Chapter. 86.5- One Thousand Hands

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“So this is the vault?” Well, that was a bit of an obvious question considering it was a large metal door surrounded by large steel walls and buried into the side of a cliff face.

“Clearly” Uzume scoffed. I noticed some burn marks on the steel.

“You already tried breaching it with force and failed?” I asked, stepping closer.

“I didn’t fail. Uraume said there was a risk of a failsafe destroying everything if we breached”

“Fair enough. And she was right.”

“What?”

“This is an Uzumaki seal. Probably made to order some decades ago” I said, looking at it.

“So yeah, if you had breached by force, then you and the vault would have been sucked into a miniature black hole of sorts” I said, after identifying the failsafes. I whistled, impressed. It was good work. Really good work. So good, it was a shame we wouldn’t be able to take the whole safe back to Konoha with us.

“So can you get in?” Uraume asked. I scoffed.

“Whoever did this was good. Great even. But if I needed to bypass, I can see a few things I’d try. But that’s only if I needed to bypass. Like I said, it is an Uzumaki seal. And what Uzumaki seal would deny one of the blood?” I reached up to my mouth with a thumb, biting hard enough draw blood. I spread it along the surface of the seal and said, “Open sesame” the last bit being entirely for show as the safe’s door swung inwards, revealing Iwagakure’s greatest treasure.

Scrolls upon scrolls upon scrolls. I walked in, scanning with my byakugan to make sure there were no traps and unsurprised to find none. That would have been overkill.

“Uraume. Please see to it that these are categorized and packed up as soon as possible” I said while walking deeper. If we had to wait to the end of the day for us to be done with this place, then I might as well spend the time looking through Iwa’s best techniques.

There was a whole section dedicated to the Earth release. I ignored it. I’d find the weighted boulder technique there for sure, but that was a concern for later. The giant scrolls that were almost definitely summoning contracts were far more interesting. I wasn’t going to sign any of them, yeah, but they were interesting at least. Maybe we’d find one for Uzume and see if she couldn’t learn some sort of sage mode. That should bring her back up to my level again, and then we’d hone each other even further.

The first one was for moles. I wondered what giant moles would look like. Another for groundhogs, one for badgers. Even one for termites. It was a treasure trove. Signing the right summoning contract could take a shinobi multiple levels up in strength. You could just think of someone like Jiraiya. And then my previously good mood disappeared, snuffed out like a match in the wind.

Because thinking of Jiraiya made me think of Tsunade, and they were both dead. The only one of the Sannin to still be alive was Orochimaru, and even that was touch and go. What would he become in a world without either of his teammates. A greater threat to peace and good conscience? A better man? There was no way to know. And a terrible part of me did not want to find out.