After signing the S-rank war mission contract, A held the scroll belonging to Kumogakure, his expression stiff. What he had just done was far from honorable.
The other accomplice who had forced the Raikage alongside him—Dodai—also looked somewhat unsettled. No matter how righteous and high-sounding their reasons were, he had indeed taken advantage of someone's plight and personally ruined the Raikage's political career. After all, he had been promoted by the Third Raikage himself.
These two young men closest to the Third Raikage both felt as though, after doing what they had just done, they had lost something important. Yet they could not understand what it was.
But Nawaki knew that the moment the two had decided to force the Third Raikage with their own hands for Kumogakure's sake, they had already crossed the final line in their hearts. From then on, they would gradually become political creatures without emotion, perhaps even stripped of their humanity. What could two men who were capable of forcing their own father and benefactor not do?
Logically, they should have become even more frightening after losing their bottom line, and thus a threat to Nawaki. Yet he was not worried in the slightest. In fact, he was pleased to see it happen.
Because what had just occurred had not merely caused the two to lose their moral limits—it had also broken the backbone of the Cloud Ninja. Once some things were lost, they were not so easily recovered. One only had to look at Sunagakure, which had ceded land and paid reparations to Konoha twice in a row. Having lost its last shred of pride, how could Kumogakure free itself from Konoha's control in the future?
This was the outcome Nawaki wanted most, yet the Cloud Ninja present remained completely unaware of it.
Whether