Goodbye, Orochimaru

Minato left the custom training ground, found Orochimaru on his friends list, and sent him a message.

"Orochimaru, I'm done here. Where are you?"

—From Flash Dance Style First Generation

"...I'm in my personal space. Just come over."

—From Eternal Snake

"Request to enter [Eternal Snake]'s personal space submitted~"

"Ding! The other party has accepted."

As soon as Minato Namikaze entered, he found himself facing a long, white corridor. The strong, futuristic atmosphere of advanced technology hit him at once.

"Please proceed slowly at a steady pace."

A mechanical voice sounded.

As he walked through the corridor, countless red beams scanned him from the sides. Ultraviolet lamps and other lights he couldn't identify swept over him from head to toe.

When he reached the end of the roughly ten-meter-long corridor, a mechanical voice rang out:

"Subject: Minato Namikaze. Inspection passed. Disinfection procedure complete."

Mitsuki, one of Orochimaru's assistants, appeared beside the corridor in a white lab coat and spoke respectfully.

"Lord Minato, please follow me."

Minato felt as if he'd entered the interior of a spaceship.

He knew what one looked like because the Assistant System offered all sorts of otherworldly exchanges. With just a few points, he could get food, clothes, and entertainment like films and novels from various civilizations.

Most Reincarnators only used those features during their downtime, when they wanted to explore their tablets.

After all, even science-fiction movies cost points. They were just a way to spice up one's leisure time, and few Reincarnators would get obsessed with them.

Minato had only watched a few hundred himself. He didn't go around bragging that he actually liked science-fiction and xianxia films best. He was a fairly low-key person.

That was why, the moment Minato entered Orochimaru's personal space, he could feel its strong sci-fi vibe.

Following Mitsuki through the winding corridors, Minato felt as if he were inside a spaceship. Along the way, they passed numerous metal chambers.

Some contained humanoid figures covered in tumors. Others held half-human, half-wood monsters. Some couldn't even be recognized as human-shaped, and were merely lumps of flesh with no discernible form. Some were as still as the dead, while others roared and slammed against the glass in an attempt to fight back...

Minato frowned all the way. None of this fit with his principles, but he wasn't in a position to criticize. He simply kept walking in silence.

At last, they passed through a thick metal door and entered a massive, futuristic laboratory.

Several supercomputers and a heap of instruments he couldn't identify formed a ring in the center of the lab. Dozens of huge glass display tanks stood around the perimeter, each filled with an unknown liquid and a human body. Most were adult men, ranging from children to middle-aged.

Orochimaru, dressed in a white lab coat, looked up from a cluster of instruments.

"Minato, wait a moment. I'm just about to finish an experiment."

Behind a glass door at the front of the lab was a space resembling a small arena. Two figures faced each other inside.

One was shackled with specially made chains. The other was noticeably smaller.

Both looked like shinobi. One appeared to be an adult Sunagakure Ninja, while the other was a child who looked to be under ten, with a sound-symbol Forehead Protector.

"Lord Orochimaru, I'm ready," the child's voice came through the communication device.

"Good. I'll begin, Kabuto."

As soon as the words left his mouth, the shackles holding the Sunagakure Ninja flew open.

The Sunagakure Ninja's head split apart, revealing a long whip of flesh and blood tipped with a razor-sharp metal blade. It lashed through the air with a terrifying sonic boom, viciously slashing at the frail child.

Kabuto seemed not to react at all. He merely circulated Chakra within his body, showing no response to the monster-like enemy's attack.

Just as Minato thought a child was about to lose his life in Orochimaru's experiment, what happened next shattered his understanding.

When the Parasyte shinobi's imposing slash struck Kabuto, it didn't cut him into pieces. Instead, it rang out like metal striking stone, as if the blade had hit something indestructible.

A layer of blue Chakra markings lit up on the surface of Kabuto's neck, where the blade had struck. Faint blue Chakra flowed through the blood vessels beneath his skin.

No, it wasn't just his neck. Angular blue patterns appeared across all the skin Kabuto had left exposed. He looked as if he were wearing a garment woven from blue Chakra.

Minato's eyes widened.

"This strange way of circulating energy is a little like the Tailed Beast Chakra Cloak. No, it seems to focus even more on defense."

While Minato was thinking, Kabuto finished testing his body's defenses and used a jutsu.

"Water Release: Water Shrapnel!"

Kabuto thrust both palms toward the Parasyte, firing a barrage of water bullets like shotgun pellets.

The Parasyte reacted quickly, rapidly swinging its blades to form an impenetrable, invisible wall.

But when the water bullets struck the Parasyte's blades, they were sliced into countless tiny droplets. The droplets passed through the Parasyte's defensive net and hit its body, bursting into innumerable small sprays of blood inside it.

An ordinary person might have died, but for the Parasyte, it was only a minor injury. The blood quickly stopped flowing from the wounds, which began to heal.

After fighting for a while longer, Kabuto finally managed to seriously injure the Sunagakure Parasyte with his bizarre defensive garment. He then restrained it again with chains and left the laboratory.

"What is this, Orochimaru?"

"It's just a little something I developed based on a group of humans called the Quincies in the Bleach World."

"Quincies? The Bleach World?"

"Is that the world we're heading to soon?" Minato furrowed his brow.

"That's right. I call it the prototype Blut Vene, version 1.0. It's quite expensive to make right now. As for its performance, it can only defend against Genin-level ninjutsu and physical attacks."

Orochimaru's eyes shone with excitement. "I believe Blut Vene still has plenty of untapped potential. But for now, the Parasytes, which are simply biologically mutated, are more practical.

"After all, the only cost is a low-grade D-rank exchange for a Parasyte larva, and it can be cloned. The only other material needed is an ordinary human. Whether they're a shinobi doesn't matter at all; their bodies aren't all that different from ordinary people's."

Orochimaru asked with interest, "What do you think? Want a few? For just 500 points, you can create a high-tier first-order combatant. The major shinobi villages usually need more than five years to train a Genin of equal strength into a shinobi close to Chunin level."

Minato refused without a moment's hesitation.

"What would I want a monster without a mind of its own for? Besides, there's no potential for growth in this kind of quick-fix, crooked path."

"Maybe so, but they still make decent cannon fodder. Too bad I don't have enough points to exchange for T-Virus Serum. The last sample went bad~ I heard there's a world where they still have some. I'd really like to take a look." As he spoke, Orochimaru couldn't help licking his lips.

Minato quietly noted the information Orochimaru had let slip, then asked,

"T-Virus Serum is only a D-rank exchange. We earned so much from the last world mission. Surely that's nothing to you, Orochimaru."

Orochimaru smiled but didn't reveal anything more. Instead, he turned and said,

"Come with me. Kisame and Pakura are already waiting. We'll get ready and set out."