Because Naruto was unconscious, Orochimaru took him away with almost no resistance. Orochimaru had originally thought Naruto might not cooperate and had even planned to activate the contingency he had planted inside Naruto.
But this was even better. He could take Naruto away in the shortest time possible, saving himself quite a bit of trouble.
When Gold returned to the giant tree, he found that Naruto had indeed vanished. Though Utsu was still furious inside, she had regained some of her rationality and returned to the base with Gold.
"Naruto was taken too..."
Looking at the empty platform within the tree trunk, Utsu's tone grew colder and colder. Gold clenched his fists until they creaked. It had been a long time since he had felt this angry.
He was a martial artist and had never liked wasting time discussing meaningless things with others. In his view, as long as one was strong enough, there was no need to rely on so-called schemes. Those were merely excuses weaklings made for themselves.
Thus, when he saw that old man from the Aburame Clan fail to kill Nagato, he had not even spared him a glance. Failure was failure. There was nothing to explain.
He had thought Moriyue was the same sort of person as himself—upright and forthright, someone who liked crushing opponents with absolute strength. But the facts seemed to prove otherwise.
Utsu had been the one to devise the plan this time. If he had been alone, he would have charged in long ago. He never would have thought of cooperating with Orochimaru and using Kabuto to obtain the paintings.
Yet even so, they had still failed. This gave rise to a kind of anger within Gold that he had never felt before...
It was not that he could not defeat