My Ninja Career is Without Regret

"You don't need to give me your money, Kakuzu! I appreciate the gesture. Don't worry, our organization isn't short on cash!"

Hyuga Shin looked at Kakuzu, the perfect worker who was devoted to the organization, and reassured him.

At the same time, he couldn't help thinking, Did Konan empty Kakuzu's vault in the original story?

"We're not short on cash!" Kakuzu's eyes lit up at Hyuga Shin's words.

Sasori, who had been silently grumbling to himself nearby, grew curious too.

He'd thought that Kakuzu, a teammate who could pull out eighty million ryo, was already outrageous. He hadn't expected Hyuga Shin to think so little of that sum.

After getting a proper grasp of how much a hundred thousand ryo was, Hidan had struggled to calculate how much eight million ryo was when Kakuzu mentioned it.

Now Hyuga Shin was saying they weren't short on cash. Kakuzu was especially excited, and even Sasori and Hidan watched Hyuga Shin with eager curiosity.

"Boss, just how much money does our organization have in reserve?" Kakuzu's faith in money kept prodding his curiosity until he had to ask.

"Well, right now, one billion ryo shouldn't be a problem."

Hyuga Shin furrowed his brow and estimated the amount in his personal vault, giving them a rough figure.

"One... one billion ryo!" Kakuzu's breathing grew ragged. It was almost impossible to imagine that Hyuga Shin had so much money!

Sasori was stunned by the size of Hyuga Shin's savings too!

Sunagakure's entire annual budget was only a little over three hundred million ryo. Hyuga Shin's vault could cover three years of its expenses!

Sasori had once served as the Third Kazekage's guard, so he knew this very well.

After all, Sunagakure was famously the poorest of the Five Great Shinobi Villages. Konohagakure, by contrast, had an annual budget of at least five hundred million ryo.

The Land of Wind wasn't as wealthy as the Land of Fire, so the financial support it provided was naturally much lower.

Sasori finally recovered from his shock and no longer worried that the organization might go bankrupt.

For an organization that currently had only five people, Hyuga Shin's vault really did mean they weren't short on cash!

Thinking of it that way, spending this much on a meal didn't seem all that unreasonable.

As for Hidan, he was still asking Kakuzu how much one billion ryo was. He still hadn't figured out how much eighty million was.

But Kakuzu had no time for him.

One billion ryo! It was unimaginable!

Kakuzu had worked nearly his whole life, taken who knew how many missions, faced danger time and again, and extorted dozens of rich men. He'd been too stingy even to enjoy his earnings, and still he'd only managed to save eighty million ryo!

And Hyuga Shin? He could casually take out one billion ryo! It was a whole different level!

The boss was not only powerful, but rich, too!

Kakuzu's admiration and reverence for Hyuga Shin flowed on and on like the Yangtze, then burst forth like the Yellow River in flood, unstoppable.

"Boss, may I ask how you earned such a vast fortune? I've worked hard my whole life and only managed to earn a mere eighty million ryo. Please, you have to tell me how. I'd be extremely grateful!"

Kakuzu could no longer hold back his curiosity and admiration. He immediately asked, even using the respectful form of address.

Sasori, sitting nearby, was speechless at Kakuzu's words. What the hell did he mean, "only a mere eighty million ryo"?!

He'd hardly ever even seen eight million ryo. Most of Sasori's money came from his grandmother, Chiyo. He was still young, after all, and barely had a few coins in his pocket.

"Being a puppeteer is damn expensive! Damn it!" For the first time, Sasori had a real sense of how poor he was.

"Well, this is a bit..."

Hyuga Shin was at a loss for words.

It really wasn't easy to explain.

He couldn't exactly tell them he'd made it by writing smut.

After Hyuga Shin left the ranks of the shinobi, he had to live off his savings.

The Hyuga Clan's Main Family didn't care for him, so naturally they gave him little financial support.

Developing his technique had burned through a great deal of his savings. Fortunately, he'd made some progress before his vault ran dry.

But he still needed financial support for the later stages of his research.

So, more than ten years ago, Hyuga Shin had embarked on a career as a bestselling author in the Shinobi World.

Writers in the Shinobi World could make pretty good money, and nobody dared pirate their books, since the publishers were mostly owned by the Daimyo of the various nations.

