White Snake

June, Year 26 of Konoha.

The fighting on the front lines had grown increasingly fierce. The ninja armies of the Five Great Villages were tangled together, war raging everywhere. Nearly a hundred thousand ninja were fighting at the border of the Land of Fire.

Konoha, this war machine, had fully begun to operate.

Twenty years later, Konoha had shed its initial inexperience with warfare, and its ninja were rapidly growing on the battlefield.

As time dragged on, Konoha's formidable overall strength gradually became apparent. More than twenty thousand ninja had been dispatched to various battlefields, each led by Konoha's upper ranks as they fought bitterly against the other ninja villages.

By this point in the war, no major clan could remain uninvolved. Regardless of their true thoughts, as long as they had no intention of splitting from Konoha, they had all committed their full strength.

Whether it was the Uchiha or the Hyuga, aside from their clan heads remaining behind, they had already sent their elite forces to the battlefield.

Even so, the situation remained far from optimistic. Kumogakure, Iwagakure, and Sunagakure were all major villages second only to Konoha. With pressure coming from all three sides, even with Kirigakure helping to share the burden, Konoha—having lost the Three Gods—was not having an easy time.

Furthermore, Kirigakure was too far away. The excessively long battle line and the inability to send reinforcements in time had always been problems. Not long ago, Kirigakure suffered a defeat at the border of the Land of Fire. Fortunately, Konoha reacted quickly and swiftly mobilized nearby reinforcements to support them, barely stabilizing the line.

At the same time, it was said that because of this defeat, Kirigakure had reassessed the risks of the war. There seemed to be voices within the village calling for withdrawal.