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Chapter 127 - Arc 8 - Forest of Quest: Playing with his food
🕑 Added 2025-01-22 00:02:02 +0000 UTCThank you for your patience, have a 4K chapter.
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“Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-” She has no idea how long she’s been continuing her mono-sound exclamation of screwditude, but it’s too awkward to stop now. Actually on second thought she does know, because she started a second or two after she got the notice and she now only has to stall for four minutes and fifty seconds which means probably somewhere around seven to eight seconds. It feels like it’s a lot longer than it is, but that makes sense, fully active and in the moment ninjas can turn a few seconds into an eternity and based on the quirk in their expression they’ve already been waiting for several universe heat deaths. Maybe she can keep it going for the full five minutes? That’d be stupid but-
The clink and shake of a big bulbous bag full of something hard interrupts her. The woman, man, she’s not even sure, raises it up in the air. It’s leather, with thick outer padding to keep a stray kunai from cutting it without resistance, and seems oddly familiar, “these are yours.” She watches in mute horror as the monster’s jaw unhinges impossibly, a long snake-like tongue flows out and wraps around it, and it’s slowly lowered towards their mouth.
Is that their balls? How did they get their balls? Didn’t Sasuke have most of them? Did Orochimaru steal their balls and eat them in front of her? Who does that? She’s pretty sure she gave Sasuke the balls when she forced him to hide so that means he’s either compromised or that’s a Henge sweetroll. She’s not sure which is worse. If Sasuke’s compromised he might be seriously hurt, if he’s not compromised it means Orochimaru’s been watching them for days. She knows what she can do with a little bit of intel and planning, she doesn’t want to imagine what Orochimaru can do. She’d take a glance back at Sasuke’s tracker to make sure, but that’d give him up which might be what the bastard is planning. She just has to trust that if something had happened to Sasuke, the system would have informed her.
“How?” She gulps while possibly watching all of their progress from the entire test enter a void that nothing will ever return from. They’re not getting those back, nothing she could possibly do would result in her getting those out of Orochimaru’s stomach. The loss barely enters her mind, but the fact that Sasuke had them and now possibly doesn’t has implications that make her grit her teeth and see red. She doesn’t want to keep thinking about it, she can’t afford the distraction, but it won’t stop branding its way into her head. What if Sasuke’s not okay?
“I simply lifted them off a doe too scared to lift its head.” He says in a woman’s voice that shakes her core. It sounds normal, she could imagine passing by someone talking like that on the street and think nothing of them, and yet she finds she’s trembling and her chest is so tight she’s struggling to take in air. There’s a tone there, underneath it all, something that promises death. She needs to figure out how to harness that and mimic it, if she survives this. The tactical usage of an instant cause panic button is immense, she’s seeing it now firsthand. “You’ll have to kill me to pass now, if you can.” There’s an undertone of amusement there, but Sakura isn’t paying attention to that.
“I don’t really care about passing that much.” She admits, shrugging, “I’m here for you.” At this point that’s kind of true, if she had her way she would have taken Sasuke’s route and left. If she hadn’t gone ahead and met Jiraiya on her own, she could have. She took her own initiative without asking, and now… She holds back tears. Is Sasuke okay? Is she okay? She should have told Jiraiya to get her the headsets anyway, she needs information if she’s going to think straight.
“You think too much for someone with no time left.” The woman’s lips come together and rise in a smirk as if they weren’t just parted impossibly to gobble down something the size of her head. She doesn’t have time to think on it though, in fact, for the first time since her Mental stat hit over a hundred she is interrupted from a thought before it can really begin, which in this particular instance is a huge blessing in disguise. She moves without thinking, gliding away from an inferno that comes so close to her it ignites the ends of her hair. The tree she stood on is a monument of blazing heat that lights up the sky brightly enough she has to look down to avoid being blinded. The part that bothers her isn’t the attack, it’s that she didn’t see it happening. The tree she was on was just suddenly a volcano and she’d be dead if her instincts hadn’t been trained from a young age to expect an attack out of nowhere.
