Three days flew by in a flash.
Soon, Reiji and his group returned to the village.
It was noon. The sun blazed overhead, and the air was hot and dry.
Reiji took off his mask and strolled down the street.
Just then, a girl in a work uniform quietly emerged from a nearby alley and slipped up beside him.
It was Meiko, Rie's number one fan.
"President, is it urgent?"
Reiji raised an eyebrow slightly at her words, then turned to call out to Jiraiya and the others.
"Jiraiya, Orochimaru, Tsunade, go ahead and report the mission. I've got something urgent to deal with!"
As he spoke, he deftly tossed the rogue ninja from his shoulder onto Jiraiya's and casually slipped away with Meiko.
On the way home, noticing Meiko lagging behind with a worried look, Reiji asked calmly,
"What's going on?"
Meiko, flustered, hurriedly responded.
"Chairman, the sales outpost in the Land of Hot Water was attacked. At least fifty of your clones were destroyed, and over fifty tons of pig iron were stolen from the shop."
"Anything else?" Reiji asked without a change in tone.
If that was all, he already knew about it.
Seeing how unconcerned he was, Meiko's mouth opened in disbelief, struggling for words.
What do you mean, "anything else"? Isn't that already a big enough deal? Fifty tons of pig iron is worth at least ten million ryo!
After a brief pause, she said weakly,
"The price of iron has risen to two hundred thousand ryo per ton."
She swallowed nervously.
As one of Reiji's first employees, Meiko was lucky enough to land the miraculous role of secretary.
Of course, she was Rie's secretary, not Reiji's.
Still, that alone was enough to make the other orphans jealous.
But only Meiko knew how tough it really was.
First of all, Rie, the boss lady, didn't care about anything and couldn't handle basic arithmetic beyond triple digits. That meant she had zero sense of how much a ton of iron was worth.
Naturally, the accounting work fell to Meiko.
Looking at the skyrocketing iron prices, even Konoha's advisory council would've gone weak in the knees—let alone her.
And the most important part? These outrageous prices were all being driven up by her boss.
Seeing Meiko's troubled expression, Reiji smiled lightly, patted her on the head, and said calmly,
"Don't worry. Just think of that batch of pig iron as a sweetener. We've got over a hundred times more to release onto the market later!
This is nothing—relax and think bigger!"
...
While Reiji was comforting his young secretary, elsewhere, Hiruzen Sarutobi's face had turned completely black.
In the Hokage's office, Tsunade, Jiraiya, and Orochimaru stood in front of the desk.
Third Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi, holding a scroll, was reading the mission report with a grim expression.
The mission was handled well—extremely well!
Not only did they uncover what happened to the two missing squads, but they also brought back the culprits!
The best part was rescuing all the kidnapped children from Uzushiogakure without a single one missing.
But then—what's this about beating up the village heads of Uzushiogakure and Kirigakure?
Do you have a grudge against them?
Do you know how hard those village heads work?
Just then, Jiraiya tiptoed up beside Hiruzen and, in a flash, snatched the round crystal ball from the Hokage's desk.
Seeing that, Hiruzen felt another wave of exhaustion wash over him.
Reiji—the ultra-powerful enforcer—causes trouble the moment he steps out of the house!
His disciple Jiraiya keeps eyeballing his stuff!
And Tsunade is always asking for time off just to sneak off to the casino.
Thinking this, Hiruzen glanced at the silent Orochimaru standing nearby and felt a flicker of comfort.
This kid's the best—never gives me trouble!
...
The mission handoff passed, and ten peaceful days slipped by.
Compared to the stability and calm of Konohagakure, Yugakure in the Land of Hot Water was seething beneath the surface.
In these ten days, the price of pig iron had climbed daily, now nearing 500,000 ryo per ton.
At this price, even the most reckless were tempted to take the risk.
Many desperate rogues from the Bounty Station had already set their sights on this seemingly ordinary pig iron shop in Yugakure.
Because this shop represented over half of the pig iron exports in the entire ninja world.
The Land of Iron had run out of iron.
For the past three years, iron ore had mysteriously vanished every few months.
By now, all iron ore in the Land of Iron had disappeared without a trace.
In the current ninja world, aside from a few small mines and Sunagakure in the Land of Wind, which still had iron ore for sale, only this unassuming shop still held vast reserves.
Plenty of people had once tried to target it.
Their fates were always the same: they disappeared.
Not just the attackers—even the ones who hired them vanished mysteriously.
That was why so many wealthy merchants and Daimyōs silently accepted the shop's existence.
It was also why iron prices kept rising steadily and stubbornly.
But now, once again, the shop had become a target.
The price had reached a point where no one could afford to fight anymore. If it went any higher, people would be forced to go to war with wooden spears.
Despite the unrest in Yugakure, the shop stayed open without hesitation.
Merchants confident in iron's price streamed in; cash flowed like water; iron ore was hauled out by the cartload.
For ten consecutive days, mercenary ninjas from the Bounty Station attacked the shop day and night.
Their fate was no different from the past three years—they vanished.
The dark shopfront looked like the gaping maw of a beast, swallowing up anyone with bad intentions.
But none of this dampened the rich folks' enthusiasm. They poured their fortunes into buying pig iron, which now held more value than gold.
They didn't care how long it took—as long as they could flip that iron within a day, their wealth would rise by ten percent.
They had all gone mad—every last one of them.
And they kept blowing this giant, glittering bubble bigger and bigger.
At the same time, cramped, rundown little shops started opening in ninja villages everywhere.
Their signs came in all shapes and styles, but they all meant the same thing:
"Now Hiring!"