Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Where We Come From

World's Largest Scavenger Hunt!

"I don't know how to pay you guys back..." Mana awkwardly smiled rubbing the back of her head. The trio took a whole night off after nearly getting utterly incinerated by the Nine-Tails' immense power. They still had to keep moving to the Wind Country, especially now when they knew that they had competition on their tracks who currently were a whole day ahead of them.

The head of the small family bowed his head and politely shook his head refusing any payment. The man saw the bleeding and injured quartet wandering the streets, he took pity on the four letting them stay in his shabby home overnight, he gave Mana some of his daughter's clothes since hers were almost completely burnt off. Kouta rested overnight and then took care of their injuries, leaving a little bit of healing to various burn ointments and pills instead of using his chakra to heal them up.

Meiko grinned and opened a satchel showing some shards of a glowing purplish mineral inside. "How 'bout some of this for your trouble, a single shard probably costs a billion ryo, you know..." she explained.

Mana was surprised to see that Meiko had the time to snag some of the minerals while she was down there. Must've happened either when she was digging the tunnel for the four to cross from the resting quarters over to the labs or when they were down in the mines.

The house owner looked quite intimidated by the prospect. "Please don't, we don't need something like this in our lives. This cursed rock already cost this town its freedom, it has become infested with criminal families trading it and making it down the mines. Now that the mine is closed and sealed under layers of rock and gold, perhaps they won't find it worth the hassle to try and salvage what they've lost, having some of this around would only bring my family trouble!" he explained.

Mana nodded, it may not have been the best idea to leave something like this in the family's home. If they tried to exchange it for money word would spread, just one word of the ore's presence in the family's home would bring crime families on their doorstep trying to reclaim some of what they have lost. After some overly long farewells, the four departed from the Land of the Rivers settlement, heading west towards the Land's border with the Wind Country. They were getting closer to their objective.

"Wait... So did we win? Whatever we were doing in the mines?" Meiko scratched her chin wondering, "I mean I lost my armor, at least tell me we've won..." the blacksmith complained once again.

"Well, we've buried the Audra ore under endless layers of rock and gold, it'd take entire years for them to reach that ore, more so, the Syndicate no longer has the Nine-Tails' infinite supply of chakra for their production so even if they did reach it in however many years it'd take them, they can no longer produce the element artificially. Eventually, the crime families should move out of the settlement since they'll have no more business there. Also, all of us survived that which very few have before – a scuffle with the Nine-Tails, a severely weakened and delirious Nine-Tails but still, it could've killed us easily if we were any less lucky... All of those are small victories in my book" Mana mumbled out looking at the murky grey sky. Rain clouds were gathering, the girl could only wonder as to what these clouds could have actually meant.

"On the other hand, Kouta is still not completely recovered after healing us so many times in such a short period of time, your card supply is completely empty, Meiko's armor with all the weapons sealed in it was destroyed, also now we know that Kouta's dirtbag father is after the Box as well. We're not ready to fight him or pretty much anyone strong for that matter..." Shimo replied to Mana's pondering. "Still, we've helped quite a lot of people, I just hope that the Nine-Tails won't blow that statistic up in our faces now that it's free to rampage freely"

"We've got another trouble on our hands, that ore, I assume Meiko can't work it since if she could she'd have rebuilt her armor long ago. That means we've got a bunch of heavy cargo and no money..." Kouta brought up another problem.