Please Have a Drink (Guaranteed First Update, Please Subscribe, Please Vote Monthly)

"Outsider, congratulations on passing my trial and earning the right to practice Senjutsu..."

"Senjutsu? Sage? You seem to have misunderstood something. I came here not for Senjutsu."

Aoba said this calmly.

He had originally been somewhat interested in Senjutsu, but now he no longer cared about it.

"Heh heh heh. Humans are born from desire and are destined to slowly fall into darkness. Everyone who comes here to seek me has abandoned everything for the sake of satisfying their desires. Since you didn't come for Senjutsu, then what did you come for?"

The White Snake Sage's eyes were half-lidded as she looked at the outsider with interest.

"You say humans are born from desire, but aren't all other living beings the same? The desire to fill one's belly, the desire to reproduce... Desire is something no living creature in this world can escape. Who can truly achieve a state of having no desires or demands, like an inanimate stone?"

"You also say that everyone who comes here to find you is someone who abandoned everything to satisfy their desires. That's even more absurd!"

"It's nothing but a lie you fabricated to satisfy your own desires, hoping to deceive the world into believing that all those skeletons inside and outside Ryūchi Cave 'deserved to die,' so you can continue flaunting your title as a sacred sage land and swindling people here."

"Ryūchi Cave? I'd say it's a den of snakes and rats!"

The smile on the White Snake Sage's face had vanished at some point. Her eyes were now fully open, revealing vertical pupils as she stared coldly at Aoba. "Brat, you're the first outsider to dare slander my Ryūchi Cave like this. Don't think that passing the trial means you'll be able to leave here in one piece!"

"All these