The jokey reply is that until we have access to Satsuko's character sheet, we don't know what their (her?) base XP rate is so we can't definitively say how axetreordinary they are.
The serious answer is that we have no reason to believe that Satsuko is not centuries old. This is not impressive in and of itself - we have examples of finely-crafted period weapons in great shape - but if it has seen regular use from the time it was created to the present day, to have not worn appreciably is notable. A well-made steel axe swung with superhuman strength at tough targets (e.g. chakra beasts) on a regular basis will wear and chip and need sharpening. Over lifetimes of such use, you would see really distinct signs of wear - sharpening removes material. And I'm talking about modern materials, which are a lot better than anything which would be available in period Japan. The grooves would no longer be in the correct place, and the balance would be different, and yet the grooves work well and the balance is impeccable.
Moreover, every single person has immediately picked up on the vibes and comparisons have been drawn between Hidan's scythe and Satsuko. Because S-rankers are bullshit, we have every reason to believe that Hidan's scythe would be a statistical outlier with special properties. Normal weapons do not project an aura of evil.
This all is assuming that the handle is metal, and not wood. (It's noteworthy that this is inherently ridiculous for reasons of balance and weight, but I'm handwaving that given chakra.) Well-maintained wooden furniture can effectively last indefinitely if kept indoors, but a wooden handle regularly exposed to the elements and placed under extreme forces is not going to look pretty after centuries.
And even on top of that, materials etc. in the EN have definitely gotten better over time. Maybe much less so in isolationist Isan, but the fact that other axe wielders didn't go 'why is your axe so janky, what the hell is it made of' despite it being hundreds of years old is, again, notable.
I would not bet a lot of money, but I would bet money that Satsuko is more than just expertly-forged conventional metal.
According to Orochimaru, Samehada is a relic from the age of the ancient gods, and its sentience/possible sapience is unique. I wouldn't call that "easily," and we don't know that it became sentient. For all we know a sentient thing became a sword, or it was made readily sentient, etc
Daiki was a fidgeter. It was a bad habit that he hadn't been able to shake, but it was who he was. He fidgeted when he got bored. He fidgeted when he was impatient. He fidgeted extra hard when he was both bored and impatient. Under the circumstances, he was struggling not to dance in place. Had he been alone he wouldn't have bothered restraining himself, but there were three hundred pairs of eyes fixed on him right now.
"Are you done yet?!" he finally called, losing the fight to remain motionless and placid. His second, a clanless ninja named Machi, smiled very slightly where he leaned against the base of the road.
"Almost, sir!" the civilian called up. "One more moment, please, honored ninja! I need to make sure the base of the trench is packed or it will settle under the weight."
"Chill, Daiki," Machi said. The clanless ninja was responsible for overwatch while Daiki was focusing on his jutsu casting. He was also annoyingly phlegmatic, the perfect anti-Daiki, always happy to sit around like a stone and wait just as patiently. Or, in this case, to stand around leaning on the ten-foot wall that was this particular segment of the Nature-Overcoming Bustling Ultimate Road Initiative. (Or, as a small fraction of people insisted on calling it, the Nature-Overcoming Byway and Urgency-facilitating Road Initiative. Daiki had no idea why the two versions existed.)
Daiki growled back at him but said nothing specific. Experience had showed that it wasn't worth it; Machi refused to engage.
It was well more than a moment, more like two minutes, but eventually the civilian pulled himself out of the trench. The incline of the trench was steep enough that he occasionally put one hand on the ground in front of himself for balance as he made his way up the slope from the lowest point—six yards down—to ground level where Daiki waited at the base of the road.
"Ready?" Daiki demanded.
"Ready, sir," the civilian said, bowing deeply.
"Finally! Go check in with the next crew, make sure they're ready when I get there."
"Yes, sir."
Daiki sat down and made the handseals for the Massive And Rapid Infrastructure jutsu, then breathed chakra out of his hara and into the world. Oddly, in the middle of a jutsu was the one time he had no trouble not fidgeting. Even, or perhaps especially, a jutsu such as MARI which required such a long start-up time.
It took ten minutes to saturate the area with his chakra; only then did he start the process of pulling the massive wall out of the ground. It rose slowly, taking perhaps a minute to reach full size. When it peaked, he spent another ten minutes casting it again, and then a third time, thickening the wall each time.
