Mission

Hyuga Seisen blinked at that.

"Guy and I have been training nonstop lately. Once my physical condition improved, it suddenly all clicked."

Physical training really did help with the Body Flicker Technique, so it was not exactly a lie.

Hyuga Kaze did not doubt him.

"Your body is still developing. Maybe your physical condition wasn't good enough back then, so you couldn't use it."

He sighed, looking somewhat guilty. "Dad was careless. I didn't teach according to your strengths."

Then he recalled the fierce fist technique Seisen had used during their spar. "Did Guy teach you the Strong Fist too?"

"After training with him for so long, I picked up some of it just by watching. My body naturally remembered how to exert force." Hyuga Seisen answered vaguely.

Hyuga Kaze slowly nodded.

It took him a long while of silence to process all that information.

Yet the shock and excitement in his heart refused to settle for a long time.

He looked at Hyuga Seisen, and a gratified smile suddenly appeared on his face.

Only at this moment did he begin to feel that life held hope. His son had grown up and was finally becoming sensible.

The past few years had been so hard on him.

Ever since his injury, his entire world had changed.

His growth in strength had stagnated. He could not take B-rank missions, nor could he get C-rank missions.

A proud member of a great clan, a veteran Chunin of many years.

Yet he had to compete with newly graduated Genin for D-rank missions, enduring countless cold stares.

With elderly parents above him and a child depending on him below, he could only swallow his anger.

And that child had been disappointing too, held back and unable to graduate.

Even at the clan assessments during clan meetings, he had repeatedly made his father lose face.

Countless thoughts surged through his mind. He pulled Hyuga Seisen into a tight embrace, his voice joyous yet choked with emotion.

"That's great, Seisen. You've finally grown up."

Hyuga Seisen let Hyuga Kaze hold him and patted his back. "Dad, I'll support the family from now on."

"Train hard from now on. Don't go back to how you used to be."

"Don't worry, Dad!"

The father and son embraced for a while before Hyuga Kaze finally realized that something was off.

It was a good thing that the brat had awakened his bloodline limit, but why had he shot arrows at his own father?

He placed both hands on Hyuga Seisen's shoulders and pushed him out of the embrace, about to demand an explanation.

But quick-witted Hyuga Seisen beat him to it with a grin.

"Dad, I'm pretty tired today. I'll head back and rest first."

With that, he took off in a flash.

"Wait, you little brat! You're quite quick on the uptake, aren't you?!"

Hyuga Kaze's face was filled with fury, a vein throbbing on his forehead.

"Who taught you to shoot arrows straight at your father? That arrow was this close to my ear!"

"I won't do it again."

How could Hyuga Seisen dare stop? He only ran faster.

"There's going to be a next time? You little brat, get back here..."

The next day.

Hyuga Kaze brought Hyuga Seisen to the foot of a mountain forest in the Land of Fire.

Hyuga Kaze panted heavily. "It's been a long time since I ran this far."

He rubbed the slightly swollen muscles in his leg.

Ever since his right leg had been injured, he had relied entirely on his left leg to support himself.

Not only had his movement speed slowed, but the distance he could travel had also shortened.

"How are you?" Hyuga Seisen asked with concern.

"I'm fine. Just not used to it." Hyuga Kaze waved a hand, signaling that he was all right.

His expression turned serious as he entered mission mode. "Let's investigate first. It's been a long time since this mission was issued, and the intelligence is already outdated."

As he spoke, he formed hand seals. Veins bulged around his eyes.

"Byakugan!"

The veins around his eyes instantly protruded. His vision abruptly shifted to black and white, distant scenery rapidly drawing closer as the flow of chakra became clearly visible.

He carefully adjusted his viewing distance and thoroughly examined the surrounding environment, especially the activity in the village ahead.

A moment later.

He deactivated his Byakugan.

"There's a village ahead. It should be Mountain Pool Village from the map. Let's go take a look."

"Okay," Hyuga Seisen replied.

Before long, the two arrived outside Mountain Pool Village.

But they did not enter directly. Instead, they first found a concealed spot on high ground at the outskirts and hid there.

To conserve chakra, it was Hyuga Seisen's turn to activate his Byakugan.

He surveyed the village.

The doors and windows of every house along the roads were tightly shut.

There were few pedestrians on the streets, and those who did pass hurried along with numb expressions.

Scorched walls and shattered doors and windows.

Everywhere in the village bore traces of having been plundered by bandits.

There were even shuriken and kunai embedded in some of the wooden walls.

"Sure enough, missions always come with unexpected surprises," Hyuga Seisen remarked.

"What is it?" Hyuga Kaze asked.

Hyuga Seisen roughly explained the situation to Hyuga Kaze.

But Hyuga Kaze merely chuckled after hearing it.

"This mission may appear to be C-rank, but when you see that its reward is as high as fifty thousand ryo, you should already expect a good chance of complications."

Hyuga Seisen was somewhat surprised. "Dad, are you saying these kinds of surprises happen often during missions?"

Hyuga Kaze nodded with a smile. "More accurately, they happen often in the more difficult missions within a given rank.

"For a C-rank mission like ours, with a reward of fifty thousand ryo, it wouldn't be excessive to raise it to B-rank."

"Then why not just classify it as a B-rank mission from the start?" Hyuga Seisen asked, puzzled.

"It's not that simple." Hyuga Kaze shook his head.

"By regulation, any mission whose targets do not include ninja is classified as C-rank or below."

"The information provided by the client and the targets to be eliminated are all ordinary people. The village cannot forcibly classify it as a B-rank mission."

"However, when the village evaluated it, they had already foreseen that the mission might not be simple, so they raised the reward to the highest level within the C-rank range."

At this point, Hyuga Kaze's expression became stern. He earnestly continued instructing Hyuga Seisen.

"So from now on, when you accept missions, you need to keep this in mind."

"Any mission with a reward pushed to the maximum within its rank is never as simple as it looks."

Hyuga Seisen nodded.

He had not expected there to be so many hidden considerations just in accepting a mission.

These were things that the Ninja Academy had never taught.

Or rather, could not teach.

They were unspoken rules that one could only come to understand through doing missions, unless one had a mentor to guide them.

That was the greatest difference between great clans and commoners.

No matter how fair the system was, the advantages brought by inheritance would still allow later generations to take many fewer detours.

Hyuga Seisen suddenly recalled that Kakashi had mentioned changing a mission's commission rank in the original story.

So he asked, "When you encounter an unexpected situation beyond the mission's scope, can't you return to the village and have the mission rank changed?"

"You can, but few people do."

Hyuga Kaze cleared his throat. "Take our mission, for example."

"Even if ninja appear, provided they aren't very strong, returning to the village to raise it to B-rank would at most add another ten or twenty thousand ryo. That's because the original fifty thousand ryo was already budgeted on the high side."

"And we already spent several days traveling here, then more time investigating the situation."

"To earn that little extra reward, we would have to return to the village and then come back, wasting more than ten days. By then, because of the passage of time, we would have to investigate the intelligence all over again."

"With that time, we might as well finish the mission, return to the village, and take the next one."

"So during missions, as long as the enemy is only a little stronger than expected, people usually just complete the mission. Very few return to the village to change the rank."

Hyuga Seisen nodded to show that he understood.

Hyuga Kaze looked at his son with satisfaction as well.

The fact that his son could ask such questions showed that he was truly thinking.

"Then let's go into the village and have a look."

The father and son descended from the high ground, both activating their Byakugan as they slipped into the village one after the other.