Danzo had not agreed to Shiraishi's proposal—or rather, he had only agreed to half of it.
He had no intention of giving up just like that. He had become Hokage, and he was about to lead Konoha to victory over Hidden Cloud. He did not want to give up everything he had now.
Danzo had resolved to make one last stand.
If he failed, the choice Shiraishi had offered him might be his last way out.
But Danzo still couldn't bring himself to make that choice.
His lifelong ambition had been to make Konoha the supreme power in the Shinobi World and prove to Hiruzen Sarutobi and Teacher Tobirama that he was the better candidate for Hokage.
With the resolve to stake everything on one final gamble, Danzo left the Hokage Office and went alone to the secret prison where Root was being held.
Now, he had no choice but to take a desperate risk. He would reveal some information to the few Root confidants he trusted most and try to bring them back under his command.
Meanwhile, as Danzo prepared for a desperate last stand, Shiraishi was on the Konoha front lines, collecting the Soul-Calling Banners he had crafted one by one, pleased with what he had gained.
Before the war began, the ninjas Danzo sent out had secretly buried these Soul-Calling Banners in various corners of the battlefield. They had been silently absorbing the souls of the fallen.
Compared with the wars in the Cultivation World where Shiraishi had lived in his previous life, the scale of ninja warfare wasn't all that large.
In this war between Konoha and Hidden Cloud, the number of ninja casualties on both sides had approached two thousand.
More than half of them were Hidden Cloud ninjas who had died when Konoha surrounded