14 Lands of rivers (4)

Kaito realized that the genin was about to blow himself up, having seen the very same scene several times in the series. Knowing that Kaito would most likely die if that was the case, he used his puppet art to pull Eiji's back towards him. 

*BOOM*

Bewildered, Eiji lost consciousness instantly. However, Kaito looked at him with relief.

[Kaito - Level 16

HP - 38 / 330]

The battlefield instantly went silent.

The mission had failed.

But Kaito could not care any less about that at this point. What mattered was his survival, as well as that of his teammates. They were in enemy territory, and they had just taken down a Chunin from the Tanigakure village. Besides their dangerous situation, what mattered was the dangerously low HP of his teammates. Although they were not dead yet, Kaito was completely knocked off and bleeding from major wounds. As for Aki, she had very low vitality, and thus her bleeding ailment were of immediate threat to her life.

First-aid would not stabilize her situation.

At this rate she was going to die.

After stopping her bleeding, Kaito disregarded his dislocated shoulder for a moment and rushed towards the Golden Turtle caravan. He was looking for items that might recover some of her HP. 

[Red Beetle Wine Barrel - 2,000 Ryô]

[Sunagakure Pottery - 50 Ryô]

[Sand Robe - 1,400 Ryô]

[Silver Coin - 200 Ryô]

[Golden Chalice - 5,000 Ryô]

[Shadow Cloak - 2,000 Ryô]

[Emerald Ring - 4,000 Ryô]

[Sandbird Feather - 30 Ryô]

...

Junk...

Ever since he had reincarnated in this world, Kaito had not felt this helpless in his life. He wanted something to help him, for once. He needed help. He needed his teammates. He did not care much about them at first, and he valued his life more than anything. But he lived with them for four whole years. Times and times again, they put his life before theirs. Aki voluntarily used her own body to protect him. Eiji gladly sent Aki to help him even though he knew he could not take on two enemy genin at once.

He needed to find something. 

He needed to.

Then, an item caught his attention. It was a book that did not look valuable at all. The book's cover was undoubtedly worthless, and the first page was completely blank. However, it was carefully hidden in between this pile of valuable items such as the emerald ring and golden chalice.

What could have pushed Mr. Hiroshi to make an item so invaluable to the eye, yet so carefully taken care of to put it among the most valuable items in his convoy? Even though the Golden Turtle group was a very impressive merchant company, there was no denying that the attack of Tanigakure shinobi was not normal to begin with.

Experience taught Kaito that clients were not to be trusted in the first place.

Scrolling through the pages at lightning-fast pace, he realized that there was crypted information onto it. Numbers and unknown symbols were written down. 

It was information...

And judging from the age of the book, it was most likely information that had been gathered over several years. 

Kaito was not stupid. He realized that he had been tricked.

Mr. Hiroshi was not just a merchant.

He was a spy, who had resided in Sunagakure for many years, and gathered information for Tanigakure. However, there was no way Tanigakure would leave any trace of their conspiracy, since it would give Sunagakure motive to engage in a war again. Thus, they decided to end it by killing the whole convoy altogether and loot it since it was doing smuggling business, avoiding taxes. Better still, they would be able to pin the fault onto Sunagakure, saying that Kaito's team defended them even when knowing the truth and showed aggressivity in their territory.

Sunagakure had been oblivious to all of this, and let this mission go past them.

Kaito, Eiji and Aki had been caught in a scheme much bigger than that.

[Mission update...]

[You have uncovered valuable information that has a minuscule influence on the world's scenario...]

[Your existence grows stronger...]