Escort Mission

Touma did not forget his mission, handing the transcribed intelligence scroll over to Jiraiya.

However, Touma and the others had been a bit over-anxious before; the infiltration unit they encountered had clearly snuck in long ago.

Ever since Jiraiya took over as the acting commander of Sunny City, he had already searched out and sealed off almost all the underground tunnels and water veins in the border regions.

In fact, on the Land of Fire side of the Fire-Rain border, Jiraiya had specifically laid out a series of trigger-based traps; any Earth Style ninja attempting to tunnel through would trigger them and be killed directly beneath the ground.

It was precisely because of this series of preparations that Sunny City had the opportunity to round up all those ninjas who had naively believed in Hanzo's mobilization order.

According to the standard rates of the ninja world, the ransom for a genin is between 50,000 and 100,000 ryo, for a chunin between 200,000 and 500,000, while a jonin's ransom can reach over a million.

The captured ninjas currently in Sunny City could bring Konoha at least nearly 100 million ryo in ransom, enough to alleviate the village's currently strained financial situation.

To be honest, even a ninja with a carefree personality like Haruno Kizashi had noticed the changes in the village; for instance, the Training Ground C they frequented had not been repaired for over half a month due to severe damage.

Although repairing the training ground would only require posting a C-rank mission for professional Earth Style ninjas in the village to accept, the village was haggling over even the 30,000 to 50,000 ryo mission fee.

After all, that 30,000 to 50,000 ryo could cover the medical supply consumption for a combat squad on the front lines; the training ground could wait, but if the medical supplies ran out, that would be a real problem.

Fortunately, ninjas are not constantly deployed on the battlefield, and they have plenty of their own ways to recover.

For example, the Konoha ninjas currently responsible for mopping up in Sunny City were busy sorting through the supplies found on those who had been poisoned and knocked unconscious—what is commonly known as "looting the corpses."

Of course, "looting" isn't as simple as just grabbing a ninja tool pouch; it requires professional handling, as most ninjas, to protect their property, rig their pouches with traps.

Touma himself, for instance, had rigged his own tool pouch with a passive detection-triggered "Reverse Summoning Technique" trap. Once an outsider's chakra triggered it, the technique would summon the pouch—along with the person who triggered it—directly to the front entrance of the Hokage Building.

By the time the person realized what was happening and tried to run, it would be too late; after all, there were no fewer than twelve Anbu on standby on the first floor of the Hokage Building. Even if the person were strong enough to break through those twelve Anbu, the commotion would be enough to alert the Hokage and his two advisors in the third-floor office.

His trap was considered ruthless; most relatively common traps simply involved hiding an explosive tag or a flash bang, enough to detonate all the projectile weapons inside the pouch at once, reaching a lethal level of damage.

Therefore, there were ninjas in Sunny City specifically tasked with disarming these tool pouch traps; they helped other ninjas process the loot and took a small cut as a commission.

Never think that a small tool pouch isn't worth much; a typical ninja's gear usually consists of three to five sets of projectile weapons, a pouch of military rations, and two or three explosive tags.

A set of projectile weapons usually includes a group of kunai and shuriken plus a group of smoke bombs and flash bangs, with a second-hand purchase price of around 800 ryo.

Since military rations and explosive tags cannot be reused, their purchase price is generally guaranteed at 90% of the original value; military rations usually go for about 130 ryo, while explosive tags fetch between 1,500 and 1,700 ryo.

Thus, in most cases, the loot from a standard ninja is worth at least over 4,000 ryo.

If one encounters a ninja like those from the Rain, who specialize in large-scale projectile ninjutsu, this figure could rise to 5,000 or even 6,000 ryo, basically equivalent to a D-rank mission.

According to Touma's estimate, the nearly one thousand ninjas rounded up by Jiraiya in Sunny City could yield at least 4 million ryo in profit. When this 4 million is split among the 200 Konoha ninjas stationed in Sunny City, each person could receive a share of 20,000 ryo.

Therefore, he could clearly see the fanatical look in the eyes of these garrison ninjas as they looked at Jiraiya; the saying "fine wine flushes the face, wealth stirs the heart" was truly no lie!

Jiraiya had only been the acting commander for half a year, yet through a few small acts of generosity, he had completely won the hearts of all the garrison ninjas in the city.

Of course, despite the profit exceeding 4 million ryo, Jiraiya didn't even care about such a small amount of money. Although he came from an orphanage, he had never been short of money since he started his career as a ninja.

For some reason, he had excellent financial luck. Although he hadn't started writing books to make money yet, he would often leave money for the affected commoners in the vicinity after his missions out of kindness.

Among the many people he helped, quite a few used that money to start businesses and grew them over the years, which in turn began to provide Jiraiya with positive returns.

Jiraiya couldn't even say how many countries he had investments in or how many shares he held in various companies. Regardless, the number in his account at the Central Bank of the Land of Fire skyrocketed every year. He wasn't the richest man in the Land of Fire, but he was definitely near the top.

This was also why Orochimaru and Tsunade would ask him for money in the early days; on one hand, his wealth was truly inexhaustible, and on the other, he really didn't value money much. He was more than happy to reimburse his companions for such trivial expenses!

After submitting the intelligence and saying goodbye to Uncle Umino, Jiraiya didn't let Touma idle, but specifically entrusted him with an escort mission before he returned to the village.

The subjects of the escort were three members of the Lin Clan from the Land of Rain—all children, two girls and one boy, whom Jiraiya had discovered by accident during his first mission infiltrating the Land of Rain.

According to the information provided by these three children, the process by which Hanzo seized the position of leader of Amegakure was not legitimate. Not only were some high-ranking officials in Amegakure dissatisfied with his rise, but even the elders of his own clan, the Lin Clan, had grievances about the matter.

Therefore, after Hanzo used strong-arm tactics to force his way to power, he carried out a bloody suppression of these dissenters. Most were wiped out, while a small number who sensed the danger in advance sent their bloodline descendants away.

These three children were direct descendants of different factions within the Lin Clan. In fact, one of the little girls was the only daughter of the former Daimyo of the Land of Rain, Lin Shiyu, and was someone with the right to act as the interim Daimyo during special periods in the Land of Rain.

It was a pity that this former Daimyo's only daughter, named Lin Qianyu, was nearly starved to death in the sewers of the Land of Rain along with the other two children when Jiraiya found them.

Over the past few days, under the care of medical ninjas and with ample food, they had regained some color, but the news of the three being in Sunny City could not be kept hidden and was exposed by spies.

This attack on Sunny City was only the first wave. According to previously gathered intelligence, the second wave was imminent. This time, it wouldn't be Amegakure commanding those rogue ninjas and wandering ninjas to attack, but their own troops.

Jiraiya also believed that an "Empty Fort Strategy" could not succeed a second time, so these three children had to be transferred to Konoha.

As for how the higher-ups in Konoha would utilize these three children, that was not something Jiraiya could control. At the very least, before they were utilized, the three of them could live a decent life in Konoha.