We didn't travel as fast as we could unlike if we were on a mission and time was of the esse rather walked casually along the road.

  "I never could uand why anyone would choose to bee a bandit." Karin pined after I killed those bandits who ambushed us.

  "There are many reasons, poverty, insanity, freedom, pressganging, the other vilges shadow warfare. The matter is not ohat easily be dealt with even for the five great shinobi vilges." I said holy.

  "I still think it's wrong." she said with a huff.

  "I am not disagreeing with you, bandits are detestable indeed. I am merely expining why one might take that path despite that fad the da holds." I said and she nodded.

  "What about that time when you all cleared out the bandits and rogue shinobi shortly after Sensei became Hokage?" she asked curiously.

  "That was more a publicity stunt than a viable method of ridding the nd of bandits. In order turly hold "ing" operations like that we'd o triple our amount of in and at least double our Jonin or risk running ourselves ragged iempt." I expined holy.

  We tinued casually discussing possible ways to rid the nd of bandits permaly but the same problems kept popping up much to her frustration. The biggest one being that we'd o alter the way our society worked where the vilge NEEDED bandits to fun. The missions that people paid us to do were more or less a matter of safety because of the threats that the bandits, rogue nin and assassins held for them. Without those threats our society would fall apart because the vilges heme funds to fun and those jobs i money bato the vilge in a gratuitous cycle.-

  While Konoha had a lot more leeway here due to our ability to grow herbs and food before exp them we were still quite depe on the missions bandits bring us. The biggest issue however with wiping out all the bandits effectively is the Daimyos of the world. Despite their weakhey aren't stupid most of the time and any of them that see a hidden vilge making strides to bee fully indepe of them will feel nervous. It should be uood that the only real hold the Daimyos have on the hidden vilges is mohey give to them.-

  This means if the vilge stops needing this inflow of funds from the Daimyo the Daimyo is helpless against the vilge uhey want to see their nd burn by provoking the other Daimyos to start a war against the vilge. I thought it was all wrong personally and that at the very least the position of Kage should repce that of Daimyo but I'll keep those treasonous thoughts to myself. We stopped in a vilge in the middle of our jouro the nd of grass border for the night after walking all day.-

  It was a quaint pce with all the buildings being sturdy but simple wooden ones with rough wooden floors. The pce maybe had ten or fifteen families living in it and only about two hundred or so people in total. I noticed that while the people here werely terribly off they certainly weren't in the best state either as many were dirty and or slightly malnourished. I was fused about this until Karin with her big heart asked one of the vilgers why the pce was like this.-

  "Theres a bandit group nearby that regurly shows up to demand tribute and they barely leave enough for us to survive but not enough to hire shinobi to kill them. They have a member here in the vilge who they leave to make sure we don't get any ideas of rebellion. He lives over there." the man who she asked said bitterly.-

  I sighed when Karin didn't hesitate to attempt to kill the bandit in the vilge only to be stopped by me.

  "We need him alive to find out where the group has their ir." I said cooling her wrath a bit with logic.

  "You'll get nothing from me!" the bandit spat defiantly.

  His defiance died quickly however once I went to work on him to extraformation. Karin and I were both VERY well acquainted with the human body and kly what buttons we could push t the maximum amount of agony without killing the subject. In this case I sent yin chakra into his brain, specifically the part the processes pain and gave it a little tickle. The bandit was singing like a ary in a mere five minutes of that treatment. Numbers, strength, location and even patrol times all fell in our p and I created two shadow es that went off to settle this matter.-

  There was a whole celebration in the vilge when my es came back with the head of the leader who was at least a in level shinobi as well as all the loot and food that the bandits had. It came as little surprise that the bandits had been stockpiling the stuff even if they didn't need more. While the vilge celebrated Karin and I rented a room at the local inn and turned in for the night. The m we ate some jerky for breakfast before hitting the road again.-

  We weren't bothered by any rogue nin or bandits for the entire day and merely enjoyed each others pany as we walked. When we reached the border the patrols there verified our stories before letting us through to the nd of grass. The forest thinned out for vast swathes of field nd that the nd was named for. The road robably the only part not covered in thick grass and only then because it was trampled down from the regur travelers that went over it. The nd of grass bordered both the nd of noodles and the nd of herbs with the nd of hs being oher side of the nd of noodles.-

  Karins vacation idea was to basically take our time traveling through the nd of fire, then grass, then noodles and finally hs before making a return trip using a different route. All in all at our current pace it would take us about four months to eventually return to Konoha. This wasn't an unreasonable amount of time as the world was more or less at peace at the moment. There were still the small skirmishes and shadow battles between vilges but that was status quo and not any indicator of an approag war.