Konoha.
Hokage Building.
Inside the Hokage Office.
Sarutobi Hiruzen looked at the stack of mission records dug out from Root's headquarters base, his expression unusually grim.
Some of the contents recorded inside sent a chill through him, even though he was a veteran of political maneuvering.
He truly had not expected Danzo to have done so many things behind his back.
Originally, he had thought that he and this old friend of his were two sides of the same coin. The things the other man did might not all have been for Konoha, but at the very least, most of them were.
But now it seemed he had still underestimated this old friend's ambition.
What "most"? If even a third of it had been for the village, that would already have been good.
Sarutobi Hiruzen was now somewhat glad that, after discovering something had gone wrong with Root, he had immediately sent his Anbu to take over Root's headquarters base.
Otherwise, if these mission records had gotten out, who knew how much chaos they would have caused inside the village.
Putting aside the human experiments, the mere fact that Root had secretly captured members of the various clans to research their hereditary secret techniques was enough to set those clans on edge.
After roughly flipping through them once, Sarutobi Hiruzen set most of the mission records aside and focused on taking out two records.
The first concerned Yamato.
When he learned that the other man had truly inherited the Wood Release ability of the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju, he was overjoyed.
No one understood the power of Wood Release better than he did. Having witnessed Hashirama Senju take action, he knew very well that this was an ability capable of allowing one man to stand against a thousand, even ten