The wall produced by MARI was always vertical, always straight, and always three yards high from ground level, regardless of where ground level was. Which meant that if you cast it on a slope, you got a ramp. In this case, you got a ramp that merged with the existing NOBURI road segment in order to provide the three hundred villagers sitting behind Daiki with a way to drag their produce carts onto the elevated road that would allow them to drag their produce carts to a market in Leaf that would pay them better than anything local. Mostly because there were no local markets, since traveling from one village to another on roads was unsafe before the NOBURI elevated roads.
Daiki let the final casting of the jutsu fade, the last shreds of chakra dissipating through the ground. He stood, brushing the dirt off his knees before turning to the villagers.
"It is done," he said simply.
The words broke a dam and suddenly the civilians were on their feet, cheering and waving their hands in excitement.
o-o-o-o
"Here's your veg, and here's your change," the merchant said, passing Mama the carrots and a trio of coins.
Mutsumi stood on tiptoes so she could see. What she saw made her frown and tug on her mother's pantsleg.
"What is it, sweetie?" Mama asked, looking down in surprise. Mutsumi beckoned her down and Mama bent.
"It's not the right change, Mama," Mutsumi whispered in her ear. "You gave him ten ryō and the carrots were four. You should have gotten six back, not three. He owes you three more."
Mama stood and turned back to the merchant, her eyes full of rage. "Are you trying to cheat me, you tiny-dicked jackass?! Where's my three coins?!"
The merchant reared back as though he'd been slapped. "What are you talking about? I gave you your three coins! You're holding them!" He pointed at the coins in her palm.
"It should be six, you syphilitic worm! Where's the rest?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about! I gave you the proper change."
"You did not! I gave you ten ryō for four ryō of carrots. I should have gotten six ryō back."
The merchant looked down at Mutsumi, visibly putting together what had happened. "Is your child telling lies? Do you honestly believe that your little anklebiter knows how to make change better than myself, a master merchant who—"
"Mutsumi is in her second year at the Gōketsu Academy and you will not insult her. If she says it's six, it's six. Give me my three other coins!"
Heads were starting to turn, other merchants and casual browsers looking over to see what the noise was all about. The merchant's eyes flicked around, visibly doing the math on whether or not it was worth it to keep fighting this.
"Fine," he said, rolling his eyes dramatically. "I gave you the proper change, but I can tell you'll stand here all day shouting and blocking my other customers. Fine, here's three more ryō. Off with you!" He practically threw the coins into her outstretched, demanding palm.
"Hmph. You should be ashamed of yourself," Mama told him, looking down her nose at the man. "Don't try this with anyone else or I'll tell the ninja and you'll be sent home and barred from Leaf's gates ever again. If you're lucky."
"Fine, whatever. Your girl is wrong but it's worth three ryō to get you out of here." He looked away, scanning across the crowd and waving at the generic passerby. "Carrots! Winter squash! Beans and rice! Delicious provender at reasonable prices! Come see, come see!"
o-o-o-o
Shigeyuki pulled the bucket up from the well one last time and emptied it into the rightmost bucket on his yoke. He slipped the locking pin into the upright of the well, preventing the crank from turning and dropping the bucket back into the water.
He paused for a minute, eyeing the well with a small smile. A year ago he would have needed to walk to the very edge of the village to get water from the river. He would have needed to bring one of his brothers, or perhaps his oldest son, to carry the spear and guard against animal attack. Now? Now he went to the center of the village, not fifty steps from the door of his house.
Speaking of which, what a door it was! Shigeyuki had no actual training as a carpenter, but he was a child of the farms; he could shoe a horse, drive a nail, remove the spines and butcher a sheep, and do all the other things necessary for survival. Well, except cooking and baking. Those were women's work and he had never learned.
Still, everything had changed when the Gōketsu had come through six months ago and brought the Nara Future Foundation with them. Now, everyone had sturdy houses, many of them made of stone by ninja magic. Conjured or built, every one of the houses had thick doors that fit so tightly all you needed was a bit of cloth against the threshold and there was no draft at all. Throughout the entire village, not a single chimney ever let smoke drift back into the room. (Well, as long as you lit your fires correctly, but what kind of idiot didn't know that?)
