I Want to Slack Off

"Damn it, Muzan! You didn't find us, and we ended up stuck in there for days!"

Anko looked utterly haggard now, no longer carrying her former high spirits.

Her fists rained down on Muzan as she vented her dissatisfaction.

"Do you know how I spent those days? Day after day! I waited for you for three whole days!"

After they had separated, Anko figured Muzan must have been delayed by something. Coupled with the unexpected developments at the time, neither Anko nor Mari dared to change positions carelessly.

So they obediently stayed put for three days. According to the agreement they had made before setting out, whether they succeeded or failed, they were to begin heading back on the sixth day.

The moment Anko and Mari returned to camp, they did not rest. Instead, they immediately searched for Muzan.

Yet from the others, Anko learned a fact she simply could not believe.

"You bastard! I even gave you my dango, and you went behind my back and completed an S-rank mission!"

Even now, she could not believe that Muzan had not only discovered the provisions, but had also worked with a Jōnin to burn them all in one blaze.

Some people even said that half the credit for completing the mission went to Muzan.

That left her feeling terribly unbalanced, and she needed to vent her fury properly.

"I can't exactly compensate you with an S-rank mission..."

Seeing how haggard she looked, Muzan did not say anything harsh. After all, his teammates had not abandoned him; they had waited in the same place for three days.

"When we get back to Konoha, you have to treat me to food! You have to cook for me too!"

Faced with Anko's unreasonable demands, Mari could only give him a helpless look. He should pray for himself.

"I can't cook anything else. I can only make noodles for you..."

In the end, Muzan had to agree to make them several times before Anko was finally satisfied.

From Anko and Mari's account, ninjas had initially kept patrolling the area. But by the final day, the Cloud Ninja had suddenly vanished, as if something had forced them to retreat into their main camp.

"Looks like we'll have some free time for now."

It was a rare rest day, and as a medical ninja, he received the best treatment as long as there were no patients.

After resting for one day, an unwelcome visitor came knocking.

Shanjian He, with dark circles beneath his eyes, came looking for Muzan. He looked as though his kidneys had been drained dry, and with his sunken cheeks, it was hard to imagine what could have wrung a Special Jōnin dry like this.

"You're finally back. Luckily, we followed your suggestion. The number of wounded personnel has surged during this period."

"Our camp's medical system hasn't collapsed, but the situation is far from optimistic. We don't have enough medical ninja."

"I need your help. Pack your things and come with me."

Because they had all been carrying out dangerous missions—especially scouting the provisions and fighting on the front lines—injuries of varying severity had piled up.

That was when medical ninja were needed. Under the orders Tsunade had established back then, as long as a patient still had one breath left, a medical ninja could not give up!

Every one of them was struggling on the rear front line. On the very first day Sakumo gave the order, personnel had already begun getting injured and had been sent over one after another.

After all, this mission required coordination. While they investigated the precise location of the provisions, the front line also had to draw away most of the enemy forces. Otherwise, once the Cloud Ninja came to their senses, the ninjas who had infiltrated the rear would face an encirclement several times larger than their own numbers.

Several consecutive days of feint attacks were needed to hold back the enemy Jōnin, resulting in significant casualties.

The reason Shanjian He looked like this was because he had overused his chakra.

He raised a trembling hand and placed it on Muzan's shoulder. Among the medical ninja, Muzan was undoubtedly the best.

Moreover, the camp's medical reform plan had followed Muzan's original design and had already shown initial results. But there were still many flaws, giving Shanjian He a terrible headache.

He had no idea where to begin. In fact, Shanjian He had planned to come over on the first day Muzan returned to camp, but remembering that Muzan had been on a long mission, he postponed it until the next day.

He had been unable to sleep all night!

"So, the camp doesn't have enough medical ninja right now."

Muzan's face twitched as he looked at him. Shanjian He was the one in charge of the camp, so when had assigning medical ninja become Muzan's responsibility?

"Something's not right here. Shouldn't you be asking Konoha for help?"

"As for the number of medical ninja, there's nothing I can do either."

He had wanted to slack off, but judging by this situation, the chance of slacking off was zero.

Then, seeing Shanjian He's utterly drained appearance after struggling for several days, Muzan finally seemed to resign himself and agreed to his request.

"Fine. Let's treat the injured first."

At the rear of Konoha Camp, a group of wounded lay sprawled about. Compared with the people he had seen last time, this situation was far more brutal. There were not even enough beds inside, and some had been placed outside.

Fortunately, there was no shortage of medical supplies. The wounded had received basic bandaging to keep them from dying of infection.

But in Muzan's eyes, that was nowhere near enough.

Arriving at a severely injured section, he saw sheets stained red with copious blood. Fortunately, the medical ninja nearby had already stopped the bleeding. Otherwise, the people lying on those beds would have been corpses.

Stopping the bleeding did not mean replenishing the blood.

Their pale faces were the result of excessive blood loss. Muzan touched their arms and found them unexpectedly cool.

"Several of them were injured by explosions. They need blood transfusions."

Although Konoha had medical ninja, its overall treatment methods were still somewhat lacking.

Especially after Tsunade stopped handling matters, Konoha's medical development had fallen into stagnation.

If it had once been a wild horse running loose, producing many medical ninja and medical ninjutsu in just a few years, then for all the years afterward, Konoha had merely been living off its old foundations.

"Blood transfusions?"

Shanjian He looked hesitant. He was also a medical ninja, so he naturally understood that for these severely injured people, transfusion was the only option.

Seeing him hesitate, Muzan frowned, deeply displeased.

"Don't tell me our camp doesn't have transfusion equipment."

"We do, but there aren't enough blood bags. And giving a transfusion rashly can easily cause death."

He did not want to use such a gamble with people's lives to treat patients.

"What the hell do you mean, rashly causing death?"

He understood the lack of blood bags; after all, there were not many people willing to donate blood.

Wait, Muzan seemed to realize something.

"You don't know about blood types, do you?"

One look at his expression told Muzan that he had guessed correctly.

Sure enough, this was a Naruto world with seriously flawed development. It was hard to imagine a world with advanced ninjutsu where technology relied entirely on Orochimaru, while the medical field that branched from it was so pathetic it was beyond belief.

"This can't be sorted out in a short time. Use chakra to replenish their blood first."

Chakra might be all-powerful, but without chakra, nothing could be done.