"That size and chakra… Is that Orochimaru's Manda?"
Roughly ten kilometers away from the battlefield, a sensory-type Root shinobi stared at the distant forest where smoke and dust were rising. He turned his head and asked Shimura Danzo,
"Lord Danzo, it seems Orochimaru is not that Rei Kaguya's opponent… Should we go support him now?"
"No rush."
Shimura Danzo slowly stood up and replied in a calm tone.
"Orochimaru has far more trump cards than just Manda. Let him exchange blows with Rei Kaguya a little longer. After both sides are forced to reveal a few more cards, we will enter the battlefield."
"Should we notify the people in the other directions?" Another Root shinobi from the Aburame clan stepped forward, a small kikaichu resting on his finger. "Ryoma just sent word to those nearby that he is engaging the mission target. If their casualties become too heavy, the following battle will become less easy."
"If they do not go, Orochimaru and Rei Kaguya will both grow suspicious… Treat it as a necessary sacrifice for the mission's success."
Danzo spoke words that meant watching his subordinates charge forward to die for nothing without the slightest fluctuation.
Yet even after hearing such cold and ruthless words, the Root shinobi showed no strange expressions.
They only nodded in unison.
"Understood."
This was Root.
A secret force that had erased humanity even more thoroughly than the Village of the Bloody Mist, darker than the Anbu who carried out missions that could not see the light of day.
For Shimura Danzo, as long as his goal could be achieved, as long as it made him stronger and brought him closer to the Hokage's seat, he would not feel even the slightest ripple in his heart no matter how many Root shinobi died in this battle.
Because he understood very clearly that as long as Sarutobi Hiruzen remained in the Hokage's position, his Root would never truly be disbanded.
And as long as Root's banner remained, he could continuously absorb young elites from the major ninja clans in the village, brainwash them, and train them into pawns completely loyal only to him.
Batch after batch.
Generation after generation.
"Show a little more, Rei Kaguya… Let me see your senjutsu, and that trump card that left the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki severely wounded and unable to recover!"
Feeling the vibrations transmitted through the earth beneath his feet, Shimura Danzo tugged at the bandage over his right eye and muttered to himself inwardly.
…
"Orochimaru! I'm going to kill you! I'm definitely going to kill you!"
Manda, who had just been forcibly grabbed by Rei Kaguya with the Dance of the Clematis and then pierced through by a huge, highly hardened bone spear, writhed painfully on the ground.
While spitting deadly venom wildly in every direction, he cursed Orochimaru, who had summoned him out just to get beaten.
Manda could not understand it.
As a shinobi capable of signing a summoning contract with him, Orochimaru should have been among the strongest even when looking across the entire shinobi world, right?
Then why had the enemy he summoned Manda to face this time ended up being so much stronger than him?
All Manda did was demand one hundred living humans as sacrifices every time he was summoned.
Was that tiny matter really enough for Orochimaru to provoke this monster wearing human skin?
Manda's body was nearly a hundred meters long, but that guy could actually grab him barehanded, swing him around several times, then smash him ruthlessly into the ground.
Facing Manda's furious curses, Orochimaru also had a stomach full of bitterness that he could not express.
He had originally thought that with Manda's cover, he could freely unleash various ninjutsu to restrict and interfere with Rei Kaguya's movements, slowly bringing the battle rhythm under his control.
But once the fight truly began, Orochimaru discovered that the vast majority of his attacks could be directly ignored by Rei Kaguya.
His Wind Release was not enough to cut through the defense of the Dead Bone Pulse.
His Earth Release had basically no effect on Rei Kaguya, who was also skilled in Earth Release.
Using his modified body to launch close-range attacks would only give Rei a chance to counterattack his real body.
Summoning giant snakes to attack was even worse. Against Rei Kaguya, whose entire body was a weapon, they were chopped into chunks of snake meat in just a few moves.
It was true that Orochimaru still had the Kusanagi Sword, which could wound Rei Kaguya's body.
But considering the monster-like physique of someone who could directly withstand Manda's collision head-on, the damage the Kusanagi Sword could create was somewhat insufficient.
As for genjutsu…
Orochimaru did not think his genjutsu was so powerful that it could affect a humanoid Tailed Beast from dozens of meters away.
Poison was the same.
The poison he had given Minato Namikaze last time was already the strongest toxin in Orochimaru's possession.
Yet even that kind of compound deadly poison had only caused Rei Kaguya's body to stiffen for less than a second.
"No wonder Minato Namikaze had no good way to deal with you. You possess a human body, yet your vitality is not inferior to a Tailed Beast's. In that case, whether it is techniques developed against giant creatures like Tailed Beasts or techniques developed against human targets, their effects against you will be greatly reduced because the target does not match…"
"Rei Kaguya, you really are like Madara Uchiha and Hashirama Senju. A special individual who has broken through the limits of his own Kekkei Genkai."
Seeing Manda, who had already been beaten until he no longer resembled a snake, vanish in a cloud of smoke after being unable to endure the humiliation any longer, Orochimaru sighed.
Then he took the initiative to retreat in the direction where Danzo and the others were located.
As expected, choosing to call Danzo along had been correct.
The other party had not even activated Sage Mode yet, but Orochimaru could already no longer see any hope of victory.
If he had truly come alone to intercept Rei Kaguya, perhaps he would have had to use the still-immature Eight Branches Technique and Cursed Seal Resurrection just to barely escape alive.
Seeing Orochimaru retreat on his own, Rei Kaguya had no intention of immediately chasing after him.
He swept his gaze over the broken scales Manda had left behind and the Root shinobi who had been dragged into the battle and killed by unknown area-of-effect attacks.
In a happy mood, he spun his arm-bone blade between his fingers.
"Fourteen summoned giant snakes, eighteen elite Root shinobi. With this, the stacks for Strength of the Ages are directly maxed out. A separate 1.5 times vitality multiplier, plus the trait that reduces the vitality cost of skills… I should be able to try putting derivative ninjutsu from the All-Killing Ash Bones into my regular trump-card rotation now.
"And Manda is pretty generous too. He actually dropped a Level 2 Ryuchi Cave Giant Snake Summoning Technique directly. In that case, I won't need to rely entirely on Orochimaru's cursed seal to find Ryuchi Cave anymore…"
After checking the rough gains from this battle, Rei Kaguya leisurely followed the direction Orochimaru had left in, heading toward the trap where a large number of Root shinobi were most likely lying in ambush.
Originally, he had only wanted to fish Orochimaru out and beat him up.
He had not expected to accidentally fish out Root as well.
With so many Root shinobi deployed at once, Danzo himself should be involved too, right?
Danzo at this time did not yet have so many Sharingan resurrection coins in hand. His right eye had not yet been replaced with Shisui Uchiha's Mangekyo Sharingan either.
If he dared to appear in front of Rei, killing him would truly not be difficult.
"But if I kill Danzo now, would that instead count as helping Konoha?"
"Then again, not necessarily. Once Danzo, this scapegoat, is gone, it will be clear at a glance which of Konoha's higher-ups have been swimming naked…"
"And after Danzo falls, who will take over Root, an organization whose scale is not inferior to the Hokage's direct Anbu? That will also be a drama worth watching…"
As Rei Kaguya followed Orochimaru's traces through the silent darkness, his thoughts wandered slightly.