27. Leaving Iron

Zoro's life in Iron Capital seems to be good. His routines are mostly physical training in the morning, followed by swordsmanship training, sparring with samurais at noon, chakra training in the evening, and training in the Genjutsu World with Instructor Moss Head before sleeping.

He sometimes takes escort jobs so he can travel around and maybe face criminals that attack. Torao always tags along with him everywhere. The black-white cat usually lies on Zoro's green hair and rarely gets down.

The main reason Torao needs to stay with Zoro all the time is because Zoro's sense of direction is getting worse by the day. He would even get lost in a straight path, which doesn't make sense.

Without Torao, Zoro would never find any place even if he visits those places every day. Zoro thinks that it's a curse because he genuinely tries to find the correct directions and thinks he chooses correctly, but it's all wrong.

Without Torao, he could never do any escort job because he would wander off somewhere, leaving the ones he is escorting. Heck, he couldn't even leave the city on his own, not to mention doing proper jobs.

While going to other cities and towns, Zoro always does investigations and reports everything he finds to Mifune who is now responsible for Zoro's job as an informant.

But he only gives reports of what he sees and hears. Torao told him he couldn't give good information from the beginning because he is supposed to know nothing about information gathering yet.

They will find it strange if he becomes an expert right off the bat. So he doesn't report the detailed information that Torao gathered by sneaking into places.

They manage to fool the higher-ups and then Zoro gets training for information gathering. It's strange how they didn't train him from the beginning. So Torao assumes that they didn't fully trust Zoro yet because of his unclear background.

But it seems they've finally trusted him now. The country must've investigated Zoro thoroughly and couldn't find any problem.

Then, it finally has been almost 2 years since Zoro lives in the Capital, so he is supposedly 14 y.o now. He has improved massively and become one of the best swordsmen in the country.

Only those like Mifune can defeat him now. So staying in the Capital won't be beneficial for his growth. He needs to go out and fight a lot of different people to polish his skills even further.

"So you finally want to leave, huh?"

"Yeah, my progress has slowed down a lot lately. I need more stimulation by fighting more people who have different skills."

Zoro is in Mifune's office, telling the man his intention to leave.

"Then you need to leave the country if that's what you want. Almost all samurais in our country have similar skills and battle styles because they come from the same root. So you can only find different types of fighters outside of our country. But that means you will mostly fight shinobis. Are you ready for that?"

Mifune asks that because shinobis are very dangerous and there are a lot of shinobis specialized for killing. Furthermore, shinobis can move very fast and sneak up on their enemies, which is very dangerous.

"No problem. I've learned a lot of things about fighting shinobis in the last 2 years and even trained with the shinobis who work here. Besides, if I'm afraid of something like that, then I will never be able to become the Greatest Swordsman."

Zoro's answer makes Mifune smiles. Mifune has known about Zoro's dream to be the Greatest Swordsman in the world and he genuinely thinks that it's possible for Zoro.

"Then I won't hold you back. Just make sure to send regular reports as usual. Be very careful too. The 3rd shinobi world war hasn't calmed down even a bit and even gets more escalated lately. I'm sure you will get dragged into it once you leave our country."

"I know, I'm prepared for that."

After bidding farewell to his friends, Zoro finally leaves the Capital with Torao on his head. Of course, they are taking an escort job as well to make sure they still get money.

They take an escort job to a border town. Not only does it give them money, they also don't need to look for the way there themselves because Zoro is the worst when it comes to directions.

Zoro is now a high-rank mercenary, a 5 star, and there aren't that many with the same rank as him in the whole country. If there is a higher rank, then he will get it already because of his power that no mercenary can rival.

There are many mercenary job offers for him, but he only takes whatever he wants even if the pay is smaller than what a 5-star mercenary should get. That's why getting Zoro's service is like a lottery for the requesters.

The people who get escorted by Zoro now also feel very lucky. They are a small family that is going to the border town because the father receives a job in the border town.

He is an architect and the job will take a long time to finish. So he takes his entire family to the border town. But the road is long and dangerous, so they need some escorts.

They never thought they would get a 5-star mercenary as one of their escorts though because they didn't offer a lot of rewards. But they are glad to have a strong escort anyway.

There are some bandit attacks on their 5 day trip to the border town. But all were solved pretty easily with Zoro there. There are 3 other escorts, but they can't even do anything to the bandits because Zoro wiped them all himself.

Some of the bandits have bounties, although not that high. Still, getting more money is nice, so Zoro takes their heads as proof.

Then after 5 days, they finally arrive in the border town. It's quite bustling with people, especially merchants who are trading items from other countries.

Zoro wants to leave the country quickly, but he knows he needs information. So he and Torao are gathering information all over the town for a few days to know what happened outside the country.

They find a lot of things, but mostly are about the shinobi war. Konoha's Yellow Flash, Third Raikage's death, and different news about how terrifying the war is.

But Zoro is thinking whether Obito has 'died' or if Rin has been killed after Kirigakure caught her. Those are important events in the story, so he wants to know if those things have happened or not just because he is curious.

He doesn't have any plan to involve himself in Madara's or Black Zetsu's plan this early. The current him is still not strong enough to go against those guys.

Well, it's more like he still doesn't know how strong he is compared to those shinobis. He also still doesn't know the best way to fight shinobis, so it's better to avoid conflicts with strong characters right off the bat.

'The war should be far from our borders because it's between the shinobi countries. But there is always a possibility of it moving closer to us. I need to be careful because those ninjas might attack anyone.'

Although the situation near the Land of Iron is good most of the time, people are still worried about the war that might reach this place. That's why escort jobs on the borders are abundant and they pay high.

Zoro then decides to take an escort job to a rather big town in the Land of Earth after he finishes gathering information.

The escort job that he takes pays higher compared to the other escort jobs with similar distance. It's because some people have been attacked on the road there and killed.

That's why those who will use that road decided to band together. Then they gathered their money and hired more escorts with higher rewards.

But it was still difficult to find mercenaries who were willing to take this job. Their lives are more important than some money, after all.

That's why Zoro needs to wait for a few days until they get enough escorts. After they finish all their preparations, the big group leaves for the Land of Earth.

Then as the big group feared, they were getting attacked on the 2nd day after they set off. Zoro is the only person in the group who is excited by this attack now.

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Chapter 47. 4th Raikage

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