Hiruko was merely an ordinary Konoha jonin. He held no important position and lacked the fame of Orochimaru and the others, so his defection caused Konoha little trouble.
Since it was wartime, Konoha could not even be bothered to send a jonin squad after him. They merely sent someone to investigate as a formality, and when they found nothing, they let it go.
Against the scale of Konoha as a whole, Hiruko's defection was like a towering tree losing a small branch—hardly worth mentioning in the grand scheme of things.
Yet even a small branch on a towering tree had leaves connected to it. To Hiruko's friends, this was no small matter.
Orochimaru did not have many friends. It was not that he could not make friends, but that most people simply were not qualified to become Orochimaru's friends.
Hiruko was one of Orochimaru's few friends.
They had been classmates in the same year and had been friends since their academy days.
Although Orochimaru and the others later became the legendary Sannin while Hiruko remained an ordinary jonin, none of the three cared about that. They still maintained the same relationship with Hiruko as before.
However, judging from the materials recovered from Hiruko's laboratory, while they did not care about Hiruko's strength, Hiruko cared deeply about his own.
"Far too reckless." Orochimaru set down the documents in his hand and shook his head slightly.
He conducted human experiments with Danzo helping him cover them up. For Hiruko to dare do such things alone, exposure had only been a matter of time.
Though Konoha had the word "village" in its name, it was not some true rural village. At its core, Konoha was a military base.
A hint of regret appeared on Orochimaru's face. Hiruko seemed to possess fairly good research