Traveling across the Land of Hot Water was a breeze now that Mana and the party of Allied Ninja escorting her didn't need to worry about local bounty hunters and gangs throwing their forces at her. It seemed that Junichi's guess that the bounty would not extend further than the Land of Fire borders was correct as they didn't run into a single ambush all throughout their days long trip across Land of Hot Water.
"I'm sorry, Junichi-san, I might have second-guessed your decision too much as the VIP," Mana admitted in a heartfelt apology that she felt she owed the veteran during one of the days traveling across the lush and vibrant woods split by cerulean rivers in a serpentine formation spreading all across the country.
"It wasn't easy staying by my decision, no matter how many years I've been doing this. I can imagine that without the context of the experience that I possess there was little for you to support your trust with. I'm not angry at you though I would appreciate it if you trusted my calls a bit more in the future," Junichi replied without looking back at Mana. Even in much safer territory, this man kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
"It was very insightful of you to foresee that the bounty only extended to the end of the country it was issued in. I was not aware that was how it worked, honestly," Mana said.
"It doesn't always. It was issued by the head of the Diamond Hand syndicate, right? He wouldn't have too much of a reach from prison and he'd have to have the resources to pay that bounty up to any black market point the bounty could be cashed in on. I bet he wouldn't wager his reputation on the black market by issuing it worldwide seeing how he'd be unable to ensure the delivery of the bounty to faraway black market points nor could he have the resources to issue them afront on all the points all over the world," Junichi pointed out.
"Don't lower your guard and unwind just yet, Mana," Cailar smirked. "There is always a chance that somebody would hire an assassin that works worldwide with the intent of splitting the bounty."
"As odd as it might seem, I agree with Cailar." Junichi nodded. "There is such a possibility. It's especially troubling given how we don't know the exact size of the bounty though, knowing the Nine Tales gang threw everything they had at us, we can estimate that it is walloping."
"Heh, and to think that you didn't find peep that out during one of your mind trips either, that's not very rocking of you, Mana!" Shitaka snickered to himself.
"Sorry, I'm not very good with money so it wasn't the first thing that was on my mind…" Mana bit her lower lip and turned her eyes to her right.
"Nor should it have been. It's an interesting detail but it was not essential to us at the time," Junichi dismissed Mana's worries.
One thing that alleviated Mana's troubles was the fact that everybody seemed to be making a quick recovery. It was as if they were used to exhausting their juices on the field and recovering soon. Honestly, Mana felt a little bit jealous of the Allied Ninja and how quickly their chakra rushed to return to its peaks. Her own seemed like a slumbering sloth though it might have been because hers had a slightly larger size to that of her colleagues. It was self-evident that neither of them spent too much time meditating and working with their chakra networks, stimulating their chakra nodes to bleed out all of the pent-up leftovers and flex their overall chakra capacity in any way whatsoever.
One of these days of the trip, a sharp breeze hit Mana right at her exposed shoulders and washed at her with hundreds of thousands of chilling needles driving through her pores. The young woman felt obliged to remove her backpack and take the sealing tag off of her and unseal her blazer from it which she had stored there as the rather soft and welcoming weather of the Land of the Hot Water and constant pampering of stopping in various pleasure towns for rest, renewal of supplies and relaxation in the hot springs had Mana hiding her thicker layers of clothing away.
"Hmm… The Land of Frost must be nearby." Junichi noted after observing Shitaka sneeze in reaction to the drastic shift in weather that took place in the span of less than an hour. "Well, we've spent plenty of time resting and restocking our supplies for the journey."
"We won't be traversing that massive patch of frosted land on foot, will we?" Mana wondered.
"No, we'll be hiring a caravan. The caravan business market is quite rich in the country, plenty of locals survive from transferring travelers from one side of the country to another through pathways on the mountains. It would be a little scummy of us not to support that industry, seeing how often it comes useful to the Allied Ninja and ninja of either country," Junichi replied.
A caravan's speed was limited to that of the speed of a couple of horses, albeit powerful and bred specifically for this sort of workhorses, dragging a caravan so Mana wondered why Junichi suddenly dropped his borderline paranoid obsession with safety over everything else. This seemed especially baffling knowing that Junichi was quite immovable about his decision to stop at various pleasure towns daily and take plenty of baths in the hot springs, buy plenty of food, drinks, and other supplies for the road. Mana suspected that he intended to abuse the pit stops in such a favorable location so that he could then force the squad to promptly complete the trip from that point on but there must have been more to this that she yet didn't know.
"Don't worry," Junichi spoke up, likely noticing Mana's worried expression. "Not even assassins will strike at a caravan. All ninja rely on the caravan service and would hate for something to happen to it. If a caravan driver would get assassinated or injured or lose clients on the road, all ninja would suffer so this one area is one where all ninja act like Allied Ninja and an area where borders disappear."
