On the streets of Konoha.
Half a month later.
Hyuga ninja delivered the first shipment to the Uchiha clan compound.
Crate after crate of kunai and shuriken was unloaded from the carts.
The heavy wooden crates were all carried into the Uchiha storehouse.
Within a few days, the Uchiha opened a ninja tool shop on the streets of Konoha.
Only a wooden sign hung outside, with a single line written on it.
Ninja tools made with a brand-new process.
Prices were listed beneath it.
Three thousand ryo per kunai, eighteen hundred ryo per shuriken.
Right across the street was a ninja tool shop run by the Senju.
The kunai in that shop still sold for five thousand ryo each.
Only a few Uchiha clansmen sat inside the shop, and none of them stood at the entrance to welcome customers.
Whoever came in to buy ninja tools, they handed them what they wanted.
When someone picked up a kunai and asked question after question, the seated Uchiha clansman did not even lift his eyelids.
"Are you buying it or not?"
Even so, business at the shop was unbelievably good.
Once word spread that kunai cost three thousand ryo each, Konoha's ninja all rushed over to line up outside the Uchiha shop.
The line of people buying ninja tools stretched from the entrance to the street corner.
One Konoha ninja had just paid and walked out when he drew the old kunai at his waist and struck it hard against his new one.
With a sharp clang, his old kunai chipped on the spot.
Yet when he checked the new kunai, there was not even a pale mark on its edge.
The ninja shouted to the people waiting behind him.
"These kunai are much tougher than the ones we usually use!"
Before long, the Akimichi clan leader arrived with several Akimichi clansmen.
He strode into the shop, picked up a kunai, and hefted it.
"I wanted to buy these back in Hyuga Village. Now I finally can!"
With a wave of his hand, he pulled out a stack of banknotes and slapped it on the table, buying twenty kunai for his clansmen in one go.
Several ninja from the Shimura Clan were also waiting farther back in the line.
As they neared the entrance, they glanced furtively toward both ends of the street, terrified that their own clan leader might catch them.
Only after seeing no sign of their clan leader did they duck their heads and slip into the Uchiha shop.
The Senju ninja tool shop across the street, meanwhile, was deserted.
There was not a single customer inside.
The Senju ninja standing at its entrance watched the long line across the street and let out a heavy sigh.
The line inched forward, with a Senju clansman among those waiting.
Soon, it was that Senju clansman's turn.
The Uchiha clansman in the shop recognized him as a Senju at a glance and would not even look him in the eye.
"Didn't the Senju say Konoha had no supplies to spare back then? Why are you buying from us Uchiha now?"
The Senju clansman's face immediately burned with embarrassment.
He glanced back at his clan's empty shop across the street, gritted his teeth, and paid for the kunai anyway.
The Senju ninja standing across the street watched helplessly as his own clansman emerged from the Uchiha shop carrying ninja tools, then turned and walked back inside his shop.
Hashirama happened to be passing down the street.
Seeing the long line outside the Uchiha shop, he approached curiously and asked a question.
"What are they selling in there to have everyone lining up like this?"
The ninja at the back recognized Lord Hokage and hurriedly stepped aside.
"Lord Hokage, please go first!"
Hashirama waved his hands repeatedly.
"No, no, I can just wait at the back."
With that, he obediently took his place at the very end of the line.
After shuffling forward a few steps, Hashirama looked up at the wooden sign outside the shop.
Three thousand ryo per kunai.
That was a full two thousand ryo cheaper than the Senju shop across the street.
Only after quite a wait did Hashirama's turn come.
Naturally, the Uchiha clansman in the shop recognized him as the Hokage.
Without even offering a smile, the clansman grabbed a kunai and handed it over.
Hashirama did not mind at all. He paid, took the kunai, and hefted it in his hand.
He laughed heartily, turned around, and called out at the top of his voice to the ninja waiting behind him.
"This kunai is really good, and the price is so low!"
"From now on, all of us Konoha ninja can buy them here!"
The Senju ninja in the shop across the street saw everything clearly.
Even their own Lord Hokage had gone over to buy from the Uchiha.
Inside the Hokage Building.
Hashirama returned with his newly purchased kunai.
Tobirama was sitting in the room.
Hashirama strode over and set the kunai on the desk.
"I bought this from the Uchiha shop on the street today."
"Three thousand ryo each."
Hashirama pulled out a chair, sat down, and smiled.
"This kunai is really good, and the price is so low."
"I've already told our Konoha ninja."