It can’t have been Sasuke that lit the tree on fire because his fire isn’t nearly that strong and he’s not that stupid, but if it was Orochimaru then she’s screwed because she didn’t see the Sannin move let alone shoot the fire. Her eyes dance around but she sees nothing but her own summons and the pit traps. Unfortunately she’s about to land in one of those traps. It’s shiny sharp teeth made of snake bones below
Or she would be about to land in one of those traps if her hair wasn’t burning. Her scalp is yelling at her to flee, dip it in water, anything at all. Instead she uses the pain as a trigger, locks eyes with a rock in the distance, and is standing freshly on the ground in the blink of an eye. One hand reinforces itself with fire chakra before grabbing the flames at the back of her head while the other swings Hunger around and uses the empowered blade to sever a good chunk of her hair before the encroaching problem can get any closer. In a fight with more time and energy she could have put it out with a water Jutsu, but she’s not sure she’s in a position to use any Jutsu at all. Any loss of chakra could get her killed here, she needs everything, it’s why she didn’t continue summoning them after hitting one hundred creatures and getting a title for her undead legion.
Not that she knew it was Orochimaru when she made that decision, if she did, she would have told the boys they were leaving and just walked right out of the gates of the forest. Test? What test? There are two Sannin in this forest, fuck the test. The lost clump of her pretty - currently red - hair slams into the ground and dissipates in just a second, filling the air with an acrid smell and telling her she made the right call in ditching it before it got to her. That’s not normal fire, none of it is. Another few seconds and she might have been bald. Ino would never let her live it down.
She readies herself into a proper combat stance with both hands on the hilt of her black sword, eyes focused on the figure and its statue like sadistic grin. In a perfect world she’d have sprung into action the moment he landed, maybe she would have managed to force herself to move before even that, but in this one world the threat in front of her frightens her to her core at just a glance. Something primal roars inside of her to just run. She feels her skin crawl, her eyes wither, and her senses heighten as she’s hit from all sides by potent bloodlust. She can do nothing but watch him land while trying to force more air into her lungs before lightheadedness takes her out of this life. Death is in front of her, the feeling is so strong that she quickly circulates her chakra to test for Genjutsu, only to find that it's coming from her own survival instincts. She doesn’t win this, no part of her thinks she wins this, all she has to do is survive a few minutes.
She can do that.
“I had expected the last Uchiha would be the one standing in front of me, but he’s hiding in a hole surrounded by a fairy tale of woodland creatures, while a lowly samurai stands ready to be cut down with fear in her eyes.” The inferno behind Orochimaru is so loud that its crackling almost manages to completely overcome what he has to say, only Sakura’s hyperfocus on not missing the cue that spells her death allows her to hear through it. The malicious tone is just so distinguishable that each dip and rise of pitch sounds like dripping poison to her instincts.
“I’m not a samurai.” She defends herself, but her voice feels weak and hollow. How many actually useful tools has she given up to pursue a more brutal frontward facing combat style? It’s effective, she’d never spit on her hard work, but there’s a lot of opportunities she just hasn’t bothered with because they didn’t fit her already blossoming style. She’s had the ability to talk to Kakashi about learning something called the Whispering Goddess technique for months and she just hasn’t bothered.
Part of that is that Kakashi’s an asshole, but would he be an asshole if she reached out to him in a more genuine way? Yes. But he might be less of a dick, and sometimes that’s what you get in life. Regardless of the reasoning she’s left without a lot of options here, none of her Jutsu will work against a Sannin. Despite being a demon sword, Hunger is probably mundane compared to whatever Orochifuckingmaru has to draw on her if he feels like it. Her skills are meaningless, all of her conceptual abilities and traits won’t work on him because they’re designed for punching down, which is really something she should think on at a better time. Is there a reason her system is trying to make her a bully? She was able to use it to try and spare those guys Sasuke burned to death, but that’s clearly not the intent of the traits.
Four minutes and forty seconds, he’s let her think for several moments while observing her. He doesn’t realize they’re on a timer, that’s all she has over him - “Do I need to raise the stakes even higher?” His voice is laced not with its previous malice, but by indignance, the cry of a child being ignored by their parents. It’s enough to kick her out of her panic for a second, but not enough for her to truly get her bearings. “You need to kill me to pass this test, but your eyes are focused on the corner of your vision.” The woman’s body growls with a primal rage that bubbles to the surface and splits her countenance. “Whatever you’re seeing there is more interesting than me? Is that it?”
