Tsunade exuded an imposing aura. With a wave of her hand, Jiraiya slunk away dejectedly. The aggrieved look on his face was enough to make anyone laugh.
Not to mention Hikaru—even Orochimaru was speechless at Jiraiya. Why put yourself through that?
But Jiraiya liked doing this sort of thing, especially whenever he ran into Tsunade. Orochimaru could only silently tell himself to get used to it.
Doing missions and training became the Sarutobi Squad's daily routine.
Because the Advanced Class students had graduated, the Third Hokage was extremely busy and had yet to make time to teach the four of them. They trained on their own and carried out missions on their own.
Fortunately, these were mostly D-rank missions that were not particularly difficult but were quite troublesome, so they did not require the Third Hokage to accompany them.
As they continued completing all kinds of missions, the squad's reputation gradually accumulated, and the money in Hikaru's pocket became more plentiful as well. This was good news for Hikaru.
Hikaru resumed the training he had neglected for so long. Now, he finally no longer had to worry about lacking money to buy kunai and Shuriken. Although the rewards for the lowest-level D-rank missions were meager, small sums added up, and after enough missions, the earnings were still quite considerable.
It just could not compare to the rewards of other missions.
Time slowly passed. The Sarutobi Squad, which had originally drawn so much attention, gradually faded from the spotlight, and quite a few people even began to gloat.
When they learned that the Third Hokage had personally taken them in as disciples, many people had been envious, jealous, and resentful. But now they had begun gloating. The Third Hokage was too busy and simply did not have much time to guide