The Daimyo's Chessboard

Inside the tent, the flame danced on its stand. A spark fell into the lamp's oil tray with a crackle.

Setsuna studied the intelligence report, his brows knitted together. With the baby fat still lingering on his cheeks, his scrunched-up face looked like a steamed bun.

Izuna rested his chin on his hand and watched him, waiting for him to speak.

Setsuna finally finished reading the report, slapped it down on the table, and blurted out, "Is the Land of Fire's Daimyo out of his mind?"

Izuna raised an eyebrow. Rather than scolding him for his insolence, he tipped his chin slightly, signaling him to continue.

Setsuna pointed at Cloudfield, tapping the map hard enough to make it thump. "This land has belonged to the Hagoromo for a hundred years. It's written plain as day on the deed. The Hagoromo have no reason to give it up."

Izuna nodded.

Setsuna continued, "But the Senju need to expand north. That means they need territory in the north to expand into, so they won't give up Cloudfield. That guarantees they'll clash with the Hagoromo."

"And clashing with the Hagoromo means clashing with their relatives by marriage-the Uchiha."

He looked up, bafflement filling his eyes. "Can't the Daimyo see that? The Uchiha and the Senju will go to war again over this land. Doesn't he realize?"

At last, a genuine smile appeared on Izuna's face.

"You're sharp, Setsuna, seeing that much."

Setsuna froze for a moment. There was something pointed about Izuna's words, as though he had dug a pit and was waiting for Setsuna to jump in.

He stared suspiciously at Izuna's half-smiling face and asked warily, "What else am I missing?"

Izuna tapped the route of the Senju's northern expansion on the map.

"The Senju want to expand north because they need to put distance between themselves and the Uchiha to the south."

He then pointed at the direction of the Uchiha's expansion. "The Uchiha are expanding south for the same reason. This is a secret strategy my brother and Hashirama Senju devised to avoid war."

Candlelight danced in his dark eyes.

"As long as there's enough distance and a large enough strategic buffer, that bone-deep hatred will fade after a few generations, giving the two clans room to negotiate peace. This is the first step Madara and Hashirama Senju are taking to prepare for peace talks. It'll take generations to achieve. Perhaps only when they're old will this first step barely begin to bear fruit."

Setsuna listened quietly without interrupting.

Izuna shifted his finger a little east of Cloudfield.

"But while the Senju need to expand north, they don't necessarily need to go through Cloudfield. Even if Cloudfield is the quickest route north, it isn't the best. For one thing, it's a vast swamp. Larger wagons can easily get their wheels stuck, making trade difficult and greatly increasing losses of supplies."

His fingertip lightly circled the area marked "Autumn Plains."

"Here in Autumn Plains, they'd have to take a slight detour, but the ground is firm and easy to build roads on. Second, the soil is actually too hard to grow crops, so nobody lives there, and there aren't any powerful shinobi clans nearby. Expanding north through here would certainly be more convenient. The Senju already trade through Autumn Plains, but doing business on land they don't control has certainly put pressure on them."

Setsuna frowned, his sanpaku eyes fixed on the distance between Cloudfield and Autumn Plains on the map.

"Then why not grant Autumn Plains to the Senju?"

Izuna tapped the spot marked Autumn Plains twice.

"If the Senju move away from the Uchiha, who could make these two clans fight and wear each other down?"

Setsuna's eyes flew wide. "So the Daimyo did it on purpose!"

Izuna snapped his fingers. "Clever."

Setsuna frowned in alarm and uncertainty. With both hands planted on the table, he leaned forward and stared at the crisscrossing markings on the map, stringing every clue together in his mind.

But he still didn't understand.

"But why? Why does the Daimyo want the Uchiha and Senju to fight?"

Instead of answering directly, Izuna asked a seemingly unrelated question. "How many people did the Daimyo send to subdue the Lord of Anshan City?"

Setsuna looked up in confusion. He only knew that his father, Huorong, and Kurama Setsuko were the shinobi who had taken part. He knew nothing about anyone else.

He shook his head.

