Nine Elders
Step
Step
One could hear the sound of someone running in the middle of the forest. It was Asura, running toward the Namikaze Clan's city for the past half hour.
He had entered the Namikaze Clan's territory 20 minutes ago. From there, he remembered his past life was just 15 miles away from the Namikaze Clan's territory and only 10 miles away from his clan's main city.
Though going back like this was kind of disgraceful for him, because he was originally 50 miles away from the Namikaze Clan's territory. However, due to some barbarians, he was pushed back by 35 miles.
Even though it was part of his strategy, it obviously didn't work, and he had to flee after his entire army of more than 20,000 shinobis was destroyed.
"Are you going to attack them again?" Aeterna suddenly asked Asura. She was curious about what he would do after suffering such a loss. Not that she was disappointed; the Romans lost 20,000 men in the Battle of Teutoburg Forest to barbarians due to an ambush.
While they were only able to kill around 5,000 men, at least Asura killed more than half of the enemy's forces despite being outnumbered.
"No," Asura calmly replied with a cold face before adding, "I will first kill the one who leaked my plan, and then I have to make many changes to our army."
"I see," Aeterna muttered.
"Can other people see you too, Aeterna?" Asura asked, worried about the implications. If others could see her, it would be a hassle for him. He would have to concoct a story to explain how he lost an entire army of shinobis and how he ended up bringing home a beautiful woman with strange clothing.
"No, only you can see me, as you are the only heir of Rome. Though I can manifest myself," Aeterna replied. Her tone was awkward, likely due to her lack of experience in conversing with others and being asked questions like this.
"That's a relief," Asura thought. If it were the other way around, those damn elders of the clan might have found another chance to try and reduce his power.
They all seemed to hate him, though they had their reasons. Asura had killed the grandchildren of two of the elders and hired someone to assassinate some of them because they wouldn't share their power with him. And by share, he meant steal.
To understand the situation, you need to know that the reason the Namikaze Clan was able to become so strong despite being the youngest clan on the island is because they have a power-sharing political structure where one individual can't accumulate enough power to dominate the entire clan.
But Asura hated sharing his power, even though he encouraged others to share theirs with him.
"Finally reached it!" Asura thought as soon as he could see an ancient Japanese-looking city with many tall, Japanese-style buildings visible even from afar.
The city was also surrounded by a defensive wall, enclosing it entirely, with a very large city gate. While normal walls couldn't stop a shinobi army for even a few hours, these walls were specially made to protect against a shinobi invasion. They had multiple layers, so they could easily stop an entire army for at least a day or so.
Another reason for constructing these walls was that in this world, there were many wild monsters that could use raw chakra. These walls provided some protection to civilians from those monsters.
"Is that Lord Asura?" one of the guards who was guarding the city gate muttered to himself as he saw a man with long blonde hair whose clothes were covered in blood walking toward the city.
Though he was not really able to see the man's face due to his poor eyesight.
"What are you saying? Lord Asura has gone to fight the barbarians who entered our territory," another guard who heard him said.
He obviously didn't know that Asura was going to attack the Hikari Clan, as only the high command in the direct bloodline of the Namikaze Clan knew about this plan.
Even the army of shinobi who were sent with Asura were only told that they would attack the Hikari Clan by Asura when they were halfway through the map to the Hikari Clan to make sure nothing went wrong.
"W-Wait, that's Lord Asura!" The second guard yelled after seeing the face of the man walking toward the city. Asura was particularly famous in Namikaze Clan territory because of his participation in a war two years ago, which he won single-handedly.
"Open the gate! Lord Asura has returned!" The guard yelled toward the guards who were inside the city, and soon the gate was opened.
They didn't really consider the possibility that someone else might have transformed as Asura and was trying to infiltrate the city. Transformation jutsu was still not refined, and it took a ton of chakra, making it impossible for anyone to maintain it for a long time. Besides, it was almost impossible to transform perfectly.
"What happened? Where is the army that was sent with him?" Some guards whispered to each other as Asura entered the city through the gate.
It was really shocking that an entire army of the Namikaze Clan didn't return with their commander, who was covered in blood.
"Did we lose the battle?" One of the guards muttered to himself but was stopped by another guard.
"Shhhhh! Don't talk about something like that. If Lord Asura heard this, he will punish you."
Their fear was somewhat vaild. Namikaze Clan's territory wasn't filled only with their direct bloodline; they had three cities, and the direct bloodline was in charge of all three of them, while many other non-Namikaze bloodline citizens lived there.
You can say that the world is in post city states era right now the city states have started to evolve into semi-kingdom like structures and during this era questioning and criticizing the ruling class is fatal.
Even though Asura was able to hear everything they were saying, he chose to ignore them and ran toward the Namikaze Clan's palace, which was in the center of the city.