She interacts with the boxes in public all the time but no one’s ever commented before. She’s always thought that they were somehow unable to see that her gaze was wandering, surely someone would have said something by now if they could.
Orochimaru just saw her look away and read the numbers in front of her like no one else ever seems to. Either he’s special, or everyone in her entire life thinks she’s crazy and sees things and just doesn’t want to say anything. Well, maybe not everyone, a lot of them know about the system, which means they think she’s extra crazy. “I’d rather not talk about-” The domineering woman glaring at her with all the force of death itself takes a step towards her, bones crack, and the monster’s jaw clearly separates. The mouth of the monster bearing down on her opens farther than when it ate the balls. An endless maw becomes visible to Sakura, one with at least a hundred teeth spiraling deep into a black hole that’s coming closer to her quicker than she can blink. The inner layers of teeth spin, and they only seem to get faster as her death personified gets closer to tearing off her face.
She’s about to get eaten by a shredder of some sort. “On second thought I’d love to talk about it!” She holds up her hands in front of her, and she sighs in relief as she watches that jaw clack shut like it never opened. All the progress made towards her was either a Genjutsu or Orochimaru is that fast because it looks like he didn’t move at all. She’s agreed to talk, which raises a lot of questions. What’s he want to hear about? Can she lie to Orochimaru? Is being honest any better? What does she do? What can she do? Clear the Genjutsu, that’s something - a quick circulation reveals no trace of any Genjutsu having been anywhere near her system recently. That wasn’t a Genjutsu, that was real, what in the Deadspace?
That’s when her eyes catch something to her side. Sasuke’s moved onto a branch high in the trees and is going through hand seals about as fast as humanly possible. A part of her would like to advise him otherwise. She’d like to scream at him, she was very clear that he needs to stay as far away from this fight as possible. She’d also love to wave at him and cry about the fact that he’s still alive.
None of those feelings matter, at this point giving his position away would be worse than anything either of them could possibly do-
“Wha-” One seal. All it takes the monster in front of her to make her scream in terror is to lift a hand into one formation before spinning and shooting a glob of fire out of his mouth with the same velocity as if it was shot out of Tenten’s rifle. She can only watch in dawning horror as the entire treeline Sasuke was hiding in explodes with violent insidious flame. Bark is sent every direction, leaves crinkle into dust, and the sky is blocked out with a massive cloud of black that joins her starting tree’s smoldering remnants in a mixture that feels like it’s about to ignite the world. That’s before her adversary spends a few more seconds in the air and takes the time to spit a constant spray of flame that layers their entire surroundings. Grass ignites, trees catch, bushes burst and before she knows it there’s a moat of destruction that separates her from the outside world and rises to ten times her height. There’s lava at each edge of where her feet could take her, but the real problem is the molten gas flowing even higher than the scorching flames.
She’s fought final bosses with less theatrical boss arena’s, it’s too bad this will probably be the last time. There’ll be no sneaking up on their fight to even see what’s going on; they'd have to get close enough that the enemy will know exactly where they are.
It’s just her, the impending promise of reinforcements seemingly an impossible distance away, and whatever of Naruto’s clones didn’t just die screaming. The screeches of the wildlife and Naruto clones alike are silenced by the roaring of their new final stage. Cut off from everything, she doesn’t dare look at the reinforcement timer. She doesn’t dare look at anything like she looked at Sasuke, lest she give something else away to someone so much more perceptive than she’ll ever be.
Orochimaru was watching her vision, she knew that, and she still looked at Sasuke like an idiot. “Why would you do that? Isn’t this about him?”
“This is about you.” Orochimaru answers with an evil smirk shifting upon an inhuman face that should never exist in the first place. An imposing force of nature stands so close to her that her life already feels over, she stays standing solely on the backs of the lies she’s told herself, reality has nothing for her right now but promises of an agony she doesn’t think she can handle. “I don’t like it when bugs get in my way, if he won’t come and fight he’s not worth sparing.” She takes a step back, tears sting her eyes. Sasuke used replacement in time, right? She wasn’t notified he died and there’s ten thousand Naruto clones wandering around, surely he had plenty to replace with. Her head spins with the possibility that he didn’t, what if she just killed Sasuke by looking in his direction? What if time’s moving so fast that the system hasn’t realized he’s dead?
