Yes, yes, you've all profited

Compared to the desolation of Sunagakure's single shop, the ten shops belonging to Kirigakure were bustling with activity.

Furthermore, the Land of Water, where Kirigakure is located, is surrounded by the sea on all sides, making its various resources quite abundant.

Although the people of Kirigakure were sick of eating fish, the people of Konoha were still quite fond of it.

Fish is meat, after all; in this era, being able to eat meat is a great blessing, so who cares whether it's fish or beef?

It's a pity that Yuya doesn't know how to make sausages; otherwise, he could use some starch to create a meat-like flavor, and Yuya could turn Konoha into a paradise where everyone can eat "meat" within a year.

This is no exaggeration. For the average person in Year 18 of Konoha, being able to taste meat at every meal would be heaven.

Unfortunately, Yuya lacks this technology.

Therefore, the best-selling items in these ten Kirigakure shops were various types of seafood.

Added to the seafood Yuya had purchased according to regulations earlier, Kirigakure had already earned millions of Ryo just from selling fish.

This could already be considered a major business.

More importantly, this wasn't a one-time deal; if you ate it today, you might want to eat it again tomorrow or the day after.

Konoha is currently in an awkward state where various factories are opening frequently, but because the total population is only a few hundred thousand, it is impossible to expand the scale.

In many cases, population is a very important factor.

To Senju Tobirama, having too many people in the village might be troublesome, but to Yuya, the more people, the better.

Besides, there is a term called demographic dividend.

It might not be very obvious when applied to an individual, but if you look at the entire country, you can see that a large population is very beneficial to national development.

While the people of Kirigakure were happy to see money pouring into their accounts every day, Yuya was even happier.

Why?

Look at where Kirigakure is conducting its trade.

Kirigakure did indeed make money, but the ships of supplies they brought over were being sold in the Trading Zone designated by Konoha.

In other words, the Trading Center that Yuya originally thought would take at least a year or two to establish was up and running in less than half a year thanks to Kirigakure's help.

Now, who in the Ninja World doesn't know that in Konoha, you can buy specialties from Kirigakure: mild-tasting fruit wine, various types of seafood, and the salt and iron unique to Kirigakure.

There is no need to mention iron; the steel mill in Kirigakure was built with Konoha's help.

Although they have to give up one-tenth of the total output every year, it is not unacceptable.

After all, it's only for three years.

It is said that at the beginning, the powerful clans managing Kirigakure wanted to suppress production so that Konoha wouldn't get many resources during these three years.

But after calculating carefully, they realized that doing so would also leave them with much less iron ore over those three years.

After another careful calculation, they realized that this iron smeltery was the reward Konoha gave them to stop participating in this war—yes, everyone, even the people of Konoha, still thinks so—and since they only take one-tenth, there was no need to deliberately lower production and prevent themselves from getting too much iron.

Of course, in reality, Yuya doesn't really value this Kirigakure iron smeltery.

After all, he is about to expand to his tenth iron smeltery.

Iron can be used for everything from the village's building materials to the pots and pans in one's own home.

Yuya has no intention of letting Konoha continue playing around with only a few hundred thousand people.

Attracting refugees and people from small clans to Konoha is a long-term policy that must be persisted in.

Of course, it would be even better if the people who come are young and strong.

Kirigakure's business in Konoha is booming, and while Sunagakure is green with envy, they really have no other choice.

They do have specialties, though—cactus and desert chili peppers, maybe?

Desert chili peppers are worth considering, but let's forget about the cactus.

The villagers of Konoha are not camels; they can't chew that stuff. At most, they might buy a few to try something new, but they wouldn't buy several fish at a time like they do at the Kirigakure stalls.

However, Chiyo, the young lady managing the Sunagakure shop, did deliver the finished puppets to Yuya and collected the final payment.

After Yuya paid, Miss Chiyo was clearly very happy.

This one item alone was enough to cover the usage fee for their Sunagakure shop in Konoha for an entire year.

Everything else sold after that was pure profit.

