Two Hundred and Fifty Tons

Yuya followed Kagami Uchiha to the Land of Lightning.

The journey took six and a half days.

If Yuya and Kagami Uchiha hadn't been ninjas, and had been ordinary people instead, the trip would have taken at least half a month.

After all, they were traveling from Konoha in the Land of Fire to the border of the Land of Lightning.

Yuya hurried to the temporary command post built near the front lines, where he met his uncle, Senju Tobirama.

After Senju Tobirama sent everyone else away, his normally cold, impassive face grew a little urgent.

Then he rubbed his hands together and told Yuya about something he'd encountered while training in Water Release.

Yuya's eyes lit up as soon as he heard.

He'd already managed to produce pure gold dust. There had to be plenty of gold ore below!

Kumogakure really was a bunch of musclebound idiots. They hadn't even detected such a massive gold deposit.

Well, it had originally been under a riverbed.

Yuya hurriedly asked for the coordinates. "Uncle, where's the gold deposit?!"

Senju Tobirama's expression grew restrained, and he spoke softly. "Yuya, this gold deposit would help you get stronger, wouldn't it?"

Yuya nodded repeatedly. Now that his gold reserves had passed one ton, he felt that his overall abilities had improved by a great deal.

Senju Tobirama nodded and continued, "Then let me ask you: who do you think deserves the most credit for finding this deposit?"

Yuya's excitement immediately faded. He stared at Senju Tobirama with dead-fish eyes. "Uncle, just say what you want to say."

Senju Tobirama coughed. "Well, after you use your ability to draw out the gold, we don't need to take too much. How about we split it evenly?"

Yuya was shocked. "Uncle, what kind of nonsense are you talking about? Split it evenly?! I only get half? What if I absorb the gold with my ability and then I'm just short of the amount I need to get stronger—and the rest is your half?"

Senju Tobirama's smile faded. He looked calmly at Yuya. "Then how do you think we should split it?"

Yuya said, "Sixty-forty. I get sixty, and you—"

Senju Tobirama turned and walked away. "Forget I ever brought it up."

Yuya immediately panicked. "Wait, Uncle! Fine, fine, half and half. We'll split it evenly!"

Senju Tobirama finally nodded in satisfaction.

After that, the two of them went to the river. Yuya crouched down and began searching with his ability.

Then Yuya gave Senju Tobirama a strange look.

"What is it?"

Yuya said, "My ability can only draw out gold within a ten-kilometer radius centered on me. And within that area, there's probably only..."

Senju Tobirama grew anxious. Was there hardly any?

"Probably only a little over a hundred tons."

Senju Tobirama said, "What? Only a little over a hundred... Wait, tons?"

His expression changed in an instant, and he began calculating how much one ton of gold was worth—and how much more than a hundred tons would be worth.

After a while, Senju Tobirama still hadn't finished calculating, so he simply told Yuya to get the gold out first.

Yuya activated his ability and drew more than a hundred tons of gold up from underground.

A hundred-plus tons sounded like a huge amount, but in reality, it would only make a pile about five meters on each side.

Senju Tobirama clicked his tongue and sighed at Yuya. "Your Kekkei Genkai really is useful. The gold you create with your ability turns back into its original state when it gets wet, but naturally occurring gold doesn't have that limitation. And you can pull gold right out of the soil underground, skipping the refining process entirely and turning it straight into gold...

"If you'd been born twenty years earlier..."

Senju Tobirama sighed a few times, then had Yuya split the gold in half.

After watching Yuya absorb his half of the gold into his body, Senju Tobirama's mouth twitched.

That reckless little spendthrift. If they used the gold to develop Konoha, they could—

What Senju Tobirama didn't know was that Yuya could absorb gold, but he could also spit it back out.

Absorb it, then spit it out—hardly any gold was lost.

But Yuya certainly wasn't going to tell Senju Tobirama that.

Better to let him think the gold had been absorbed and used up.

"By the way, what else were you about to say? You can tell me now."

Yuya nodded. "Oh, I was going to say there are still several thousand tons of gold below us. But my ability only reaches ten kilometers, so I can't absorb all of it."

Senju Tobirama froze in place.

A moment later, Senju Tobirama charged over, eyes bloodshot (though they were red to begin with), and grabbed Yuya by the shoulders. "I'm going to teach you Earth Release!

"You have to learn Earth Release within a day!"

Senju Tobirama had clearly gone a little crazy.

But that was only natural. No one could face several thousand tons of gold without getting excited.

Unless they didn't know what gold was worth.

So, for the next week, Senju Tobirama devoted himself to teaching Yuya Earth Release.

His main goal was to make Yuya find a way underground and haul up the gold.

After a week—seven whole days—Senju Tobirama himself could have created a new jutsu.

But Yuya had only just managed to learn three Earth Release techniques.

Strictly speaking, all three belonged to the same category: they used chakra to loosen the soil and change its form.

Once he'd learned one, he should basically have been able to use the other two as well. But Yuya still took a whole week.

Senju Tobirama sighed, though he knew that learning it all in a week—while still falling short of his own pace—wasn't much worse than the other members of his elite squad.

But right now, time was money.

After learning Earth Release, Yuya brought up a lot more gold this time.

The pile he hauled up stood more than ten meters high.

Senju Tobirama's heart stopped, but it quickly started again.

He knew he couldn't afford to keel over.

After splitting the gold in half again and happily sealing his share in a Sealing Scroll, Senju Tobirama asked in confusion, "What you just got out of the ground—was that several thousand tons?"

Yuya said, "No, it was only five hundred tons in total. Your share is two hundred and fifty tons."

Senju Tobirama was furious. "Didn't you say several thousand?"

Yuya sighed. "That's farther down, dozens of kilometers deep."

Senju Tobirama frowned. "You can't go any deeper?"

Yuya rolled his eyes. "You can try it yourself, Uncle. I can't get past two kilometers underground. The soil's too hard, and if I use up too much chakra, I'll be stuck down there for the rest of my life."

Senju Tobirama understood. This little brat Yuya was just too scared to go deeper.

Senju Tobirama said he could take Yuya down himself.

Yuya shrugged and suggested that his uncle try it first.

Senju Tobirama tried, and found that he could only use Earth Release to descend about three kilometers. The rock layer below seemed to contain other elements at such high concentrations that he couldn't go any farther.

He sighed. Senju Tobirama knew that was as far as he could go, and Yuya truly couldn't reach that depth.

So he gave up on the idea.

Still, he memorized the location of the gold vein. Once Yuya got stronger, the two of them could sneak back and steal the vein from the Land of Lightning—cutting the Land of Lightning out of the deal.

After all, that bunch of brutes in Kumogakure would only put it to waste.

Then Senju Tobirama took Yuya back to the temporary camp.

Yuya secretly rejoiced. His gold reserves had grown even larger.

He had a feeling that his next advancement would come after he absorbed more than a thousand tons of gold. By then, his detection, perception, and absorption abilities would surely become even stronger.

But Yuya certainly wasn't going to tell anyone about that.

He understood the principle of keeping one's wealth hidden.

That night, an elite Kumogakure force launched a night raid on the temporary camp where Konoha's forces were stationed...