Chapter 72: Finding Uzumaki Clan Members

"Please! I'm begging you, don't kill me!" The middle aged Wind Daimyo cried, begging in front of Hikaru and Itachi. The Wind Daimyo was a fat man with small eyes. He was bald and he was kneeling in front of the two of them, crying and bawling his eyes out.

They were inside the living room of the palace of the Daimyo's family. The room was wider than normal houses with a beautiful chandelier made of pure gems in the middle. The walls were painted with golden paint, the tables and chairs around them were made of gold. And on top of some tables, there were foods coated with edible gold. It seems like the Daimyo's family had been living in luxury while the people in the capital were having a financial crisis.

Hikaru stared down at the pathetic Daimyo kneeling in front of him, and coldly said, "Do you take me for a fool, Wind Daimyo?"

"N-no, sir! I-I was just trying to-"

Pak!

With one slap, Hikaru sent him flying. He did not put any force in that slap, yet the Wind Daimyo was sent flying, even destroying the luxurious wall of the room.

Since the Wind Daimyo was just a mortal, he couldn't withstand that one "weak" slap from Hikaru and died almost immediately.

Even though the capital was having a financial crisis, most of the people living there are nobles. Nobles are the kind of people that don't eat cheap food, even if they don't have any money. Yes, that's the kind of situation they are facing right now. They have no food shortage, they're just people who like expensive things.

Look at the food of the Daimyo's family, their food were all coated in edible gold. Do you know how much that costs? Just 1 normal size apple coated with edible gold could cost someone about 316,000 Ryo! But the average income of a normal family in this world could be estimated to about 1,000,000 Ryo per year! That's like a 1/3 of their yearly income.

These people are too used to living in luxury that they couldn't even think of humbling themselves a bit.

But now, the Wind Daimyo is dead and no one in the capital can quickly replace him at the moment. But that's easy to solve for Hikaru, just put a clone of his as the fake replacement. Of course, this is not just any normal clone. It's a Mana Homunculus!

Mana Homunculus is the technique he created for stuff like this. He is basically making a homunculus that is smarter than normal clones. As you can guess, Homunculus are technically not clones but are beings that are capable of thinking for themselves but the thing is, they don't have a soul and Hikaru can create any kind of person right now.

The Homunculus would not acquire any of Hikaru's abilities and would be like an infant when they are first created. The way they are created is by dropping a drop of his blood, and then multiplying the cells of that blood by using his mana and in about a month, he would have a newly born homunculus. But that is too slow, so he would have to use one of his limbs to create a homunculus for faster creation.

Itachi stared at the dead body of the former Wind Daimyo and said to Hikaru, "Was that really necessary? Killing would only bring a loss of power and a lot of people would create unnecessary bloodshed to take the throne for themselves."

"Don't worry, Itachi. I have a plan for that." Hikaru said confidently, "I'll be replacing the Wind Daimyo in a moment, we just need to destroy any evidence left behind by this fat bastard."

"I understand." Itachi said to Hikaru with his usual stoic face.

With a snap of his fingers, Hikaru watched the corpse of the Daimyo burn to ashes. His chaos flame right now is easily stronger than the black flame of Amaterasu.

'No matter how many times I witness it, his flame is clearly more powerful than my Amaterasu. I wonder how he got hold of such power.' Itachi thought in slight awe of Hikaru.

"Raaaahh!" Suddenly, a boy no older than 12 came out of the door with a knife in his hands. He was rushing towards Hikaru with the intent to kill. It seems like he witnessed his father's death by his own eyes.

Hikaru could also sense another person behind the door.

The boy was quickly apprehended by Itachi. He took action because he knew that Hikaru would not hesitate to kill this boy.

"Woman, come out from that door." Hikaru ordered with extreme authority in his voice.

The woman behind the door had no choice but to come out. She was a beautiful woman, and Hikaru could hardly believe that she was in her mid-thirties. She looks like a woman in her twenties. But there was something strange, she has red vibrant hair and violet eyes. She wore the clothes of a noble and she was clearly afraid of Hikaru.

'Come to think of it, this boy also has red hair.. Does that mean they are from the Uzumaki Clan? No, I'll investigate her later. If she lives, that is.' Hikaru thought, mildly surprised. Uzumakis were rare to find, so you could understand his surprise. They may be somewhat related to Azumi and her mother.

