IHaveHidden
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Chapter 11 ( A hovel to call my own)
🕑 Added 2024-09-07 04:48:28 +0000 UTCI was left alone. Mei was pulled away from all of us to go report something and she dragged her family away with her. That was fine and dandy but they just left me here.
I've never been more insulted in my life. These people knew what I was capable of and the rather unique abilities I possessed. Yet, they just left me in the basement of the bar with the fucking bartender.
Said bartender was looking at me with some confusion on his face. I'm assuming he was feeling as awkward as I was about all of this. For a brief moment, I considered it just walking away but my promises and deals kept me in place. Eventually, the guy let out a stiff grunt and opened his mouth to say something.
“ Right, I guess I'll show you around” The bartender let out stiffly as he motioned for me to follow him. I looked at him for a moment and let out a sigh and just chose to follow. I don't know if this was payback for all the nonsense I dished out to the Terumi family but I will get revenge for this.
At least there was not much ground cover here. The guy was walking me through the base or as much of the bases as I was afforded access to. A mess hall that served rations for those taking refuge in this location. A bathing area for everyone to take care of themselves and a room for meeting and talking to your fellow refugees. After that, he led me towards a small enclosed room for me to rest in.
Since we were quite literally underground the walls were made out of dirt but it was harder than I expected. I could only imagine that some sort of ninjutsu was used here. There was a cot on a raised dirt platform for sleeping and a chair and desk for whatever you wished to do in here. The lighting was provided by a torch.
I was fairly certain that the world of Naruto had electronic devices but we were currently refugees hiding underground so access to that would be difficult. It was not exactly five star treatment but if this was going to be my hovel I was fine with it.
I will say I'm rather glad that I do not actually have to sleep. That fucking cot looked like it would put a massive kink in my neck. I suppose I could spend the rest of my time grinding up skills and training my body.
Although I suppose training any unique abilities here would be rather difficult. Not from the lack of space but from the lack of privacy. I was fairly certain that the eyes watching me currently had nothing against me in particular but they had a duty to fulfill.
I could not exactly see where everyone was as they were far too good at hiding. I should have expected something like that from the preemptive assassination capital and literal fucking ninjas. Still, even if I could not see them I could feel and hear the steady thumps of their hearts.
From what I can tell I had three individuals watching me. One hiding in the shadows of this room and two others outside of it. Now I'm fairly certain that the two others were not just responsible for myself. It was more like those two figures were responsible for monitoring the hallway.
The one in this room on the other hand was absolutely responsible for just me. I cannot tell for certain but I felt his eyes boring into me as he tried to dissect and analyze me with everything he had.
I suppose I was assigning gender rather quickly. A woman could very well be responsible for watching me as well but that seemed unlikely. It would just make more sense to have members of the same gender watching new arrivals.
No one wanted to be considered a pervert after all. Well, Jiraiya did but he's not exactly a case in normality. That poor fool of a man has taken far too many strikes to the head after all.
I let out a sigh and sat in the chair as I contemplated what to do next. This entire day has been a bit of a rush and I never would have seen any of this coming. My first instinct is to seek out the main cast and throw myself on their side but that no longer was open for me.
I had a deal with Mika and I had to complete it before I could do anything else. The rebellion has also gone their claws in me and I imagine leaving would be rather difficult. Then again why should I put my neck out for Naruto and his strange Talk No Jutsu.
There is certainly a bonus in being in Kohona as it's probably the most peaceful of all of the Ninja villages. In exchange for that they had the most dangerous and overwhelmingly powerful foes. Madara with his strange fascination with the Senju Clan and Obito because Kakashi cucked him.
The only issue I have with my current position is I did not get that peacefulness and I had to still deal with the manipulations of the Uchiha duo. The Hidden Mist is probably hard mode in comparison to the rest of the Ninja villages.
The Village Hidden In The Clouds is probably the best place I could have ended up at. They have a strong military might and they don't draw any attention from any of the big guns until much later in the series.
The Village Hidden In The Stones on the other hand is filled with cannon fodder for the most part. Sure they're basically ignored for the most part but all of my comrades would be better than mobs only by a marginal amount.