That was an interesting thing to hear. Such symbiotic, unwritten peace treaty amongst ninja of various villages, bandits and legitimate ninja, mercenaries, and assassins alike. It made a semblance of sense. Traveling through the mountains during constant, freezing blizzards matched only by those at the Land of Snow would have been difficult for any ninja and borderline deadly for civilians. They'd die before reaching the peak of one mountain in a blinding range of mountains that extended all the way to an entirely different climate zone.
If a gung-ho bandit went ahead and proved that additional security was necessary and removed a caravan driver from the market, the caravan prices would have grown a great deal as the drivers would have found it necessary to hire additional ninja protection from Shimogakure, which would have made traveling by caravan more troublesome for all. Especially so for the bandits who would have found it troublesome to hire caravan drivers when they were all protected by teams of ninja who were out to hunt them. It wasn't hard to see why the traveling caravan was a safe haven for all.
"Well, don't let your guard down just yet. The travel across the whole country will take at least four to five days. That's why we've been so thorough on stocking up on supplies, you see…" Junichi pointed out.
"Yeah, I figured as much…" Mana nodded.
The Land of Frost made itself about as apparent as the Land of Hot Water did earlier though its frozen, drowned in snow landscapes stood out far more than those of what came before. During her quest for the Box of Ultimate Bliss, Mana and her friends had traveled on a whole different direction though the gradual change of scenery did remind her of how the deserts of the Land of Wind took over the reins. It was easy to miss the beginning of a subtle drizzle of snow, one that became increasingly more difficult to ignore as the thick woods and rivers took a more swampy appearance before the rivers appeared to freeze and the thick oaks turned to white birches, pines, and spruces as the tundra began taking over.
By the time that Land of Frost became impossible to ignore, the ground was completely covered in snow and not much of it could have been established as all around was sunken in layers upon layers of white that never melted even during the brief periods of summer that was so questionable that it barely did anything to defrost the ice. It was hard to believe that Mana had been traversing these lands during late spring as it was impossible to tell from winter.
The group had stopped in a small settlement of log cabins surrounding a wasteland that seemed a lot like what came before – just plains of white that extended beyond the horizon with few pines and spruces sprinkled in between. If there were occasional boulders to spice things up, they had been completely covered up by snow long ago, making them a rather bothersome surprise to bump into as one plowed through the chilling path of white. There were ranges of mountains and thicker forests of conifers ahead, Mana was sure of it. She wasn't much for geography but her background reading up on history put forth mental files of battles waged in these lands and overwhelming odds being turned over solely because of the wild weather and environment that pelted and shaved away even the most adamant souls.
Why did Mana ever think that Junichi considered crossing the Land of Frost on foot? He was uptight yet he was anything but a madman.
"Make sure you have all the supplies you need. These settlements make a living by offering travelers everything they will need for the trip. Most caravan drivers compete with one another offering food, drinks, and blankets for their clients but don't take these things for granted and buy your own supplies ahead of time," Junichi advised as he parted off from the group to seek the caravan that would carry them across the country for a tolerable price and acceptable competence at its task.
Mana found herself scratching her chin as she stared at a black coat that she so desperately needed. A blind granny sold her a more favorable piece of headdress in a knitted, woolen hat and she came prepared with her own white gloves that weren't ideal for these conditions but they'd suffice as Mana needed minimal aid from her chakra network to push away the possibility of frostbite in them. A coat would have been nice though…
"What's wrong?" Mollay wondered. "We're all ready to leave now if you're done."
"Oh… Okay, I'll be right there." Mana jumped up. She was so deep in thought that she hadn't noticed Mollay approaching her from behind.
"Ma'am, give us that coat, please." Mollay approached the vendor and placed a handful of coins on the wooden counter.
"H-Huh? That's not necessary…" Mana argued.
"That's fine. Your safety is our trouble. Whether it be assassins, bandits, or frostbite." Mollay insisted. "Are you running low on money, perhaps?"
"No… Yes… Maybe, I'm not sure. I'm not very good with money." Mana admitted as she slipped into the coat and buttoned it up at once, taking a sweet moment to rub her cheeks on the insides of the collars just to reinvigorate some life back into them.
"What do you mean, you can count, can't you?" Mollay wondered.
"Well… Yeah but… I'm a lot better when there's just a price tag on things. When you have to barter and… I just don't know what's too much an what's a bargain, you know?" Mana admitted, feeling a bit ashamed of herself.
"Ah, I see… You must come from a rich family," Mollay nodded to himself. "That's fine. I also never could quite master it so I end up overpaying for this sort of stuff even these days. The HQ isn't too enthusiastic about it but those are acceptable losses."
