Toru followed Orochimaru away from Root's base.
"Thank you for saving me, Lord Orochimaru," Toru said from behind him.
Orochimaru wore a faintly amused expression. "I merely happened to pass by."
"Come to think of it, I do need an assistant like you."
"Do you have time today?"
Toru hesitated slightly, because he had promised Kurenai that he would have dinner at her house that evening.
But after thinking about it, it was only afternoon. A whole afternoon should be enough, and Orochimaru had just helped him, so it would be impolite to refuse.
Thus, Toru replied, "I do. What do you need me to do, Lord Orochimaru?"
Orochimaru said, "It's still the Soft Body Modification Technique. I spent some time researching it these past few days and have already pushed its progress to the stage of live experimentation."
Toru was greatly surprised.
The "some time" Orochimaru spoke of was probably an absurd amount of time.
From what Toru understood, the Soft Body Modification Technique was still many steps away from being ready for live experiments. It should have taken at least several months.
Yet by the time Toru returned from a relatively short mission outside the village, it had already reached the live experimentation stage. One could only imagine how hard Orochimaru had worked during that time.
Orochimaru sensed Toru's possible thoughts and explained, "I don't have the patience to develop a technique of this level slowly."
"So I sped things up a little."
"After this experiment is over, I plan to change research directions and develop a more advanced Soft Body Modification Technique..."
Along the way, Orochimaru told Toru about the progress of the Soft Body Modification Technique and his recent research ideas.
In Orochimaru's words, Toru was one of the rare ninjas with scientific literacy, which was