As it turned out, having the advantage of foresight did make his read on the situation accurate. But even without it, Higashino Makoto would never have believed Kirigakure would keep playing nice forever.
Among the Five Great Shinobi Villages, Sunagakure had puppets and poison; Iwagakure had numbers and group techniques; Kumogakure had brute force and a knack for taking things without paying. Konoha had... deep roots and, at crucial moments, some godlike figure would always emerge.
And what did Kirigakure have? A bunch of lunatics who were very good at killing one another.
The most mysterious of the Five Great Shinobi Villages, Kirigakure had always pursued an extreme policy of isolation, so little information ever leaked out.
But according to the scant intelligence available, they had long been carrying out some policy called the Bloody Mist Village. The pressure caused by their brutal infighting was about to explode. And rather than blow themselves up, they might as well blow up someone else.
At that moment, all four of their opponents had been battered by war and had no cards left to play. It was the perfect time to throw down a bomb and reap twice the rewards.
At last, a month after the Battle of Kannabi Bridge—in August of Konoha Year 49—Kirigakure decided to join in the cheerful game of slaughter.
They landed on the eastern coast of the Land of Fire and brazenly invaded Konoha. In an instant, the eastern coastal defenses collapsed. Civilians were killed or driven from their homes, towns were destroyed, and the situation became extremely dire.
Those lunatics displayed an unmatched lust for slaughter, as if they weren't invading for profit at all, but simply to indulge their bloodthirst.
But Konoha could no longer spare enough ninja forces from its other fronts.
Third Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi summoned the heads of the major clans for an overnight meeting and presented the final solution.
Open the gates and unleash the Uchiha.
The Uchiha were skilled in Fire Release, while Kirigakure excelled at Water Release. The Uchiha didn't care. This was a golden opportunity for the strongest Ninja Clan to earn credit. As for elemental advantages and disadvantages—what were those?
So a force led by Uchiha Ninja, with the Hyuga in support and the other clans contributing their reserves, was hastily assembled and sent to the Eastern Front.
To make up for the lack of manpower, the village squeezed the Commoner Ninja even harder. It even threw many rookies who had graduated just a few years earlier onto the battlefield.
Apart from the basic forces needed to defend the village, every person they could spare had been wrung out of them. Fighting on multiple fronts had left Konoha seriously short on manpower.
Finally, to balance the rivalry between Konoha's two great houses, Third Hokage had no choice but to hand command of the Eastern Front to Orochimaru.
Iwagakure had agreed to negotiate under pressure, but no peace treaty had been signed. On top of Kumogakure's offensive, Jiraiya and Minato Namikaze couldn't get away.
Orochimaru had seen it all coming. Though his mind was no longer on the war, he didn't refuse—in fact, he was quite happy to take on the responsibility. Compared to Sunagakure's limited variety, Kirigakure had an abundance of bloodline abilities.
The Kaguya Clan's Shikotsumyaku, the Yuki Clan's Ice Release, the Hozuki Clan's Water Transformation Secret Jutsu, the Kaguya Clan's Human Shark Body...
They were all excellent experimental materials.
Splendid!!
Kirigakure's entry had turned the Shinobi World War, whose course had gradually begun to take shape, into an even more chaotic affair.
What's more, while invading Konoha, they also sent troops into the southern seas. Using the Land of Tea peninsula as a stepping stone, they set their sights on the prosperous coastal regions in the south of the Land of Wind.
Fans of Naruto in his previous life had speculated that Kirigakure invaded Sunagakure by crossing the ocean from the other side of the planet, sparking a war between them.
But that made little sense. It was far too distant. The planet where the Shinobi World lay was not small, and the Five Great Nations, along with the many smaller countries, were clustered together in a relatively small area.
To invade Sunagakure, Kirigakure only had to head west across the Rainbow Sea, then establish a foothold in the Land of Tea, which had no Ninja Village of its own.
The Land of Tea was a vassal state of the Land of Fire, but Konoha had no time to protect it.
As for heading east and going around the other side of the planet, that was not only a much longer route, but also required them to skirt two other continents, one large and one small—both vast and barren.
Those two continents were almost entirely wasteland, with very few people living there. Their styles of combat and customs were also completely different from those of the mainstream world.
The Shinobi World wasn't in the ancient era. Seafaring was advanced, so people weren't unfamiliar with those lands. It was just that they had so little to offer that no nation took an interest in them.