Then you finally had The Village Hidden In The Sand. Or the village where you wind up being dirt poor, starving, and getting heat stroke constantly. Their military might is rather poor from their taxation but they at least have some big hitters. Even if one of their big hitters is a literal fucking child.
Not that the Mist was much better in comparison to the Sand. Since they are currently going through a civil unrest their funds are completely and utterly low. Their own ninjas are tearing each other apart so any strength in military is pointless. The only positive trait they have over the Sand is that I would not have to deal with getting heat stroke.
Well, that's not exactly fair either The Village Hidden In The Mist had its good points. Since there is civil unrest going on it is rather easy to slip into either side of the war. While I was under some scrutiny here I imagine that any of the other ninja villages would have me in prison for at least a little while.
Since I had to take a side in this civil war I could also get myself a rather lucrative position in the future if my side wins. I knew for a fact that the side that I was currently on would win in the end but that was not really in doubt in the long run.
The other side's big leader was under mind control and had no will of his own. He was certainly powerful but he would not take actions that would make winning the war a lot easier on his own side. It was the equivalent of a giant baby wrecking everything around him instead of a strategic ninja that could take advantage of anything.
We also have the will of the people on our side. Sure there is a certain sentiment going around that bloodlines users are devils but that was propagated by the Mist government. The government of the hidden mist has never really been that popular in the first place due to its bloody reputation.
We were not popular with the working class as ninja was a term that usually led to blood shed. No, we would not be winning any sort of popularity contests but we drew some sympathy.
So we had an easier time trading supplies and weapons from the working class. It was nothing in comparison to the supplies provided by the current government as they had the support of the Daiyomo but it was enough to get by.
There was a problem with our current supply routes. Explosive tags were not something civilians could provide and while we could make our own the current government had a surplus. Kunai was pretty easy to supply but anything better than that was a pipe dream.
Which made me a little more valuable than I expected. As if reminding me about it the pool of energy I used to empower items filled up again.
I hesitated for a moment before pushing all of that energy into enforcing the concealing effect on my coat. It improved from the blending into a crowd effect to being somewhat close to Kuroko.
I still had a presence but it was a very weak one and if I properly distracted someone I could push their attention away from me. This did not mean I was invisible, people would still be aware of the person in the room but they would just not think about it for the most part.
It was a fantastic boost and I could not wait to push this coat even further. People may think assassination is a lame way to go about things but a knife in the dark is the most deadly.
I would eventually reach the position of shooting an arrow into someone and having them treat my presence as nothing but the wind. All the bandits in Skyrim will learn to fear my name.
I was surprised when I noticed my Item Empowerment skill went up a level. It was just level one so I should have expected the lower level-ups to come quickly. The pool I had access to was now deeper but sadly it remained empty for now. My bar used to be 100 now it is 150 which would make further empowerment easier.
The speed at which I recovered energy did not increase but this was just a single level.
Eventually, this skill would lead me to become very rich and very powerful. I was glad that I had picked it even if I was somewhat iffy about most of my choices on the CYOA.
If I knew I was going to be thrust into the character I would have pushed for something stupidly powerful. I would have mowed down on the Apprenticeships that I took and I might have taken one of the world breaker powers.
I was happy with the Gamer and the templates I picked but I would have put items of power on both templates to save points. Sure, I would be afraid of losing them but The Gamer had an inventory so I could throw them in there after using it for a bit.
The Gamer would give me the skills I needed to grind after all. There was no need to keep those suckers around to be stolen and abused.
Still, Item Empowerment was rather broken and I could get other things from the Gamer as well. Potions and enchantments laced over the Empowerment function. That combo is really broken.
While I was happy with that skill Empowerment would not help out the rebellion much. No, I could make some very powerful items but I would prefer to keep those things for myself.
So the thing that would really help the rebellion was my trading network. I may only have low fantasy worlds at my finger tips at the moment but that was enough.
Food, Medicine, Clothes, Weapons, and everything in between were at my fingertips. I could not get something like a gun but I could buy Wildfire off of Ned and I could buy things that would offer similar damage. All I had to do was convince the rebellion I had contacts that would be massively helpful to them.