Best of all, they hadn't simply done it themselves unless asked. They had taught the farmers what they needed to know; more advanced forms of masonry and carpentry, tricks to predict the weather, and more. They had provided new seeds that grew faster and heavier, and draft animals to till the fields. A handful of the teachers, mostly the Gōketsu ones, had been ninja while the rest were civilians just like himself. One of the instructors, Master Tanaka the expert weaver, was a young and handsome man past whom the village mothers had trawled each and every marriage-age daughter they had. Master Tanaka had intended to teach here for three months, then move on to the next settlement. He was now permanently settled and there would likely be a new Tanaka in the spring if Kotoe's constant dreamy smiles and rumpled hair were anything to go by. The leader of the Nara Future Foundation had heard Tanaka's change of plans, sighed, muttered something about 'staff erosion', and then wished Tanaka and his new bride well and gone on his way.
Yes, the village of Stone Faces was recovering nicely after the damage caused during the war. Indeed, with all the new immigrants they had twice the population and a vastly higher standard of living. Indeed, Shigeyuki had five full sets of clothes and a thick coat that kept him truly warm in all but the coldest weather.
And the taxes had gone down! Who ever heard of taxes going down? It was impossible.
Oh, and as long as we were talking about impossible: the ninja were actually delivering bags of ryō to every household, every month. Not buying anything, just...dropping them off. It had taken a while to get the concept through that yes, this money was for the village to use for whatever they wanted and no, the ninja were not going to be back tomorrow to take it. Every living soul in the village, down to the babes in arms, received a hundred ryō per month. Children's money was given to the parents so, needless to say, even more wives were pregnant than usual for this time of year.
Perhaps strangest of all were the smiles. They were on...well, basically all the faces. Not every moment, certainly—people still had setbacks or problems that made them glower, breakups that made them cry, and a handful of people had never had the ability to smile. Still, on an average day the average person was smiling. It was weird, and wonderful, and Shigeyuki could only assume that he was living in a story.
It was a nice story, and he hoped he could keep living in it.
Daiki was a fidgeter. It was a bad habit that he hadn't been able to shake, but it was who he was. He fidgeted when he got bored. He fidgeted when he was impatient. He fidgeted extra hard when he was both bored and impatient. Under the circumstances, he was struggling not to dance in place. Had he been alone he wouldn't have bothered restraining himself
Oddly, in the middle of a jutsu was the one time he had no trouble not fidgeting. Even, or perhaps especially, a jutsu such as MARI which required such a long start-up time.
I wonder if the Gōketsu goodwill generators such as the Academy, NOBURI, MARI, etc. will help the clan withstand the ineluctable Hagoromo-and-pals onslaught of, well, Gōketsu-targeted ill-will. It's not like the Hagoromo clan doesn't have a powerful goodwill generator in and of itself by virtue of being a powerful clan with lots of ninja including their dumb patriarch, who is nonetheless some incredible jōnin.
Oooh, provender, nice new word for my collection. But are the reasonable prices for before or after the "probably a numerically challenged civilian" markup?
Hmmm... but you shouldn't try to butcher one if it appears to be alone, it's only to entice its prey, since we know they're pack predators there probably is another one nearby, camouflaged...
Yes, the village of Stone Faces was recovering nicely after the damage caused during the war. Indeed, with all the new immigrants they had twice the population and a vastly higher standard of living.
Huh, that's about 300 newcomers (including the newborn), nice! And assuming the same amount of people per house as before the war, since about 75% of houses were destroyed, that'll be 87.5% of houses that are new, i.e. better than before, without counting houses that would just have been rebuilt/replaced. Though the number of people per house might well go up just because the town is now within a MaRI wall, not a palisade, making it harder to expand.
Every living soul in the village, down to the babes in arms, received a hundred ryō per month. Children's money was given to the parents so, needless to say, even more wives were pregnant than usual for this time of year.
I wonder if that may cause long-term local inflation, though, or if that's taken care of through the necessary expansion (maybe they just build extra walls now that they have the Good And Proper Techniques) and exchanges with an overall unchanged market of travelling merchants.
Oh, and as long as we were talking about impossible: the ninja were actually delivering bags of ryō to every household, every month. Not buying anything, just...dropping them off. It had taken a while to get the concept through that yes, this money was for the village to use for whatever they wanted and no, the ninja were not going to be back tomorrow to take it. Every living soul in the village, down to the babes in arms, received a hundred ryō per month. Children's money was given to the parents so, needless to say, even more wives were pregnant than usual for this time of year.
