A Boy's Encounter

After easily dealing with those four Hidden Mist Chunin, I dragged their corpses back to the combat camp.

"What is this...?"

Seeing me dragging the bodies of four Hidden Mist ninja, everyone in the camp revealed astonished expressions.

"I went for a stroll and got attacked by them. After killing them in return, I brought them back. There should be a Yamanaka Clan ninja here, right?"

After a long silence, a man finally raised his hand.

"Yes, I am a ninja of the Yamanaka Clan."

"These four are all Chunin. They might not know much, but there should still be something to gain. I'll leave them to you."

"Understood!"

After this, there should no longer have been anyone on the eastern front questioning my strength. Everyone found the Hidden Mist Technique troublesome, yet on my first day here, I had single-handedly killed four Chunin.

From then on, I became the pillar of the eastern front. Whenever an encounter broke out somewhere, I was immediately notified to provide support.

On this battlefield, I had finally returned to my old days of training every day while carrying out missions.

After all, these were all chance encounters. Hidden Mist would not be stupid enough to actively attack our headquarters, so we could rest properly at night.

Since I could go to bed early, I could get up early too.

After finishing my morning training each day, I would start wandering around. On average, I brought back the corpses of at least ten Hidden Mist ninja every five days.

Until one day, someone brought back a piece of intelligence—if they encountered Qingyue of Konoha, they could abandon their mission and were forbidden from engaging him without authorization.

Though it was only one ninja village, I had at least received the same treatment as Sakumo. Unfortunately, I still lacked a resounding title.

What would my title be? I was really looking forward to it!

It was worth mentioning that, through my unrelenting training and frequent battles, I had finally used Armament Haki during one difficult encounter.

At the time, I had encountered two Hidden Mist Jonin. Their incredible speed made it impossible for me to defend properly, and I could only barely avoid vital areas.

In that crisis, I finally used Armament Haki for the first time to protect myself. Relying on it, I successfully dragged the fight into a battle of endurance, defeated them, obtained important intelligence, recovered the Byakugan stolen by Hidden Mist, and killed Ao.

Unfortunately, Armament Haki was still beyond my control. I could not use it whenever I wanted.

But there would always be a way.

Time reached Konoha Year 49, and Might Guy's team finally stepped onto the battlefield. Seeing an old classmate again after so long made me happy.

But... that also meant Rin and the others had gone to the battlefield, right? I wondered how they were doing. Had Rin been hurt...?

"Qingyue! I didn't expect you to were here too. Long time no see!"

The moment he saw me, Might Guy excitedly ran over to greet me.

At this point, Guy was the only one here who did not speak to me respectfully. Everyone else was wary of my strength and acted somewhat restrained around me.

"Long time no see, Guy. Since you've gone to war, you should already be a Chunin, right?"

"That's right! Thanks to my father's and your guidance, I've officially become a Chunin!" Guy still gave a thumbs-up, revealing his gleaming white teeth.

Come to think of it, Guy was actually stronger than his original counterpart at this point. After all, I had also taught him Battle Aura. Combined with his scientific training, his strength had definitely improved.

The reason he was still only a Chunin was perhaps because he lacked seniority. If he opened the Eight Gates, his strength would certainly already have entered the ranks of Jonin.

"Then we'll be comrades from now on. Please take care of me."

After briefly greeting him, I continued my wandering, constantly thinking about how to deal with the Seven Ninja Swordsmen at the same time.

Since Might Guy was here, I would secretly follow him from now on. After all, I did not know the exact time when the Seven Ninja Swordsmen would attack them.

I had been here for quite a while, yet I had not seen the Seven Ninja Swordsmen even once.

[Teacher Hill, what is the greatest reward the Power of Fate can exchange for?]

Changing Sakumo's fate of life and death absolutely counted as a massive historical change. The reward I could exchange for was something like directly awakening Armament Haki.

Minato Namikaze's life and death would certainly have an even greater impact on history, so the reward I could exchange for would definitely be extremely outrageous.

[I cannot tell Lord Qingyue that for now. However, one thing is certain: the more history is changed, the higher Lord Qingyue's own existence value will become, and the stronger the Power of Fate will be.

For example, the protagonists in novels all possess the blessing of powerful fate, and the authorities they gain are powers capable of changing the world.]

I roughly understood what she meant. Perhaps in the future, the things I could exchange for might even be enough to influence the world.

But in this dangerous Shinobi World, changing history would not be easy, especially when it involved the lives and deaths of important figures.

It definitely would not work if I kept saving the Power of Fate without using it to improve myself. Changing Rasa's fate earlier had used up half of the Power of Fate, and changing Minato's would probably require even more.

When the shop had refreshed last time, I had still chosen to keep it. The highest reward I could exchange for now was Laplace-Class Magic Power.

That was already incredibly powerful. With Hill around, I could learn many spells, and Laplace-Class Magic Power meant I would almost never have to worry about running out of magic power.

However, I had not even mastered Haki yet, and after every battle, I still had plenty of chakra left over.

At this stage, I could not even integrate ninjutsu into combat. Even if I learned magic, there would not be much I could accomplish with it.

In any case, I would save it for now. There might be some grand prize later.

As the days passed, life on the eastern front became much more fulfilling. Every day, I trained, wandered around, killed Hidden Mist ninja, and followed Guy to make sure he did not encounter the Seven Ninja Swordsmen.

Whenever I had free time, I wrote books for Hill to read.

Those books were filled with knowledge and allusions from my previous life, so Hill was the only one I could show them to.

On a peaceful afternoon, after eating some stored protein and carbohydrates to replenish the energy I needed, I set off again to follow Guy.

Though they had only just been promoted to Chunin, their team was already quite mature.

They constantly maintained their formation to ensure they would not be ambushed by Hidden Mist ninja, but there were still some shortcomings. Their team had no ninja especially skilled in scouting, so this positioning was still somewhat inappropriate.

"Wait, are they heading toward that place?"

I had been following Guy from behind, and they now seemed to be about to enter that forest. In my memories, that was where they encountered the Seven Ninja Swordsmen.

The farther forward we went, the more obvious the unease in my heart became.

I was finally about to officially participate in a Kage-level battle. With the Seven Ninja Swordsmen together, their combat power was certainly stronger than that of an ordinary Kage, right?

Ever since coming to this world, all my battles had been easy. I had effortlessly defeated my enemies by relying on an information gap and different fighting methods.

This would be my most difficult battle so far, one that could truly threaten my life!

Of course, I could stop Guy and the others from entering the forest here, then pretend nothing had happened and ignore them.

But... as a reincarnator, if I chose to avoid danger because I was afraid, wouldn't that be too pathetic?

In the end, I followed Guy's team into the forest.

Standing atop rocks of varying sizes and on the treetops were the Seven Ninja Swordsmen, each carrying a strange ninja sword.

"This is... the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of Hidden Mist. Why are they here?!"