"The Land of Lightning's army has already surrendered?"
"What happened? Weren't they supposed to still be on their way?"
The generals of the Five Nations Alliance exchanged looks, unable to believe the intelligence they had received.
They immediately sent men to investigate further, only to be utterly dumbfounded when the detailed reports came back.
"The entire fleet was wiped out just by getting caught in the crossfire?"
"Kumogakure rescued the survivors?"
"What do you mean, showing up on the battlefield automatically counted as participating in the First Shinobi War?"
The generals rubbed their eyes. Reading this report made them want to curse.
According to the orders their daimyo had given them, the Five Great Nations had assembled their forces to seize the tailed beasts and wipe the shinobi villages out for good.
Of course, most people knew perfectly well what these prewar mobilization goals really amounted to: slogans to shout and nothing more.
The power the First, Madara Uchiha, and Naruto Uzumaki had displayed at the Konoha Meeting was undeniable, and the daimyo had explicitly ordered them to avoid those men entirely.
Previously, they had regarded ninja as nothing worth taking seriously, and the great nations knew very little about them.
Even the daimyo of the Land of Fire, the victorious nation in the Fourth Shinobi World War, had known little about the ninja of Konoha under his command.
When they had selected the Fourth Hokage, the Land of Fire's daimyo had not even known what men such as Minato Namikaze and Orochimaru, heroes of the Third Shinobi World War, actually did.
In the eyes of the nobles of the past, ninja had been mere tools. No matter how often a cook used his pots, bowls, plates, and pans, he would never care what names those implements had given themselves,