This is supposed to be about Sasuke, the quest was clear that Sasuke was the target of some bite, he needs to be alive to get bitten, so Orochimaru wouldn’t just kill him like that. That’s what she has to tell herself as her head pounds and even her feet on the dirt feel unsteady. “Well now I definitely don’t want to talk.” She trembles, falling back into a combat stance, ready to shove her blade into that throat when he tries to eat her again.
She was wrong to think she could stall through this. Nervousness got a hold of her, and her teammate suffered the price. If she was suitably distracting him with combat Sasuke wouldn’t - maybe he would - she doesn’t know but she can’t deal with this!
“He’s alive.” She asserts it for herself more than anything as she holds back powerful sniffles. An all consuming dread threatens to make her crawl into a ball and shut out everything, but she can’t do that right now. Her body moves on its own, and before she can recognize her own steps she’s halfway through a slash that would bisect the twisted force at their midsection. They move to sidestep her like she’s nothing, but that’s what she wants, without even a thought she unleashes everything she has at once. “Fatal Slash!” An explosion rings out so loudly she moves past ringing ears and finds she can’t hear anything at all. Every bit of blood and chakra she charged Hunger with before the fight even started is sent into her attack to extend her range and catch the enemy off guard.
Kakashi’s told her since day one that the difference between a living enemy and a dead enemy is surprise. If she can use Orochimaru’s underestimating her and unawareness of her technique to -”gkkk-”
Her head flies back, her vision goes black, and when her eyesight corrects itself she finds she’s flipping through the air without any control. Momentum breaks a bone in her shoulder and she finds another few harshly snap from the sudden smack when she lands in the dirt. Her body continues to roll uncontrollably for several seconds, skin ripping and her already queasy stomach threatening to upend everything she’s eaten in this forest. It burns, her blood boils and she has enough small cuts from Hunger that she’s sure if she wasn’t taking basically no damage from her own weapon it’d be the Zabuza situation all over again. Her legs fall limply into a pit-trap hole, hanging above dozens of spikes, and she finds her chin leaning over the side of another. She’s staring down into certain death as if she just happened to trip here on a stroll.
She’d call it luck, but if Orochimaru wanted her to fall in one of these he would have made certain she did. Instead they ensured she’d land in between two, teetering between life and death in a symbolic display which demonstrates their control perfectly. “Lll-” she tries to talk and finds blood spills out her lips instead. It drips down the dirt path, as well as a black sludge she doesn’t remember eating.
Fighting was never an option. One quick attack and she’s bleeding out above two of her own traps, the symbolism is almost as thick as the sludge. The only reason she’s not dead yet is that she was smart enough not to admit she knew who her opponent was. Before her sessions with Ino she’d be a corpse by now after she blatantly blurted out ‘Orochimaru?’ and pointed at him. That’s a little relieving in that she didn’t screw over Sasuke with her nervousness, a little less relieving in every other way.
It turns out being on village arrest wasn’t a complete waste, assuming she somehow manages to survive this; the increase in tact is apparently literally life saving- “Surely that’s not all you have? I expected more from the one Konoha won’t stop talking about.” She looks up weakly just in time to catch sharp judging eyes looking right back down at her. She doesn’t even have time to try and get something out in response, his foot lands directly on her head, and enough pressure is pushed down on her that she starts to tip into the pit in front of her. Dirt crumbles from the force of his movement and before she can get the newly forced dirt out of her mouth she’s slipping down into her own trap as disrespectfully as possible. She’s sure she’s not the only person who’s ever slowly slid to a gruesome death at his command, but she hopes Naruto blows up the tags after she’s gone and she’s the last. Assuming everyone ignored the system and ran away and it’s just her and him that explodes.
“It’s a shame. Maybe the Kyuubi boy will be interesting, I hear he can regenerate. That means he’ll never break no matter what I do to him.”
