A Painful Past
For a moment, Jiraiya truly did not know what to say.
He had genuinely been stunned by Mito's strength.
A village of several thousand people, besieged by several thousand ninja—even a Kage might not have been able to walk away unscathed, right?
Yet Mito had directly razed their village to the ground, and every single ninja had died!
Jiraiya truly could not believe it.
But when he raced back to Kusagakure at top speed, the enormous crater before his eyes told him that all of it was real.
Some places inside the pit were still burning.
"Too terrifying. Too terrifying. I absolutely can't provoke Lady Mito in the future!"
After Mito returned, she stroked Karin's head. "Don't worry, child. Grandmother has already killed all the bad people. No one will hurt you anymore."
A-Gang corrected her wording. "How old is this child? She probably has to call you Great-grandmother."
Mito smiled and pressed a hand to her forehead. "Ah, I forgot. It should be Great-grandmother."
The woman and Karin clearly still found it somewhat hard to believe.
Karin lifted her small face and looked at Mito, seeing an incomparably kind and gentle smile.
At that moment, Karin could no longer hold back. She hugged Mito and broke down sobbing.
Heaven knew what exactly the mother and daughter had gone through, and what kind of persecution those beast-like ninja had inflicted on them.
When the woman saw her own daughter crying so hard she could barely speak, she also knelt on the ground and shed tears.
"Lady Mito, thank you for saving our lives. I truly never thought I would be able to see you again one day."
Mito hurriedly helped her up. "What are you doing? Not protecting you properly was my responsibility as an elder. Now