Somewhere in the Forest of Death, a scene of brutal massacre was unfolding.
"Sand Coffin."
"Sand Burial!"
"Aaaahhhh—!!"
Splatter! Splatter!
Three screams were cut short as countless sprays of blood erupted from three masses of sand, painting the surrounding trees and ground in a terrifying crimson.
"Heh. Weaklings," Gaara said, his gaze cold as he looked at the carnage he had created. He casually recalled the blood-soaked sand into the gourd on his back.
His two-move combo, first using Sand Coffin to trap the enemy and then Sand Burial to crush them into pieces, was both powerful and horrifying.
Faced with this combination, the team of candidates they had just encountered had been slaughtered without even a chance to resist.
"Hey, Gaara, that's enough. We've already collected the scrolls we need. Let's just head to the tower," Kankuro said, looking at his younger brother with a mixture of fear and frustration.
Ever since they had entered the forest, Gaara had been leading them around, hunting other candidates under the guise of "playing."
This "play" had already claimed the lives of three teams, a total of nine people.
Among those three teams, some had tried to surrender, but Gaara had ignored them all, killing every single one like a cold-blooded executioner.
"Heh. Boring. Let's go then."
"That's enough! If we keep going like th—eh? What did you say?"
Kankuro had already braced himself for Gaara to reject his suggestion and had been prepared to argue, but he stopped mid-sentence, stunned.
Gaara had actually agreed? His brother had always done whatever he pleased and never listened to anyone!
Beside him, Temari was surprised as well. She clearly hadn't expected Gaara to listen this time either and had been ready to step in and mediate the inevitable conflict.
Gaara ignored their shock and started walking toward the tower.
He hadn't listened to Kankuro because he valued his opinion. It was just that after killing all these weak humans, he was bored.
He wanted to kill someone strong, someone who could pique his interest. Since he hadn't encountered anyone like that after searching for so long, he decided not to waste any more time looking.
There would be plenty of opportunities to fight strong opponents in the later stages of the exam.
'Naruto Uzumaki, Sasuke Uchiha. Count yourselves lucky this time. In the next exam, I will crush you both, one by one!' he thought to himself.
Ever since seeing them in the first exam, he had felt that these two might be the kind of opponents who could interest him!
Half the reason he had been searching was to find them, but unfortunately, he hadn't run into them.
In another part of the Forest of Death, Naruto and Sasuke, whom Gaara was thinking about, were staring intently at the large ki blast hurtling toward Orochimaru.
Earlier, while Orochimaru was distracted, they had exchanged glances and silently agreed on a plan:
Naruto would draw his attention, and Sasuke would launch a surprise attack with his ultimate move. Now, their hearts were in their throats, hoping this ambush would pay off.
Swoosh!!
The watermelon-sized ki blast shot toward Orochimaru like a cannonball, accompanied by a fierce whistle of wind. If this hit, it would definitely blow a hole right through him!
"Trying that diversionary tactic again?" Orochimaru, whose attention had been drawn by Naruto, only looked over when the ki blast was almost in his face.
However, faced with this imminent attack, he didn't panic. In fact, a faint smile appeared on his lips.
His body suddenly elongated, then bent drastically to the side like a rubber band, stretching into a semicircle.
The ki blast whizzed right through the space created by the arc of his body.
"What? Damn it!"
Sasuke hadn't expected Orochimaru to dodge in such a bizarre way. In his desperation, he mentally detonated the blast.
Even if he couldn't score a direct hit, he would make sure the aftershocks caused some damage!
BOOM!!
The ki blast exploded just a meter behind Orochimaru. A powerful wave of energy instantly spread out, blasting the nearby crooked tree into splinters.
Crash!
A massive cloud of wood chips and debris filled the air, completely obscuring the area around the explosion. No one could see what state Orochimaru was in.
Before they had learned to sense ki, Naruto and the others would have been like most people, staring nervously at the debris, waiting for it to settle to know the outcome.
But now, thanks to Goku's training, they could sense the opponent's condition through their ki, even if they couldn't see!
"His ki disappeared? Did that kill him?"
Naruto, who had rushed closer, scanned the area with his senses but couldn't detect even a trace of Orochimaru's aura.
"No, that doesn't seem right. Be careful. He might be hiding nearby, just outside our sensory range," Sasuke said, scanning their surroundings with a grave expression.
When he had attacked Orochimaru, the distance between them had exceeded his sensory range.
Although he had closed the distance in the next instant and clearly sensed that Orochimaru's ki was gone, for some reason, he felt an unsettling premonition.
It felt as if Orochimaru wasn't dead, but lurking somewhere they couldn't sense, waiting for the right moment to strike.
"Sakura, can you sense him?" Naruto asked as Sakura arrived at his side. Of the three, Sakura had the widest sensory range, so it was possible she could detect something they couldn't.
However, Sakura shook her head. "No, I can't sense him either."
"But..." Her expression was extremely serious. "But I feel like eyes are watching us from the dark, ready to strike like a venomous snake."
"A venomous snake? Isn't that just that guy? He looks like a snake, and all his moves are snakes," Naruto said, scowling as he looked around.
At that moment, apart from their voices, there was no sound. The flying debris had long since settled to the ground, waiting for the next breeze to stir it up again.
!!!
Suddenly, Sakura looked to the left. A moment later, Sasuke and Naruto followed her gaze. In their perception, a living creature was rapidly approaching them.
Soon, in the direction they were looking, a pitch-black snake slithered out from a nearby bush, coiled up, and hissed at them.
"A snake? Is this one of his?" Naruto breathed a sigh of relief, cracking his knuckles as he looked at the snake.
After the previous battle, seeing a snake made him think of Orochimaru, and thinking of Orochimaru made him want to beat something up.
"I don't know. Just kill it," Sasuke said. He was equally sick of snakes. He formed a ki blast in his hand, ready to destroy it.
But just then, his face went pale as an intense, overwhelming sense of danger erupted in his heart. Without thinking, he dodged violently to the side.
In the next instant, SWOOSH!!
Accompanied by the sound of cutting air, a head with an elongated neck shot out from the forest behind the three of them, its mouth wide open, aiming to bite Sasuke's neck!