Chapter 115

For the next week, Kenshin did nothing but work. With Formation Creation leveled up to level six, he had a huge opportunity and a huge amount of work to do. The first thing he did was redesign his sons' suits, making their power cells larger and their shields stronger. He estimated that the shield could withstand a single full-force punch from the average Jonin, but he knew that the average Jonin had hundreds of such punches in reserve, and the speed was much greater than even Ichiro could muster.

Kenshin planned to implement a collective shield function into the formations on their suits, allowing energy to be transmitted over a distance to the person who currently needed protection, allowing them to withstand much more than a single shield could. However, at the moment, Kenshin did not know how to do this. It would require at least weeks of painstaking research and testing, which was not currently possible.

He put the enhancement of his exosuit on the back burner, not planning on leaving the hideout anytime soon. He was so busy at the moment that he sometimes forgot to eat, or slept on the couch in the workshop. He spent at least six hours a day learning medical ninjutsu, impressing Hitomi with his learning ability time and time again. She estimated that it would only take about a month and a half until Kenshin knew everything she knew.

Another pressing problem, in the literal sense of the word, was that Kenshin needed to create at least a dozen functional katanas so that his sons would have an advantage over other shinobi.

Even as a high school student, when getting acquainted with this world through a laptop screen, Kenshin was puzzled why shinobi used small kunai instead of convenient and functional swords capable of cutting an opponent in half. The answer turned out to be extremely simple - cheapness and convenience.

The high cost of katanas was not the main factor why shinobi mostly used kunai, but it was not unimportant. The technological capabilities of this world were at the level of the Middle Ages, so mining and smelting ore, followed by forging katanas, was a very expensive business.

Such katanas would become dull and break even in battles between common people, and the crossed swords of Genin were guaranteed to shatter into pieces, as opposed to slightly stronger kunai. The only thing that could help in this matter was fuinjutsu.

High-class fuinjutsu masters could strengthen the blade many times, allowing high-class shinobi to prove themselves on the battlefield. However, the higher the shinobi's strength, the more difficult it was to create a sword for him.

A katana that a Jonin could wield cost a fortune, and was usually beyond the means of a lone shinobi. Katanas for Elite Jonin were not available for sale. They all cost a fortune, and demand was hundreds of times greater than supply. This was due to how difficult it was to strengthen it with fuinjutsu. There were very few masters capable of this, and the cost of several years of painstaking work by such a master could not be calculated.

Almost all Jonin's fights were hand-to-hand, because ordinary blades would break from one swing, flying apart in the air. And if they did reach the enemy's body, they would not cause any damage, causing only slight discomfort, as if an ordinary person were hit with a dry rod the thickness of two straws.

That is why Kenshin was fired up with the idea of arming all his sons with the strongest blades, increasing their combat effectiveness by 20-30%. However, even for him, this was not an easy task. First of all, he needed swords of the same quality, and even so, he had to construct a formation for each sword. Everything would be much simpler if these swords were stamped at a factory from the same ore, according to GOST. But in the blacksmith's bins, the ore could be of completely different quality, as well as the degree of impact on the blade itself, and the finished katanas were of different quality. For an ordinary warrior, this did not matter, but for Kenshin, whose formations had to permeate the entire structure of the sword, it was a headache.

All his "free" time, Kenshin thought about how to create a universal formation for all swords at once. Scrupulously strengthening each katana for several weeks was not in his plans, but the swords had to be ordered now, and this required a lot of money.

In just a few days, he resumed the production of ten- and twenty-year-old wine, the sale of which he could finally entrust to his eldest sons. During this time, the first team completed four missions, and all its members became accustomed to sorties in one way or another.

Kenshin instructed his sons to find outlets for the elite wine during their missions to various cities or villages. The best thing, in his opinion, was to negotiate with the caravan drivers, who often needed to be accompanied on assignments.

He also ordered to find a good blacksmith and negotiate with him about forging ten identical katanas, setting the condition that they all should be forged from the given ore, the processing of which again fell on Kenshin's shoulders.

On the 244th day, Aya and Natsumi gave birth to more babies, Nineteen and Twenty. Both of them had low talent levels, but Kenshin was not upset and was happy to have sons with Chunin potential.

On the 245th day, Kasumi gave birth to his twenty-first son, with a talent level of 31. This made Kenshin happy, as he couldn't wait for one of his sons to become Jonin.

On the 248th day, Ichiro and his brothers dragged 350 kilograms of iron ore after the mission, spending 40,000 ryo. They made 34,000 from selling wine, so the purchase of iron did not hit the family's wallet too hard, but the money issue was so acute for the first time. Kenshin estimated that another 100,000 would be spent on paying for the forging of blades out of turn.

Over the course of five missions, Team One earned a total of 70,000 ryo, but all of it was spent on purchasing supplies for the shinobi, primarily shuriken and explosive tags. Kenshin could not yet create an equivalent of explosive devices, so the tags were incredibly important. Each one cost 5,000 ryo and was capable of killing a Chunin at point-blank range. The explosion caused virtually no damage to a Jonin, and the tag's explosion was only dangerous near the eyes.