Ch385. Training mission

The island appeared north of the Elemental Nations, far enough that nobody on the northern shores could see it but close enough that sea trade would be possible.

This placement was deliberate since the Village Hidden on the Other Side was the northernmost settlement of the Elemental Nations.

Kaguya gently put the island back into the ocean, taking her time so she wouldn't create tsunamis since that could be quite a pain in the ass for the Other-sided village and the Elemental Nations as a whole.

When the island was finally settled in the water, Kaguya started embedding it into the seabed to anchor it better. It was an annoying job, but if she didn't do it, the island could eventually face quite a few problems.

She also made sure to align the biggest port on the island's side that faced the Elemental Nations with the Village on the Other Side, making the distance between them short.

Since nobody would know about the island for quite a while, Rei definitely wanted his companies to get some nice trading deals with the countries there before other traders of the Elemental Nations found out about this new juicy opportunity.

Honestly, Rei was not interested in ruling the island. There was nothing special in there. No resources, no technology, and not even the people. The populace was backward and superstitious, exactly what one would expect from medieval people.

They were useless to Rei for the most part.

A long process of grooming and training would be required to make use of them and frankly, Rei was not inclined to invest the time and resources for that. People of Elemental Nations were sufficient for his village's needs.

It wasn't like he couldn't just send his ninjas to secretly create gold and silver mines in the uninhabited mountain ranges of the island either. One advantage of dealing with a medieval world was that they had no idea about the resources hiding deep in those mountains nor did they have the means to discover them.

Rei's ninjas could create these mines quite easily while making hidden outposts and infrastructure for spreading their mission activity all over the island. After all, having teleportation seals would give them a massive advantage.

...

Rei knew that Kaguya's work on embedding the island into the seabed would take time since it was a delicate process. He was definitely not about to wait for her.

Instead, he took Riful, Isley, and the Claymores back to the Village on the Other Side. The group gawked quite a lot at the buildings and different architecture... and especially at the people jumping from roof to roof with physical prowess, they would expect only from Claymore.

During their walk through the village, they saw many sights that wowed them and Rei deliberately led them through more shinobi-oriented districts. Showing them that there were other people capable of taking them down if they became rebellious would just increase the future morale.

In the end, they arrived towards Tsunade's research center where Rei gave the Claymores and two Abyssal Ones into the gentle care of Tsunade who, Rei noticed, already had her hands full with another group of silver-eyed blondes, which surprised not only him but also the Claymores he brought with him.

Realizing Konan was already done with her task, he decided to pay her a visit and ask about her mission.

Finding her wasn't hard. In her usual fashion, she was in her office with Izumi, enjoying sake and leisurely talking about the mission.

This tradition started when Konan had to comfort Izumi after she returned from a particularly nasty mission where she was forced to kill an entire orphanage of kids who were made into unthinking and bloodthirsty monsters through experimentation.

Konan knew talking helped and getting some comforting words alongside advice was priceless after such an experience and she would be damned if she didn't make sure her apprentice was mentally fine.

"May I join you, girls? I am quite interested in how it went too." Rei quipped as he entered the room before walking towards the table and taking one of the free chairs.

He didn't get a verbal answer but Izumi slightly blushed and fidgeted while Konan was already pouring him a glass of sake, showing her consent.

"The training mission was a massive success, of course." She said and put the glass in front of Rei, "From the three hundred jonins participating, we only got five injured and zero casualties." Konan huffed.

"And I reckon these five will be heavily punished." Rei wryly smiled.

"Naturally." Konan threw a half-hearted glare at him, "You know well the only way they could get injured with all the preparations we put in is if they decided to confront their enemies by themselves instead of as a team. There is no place for foolish personal heroics in our profession."

Rei decided to take the intelligent way out and stayed quiet about this topic. It made him a bit sheepish. Konan loved to remind him of the time he decided to fight Toneri by himself.

It worked out itself quite well but Konan was still a bit sullen because of that decision of his.

He had to agree with her on this, though.

There were three hundred jonins put into a hundred three-man cells and each cell had either one target or was in reserve for another cell, looking after their backs.

That made three to six jonins for each Claymore.

Plus the Claymores were not all jonin level. Rei would be generous and say that Claymores under rank 15 started to gain a measure of jonin level capabilities. But all of those had two teams assigned to deal with them.

Only the Claymores number five to one started to enter or were at S-rank physical capability alongside having some special ability like long-range sensing or regeneration or something else. But those were given to two teams of S-rank ninjas to deal with.

Getting injured with these kinds of odds?

Their ninjas were either incompetent or arrogant since Claymores in general were just an inferior budget version of ninjas.

They were very disadvantaged in a fight against ninjas considering they lacked Genjutsu and Ninjutsu while their Taijutsu capabilities were largely underdeveloped and unexplored, nor did they receive any sort of extensive combat training.

Yes, they could fight but their swordsmanship was not impressive. It was a bit sad. Some of them developed a nice move and gained a moniker for it but that was honestly it. Claymores depended more on their instincts and brute force to swing their massive swords around. There was not much technique to speak of.

The only way their highly trained and hardened ninjas who were extremely well-versed in fighting as a team could get injured while fighting a Claymore was if they demanded one on one combat and then were arrogant enough to limit themselves to taijutsu, maybe bukijutsu.

"Just don't be too harsh on them." Rei weakly tried to make these idiots' punishment lighter but from the way Konan snorted, he probably just made it worse for them. 'Oh, well...' He mentally shrugged.

There was no place for disobeying orders in a militaristic village full of trained killers. Their ninjas had a clear order to confront a Claymore as a team and capture their target without forcing her to awaken.

If it was up to Rei, he would punish not only those five individuals but their entire teams for not preventing them from disobeying the orders.

Rei then turned towards Izumi who quietly observed them with interest written on her face. He and Konan used only three lines but their conversation was mostly non-verbal. Every twitch was a signal for a sufficiently trained ninja. There was no need to say much when they could understand each other with just a look.

"And you? How was facing Luciela?"

After asking that, Rei's eyebrows twitched when he saw how Izumi's smile widened and her eyes suddenly sparkled while she started to open her mouth to answer.

From her bright expression, he instantly knew Luciela's fate was not enviable...