"Jiraiya-sensei and I will be leaving tomorrow because of a mission."
Without waiting for Jiraiya to explain, Hyuga Wuye stepped forward and told the three of them himself, brief and to the point.
Yahiko and Nagato froze.
Konan's small hands, which had been folding paper, also paused.
They all knew that parting would come sooner or later, but they had not expected it to come so quickly, so suddenly...
It would not even wait one more moment.
"Sensei, did something happen?" Yahiko could not help asking.
"It's a perfectly normal wartime deployment order."
Hyuga Wuye's expression was calm. Like Konan, he showed no sign of any unusual emotion.
"A wartime deployment order?!"
Yahiko cried out. Nagato and Konan also looked over, unable to hide their concern.
Wuye had no intention of concealing it from them.
Or rather, ever since he had begun teaching them, he had never hidden anything from them—about the shinobi world or about war.
"The local-conflict phase of the Second Shinobi World War has ended. Over the past three years, several major nations have recovered and regained the strength to fight."
"Iwagakure suffered heavily when Cloud Village raided them before, so they may retaliate. But they provoked Orochimaru-sensei, and with Jiraiya-sensei three years from now, they may well suffer another defeat in the end."
"Cloud Village may keep kicking Iwagakure while they're down, or they may launch a surprise attack on Konoha. Of course, the most likely possibility is that Konoha will egg them on to sneak attack Mist Village or Sand Village, since they love pulling those underhanded tricks."
"As for Sand Village, they suffered the greatest losses during the previous full-scale war, so they are instead the side most likely to seek peace."
"And as for Konoha, as long as we hold on until the