Under the dim lamplight, the old woman told Sasuke about the village.
As it turned out, a year earlier, all the men in the village, young and old alike, had been taken away for forced labor. With no one to plant crops, the fields had gone to waste. Though the village stood beside wooded mountains, there was no one left to hunt, and wild beasts gradually overran the forests until no one dared venture near them.
Little by little, the village had become cut off from the outside world. There was not even a proper merchant left.
Unable to produce anything or buy supplies from outside, those who remained could only wait to die.
Everyone who could leave had already gone. Only elderly people without anyone to care for them remained, unwilling to abandon their homeland.
Sasuke was puzzled. "Usually, only people convicted of serious crimes are sentenced to forced labor. These villagers haven't done anything wrong, so why were they taken away?"
The old woman smiled. "You really are a young man who hasn't seen much of the world. You don't understand this country at all. People like us are 'untouchables'!"
The Land of Lightning, it turned out, had maintained a rigid hierarchy since ancient times.
Royalty, nobility, commoners, and untouchables!
The Daimyo of the Land of Lightning and his relatives were royalty.
Those who served the Daimyo directly, along with their families, were nobility.
Those who could consistently perform a duty for royalty or nobility, or pay them tribute, were commoners.
Everyone else was classified as an untouchable!
As for where shinobi stood in that hierarchy, that was plain enough.
Only Kumogakure's Raikage, who served the Daimyo directly, and the very few shinobi specially appointed to protect the Daimyo belonged to the nobility. All other shinobi were the