The Stone Shinobi had suffered a heavy defeat in their battle against the Sand Shinobi. The Sand Shinobi had just been soundly beaten by Konoha, and then they had fought a major battle against the Stone Shinobi. Although they had won, they no longer had the strength to keep fighting.
Thus, on the Land of Wind battlefield, Konoha, the Sand Shinobi, and the Stone Shinobi kept one another in check. The situation in the Land of Earth was much the same, with Konoha, the Stone Shinobi, and the Cloud Shinobi facing off. In the Land of Water, it was Konoha, the Cloud Shinobi, and the Mist Shinobi.
The Five Great Nations kept one another in check, and nearly half a year after it began, the Third Shinobi World War entered a war of attrition.
And so, time flew by, and a year passed in the blink of an eye.
There were no major offensives on any of the battlefields that year. Small-scale skirmishes and ambushes continued without end.
On the rocky wasteland outside Konoha Camp in the Land of Wind, Hatake Sakumo and Yamanaka Tohru were sparring as usual.
It was the year 44 of Konoha. Yamanaka Tohru was almost twelve, about the same age Naruto and the others would be when they graduated in the original story.
Over the course of that year, Yamanaka Tohru had changed greatly in all sorts of ways.
First, there was his height. He had shot up like a bamboo shoot after the rain, growing rapidly until he was now around 1.6 meters tall.
Then there was his chakra. Because of Ice Release, Yamanaka Tohru had far more chakra than an ordinary ninja. He wasn't as outrageously powerful as Naruto in the original story, but he had still reached the Quasi-Kage level.
The increase