After looting the hideout and saving the captives, the group continues their way to their destination. The captured bandits are forced to walk behind the group while being chained.
As for the 3 dead ninjas, their heads are placed in a sack and carried by the tied bandits. The saved women are sitting on a carriage with some women from the merchant groups.
They get attacked again, but Zoro finishes the bandits easily because there are only a few of them and they are all normal. These bandits are even poorer than the previous bandit group and there isn't any single captive.
So they also take these bandits to their destination. When they arrive after 3 more days of journey, they hand over the bandits to the authority and also take the bounty rewards from those 3 missing nins.
After finishing the job and taking his reward, Zoro finds an inn to rest. Torao that has been hiding in his shadow most of the time comes out to sleep with him too.
The next day they go around the town to gather information. They are finally out of the Land of Iron and can do a lot of things now that they also have sufficient power. As long as they are being careful, then they won't die in a ditch somewhere.
"Hmm, the war is said to have almost reached its climax, huh? Then I guess Obito has fallen into Madara's hands by now and Rin is probably dead already."
The news about the 3rd shinobi war is easier to find here than in the Land of Iron because this country is directly involved. Or rather, Iwa and Konoha are the perpetrators of this 3rd shinobi war, so the Land of Earth is deeply involved in it.
"Sigh, I want to see those hidden villages, but I guess it's impossible for now."
"They won't let outsiders enter their villages easily even during peaceful time, not to mention in war time like this. Besides, what do you want to do there?"
"Nothing, just sightseeing."
Torao sighs at Zoro's reason. Those hidden villages aren't tourist spots, after all. Though he can understand that Zoro must really want to see those villages himself because he wants too.
"If you do well with our plan, then it will be easy to enter those villages."
Zoro nods at Torao's words before taking out the bounty book.
The plan that Torao mentions is bounty hunting. Doing mercenary jobs isn't too beneficial anymore for Zoro because there won't be many chances to fight strong people.
That previous case of encountering missing nins that became bandits was rare. It's actually Zoro's first time fighting ninjas in his jobs after being a mercenary for almost 3 years.
If it happens often, then there won't be any mercenaries. They won't do this job because they surely aren't matched for ninjas. Aside from having battle skills, these mercenaries are just normal people who can't use their chakra.
So he won't grow stronger if he just keeps doing mercenary jobs. He wants to fight strong people and that's why Torao told him to hunt criminals, especially missing nins. There are many missing nins, after all, and some are very powerful.
"Hmm, then it means I will also hunt Akatsuki members, right? They are mostly S-Rank missing nins with high bounties, after all."
"Yep, and then you will be a hero, hahaha."
"Ew, no thanks. Being a hero is a hassle. People will keep talking about me, don't leave me alone, and the worst is they will give me more work while having too much expectation of me. That already sounds tiring."
Each village and country has a different list of individuals with bounties because of their different interests. For example, Kakashi is a good Konoha ninja, but he is a bad enemy for other villages, so those villages put a bounty on him.
Zoro wants to avoid hunting those kinds of bounties because then he will be the enemy of a certain village. It's not that he is afraid of those villages, but being their enemy means he can't get the bounties of those wanted by that village.
So to avoid that, he needs to have the bounty lists of all villages and countries, known as Bingo Books. That way he will know why the targets are wanted and if they are categorized as criminal missing nins or not.
Almost all of these criminal missing nins are those who defected or betrayed their villages. Unless they join other villages, they won't be protected by any laws, so there won't be any problem if they die.
"By the way, where is the nearest battlefield?"
"Still very far from here. Why do you ask?"
"Just wondering if we can sneak into the war and fight some people."
"Stop it. There's no benefit in doing that. You'll only become some villages' enemy."
"Sigh, you are right. Too many problems just to fight shinobis."
"Don't worry, there will always be an increase of missing nins after the war. Even now there are already many of them. It's just that finding them is difficult with the war taking everyone's attention. For now, why don't we try to enter Iwa? Let's try finding jobs that can take us there."
Zoro agrees and starts taking jobs that take him closer to Iwagakure. But it's really difficult to even get a glimpse of Iwagakure's name in the job list.
The closest he can get is a town more than 30 kilometers away from Iwa. All the jobs that lead to Iwa from its surrounding towns are taken by Iwa shinobis.
They'd rather send genins to escort everyone coming and leaving Iwa than some unknown mercenaries who might be spies from other villages, after all.
Then while Zoro is busy trying to find ways to enter Iwa without any result, the war stops. Iwa and Konoha signed a peace treaty as they were the perpetrators of this war. So other villages also decide to stop.
Feeling defeated, Zoro finally decides to go to another country. Iwa is more stubborn than he thought, so he decides to leave rather than wasting his energy here.
He will start head-hunting the missing nins now that the war has ended. In the past months since he left Iron, Zoro has updated the Bingo Books he has. There really is a big increase of missing nins because of the war.
These nins usually run away from the war out of fear. There are even those who betrayed their villages and sold information to the enemies.
Zoro doesn't care about their reasons. There's no right or wrong in this business. Only money matters in bounty hunting.
But searching these missing nins isn't easy. After all, they are ninjas who can change their appearances to hide even in a bustling town and no one will notice.
Well, that is if one doesn't know the true way to collect information. There will always be information brokers in every big town that sell even highly-classified information and Zoro always knows how to find them thanks to the teaching of The Land of Iron when he agreed to become their informant.
These brokers usually have stores with secret signs that are hard to notice unless they are experienced with these. Zoro can buy information about the missing nins in these brokers for different prices depending on the rarity of the information.
Though Zoro knows that most of the information about these missing nins comes from hidden villages. They just don't have enough hands to chase all the missing nins by themselves because they also need to do many missions.
"Oh? They seem to be good targets."
Zoro gets information about 2 missing nins from Kumo. They were last in a border town, south of the Land of Earth. Those 2 are a jonin and a chuunin.
"Hmm? Raping and killing civilians from their own country during the chaos of the war? Seems like I need to give them some special treatments before sending them to the afterlife."
Rape is a crime that Zoro despises so much. Now he is determined to find those 2 scums and gives them some special treatments.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Read up to +20 chapters ahead in my p@treon page
p@treon.com/creampuffs69
Chapter 49. Stagnant
Please like and support this book too if you like it, thank you