Faced with the Third Tsuchikage suddenly dumping the question on him, Araki was briefly stunned.
What level was the Third Hokage at?
Was he worth the score of a Kage?
Araki did not rush to answer. Instead, he first considered why the other man had asked that question.
Clearly, the scores the Third Kazekage had proposed earlier basically matched a shinobi's rank—or rather, their importance.
Using one point for an ordinary jōnin as the baseline, an elite jōnin's actual combat strength was roughly equivalent to five ordinary jōnin.
As for the massive jump in scores for commanders and Kage, it was not because they could fight off the siege of thirty or fifty jōnin alone. It was mainly due to the value added by their identity and status.
Once a commander died, the army's command and deployment would inevitably fall into chaos. If a village's Kage died during a war, that village would find it difficult to do anything besides surrender.
From that perspective, Sarutobi Hiruzen, who had already stepped down as Hokage, was not actually worthy of a fifty-point evaluation.
After all, now that he was no longer Hokage, even if he died, Konoha would not be thrown into turmoil. His strategic value was not that high.
Even he could quickly figure out such a question, yet the Tsuchikage had specifically brought it up, and the Kazekage had given such an absurd score...
Then they suddenly threw the question to him...
Were they... putting on an act for him?
Was the purpose to test him?
Araki felt a little enlightened.
He was right.
Not to mention anything further back, when they had previously seen the photos of Sarutobi Hiruzen and Shimura Danzō's severed arms, along with Konoha's bounty notice, they had merely been suspicious and uncertain.
But on Turtle