"Two." Izuna held up two fingers. "Huorong and Setsuko."

Setsuna's eyes widened.

Izuna lowered his fingers. "That's how overwhelmingly superior shinobi are to ordinary people in strength."

"An ordinary Uchiha generally reaches jonin-level fighting strength once they awaken the three-tomoe. The same goes for the Senju: successfully awakening mangekyo power makes them jonin."

"What's more, for an ordinary mission to subdue bandits, a five-person squad of genin led by a chunin is more than enough."

Setsuna began to grasp something, his fingers unconsciously tightening around the edge of the table.

"So..."

Izuna picked up where he left off. "That's why shinobi clans can subdue Anshan City so easily. In other words, if a shinobi clan wanted to attack the Daimyo's capital, it wouldn't be much harder."

The candle flame danced between them.

"If the Uchiha and Senju, these two great clans of the shinobi world, aren't fighting, he can't sleep soundly."

Setsuna stared hard at the swamp marked "Cloudfield" on the map, flickering candlelight reflected in his sanpaku eyes.

"Can't the Senju and Hagoromo see there's something wrong with this reward?"

Izuna shook his head with an amused laugh.

"Do you think Tobirama Senju is a fool? Or Hagoromo Shogatsu? Or that I, Uchiha Izuna, am a fool?"

Setsuna opened his mouth, but the retort left him speechless.

"Then why..." Setsuna's voice was subdued. "Why are we still letting the Daimyo lead us around by the nose?"

He raised his head, anger kindling in his sanpaku eyes.

It was the anger that surged from his chest at seeing the people he cared about toyed with by some worthless fool far away.

He remembered something his players often said-

"Are kings, nobles, generals, and ministers born to their stations?" Or, "The Jade Emperor's throne takes turns-this year, it's ours!"

Setsuna simply slapped the table and stood up.

"We shinobi are far stronger than these ordinary people. Why should we let them lord it over us? We should join forces with the other shinobi clans, overthrow this damned Daimyo, take down the landlords, and divide up their land. Why bother dancing to someone else's tune?"

Izuna's eyes widened, and he nearly choked on his own spit.

He abruptly turned his head away, pressed a fist to his mouth, and broke into a fit of violent coughing.

"You... cough, cough... what did you say?"

Izuna finally stopped coughing and stared at Setsuna in disbelief.

His gaze swept back and forth along both sides of the little bald boy's head several times, as if searching for where exactly that legendary rebellious streak had taken root.

Rebellion.

Overthrowing the Daimyo.

In his nineteen years of life, he had killed countless enemies on the battlefield. He considered himself one of the most radical, most unpredictable members of the Uchiha Clan.

But he had never once thought-not even for a second-of rebelling against the Daimyo.

Even his brother, the man who stood at the pinnacle of strength in the entire shinobi world, Madara Uchiha, whose very bones seemed inscribed with the word "arrogance," had never considered rebelling against the Daimyo.

The Daimyo was the ruler of the Land of Fire.

The Daimyo was descended from a god.

The Daimyo was the rightful master of this land.

These were ironclad truths drilled into every shinobi who survived the Warring States era from the moment they were born.

Yet here was this five-and-a-half-year-old bald boy, slapping the table in the candlelight and declaring in a voice still tinged with babyish sweetness-let's rebel.

Setsuna frowned and shot an irritated look at Izuna, who was coughing so hard he could barely breathe. "What? Did I say something wrong? Wherever there's oppression, there's resistance!"

But once he calmed down and thought about it, that did make sense. Wherever there was oppression, there would be resistance. People oppressed too cruelly and driven into a corner would fight desperately, even if it meant mutual destruction.

But that didn't apply to the Daimyo and shinobi.

Izuna drew a deep breath, suppressing the shock in his heart. He had to correct this dangerous idea.

"The Daimyo's bloodline comes from a god. He is the god's earthly-"

"Bullshit."

Setsuna cut him off without hesitation.

