Watching the white snake with eight heads and eight tails turn back into Orochimaru, Akaseki finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Compared with his own Red Lion form, Orochimaru's bodily transformation was far too extreme. He had barely looked human at all.
And the nature of his transformation was the exact opposite of Akaseki's!
Akaseki's transformation involved very little "snakification." Even in his complete form, only his tail was a snake. With 50% of his senjutsu chakra activated, even that tail remained hidden, leaving him looking completely unrelated to Ryūchi Cave.
With Ryūchi Cave's Sage Mode, the greater the degree of "individuality," the more perfect the sage body. Conversely, the less individuality it possessed, the more it resembled a snake.
Orochimaru was the exact opposite. His eight-headed, eight-tailed appearance was certainly strange, but no matter how you looked at it, that thing was a snake!
However...
Orochimaru's transformation was actually highly individualized as well. It was just that his individuality happened to be very close to a "snake."
As for that final moment, although Orochimaru had nearly failed, he had still expelled the "snakification" at the critical juncture-only one head and one tail belonged to him. The other seven heads and seven tails were the expelled "snakification." The two simply looked so similar that there seemed to be no difference.
Thus, although Akaseki had sensed something, he still...
Only after seeing Orochimaru return to his original form did he become completely certain that Orochimaru had succeeded rather than lost control entirely.
Tagorihime fell silent as well. In a thousand years, there had never been a single human who successfully mastered Ryūchi Cave's Sage Mode. Yet two had appeared in the space of just two days!
"Orochimaru, what was that just now...?" Akaseki asked curiously.
Obtaining Ryūchi Cave's Sage Mode was