As for why things had turned out that way, no one in the Shinobi World knew. Curious explorers had gone there to investigate in the past, but none of them had ever figured it out.
Perhaps only Kaguya Otsutsuki and her three sons, who had lost their human forms, knew the whole story.
Higashino Makoto had studied the geography of the Shinobi World and had a vague idea of the answer.
The Divine Tree must have drained them dry. The lands where the nations of the Shinobi World lay were the last source of life on the planet. Even so, most of the largest nation, the Land of Wind, was nothing but endless desert.
Otherwise, why do you think the Otsutsuki Clan came to the Shinobi World to plant a tree? To reforest it?
Sunagakure was furious at Kirigakure's senseless attack and immediately dispatched troops under Pakura's command to deliver a crushing blow to those lunatics.
If I couldn't beat Konoha, you think I couldn't beat Kirigakure?
Fire Release was countered by Water Release? Pakura declared that she used Scorch Release, and promised to provide them with a full Mummy Service package, from sauna to desiccation.
In no time, countless Kirigakure Ninja experienced a dry, refreshing sensation unlike anything they had ever known. The Third Shinobi World War, which had been showing signs of stabilizing, plunged into chaos once more.
The chaotic war raged on.
Kirigakure had assumed Konoha was already exhausted and couldn't resist their surprise invasion. But after only a few days of celebrating, they were thrashed by a Konoha force led by the Uchiha and Hyuga.
An elemental disadvantage? The Uchiha Ninja said that as long as you were strong enough, it wouldn't affect the bigger picture.
The Mist Technique obscured their vision? The Hyuga Clan said that in front of the Byakugan, there was nowhere for them to hide.
The Kirigakure Ninja immediately came to hate the same thing as everyone else in the other Ninja Villages: this bunch of cheaters who could see through everything. But they also wanted that power for themselves, so they secretly began plotting to steal the Byakugan and searching the battlefield for members of the Hyuga Main Family.
At the same time, to turn the tide, they brought out their strongest trump card: the Seven Ninja Swordsmen.
Seven powerful Ninja, all different in appearance and temperament, each wielding a bizarre weapon, began hunting freely across the Eastern Front.
They didn't respect one another, but were always competing. They treated the war as a delightful game.
Even when they came across a rookie squad from Konoha, all seven would play with them like cats tormenting mice. Then they'd end up turning on each other over who got to keep the prey.
Efficiency in killing enemies? The Mizukage's orders? To hell with all that.
And then they ran into an oddball Genin dressed in a green, skintight bodysuit. He beat them into the Lucky Three, sending some fleeing and others defecting.
In October of Konoha Year 49, Might Duy died in battle.
Konoha's leaders were overjoyed. They hadn't expected to get such a windfall: the life of a single Genin had taken out four of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen. A huge profit—a ridiculously good deal.
They also began to take the Eight Inner Gates, a Forbidden Jutsu, seriously. Their research revealed that it truly wasn't something a normal person could learn. It took an incredibly long time to master, and without exceptional Taijutsu talent and the utmost endurance, even decades of training might not yield results. It was also easy to train yourself to death. The technique simply wasn't suitable for most people.
Fortunately, Might Guy, as the heir to this technique, gained the village's special attention.
Might Duy's death not only greatly eased the pressure on the Eastern Front, but also kicked his son into a brighter future.
Time raced by amid the flames of war, and the new year soon arrived.
Unwilling to give up, Kirigakure once again plotted a major move under the influence of certain forces. They planned to send the Three-Tails into Konoha.
It failed again. Apart from the death of an expendable Konoha Medical Ninja, they accomplished none of their goals.
What's more, Kirigakure temporarily lost the Three-Tails and sacrificed nearly all its elite Anbu. A catastrophic loss—a complete disaster.
But those people didn't know that, at the instigation of a hidden hand, they had personally destroyed a young Uchiha's light, turning a kind boy completely dark. From then on, he would become the operations chief in a conspiracy city of interlocking rings.
At the end of February in Konoha Year 50, Konoha Ninja Nohara Rin died.
The person who killed her was Konoha Ninja Kakashi Hatake.
The faint glimmer of light that had just appeared dimmed once more. He knew his teammate had used his hand to commit suicide, foiling Kirigakure's plot.
But that only made his pain worse. Even Rin, whose abilities were nothing special, had held to her convictions more firmly and shown greater courage than he had.
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