Chapter 21

The walk to the Land of Vegetables was smooth sailing if not a bit slow since we had to go with civilian standards. It wouldn't do well if we left the people we were supposed to protect behind after all.

The caravan we were protecting had several people in them along with three merchants: Yurinoshi, Kikusuke and Shun. Kikusuke looked quite similar to Yurinoshi but instead of a beanie had a normal hat, pretty normal even if they both gave me looks when they thought I wasn't watching them. Shun on the other hand gave me a bad feeling.

As in Wave mission kind of a bad feeling. Why?

Shun was a woman but she was pretending to be a man, she was even forcefully deepening his voice and wearing very baggy clothes. Sure she could simply be pretending to be a man in order to get taken more seriously since people always looked down on women in order to hide their own inadequate masculinity.

But I kinda doubted it.

"Kikusuke-san, what kind of country is the Land of Vegetables?" Chocho asked as she put another potato chip in her mouth.

"It is a rather small and peaceful country. As you can imagine from the name, we mostly deal with vegetables. But the meat from our cows and the fish from rivers are quite delicious too. A hot pot made from ingredients from our country is especially great." He boasted, seemingly very proud of his land's cuisine.

Chocho nodded with a smile as she wiped off the small amount of drool that had gathered on the corner of her mouth.

"Vegetables grown in our land are also known to boost one's vitality. Our ingredients tend to find themselves on the tables of other countries' Daimyos." The merchant kept bragging.

"Is that true?" I asked our sensei silently while keeping away from the merchants.

"Yes and no. While their vegetables are quite a bit higher quality than average, they don't actually boost vitality more than what our own food does. What makes them famous for that is because Land of Vegetables don't have a hidden village. They have a few shinobi families who answer to their Daimyo though."

"Shinobi families?"

"Families who have history of shinobi but nothing glamorous and never with enough members to be recognized as an actual clan." She explained.

It made sense. If every family with ninja in it was considered a clan then Konoha would have more clans than they could bother to count. To be a clan one needs to have a certain amount of prestige and members. Though once you became a clan you would always be recognized as a clan. That was the reason Kushina was still a clan head even though her clan was consisted of only her and her daughter.

After that our walk continued in a peaceful tone, until some morons with clubs and knives came out of the woods. They looked like the kind of characters that would appear in only once arc only for the main character to punch them into a star in the sky.

"Oi! Hand over the goods you bitches! These lands belong to our bosses the Janin brothers!" The one I assumed to be the leader moron said with a demented laugh as he licked the knife in his hand. That's dangerous you know.

And Janin brothers? What kind of idiot came up with that name, it just means evil ninja. It's almost like these people don't even try anymore.

"Daiki." I was broken out of my musings by my sensei who looked underwhelmed by the bandits.

"Deal with them, but do leave their leader alive. We can interrogate him." She said, her voice cold and hard as steel. She wasn't underwhelmed, she was annoyed.

"Sure." I shrugged.

"What do you two whisper back there! I said hand over all the goods! Or do you wish to anger me! The great and powerful Pelika Anaru-sama!"

"Doton: Doryūsō(Earth Flow Spears)!" I clasped my hands and then all the bandits behind 'ThE gReAt aNd PoWeRfUl AnArU-SaMa' were pierced in various places by spiked made out of earth that came behind them.

Alarmed by the noise of earth moving and yells of pain, Anaru turned behind him to see that all of his men were I played through either their guts, hearts or even their heads.

"H-how? How? HoW?! hOw?! HOW?!" He started to yell with his formerly smug bastard expression replaced by one of pure fear.

"Sensei, you sure that we actually need him?" I asked while ignoring the disturbed looks I was getting by everyone except the pair of purple haired kunoichis.

"No, but it is better to be safe rather than sorry." Yugao sensei said as she walked towards the sole alive bandit who fell on his back in fright as he tried to get away.

"No! Get away from me! Get away! GET AWAY!" He continued to yell as Yugao dragged him into the woods. Then there was a moment of silence before the man's screams came back with an even higher pitch.

"AAAAHHHH!"

I could see that each of the merchants looked rather unnerved by the sounds. Not exactly my problem though.

After a while Yugao came back with a small amount of blood on her knuckles but the bandit was nowhere in sight.

"It seems like this country has been taken over by a trio of shinobi who call themselves Janin after they killed the Daimyo with the help of some courtiers who weren't loyal to the Daimyo. Then they killed the courtiers as well." She explained and Chocho paled, while the merchants looked uncomfortable.

"But it seems like the daughter of the late Daimyo managed to escape along with two of Daimyo's shinobi. So the brothers have ordered all the bandits to go around and keep a lookout for the daughter." Yugao said before she looked at Yurinoshin with a hard look.

"Anything you might want to share with us, Yurinoshin-san?"