"Lord Hokage, war has broken out again."
Back in the Hokage Office, Shikaku Nara hurried through the door with a stack of files to deliver his report.
Yanbai had rarely held Hokage meetings lately. He hated sitting through pointless talk, so he generally held one meeting a month and had everyone resolve a whole pile of problems at once.
Unless there was an emergency, Yanbai would not call a meeting on a whim.
At Shikaku Nara's report, Yanbai's eyes lit up. "Which country declared war on the Land of Fire?"
Seeing Yanbai's mild smile suddenly turn gleeful, Shikaku Nara was speechless.
Shikaku Nara fell silent for quite a while before saying, "No, Iwagakure began launching surprise attacks on Kumogakure, and Kirigakure attacked Iwagakure. Then Sunagakure started making moves too. Amegakure, Takigakure, and the Grass Ninja have all taken action to varying degrees..."
Yanbai kept waiting to hear the words "Land of Fire" or "Konoha Shinobi Village." Unfortunately, neither came up, even after all that waiting.
Yanbai was utterly baffled. "What does that mean? The Land of Fire and our Konoha Shinobi Village have been left out?"
Shikaku Nara sighed, thinking, Why have we been left out? Don't you have a damn clue?
The Land of Fire had now skyrocketed to heights far beyond the Four Great Nations' reach.
Previously, they had fought one another because they considered their national strength roughly equal.
Now the gap was so vast that no one dared provoke the Land of Fire.
How could they? By coming over to get themselves killed?
Especially with Yanbai's "prisoner-of-war atonement system." It did not kill people, but it drastically weakened defeated nations while accelerating the Land of Fire's construction and development.
Now the Four Great Nations and the smaller countries were all equally poor, so they had begun