This Isn't Defeat, It's a Tactical Retreat

Although Konoha had stepped forward, Kumogakure could only grit its teeth and accept it.

But they should do less of this sort of stabbing allies in the back—at least not openly.

Because something had happened to Roshi, the Four-Tails Jinchūriki.

With no other choice, Ōnoki could only leave matters at the front line to his son, Kitsuchi, while he hurried back to Iwagakure with several guards.

Iwagakure's higher-ups needed to carefully discuss Roshi's abduction.

Inside the conference room of the Tsuchikage Office Building, the atmosphere was exceptionally stifling. Even Ōnoki and the other senior officials had no good solution to Roshi's predicament.

Roshi, damn you!!

If you wanted to make a fuss, then make a fuss. Even leaving the village in a fit of anger was nothing much. Couldn't you at least hide better?

What a joke. Your idea of hiding was making it impossible for the village to find you while letting the enemy find you, right? And now what? You'd been captured and taken to Kumogakure.

It was utterly disgraceful.

"Should we withdraw our troops?"

At this point in the war, the higher-ups actually all knew that the village could not win.

They simply had never found a suitable excuse to back down, so they had kept fighting with gritted teeth. Now that the issue with Roshi had erupted, it gave the village a perfect reason to withdraw.

The importance of a Jinchūriki—or more precisely, a Tailed Beast—to a village went without saying. They could choose not to use it, or imprison it, but they could not be without it, nor could they stand by and watch it become another village's possession.

That was the bottom line.

"But if we withdraw our troops..."

Wouldn't that be an indirect admission of defeat?

They might even be saddled with a