"Our Uchiha ancestor was a real god." Setsuna folded his arms and lifted his chin slightly. "Trace our bloodline back to its source, and you get Kaguya Otsutsuki. You know Kaguya Otsutsuki, right? The Progenitor of Chakra, a true god who descended from beyond the heavens. What kind of damned divine descendant is the Daimyo supposed to be?"

Setsuna gave him no chance to interject, growing even more animated. "Logically, someone with divine blood should be able to perform some kind of miracle, right? What can the Daimyo do?"

Izuna answered instinctively, "The Daimyo can commune with the gods-"

"Commune with the gods?" Setsuna scoffed and raised his right hand.

A pitch-black shadow hand silently emerged from the shadow beneath his feet, its five fingers spread as it swayed slightly in the candlelight.

Fire.

"Shinobi are stronger than ordinary people?" Madara Uchiha's voice came from outside.

Someone yanked the tent flap open from outside. Night wind rushed in, making the candle flame abruptly shrink.

Madara Uchiha ducked into the tent, the wind scattering his long black hair across his shoulders. His unfathomably deep eyes swept over Izuna before settling on Setsuna.

His voice carried its usual coolness. "Genin aren't much stronger than ordinary people."

Setsuna spun around.

He hadn't expected Madara Uchiha to appear at that moment, but Madara's arrival didn't make him rein himself in. Instead, it made him even more defiant.

"What, you enjoy letting the Daimyo sit on your head and take a shit? That doesn't sound like you!"

Madara Uchiha's brows drew together sharply.

The crude description made a vein at his temple twitch almost imperceptibly. He suppressed the urge to teach the little bastard another lesson on the spot and resolved to have the Second Elder give the boy a thorough education once they returned.

Suppressing his anger, he asked, "Do you know how many shinobi there are on the entire continent?"

Setsuna frowned.

He genuinely didn't know. The game had never mentioned that number. Its background lore only offered broad frameworks like "great shinobi wars" and "the Five Great Nations of shinobi." No planner had ever thought to calculate the shinobi population.

Madara Uchiha answered his own question. "Five hundred thousand."

Then he asked, "Do you know how many ordinary people there are?"

Setsuna honestly shook his head.

Madara said, "There are several thousand times as many of them as us. In this world, shinobi are the minority."

"To ordinary people, the Daimyo carries the blood of the god who created them. He represents the origin of all ordinary people."

He shook his head. "If shinobi refuse to acknowledge the Daimyo as a child of that god, it means shinobi don't consider themselves human. How are we supposed to live alongside ordinary people then?"

Setsuna opened his mouth, but he couldn't articulate what was wrong with that.

Madara Uchiha ignored his sulking and continued.

"Most shinobi in a clan are genin, followed by chunin. Elite jonin are a minority. Keeping those genin and the majority of clanspeople who can't mold chakra alive-that's what proves a clan leader's ability."

"The same applies to a country. It has never been about the wishes of a minority. Keeping all the common people alive is what proves a Daimyo's ability and earns their love. As for how the shinobi clans fare, that isn't something commoners consider when judging the Daimyo."

Setsuna stared at him, defiance erupting in his chest, along with an urgent anger he didn't quite understand himself.

"You shouldn't be like this!"

Madara Uchiha raised an eyebrow slightly. "Like what?"

Setsuna spoke each word distinctly. "Obeying these rotten rules that oppress shinobi! You should break what's unreasonable and establish new rules instead!"

In Setsuna's understanding, Madara Uchiha should have been someone who changed the course of the world. An arrogant force who could destroy every obstacle for the sake of his ideals. The Asura of the Ninja World, who bowed to no rules.

This Madara Uchiha before him, who weighed every consequence, wasn't the one he knew.

But Setsuna had forgotten.

The Madara Uchiha he knew had already been utterly alone.

That Madara Uchiha had lived through his brother's death, abandonment by his clan, and betrayal by his friend. All that sustained him was his desire to change the world.

The present Madara Uchiha carried the entire Uchiha on his shoulders. Not every Uchiha was an elite. Most were low-strength chunin or genin.

As clan leader, Madara Uchiha naturally had to consider every consequence as he navigated within the rules.