He reached the clan's palace in just about a minute since the center of the city wasn't that far away from the city's entrance.
The Namikaze Clan's palace wasn't grand or anything. It was like a typical Japanese-Chinese mix type of palace, with four floors made of wood like the rest of the city. Only the defensive walls and a few other places were made of stone.
"There's no guard here?" As Asura entered the Namikaze Clan's palace, he was quite surprised to find no guard in front of the palace.
"Asura! How are you back so early and why are your clothes covered in blood?" As soon as Asura climbed up to the second floor of the palace using the stairs, he heard an old and loud voice.
"Don't tell me, did you lose?" The voice belonged to Namikaze Kaito, one of the elders of the Namikaze Clan. He had long white hair, blue eyes, and a very wrinkly face.
The Namikaze Clan had nine elders who didn't really do anything but just stayed in the palace and lived their lives on the tax money the clan collected.
"Someone leaked our plan, and I was ambushed," Asura said with a cold face as he approached Kaito and looked him in the eyes. "I doubt it is someone from the nine elders, Grandpa Kaito."
Asura said with a threatening tone, Like I said before he is hated by all the 9 elders because of valid reasons but he had to share his plan with them as they have still have power even though they don't do anything.
"Mad brat! Not only did you lose 20,000 men because of your own incompetence, now you're accusing all of us!" Another elder spoke up, a frail old woman with white hair who could barely stand up from her seat.
"My incompetence? I've won more battles in the last two years than you have in your entire life, Grandma Riko," Asura said in a mocking tone.
But confronting all nine elders directly wasn't his plan. He first wanted to meet his father and gain his support and his army to outnumber these individuals, and then search their mansions' every corner to find some evidence.
However, he didn't understand why all of the elders were on the second floor of the palace. They usually stayed on the third floor during the day and then went back to their mansions at night. The second floor was for his father, the clan's patriarch.
"The audacity of this brat," Riko said, and after hearing Asura's words, almost all of the nine elders were ready to badmouth him.
"Aeterna, please activate the system's information function," Asura muttered under his breath in a quiet voice, ensuring none of the elders could hear him.
"As you wish," Aeterna said as she appeared out of thin air again, having disappeared before Asura entered the city.
Soon an golden floating system window appeared infront of him.
________________________________________________________________________________
1. Namikaze kaito
Age: 72
Kills: 150
Relation with Heir: 85 (Hatred)
Net Worth: 120,000 gold coins (Very Rich)
Status: Traitor
2. Namikaze Riko
Age: 68
Kills: 200
Relation with Heir: 90 (Hatred)
Net Worth: 90,000 gold coins
Status: Wants to betray the clan
3. Namikaze Ren
Age: 70
Kills: 175
Relation with Heir: 92 (Hatred)
Net Worth: 130,000 gold coins (Very Rich)
Status: Traitor
4. Namikaze Sora
Age: 65
Kills: 160
Relation with Heir: 80 (Hatred)
Net Worth: 110,000 gold coins (Very Rich)
Status: Wants to betray the clan
5. Namikaze zuna
Age: 73
Kills: 140
Relation with Heir: 88 (Hatred)
Net Worth: 85,000 gold coins
Status: Disloyal
6. Namikaze Yumi
Age: 69
Kills: 130
Relation with Heir: 91 (Hatred)
Net Worth: 135,000 gold coins
Status: Traitor
7. Namikaze Miko
Age: 66
Kills: 185
Relation with Heir: 93 (Hatred)
Net Worth: 95,000 gold coins
Status: Disloyal
8. Namikaze kiko
Age: 71
Kills: 170
Relation with Heir: 87 (Hatred)
Net Worth: 75,000 gold coins
Status: disloyal
9. Namikaze Aiko
Age: 67
Kills: 145
Relation with Heir: 94 (Hatred)
Net Worth: 60,000 gold coins
Status: disloyal
________________________________________________________________________________
Soon, all of the nine elders' information windows appeared in front of Asura. Seeing the information displayed, Asura couldn't help but give an evil smile.
"These sons of bitches are so dead now!" Asura thought to himself as soon as he saw the status: Traitor and disloyal. He wasn't really shocked to see that all of them hated him.
But it came as a surprise that all of them had a net worth of more than 10,000 gold coins.
You must know that an average person in Namikaze Clan's territory and other clans' territory on this island only earns about 3 gold coins per year.
And even the Namikaze Clan only earned about 100,000 gold coins by collecting taxes from their three cities... and none of these Motherfuckers get paid to do absolutely nothing, so how the hell did they have such a high net worth?
They obviously embezzled money from the clan's treasury.
"You know what? I really am incompetent," Asura said before drawing his sword from behind his back, still stained red with dried blood and bearing many cracks.
"I should have killed all of you sons of bitches a long time ago," Asura said as he cut down Riko's left hand.