"Not quite what you'd call a rich family…" Mana scratched the back of her head. It was true that her mother owned a well-known business all over the village though she was just about as successful as an owner of a coffee shop could have gotten. Her father was one of the best average rank ninja in the village making just above average pay. While the Nakotsumi family didn't struggle or face economic hardship, they were hardly living in luxury.
"Ah, well, my excuse is that I've spent most of my days in a cave, mining minerals, and I've never bartered a day in my life," Mollay nodded. Sometimes the man looked a bit confused in social situations. His responses were just tight cut-offs, one-not responses as if everything was a yes or no question and demanded that type of reply. It didn't help that the pale chubby didn't speak all the way back to the group.
The squad of Allied Ninja already waited by a caravan while a driver flipped a flask as large as his own forearm over, gulping down heavily from it. Once Mana and Mollay joined the group, the driver encouraged them to settle in with a slight slur. Mana didn't need to be able to smell to realize that the caravan driver had been a tad tipsy and would get increasingly so as the trip continued.
"It's gonna be a long trip ahead of us. The mountain paths are gonna shorten it but only by a couple of days, don't worry, I know them all well. Under the seats you'll find some blankets and spirit, we don't grow any rice around these parts so I hope none of you are fans of rice wine or sake. If you're into finer liquors, there are some distilleries selling whiskey just…" the driver showed signs that his briefing of safety conditions and the like would reel off into a specific, rather irrelevant direction.
"That's fine, we just need to cross to the Land of Lightning as soon as possible. We're not in a rush but neither would we like to waste time," Junichi pointed out as he opened the door and stepped halfway onto the cabin while still communicating with the driver.
"Ah, I see, well then… Settle in and let me take care of the rest. You can put your supplies in the back, there'll be a handle that lets you access it from inside the caravan once you settle in. You can freely open and close the curtains if you want. The view is gonna be something once we get to the mountains and even looking a snowy field helps to pass the time, I'd say. If you get queezy from that sort of stuff though, you may want to keep 'em closed. Your choice, really." The driver pointed out as he hid the flash in a compartment under his left calf and prepared to set out. The man turned back on an occasion only to make sure that all of his passengers got on already. Once they did, the man encouraged his horses to take off.
Mana had seen horses before but none quite like these. While the sum of their body parts and features made them out to be horses, they were nothing like the fine steeds one could see in competitions or being shown off at fairs. Neither were they the tall components of cavalry seen in battle yet they looked intimidating enough. These equestrians were much shorter than any of their counterparts Mana had encountered yet just about every body part of theirs from their snouts to their legs were beefed out like they were carrying the entire caravan on their backs when nobody was looking.
The driver also appeared to be doing nothing about tending to their mane, resulting in a much more hairy and wild-looking animal whose eyes weren't visible for the most part which didn't help Mana's estimates for their successful trip through the slick mountain path. Then again, she wasn't the driver that spent her entire life doing these exact sorts of trips day after day. Maybe it helped if the horses couldn't see the altitudes that they were in with only the driver to guide their path, what did she know?
The trip itself started out about as uneventful, as it might have been predicted. In the beginning, even someone as patient and reserved as Mana was beginning to feel bored. The first few hours of the first day felt like torture as she was confined inside a cabin with four other ninja all of whom kept staring through the windows with only brief patches of their view being visible to Mana from her position. At least was warm sitting between Mollay and Junichi as the two men were thick enough to almost put a squeeze on the young woman sitting in between them.
"Can I maybe sit by the window?" Mana wondered in a moment when it seemed like boredom had eroded her resistance completely.
"No," Junichi answered without even turning back at her. "It's dangerous to sit by the window. If we were attacked – you'd get hit first. Your chances of survival in an ambush would be the least likely."
"It's almost impossible that we'll get ambushed," Mana pointed out. It wasn't like not getting to sit by the window was even that big of a deal as all that she was missing out on was just kilometers upon kilometers of frozen tundra plains. Still, she liked the entertainment from the argument as it did something to spice the monotony up at least a little bit.
"You may be right, but as unlikely as the odds are, I'm not about to gamble on the well-being of the VIP, even if I'm almost certain to succeed in that gamble," Junichi replied. There was no anger in his voice, it was more than likely that he also welcomed some stimulation as opposed to the dulling stare at endless snowy fields. "Plus, once we get to the mountain paths, there's always a chance that the caravan takes an odd turn and you'll tumble out the door. I'd rather be the one to take that plunge rather than have my VIP do it."
"How very noble of you…" Cailar mocked his superior with a smug grin. It was only him and Shitaka sitting on the other side and they were by far the less bulky pair of the Allied Ninja so they had the luxury of moving about in their seats almost completely unrestricted.