What is she doing? She blinks tears out of her eyes just in time to see a squirrel out of the corner of her eyes before with one final push, the dirt crumbles the last amount that’s needed for her to fall face first into one of the blades below. She tilts just enough for it to only spear into her cheek- And she’s on the ground, standing twenty feet away and clutching her sword while begging for any strength it can give her. She expects to see a puff of smoke from where she came, but instead she sees the poor squirrel squirming around the spike and bleeding into the pit. She watches it wriggling confusedly and dying a slow death at her hands.
“Oh.” That wasn’t a clone. Well what good are all the clones if she’s still killing random wildlife? That sucks really bad. She spits blood onto her sword and lifts it into a proper stance. She watches as Hunger roars to life. He’s always liked her blood more, it’s endearing, in that she’s about to die so everything’s endearing kind of way.
“With all the spectacle around you, I thought you would be more than this.” Her hazy vision takes in the woman approaching her. “You sounded so interesting, and you feel so much like I did at your age, but you’re worthless. Minato’s successor? The World’s Chosen? Fake titles granted by a desperate realm about to burn. Impress me or I’ll just kill you and move on with my plans.”
She’s not sure what any of that means, but she’s not going to think about it. She takes a hazardous glance towards the counter, hoping beyond anything else that she’s managed to kill a few minutes.
Forty seconds. She has managed to stall Orochimaru for forty seconds, and she is half dead. As much as she’d like to cry about it, she only has one option, call upon act two of her plan. She raises her hand high in the air, stretching it above her head in an open palm towards the sky.
“Oh?” The imposter tilts its head, looking at her odd motion.
She can’t speak, her windpipe is broken or something, everything inside her burns, her balance is off and her vision is screwed. She’s still having issues hearing wildlife from the side effects of her own explosion, and she is sure she’s going to die.
None of that matters when her hand outstretched towards the sky clenches into a fist, before she lowers it to aim directly at the face of the clearly body modified master ninja in front of her. The ground rumbles, the air is filled with screeches, and the treeline comes alive all at once. Ninety five summons charge towards them filled with rage, malice, and a lack of sense or self preservation. The pit traps are filled with clumsy minions, the flames sear them as they charge through, but that’s not important, a few lost minions means nothing if she survives. They already died once for this plan, what’s a second time?
The skyline is blocked out by thousands of Naruto clones transforming into his real form and falling towards Orochimaru with their kunai at the ready. Wind Jutsu flies from every remaining bush around to pincer the living atrocity before her, and with her last bit of strength she throws a flaming slash of blood into the mix to make the wind explode and scorch the area in an aura of judgement.
She can’t see what happens, she doesn’t get to see.
There’s smog and smoke and she’s pretty sure she shouldn’t have set it all on fire knowing Naruto clones were flying into it, but what’s a few hundred clone casualties if they manage even one hit on something as strong as this?
Her sword turns in her hand and she slashes behind her, instinct telling her to move even while her logical brain and five senses pick up on nothing at all, for a massive soul is behind her and it’s not Naruto. She watches her black blade enter the grip of a pale hand and stop. Cold eyes have turned an even colder malevolent yellows, piercing lights in the darkness that threaten to make her fall back and beg for her life.
Underneath them is purple make-up, which works surprisingly well on him. She’d ask but she has bigger concerns, like the fact that she’s forced the true form of Orochimaru out, and from the looks of it he’s not angry.
That’s excitement glimmering behind that gaze, hatred and interest intermix like a poisonous cocktail deep inside her foe and it becomes ever clearer that there was never a reality in which she stalled for five minutes. “Very good, Sakura.” The creature in front of her gives her a toothy smile that reminds her what’s beneath, her name spoken through lips dripping with malice makes her eyes widen as if they’re not already threatening to bulge out of her head. “Now do it again.” Despite having no scorch marks, or even any sign of damage at all, Sakura has to take forcing him into his true form as a win, even if it means she’ll likely die screaming. As suddenly as she breathes her summons catch on to the new position of their target and charge them without a care that they’re technically risking her.
She has the chance to send the command to tell them to back off, to not risk trampling her.
Her eyes look to the corner of her vision, four minutes fifteen seconds.
She uses her opportunity to send out an order to every still living summon in the area, attack at all costs.
Comments
Alexander
Definitely worth the wait.
Christopher Cummins
"Don't wanna talk? Guess I'll just eat you."
Dopplerdee
Fuck Orochimaru is ah menacing bastard.