"From now on, everyone should buy their ninja tools from the Uchiha shop."
Tobirama said nothing in response.
He reached out, picked up the kunai on the desk, and examined it.
Tobirama recognized the kunai at once.
It was identical to the one he had held at the Hyuga Workshop a few days earlier.
This was a ninja tool made by the Hyuga.
The first thing that came to Tobirama's mind was the Uchiha.
The Uchiha had actually taken Hyuga goods and openly set up shop in Konoha.
Konoha's ninja were lining up outside the Uchiha shop one after another.
Even Senju clansmen had gone.
This was no mere sale of ninja tools!
The Uchiha were buying people's loyalty in Konoha!
He recalled what Shinichi Hyuga had said in front of all the clans at the Distributor Conference.
The Hyuga's doors would always be open to the Uchiha.
The Hyuga and the Uchiha were growing closer and closer!
Tobirama gripped the kunai in his hand.
He thought again of the production process he had reproduced in the Senju Clan Compound.
Melting a furnaceful of iron required ten jonin skilled in Fire Release to take turns heating it for an entire day.
An entire day's work yielded only one batch.
And one batch could make only a few hundred kunai.
Yet a jonin could easily earn over a hundred thousand ryo in commission from a single mission.
Having ten jonin tend a furnace all day meant missing out on ten missions!
Tobirama quickly calculated the costs in his head.
The commissions from ten missions added up to over a million ryo.
That million-plus ryo had to be spread across the few hundred kunai from that batch.
Divided evenly, the cost of each kunai came to several thousand ryo!
The expense of the Fire Release alone exceeded the Uchiha shop's selling price of three thousand ryo!
That did not even include the large sum spent buying iron ore.
Nor the money spent buying cartloads of charcoal.
Much less the labor costs of building the furnace!
He had gone to such great lengths over the past few days to finally reproduce the process.
Yet after doing the calculations, making them himself actually cost far more than buying them directly from the Uchiha shop!
The gains did not cover the losses!
He had put the cart before the horse!
Then Tobirama thought of how the Hyuga definitely still made a profit selling them for three thousand ryo each.
Even at the wholesale price of fifteen hundred ryo each for first-tier dealers, the Hyuga still made a profit.
Just how low was the Hyuga's cost of making a single kunai?
Shinichi Hyuga was not spending every day tending a furnace with Fire Release at all!
The Hyuga had another method, one he had failed to spot!
Damn you, Shinichi Hyuga. You actually tricked me!
Why were the Hyuga's costs so low?
Tobirama went over everything he had seen that night in the Hyuga Workshop, one item at a time.
The large furnace, the molds, the waterwheel, the long tables-he had copied them all.
There truly was not a single thing missing.
But that night in the Hyuga Workshop, he had not seen a single piece of charcoal.
There had, however, been a pile of black stones in the corner.
He had even picked one up to examine it at the time, but had not recognized it at all.
Could that be what the Hyuga burned in their furnace?
Could that pile of black stones be the key?
Tobirama remembered mocking Shinichi Hyuga in the Senju Clan Compound a few days earlier.
Mocking him for foolishly tending a furnace.
Mocking the Hyuga as brutes who knew only taijutsu.
Thinking back now, who was really the fool?
Every one of those words had come back to slap him in the face!
Damn it!
Not a trace of frustration showed on Tobirama's face.
Hashirama was sitting right across from him.
He could not breathe a word about secretly visiting Hyuga Village behind his elder brother's back and reproducing the workshop in the Senju Clan Compound.
Hashirama was still talking.
"And as for the ninja tools the village supplies to its ninja, we might as well buy those from the Uchiha too."
"The village used to buy them from the Senju shop at five thousand ryo each."
"If we switch to the Uchiha's, we'll save two thousand ryo on every one!"
"Over a month, that'll save the village a huge amount of money!"
As he spoke, Hashirama turned to Tobirama.
"Tobirama, what do you think?"
Tobirama wanted to say that the Uchiha were buying people's loyalty.
But the Uchiha's kunai were both good and cheap. What could he possibly say against that?
Was he supposed to say that the Senju could make them too?
He had just done the calculations. Making one themselves cost the Senju more than the Uchiha's selling price!
Besides, the moment he said that, his elder brother's first question would be how the Senju had made them.
When Tobirama remained silent for so long, Hashirama slapped the desk.
"Then it's settled!"
Tobirama gripped the kunai, unable to utter a single word of objection.
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