Orochimaru had never wanted so desperately to learn a forbidden jutsu as he did at that moment—the Flying Thunder God.
It wasn't that he envied Minato.
He just wanted to cover his excellent student in formulas, so that whenever the little rascal slipped away from him, he could snatch him right back!
This was ridiculous!!
How had he even "figured out" that Minato was a spy?
No, seriously...
What was with all these charred Root Ninja corpses?
When that kid charged in on the Five-Tails, hadn't he shouted that he was protecting Elder Danzo?
And this was what protecting him looked like?
"Whew..."
Orochimaru let out a deep breath.
He was tired, exhausted, weary in both body and mind, completely drained.
He'd rushed all the way from the border of the Land of Earth to Kanabi Bridge, then turned around and raced back to the Land of Fire. The heavy toll on his chakra, stamina, and energy wasn't hard for him to bear.
Back when he, Jiraiya, and Tsunade had spent a long time carrying out missions in the Land of Rain, they'd faced situations a hundred times more dangerous than this.
Orochimaru could handle this kind of heavy exertion several more times over.
But in the less than two hours since he'd returned to Konoha...
"Old man, did you feel like this back then, too?"
Orochimaru rubbed his brow, seemingly forgetting that the big, round Choza was standing right beside him...
"Um... Lord Orochimaru?" Akimichi Choza raised a hesitant hand.
"Hm!?" Orochimaru abruptly turned to look at him.
Exhausted to the extreme, Orochimaru's "act"—the one he'd adopted while training to compete for the Hokage title and live up to his teacher's expectations—had temporarily dropped.
His chilling gaze fixed on Akimichi Choza. The burly man stiffened all over, as if