When Uchiha Gen stepped into the tent, the two Chunin guards at the entrance exchanged glances, both catching the same thought in each other's eyes.
So this is Orochimaru-sama's disciple? No wonder, he is much more approachable than the other Uchiha we've met before.
"Sensei."
"Sit."
Orochimaru, eyes lowered over his paperwork, lifted his gaze briefly, then returned to writing.
Gen didn't stand on ceremony. He pulled out a chair at the small conference table and sat down.
"Orochimaru-sensei, what's the plan for the next stage of the war?"
"Slowly," Orochimaru replied without looking up.
"Oh?" Gen raised a brow.
"You need time to harvest souls. I need time to gather materials. For both of us, the longer this war drags on, the better. Besides, working outside Konoha is far more… liberating. I don't have to restrain myself here, so there's no need to rush."
Gen smirked. He thought the same. The longer the war stretched, the more souls he could collect.
He had already decided to fight more conservatively from now on by holding back, so as not to damage Hidden Mist too heavily before Obito seized control of Yagura.
Because even if Obito succeeded, he couldn't simply grind the Mist into dust. Yagura might wear the Mizukage's hat, but the Village wasn't his alone. The elders still held weight, and the strongest of them—The Great Elder—stood nearly equal in authority to the Mizukage.
Obito could not act recklessly without consequence. A unilateral order might slip through once or twice, but too many, and suspicion would follow. If Mist suffered losses beyond a certain threshold, the elders would force a retreat, and even Obito couldn't prevent it.
That was the reality Gen accounted for.
Of course, none of this mattered to the other Konoha shinobi. To them, a drawn-out war only meant more corpses. But Orochimaru, as front-line commander, answered to no deputy and held both strength and prestige enough to delay operations as he wished.
"I'm relieved to hear that, Sensei."
"Hmm…" Orochimaru finally set down his pen and gave a faint smile. "Be my deputy."
"Deputy Commander?" Gen blinked. "You don't have the authority to appoint that, do you?"
"Authority is paperwork. We'll submit the request to Konoha. Your achievements are enough, commanding at the thousand-man level is well within reason."
Gen chuckled. "The old man really does need you right now. Still… thank you for the thought, Sensei."
"Don't just thank me. Pull up a stool and start learning."
"Understood."
Gen moved beside him.
Master and student bent over the stacks of reports, Orochimaru pointing out categories, explaining patterns, then quizzing Gen on decisions. If Gen's answers were correct, he moved on. If not, Orochimaru corrected him and explained the reasoning with clinical clarity.
The system was no different from how Orochimaru taught ninjutsu; structured, logical, and precise.
He explained that military files boiled down into four categories, troop deployments, logistics, medical, and everything else. Each split into subcategories, but ultimately, it was all about managing people.
The most crucial skill wasn't brute strength, but arithmetic. Without solid numbers, it was all too easy for subordinates to pad supply counts, skim rations, or 'lose' coin.
Konoha shinobi weren't saints. Despite the Village's indoctrination, corruption still existed. Not so much at the front line as no one dared try it under Orochimaru's eyes but in other postings, it was common enough.
Strength didn't automatically translate into governance. Gen could easily dominate a battlefield, but learning to control an army would be another kind of trial.
That same night, news of the battle reached Kirigakure.
Yagura, face turned dark, then left his home without delay and summoned the Village's elders for an emergency council.
The report hit the chamber like a hammer.
Raiga Kurosuki, dead. Eight other jōnin, lost.
Unacceptable.
Of the nine jōnin, five had fallen to Uchiha Gen, two to Orochimaru, and the last two had been cut down while fleeing from Konoha pursuit.
Jōnin were the backbone of every Village. Losing nearly ten at once was a wound that went straight to the marrow.
The numbers across the Great Nations told the story well enough; after a year of recovery and new promotions, each Village had between one hundred and one hundred and fifty jōnin at most.
Sunagakure sat at the bottom, barely over a hundred. Konoha and Kumogakure led with perhaps a hundred and forty. Kirigakure itself had just above one hundred and twenty, including bloodline clans and secret arts families. In truth, the elders could only directly command a little over one hundred.
Now, almost a tenth of that strength had been cut away in one night.
The council chamber seethed with rage and worse, despair.
And the blow kept coming.
The Kiba scroll had not been recovered. The legendary blade was gone.
The elders' hearts nearly cracked. Someone would have to answer. And Suikazan Fuguki, as commander, found himself staring into the storm.
Yagura, however, wasn't ready to discard him. He spoke in Fuguki's defense, and even the Great Elder lent weight, insisting the failure wasn't solely the commander's fault. With their combined voices, Fuguki wasn't stripped of command, but ordered instead to atone through meritorious service.
That meant the war would continue.
The great Elder had been ready to cut losses, but Yagura refused to see his war end in humiliation, and the elders, unwilling to waste the blood already spent, pressed forward.
They wanted restitution and their blade back.
The decision was made; reinforcements with three hundred genin, thirty chunin, and ten more jōnin, who would march to the front.
Not long after the meeting ended, White Zetsu slipped through the earth, carrying the news to Obito, who sat masked and resting in an abandoned house on the outskirts of Hidden Mist.
Obito straightened slowly, his lone Sharingan glowing red as it fixed on Zetsu.
"You're telling me Uchiha Gen not only commands a dragon as his summoning beast… but also rips souls from shinobi through fear?"
'Tobi,' White Zetsu grinned, voice lilting, "you're not joking, are you?"
Obito's silence was heavy.
Fuguki wouldn't dare lie to the Mist elders about something like this.
That meant it was true.
"The Rinnegan exists. The Sage of Six Paths once lived. A dragon isn't impossible. But this…" Obito narrowed his eye. "An ability to steal souls through fear? That's no Uchiha technique. Madara's archives had nothing like it. So where…?"
Before White Zetsu could respond, a slick pool of darkness spread across the floor. Black Zetsu rose, clinging to White Zetsu's form.