Hikaru stared directly at the woman's eyes and she looked away in fear.

"Tell me your name." Hikaru demanded.

"I-I am Haruo Aiko, s-sir." The woman timidly introduced herself.

"I meant your real name before you obtained your current one." Hikaru said, noticing that the name of the Daimyo was also Haruo.

The woman bowed her head and apologized continuously before she said, "M-my real name was Uzumaki Aiko before I was sold by my previous parents to slavery." It seems like Aiko is naturally timid.

"Then, how did you become the spouse of the Wind Daimyo?" Hikaru asked curiously.

"T-the Daimyo took f-fancy of me b-back then and I-I became his concubine. T-that boy is one of my children to the D-Daimyo." She explained, although timidly.

"Where are the others?" Hikaru is now very interested. If he could lead Aiko and her children back to Konoha, the Uzumaki Clan could rebuild itself again.

"T-they are currently escaping from the capital." Aiko said, she had a sad look on her face.

Hikaru did not look surprised by that and just created 5 shadow clones to chase after her children.

"How many children do you have?" Hikaru asked.

"S-six." She replied.

He nodded to his clones and they disappeared from the room in a burst of speed.

8 Uzumakis, including this woman, has now fallen into his hands. If he investigates more, he might find more Uzumaki in the elemental nation. A hunt, to say the least.

( A Month Later )

It's been a month since he killed the Wind Daimyo, replaced him with his homunculus, took his wife and children, and basically took over the entire Land of Wind. Of course, this information hasn't been known to anyone except him, Itachi, and Aiko and her children.

From this one month of hunting for Uzumakis, he found around 30+ Uzumaki. Some of them were sold to slavery, some were shinobis, and some were seeking revenge to the three villages that invaded their clan. He asked Aiko where her parents are but she just said that they adopted her and were not her real blood-related family.

He has also signed a contract with the Yang God of this world. He can now control the Yang Element in this world. But it seems like the Yin Goddess is hard to find.

Every mountain in this world was BUILT by someone or by something. They are usually housed by deities, like the gods. But the Yin Goddess was the only exception since she apparently lives in a small dimension she created herself. By the way, the Major God doesn't live in these mountains, they live high in the land of the celestials. Minor Gods are like the civilians in the world of gods.

Anyway, the Minor Gods and other deities like that old man, all live in the mountains they created. If a mountain is destroyed, the wrath of the deity living there would bring disasters after disasters upon the person who had destroyed their home. The home of the gods and deities are invisible to mortal eyes, so they cannot be seen.

But Hikaru can clearly see them with his Ring of the Unseen.

He asked Yang God where she may be, but he too doesn't know where she is. The entrance to her dimensional plane is moving everywhere around the world every second that's passed. It was basically hopeless, if Hikaru was a normal creature. Since maxing his current stats, he was able to travel a hundred times faster than the speed of light.

He can basically travel 30,000,000 Kilometres per second. He can travel towards the sun in less than a second. But he might destroy planets if he tried using his speed because he cannot control it properly yet, even his real strength. Right now, he is a real planet destroyer. But that is also a problem if he decided to go all out. Not a single piece of this world would remain.

Fortunately, he is able to control his strength to a minimum level. That's why you aren't seeing him changing landscapes from time to time.

Anyway, he will give up on the Yin Goddess for now. She sounds troublesome. He decided to just learn the martial arts knowledge of this world for a while, it can become useful later on.

He also gave Itachi a new weapon, an Uchigatana imbued with Chaos Flame and has been enhanced to +20. It is a very powerful weapon for mortals, and Itachi's respect towards him has increased a lot, even though that's just one of the weakest weapons he has. He'll give him a more powerful one later, after he has grown strong enough.

After finding all of those Uzumaki Clan members, he decided to hand them over to Kimimaro to train them properly. Kimimaro is probably the most capable subordinate at this time. He is also a Kage level shinobi, capable of matching the other Kages in battle prowess. But if you add the equipment that Hikaru had given him, then, even if all the current Kages faced him, they still wouldn't be able to defeat him. He is certainly stronger than Azumi.

Right now, both him and Itachi are traveling in the woods near the land of fire.

They walked on the paved road slowly and steadily. The place was quite peaceful, if you look at them. The only thing destroying their image were the countless dead bodies of the bandits, covered in their own blood, behind them.