Recruitment

After a while, Ashiba stood at the outskirts of the town. He looked at the pedestrians passing by and the bustling activity, only endless buildings and people could be seen from afar. Calling it a town would be an understatement to its actual size, and the scenery at night especially made it look very active. The more Ashiba observed, the more his astonishment grew further.

It would be strange seeing a boy about 6 years old wandering alone in a big place like this in his previous life, yet nobody here found this a strange occurrence except for a few strange glances at his strikingly red hair which reminded people of a certain shinobi clan.

The first thing he did after entering the town was to look for a nearby Inn because he hadn't eaten anything since the morning. He found it quickly by asking some passing pedestrians.

After walking for a good while, he finally found the described Inn, he quickly went inside and searched around for a vacant spot to eat.

He sat down and started looking through the menu on the table, a person who looked like a server walked towards his table and said with a welcoming smile: "What would you like, Kyaku-sama?."

"Give me the entire menu." said Ashiba without batting an eye.

The server looked surprised at Ashiba's words but did not dismiss them. After all, in this era where small clans of shinobi are destroyed every now and then, its not rare to see rogue ninjas and even war orphans with no where to return, and he doesn't have the ability to offend this boy who may possibly one of these two, he had never seen someone with this bright red of a hair here, so he might be a survivor from a destroyed clan who is be able to perform those mystical shinobi abilities called Jutsus.

After waiting for a while, Ashiba's table was filled with food of all kinds. He started devouring everything in front of him, startling people around who looked amazed at his speed of eating all that food. He ignored those stares and finished eating the food in front of him.He went to pay the bill, and as he was about to leave the Inn, he started to hear an intriguing conversation from a table near him.

"Have you heard, the Shimura clan is recruiting rogue ninjas again for frontlines?" said a man with shining eyes.

"Yeah, apparently they're in the middle of a war between themselves and the nara clan."  another person said.

"Recruiting rogue shinobi? Heh, more like recruiting cannon fodders for the war." the last person said with a scowl.

"But I heard people with the highest merits in the war can wed a Shimura kunoichi and formally become a Shimura clan member." the first person said with a heated expression. His agitation was not for no reason after all, in an era filled with wars, it is not easy to live without the backing of a clan.

"Is becoming a shimura clan member more important than your life?" said the third person with a grimace on his face as he retorted at the first person for being narrow minded. In his opinion, surviving as a rogue ninja was more safer than being cannon fodder for the Shimura Clan, the rewards weren't worth it.

Ashiba looked towards the table where these voices were coming from. There sat a group of young three men in normal clothes, but different from the rest of the people was that they held a couple of kunai at their waist. Ashiba could infer from their conversation and their appearance that they were rogue shinobi.

Ashiba walked towards their table and put a bunch of silver coins on their table: "Where is the recruitment happening?" said Ashiba with a smile on his face.

All three men looked dumbfounded for a while before the third person quickly grabbed all the coins and put them close to his chest. The other two people sighed in regret as they came back to their senses, after all earning some coins for information that's common is really a good deal with nothing to lose.

"Well, the recruitment site is 10 miles south of this town, but I advise you kid to rethink about it, most of the shinobi recruited by those clans never make it out of the war." said the third person with a solemn expression on his face, he didn't want a small kid to end up dead on the battlefield, he was getting sick of seeing myriads of them die in the battlefield everyday.

"I understand," replied Ashiba casually. 

Looking at Ashiba's expression, he knew that the boy hadn't taken his words to heart. He shrugged it off, after all he had reminded the boy with kindness in his heart which is rare of him, if he still insists on going, then it doesn't involve him anymore.

While Ashiba walked out of the Inn, he started thinking about his next step. First he needs to go and sign up for recruitment of the Shimura clan, as for why he would want to be cannon fodder, it was the best current way to burn his bloodline and strengthen himself in the process.

Although this endeavour definitely had risks of its own, he knew that he wouldn't be able to make his bloodline stronger if he didn't participate in as many battles as possible and bare these meager risks. If things went well, he could even start the plan of building his clan to evolve his bloodline.

As he thought about his plan, he couldn't help but laugh and said with derision: "Shimura clan, just a stepping stone in my path."

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