Moreover, due to Yuya's deliberate arrangements, several restaurants also came to sign purchase contracts for desert chili peppers with Sunagakure.

Although the initial volume wasn't very large, with future development, the demand for this kind of chili, which has a huge daily consumption, will definitely increase.

They are currently selling over a hundred thousand Ryo worth a day. Although this is just the selling price, if you factor in the journey from Sunagakure in the Land of Wind and the daily expenses of the dozen or so Sunagakure ninja here, they aren't actually making much money. But how could the people of Sunagakure calculate so precisely?

To them, is the journey along the way a cost?

That is clearly their training as ninja!

Ah, though it is true that daily consumption in Konoha is a bit high.

After all, Konoha Village understands men and women too well.

What with the massage parlors, jewelry stores, and the gambling dens deep in the Trading Street...

To be fair, if Yuya didn't lack the relevant technical knowledge, he would have given the Ninja World a little taste of internet cafe culture.

However, for one, he didn't know the technology required to build a network, and for another, the world wasn't exactly peaceful yet. If he opened such a place, those brats would surely be unable to resist the temptation, and the next generation of Konoha's combat strength would be in serious jeopardy of collapsing.

But as the saying goes, if the east side isn't bright, the west side might be.

Yuya could go to other countries to open internet cafes and poison their next generation instead.

Unfortunately, having the idea wasn't enough; he needed the capability to back it up.

Of course, Yuya had already begun his cultural invasion of other countries; the first step was naturally the promotion that "In Konoha, you can buy goods from other nations."

Although Konoha could now be said to have consolidated the relevant resources of the Land of Water and the Land of Wind, allowing them to trade at their own exchange, if one were to be honest...

It was still not enough.

Yuya looked at the maps of the Land of Lightning and the Land of Earth with a bit of envy.

The high-quality Wagyu beef from the pastures of the Land of Lightning and the abundant food resources of the Land of Earth—referring to potatoes, which were edible after all—were things he really wanted.

In comparison, Sunagakure, which was as poor as a ghost (yes, only Sunagakure was poor; the Daimyo of the Land of Wind was not poor at all), and the Land of Water, which was far from the continent and relied mostly on the ocean for resources, were indeed less promising than these two countries on the mainland.

Regardless, this war still had to be fought.

War is the continuation of politics, and the strategy Yuya wanted to implement—getting these two countries to join in and make money together (meaning they would come to Konoha to earn money, and if they didn't come, they wouldn't earn any)—could not be realized until this war ended.

But that didn't matter.

He could wait; he could absolutely afford to wait.

Just as Konoha was developing vigorously, Yuya opened a store specializing in clothing. The prices were outrageously high, but believe it or not, a few pieces actually sold within days of opening.

Hmm, the buyers were from the Shimura Clan and the Nara Clan.

Hiss, you thick-browed, big-eyed Nara Clan members are actually this wealthy?

You usually act so low-key, but now you can't hide it anymore, can you?

While Yuya noted this down in his little notebook, he secretly established the Ninja Equipment and Information Technology R&D Department.

The main focus was research.

After all, now that Konoha was making money, it was time to think about how to spend it.

And without a doubt, conducting research was one of the fastest ways to burn through cash.

The first project: using the exquisitely crafted Sunagakure puppet that Yuya had bought for ten million Ryo, they would attempt to reverse-engineer Sunagakure's puppetry.

Yuya did like 2D characters, but Sunagakure's puppetry was truly a bit absurd.

They were just too ugly; Yuya was only using the 2D characters as an excuse.

His real purpose was to see if he could reverse-engineer the technology.

Regardless of whether the research turned out to be useful or not, he might not use it, but he couldn't afford to not have it, understand? The main point was tactical reserves.

And so, time slipped away bit by bit.

Then, in the late summer of Year 18 of Konoha, that news arrived...

There are even AI games in Ultimate Storm; those games are official, right? So strictly speaking, a network might be possible, but I'm afraid of writing about opening an internet cafe in Naruto, so I'll just pass on that idea.