They maintained strict control over books.

They were especially strict about books containing subversive ideas. Those simply wouldn't be published.

Hyuga Shin wanted to make some money to support his work on developing his technique, so he decided to try writing a few books.

He had plenty of time to rest when he wasn't working on his technique, anyway.

Besides, after looking into it thoroughly at the time, he'd found that smut was incredibly popular in the Shinobi World.

The Five Great Nations even published a great deal of it, because there was a real market for it.

Shinobi bought astonishing quantities, and ordinary people bought even more!

One of the Three Poisons, indeed!

So he bought a few bestselling books to study the market.

Just as he'd expected, the prose was pale, the plots were a mess, and the character descriptions and steamy scenes were all shallow.

With the influence of his previous life, he thought the writing was a complete pile of crap!

The worst part was that readers devoured it with relish!

Unbelievable!

It seemed erotic fiction in this world was still in its infancy. It was a gold mine waiting to be tapped!

Hyuga Shin immediately decided to open the eyes of these bumpkins in the Shinobi World.

He could make some money along the way and support his great work of developing his technique.

The best part was, it paid fast!

And so, one night more than ten years ago, Teacher Dalong, the famous bestselling author known across the Five Great Nations, burst onto the scene!

His first book, Living with Beautiful Female Ninjas, took the Five Great Nations by storm soon after its release!

Its exciting plot, tantalizing descriptions, and thrilling scenes that set the imagination racing—along with the yearning, unspoken love, and painful struggles of desire and separation—came vividly to life in Hyuga Shin's writing.

His characters felt so real that readers could easily put themselves in their shoes and let their imaginations run wild.

For a time, it swept across the Five Great Nations.

That one work, wrapped in the guise of smut, brought Hyuga Shin a total income of more than three hundred million ryo!

It was pure profit!

Even robbery wasn't this lucrative!

Teacher Dalong went on to write more than ten other works, including The Story of Me and My Beautiful Female Ninja Boss, Chronicle of Flowers in the Warring States, Inoue Takeo's Memoirs, My Ninja Career is Without Regret, and To Those Beautiful Days Past.

Every one of them was excellent and incredibly provocative, yet somehow never as explicit or blunt as the books written by other authors.

Readers filled in the blanks with their imaginations, to the point that potent kidney-tonifying pills were a must-have for every fan.

Hyuga Shin understood his readers. You couldn't tell them what the characters in the book were like. You had to make them wonder what they'd do if they were in the characters' shoes.

That was how you drew them in.

A tease from afar was the most maddening of all! No amount of pale description could beat the reader's own imagination.

Teacher Dalong had also written a full-blown piece of smut that had repeatedly sold out.

It still topped the erotic fiction bestseller list, crushing every author who tried to imitate him.

These works earned Hyuga Shin several hundred million ryo in royalties each year. His annual earnings had never fallen below three hundred million ryo, matching Sunagakure's entire yearly budget.

He was richer than a whole village!

And at this point, money no longer had any use to Hyuga Shin. It was just a pile of wastepaper.

But it was a tremendous source of support for the Spark Organization.

"Boss, is there something you'd rather not talk about?" Kakuzu asked, noticing Hyuga Shin's hesitation.

"It's not that. I just don't think it'd be a very suitable line of work for you. Anyway, the organization won't be short on money from now on."

Hyuga Shin tried to gloss over it, feeling a little awkward.

He still had some pride.

He couldn't let the organization members' good impression of him be ruined.

"Then may I ask what line of work you're in, boss? I doubt you could earn that much as a shinobi."

Hyuga Shin had underestimated Kakuzu's devotion to money.

He hadn't expected Kakuzu to remain so obsessed with it even after finding a cause to believe in.

"Nothing special. I just wrote a few novels and made a little money."

Under Kakuzu's persistent questioning, Hyuga Shin reluctantly admitted how he'd earned his fortune.

"Writing novels? I guess that really isn't suitable for me." Kakuzu sounded a little dejected.

"Wait. What kind of novels could possibly make that much money?! Are there really authors in the Shinobi World who earn that much?" Kakuzu immediately began to wonder.

"Actually, there are!" Kakuzu thought it over carefully, and a guess came to mind.