Toki's Overnight Fortune

"Um, how much?" asked the Kusakage.

"A C-rank secret scroll is 100,000 ryo, B-rank is 200,000 ryo, A-rank is 1 million ryo, and S-rank is 10 million ryo," Toki repeated with a grin.

The Kusakage hesitated before saying,

"B-but, won't that be the same as paying for a mission of equivalent rank? And at the highest price, too."

For reference, the reward for a C-rank mission is 30,000 to 100,000 ryo, for a B-rank mission it's 80,000 to 200,000 ryo, and for an A-rank mission it's 150,000 to 1 million ryo. S-rank missions start from over 1 million ryo. Honestly, when it comes to S-rank missions, 10 million ryo isn't that high of a price. After all, the bounty on the head of someone like Asama is 35 million ryo. But then again, Asama was the son of the Third Hokage, an elite jonin of Konoha, and one of the Twelve Guardians of the Fire Country's daimyo. One million ryo in exchange for an S-rank ninjutsu seemed like something only a crazy rich person would do. And the Grass Village definitely couldn't afford such extravagance. Even for A-rank...

The Kusakage couldn't help but feel a pang of heartache as he remembered the A-rank ninjutsu, Chidori, wasted by the genin. Seeing the Kusakage 's dilemma, his assistant gave a sheepish smile and said, "I wonder if Clan Head Toki could lower the price a bit. You know our situation in the Grass Village..."

Spending the money for one mission to purchase a disposable ninjutsu was worse than hiring a ninja. But at least war missions started from B-rank, so the cost should be a bit lower. Toki looked at the hesitant pair and smiled faintly.

"Small-scale business doesn't negotiate prices."

The Kusakage and his assistant exchanged a glance, their expressions showing regret.

"In that case, we're sorry. After all, we're just a small ninja village..." the Kusakage said.

Compared to spending a fortune on building an elite force, it was better to let more of their ninjas die. After all, they were just commoners who could be trained in a few days and sent to the battlefield during wartime, when lives were worth very little. Toki wasn't annoyed by their response. He simply shook his head regretfully and said,

"Is that so? That's a pity. In that case, I'll have to go see the Hidden Waterfall Village across from us. I'm sure they'd be more interested in this thing."

"W-wait! Wait a moment!!"

"We'll take it!" exclaimed the Kusakage and his assistant excitedly.

The Land of Rivers was richer than the Land of Grass to begin with. If they sold it across, there would be basically no way forward for them. Toki grinned, revealing a devilish expression.

...

By the time Toki left, all the secret scrolls had been turned into silver coins. It had to be said, even small villages might not be poor, because their money came from merchants and nobles. These people didn't actually have national boundaries, and their business wasn't limited to just one small country. Like the appearance of Gato in the Land of Waves arc, as one of the few billionaires in the world, he could easily manipulate the economy of the Land of Waves.

So, while the Land of Grass was small, it wasn't really poor. After all, from a certain perspective, they were the henchmen kept by those rich businessmen and nobles. Toki had wanted to complain more than once about the military-political-financial system of the ninja world. Toki swore that once the clan grew stronger, he would make those pests who clamored behind the scenes understand what democracy was and what it meant for the power to come from the barrel of a gun.

This transaction not only brought in a windfall but also two unexpected surprises. One of them was that after the transaction was completed, the clan system opened up a new trading platform. The Grass Village appeared as a commercial partner in the trade section. And the transaction volume of trading partners would be converted into clan reputation at a ratio of 10,000 to 1.

This time, Toki's entire inventory sold for a whopping 1 billion ryo. Naturally, Toki's backend system gained a full 100,000 points! This was a huge sum of money! God knows how painful it was for Toki to spend all 18,000 clan reputation points he had earned as a network marketing master to buy the design drawings for the secret scrolls of the scientific ninja tools. He even spent 100 reputation points specifically to deal with this transaction, purchasing a one-time-use A-rank Chidori secret scroll.

Yes, that thing was disposable, mainly to showcase its effects to the Kusakage and the others. The design drawings for A-rank scientific ninja tools cost a whopping 10,000 reputation points. Toki had already realized that he seemed to still be in the newbie protection period. Whether it was the Scientific Ninja Tools Research Center or the training ground, they were all newbie benefits. And those dense activations in the backend all required a clan building that truly was good stuff. With just the 1,800 members of the Uchiha clan, it would probably take forever to gather.

But now that the trade section had opened up, it was different. Just one trade directly boosted his clan reputation by 100,000 points. This was something he hadn't dared to think about before. In the past three months, including the first reward for subduing clan members, he hadn't even reached 10,000 clan reputation points. If Toki wanted to, he could even upgrade the Spirit Beast Breeding Center to level three. Maybe he could even summon some more terrifying demonic beasts or something. But considering that he would need to subdue them before he could use them, Toki decisively gave up on this obviously suicidal upgrade operation.

He had already figured out the effects of these buildings to some extent. Level 1 dealt with things from the local world, while level 2 and above began to involve things from other worlds. If he could continue to upgrade the buildings... Just thinking about it made Toki, even with his level of control over his qi, unable to help but reveal a wistful expression.

At this moment, a slightly panicked voice came from beside him:

"Um... sir?"