Legend of the Death Forest

March 31, Year 60 of Konoha. Evening.

Tomorrow was the entrance ceremony, and the entire orphanage was making its final preparations. Little Fatty tried on his school uniform again and again, A Zhu polished her ninja tool pouch no fewer than five times, and Little Flower sulked for quite a while because she would not be enrolling until next year. In the end, the matron placated her with a piece of red bean cake. Senju Shinichi, meanwhile, sat on his hard wooden bed with a yellowed old book, turning its pages gently as though he were dismantling something fragile.

He had found this book on the shelf in the farthest corner of the library. More precisely, he had dug it out of a cardboard box marked "Discarded Books Pending Disposal." The box was sealed and stamped "Outdated Materials · May Be Destroyed," but the seal had not been properly stuck down, leaving one corner exposed. So he had casually pulled it out. The title had faded until only a few words remained legible—Summoning Beast Habitat Survey Records. The author was a chūnin whose name he had never heard before, and it had been written around sixty years ago. It recorded this unknown chūnin's experiences tracking various wild summoning beasts within the Land of Fire. Most of it was boring enough to put anyone to sleep, such as what kinds of insects a certain invisible lizard liked to eat, or what type of explosive tag filler could be made from the bat droppings in a particular cave.

But when Shinichi reached the final chapter, he stopped. The ink in this chapter was different from the rest, a deep blue-black. The handwriting was messy but forceful, clearly written in haste out in the wild. Its title had only four words—"Slug Sage's Trail."

"Deep within the Death Forest southeast of Konoha, there dwells a fragment of the Slug Sage. This fragment is approximately the height of a person, wholly pearly white, and bears traces of the Wet Bone Forest's senjutsu chakra. Do not attack forcefully upon encountering it; remain still and adapt to movement. I accidentally entered its territory and was trapped in its mucus for three days. Only by trading my own chakra was I able to escape. Afterward, I searched through all available records and learned that this was one of the fragments the Slug Sage of the Wet Bone Forest had left in the mortal world, used to seek qualified contractees. Those who pass its trial may gain the qualifications to begin learning senjutsu."

Shinichi read that passage three times. Wet Bone Forest, Slug Sage, senjutsu. Of the Three Great Sage Regions, the toads of Mount Myōboku and the snakes of Ryūchi Cave had both played major roles in the original story. Only the Slug Sage of the Wet Bone Forest had received very little attention. In the original work, Tsunade was the slugs' contractee, but from beginning to end, it had never shown what Wet Bone Forest senjutsu actually looked like. A fragment Katsuyu had left behind in the ninja world—this was one of the Wet Bone Forest's tentacles reaching into the mortal realm.

He closed the book and shut his eyes, assembling several pieces of information in his mind. Location: the Death Forest. Konoha's famous forbidden zone and the fixed site for the second stage of the chūnin exams. It contained wild beasts, venomous insects, swamps, and wandering ninja more dangerous than any of those. Distance: setting out from Leaf Village, a round trip plus the search would take at least two days. Time: the entrance ceremony was tomorrow, and there were still three days before classes officially began. Those three days were his last opening. Three days later, he would be an official Ninja Academy student. He would have to check in every day and could not disappear without reason.

He would leave tonight. Return the day after tomorrow. Just in time for school to start.

After night fell, a crescent moon hung from the tip of the old locust tree. The children in the courtyard were already sound asleep, with Little Fatty's teeth grinding as steady as ever. Shinichi climbed out through the kitchen's back window as usual, but this time his backpack held not smoke bombs and kunai, but a roll of bandages, three soldier pills, a water flask, insect repellent ointment, and that battered survey record. The matron was sleeping unusually deeply tonight, perhaps exhausted from washing too many bedsheets during the day. She had not even heard him open the storage cabinet to take the soldier pills. He chose the drainage ditch on the southwest side as his route out of the village. The ditch dried up in winter and was overgrown with weeds. It lay outside the patrol routes, and even Root had not stationed any hidden sentries there.

But someone was in the ditch today.

Just as Shinichi crouched down to slip through a gap in the iron grating, he heard hurried panting behind him. Turning around, he saw Naruto Uzumaki carrying a small bundle and running so hard he was gasping for breath. The bundle was wrapped in his old orange T-shirt. The irregular shapes inside looked like rice balls.

Shinichi looked at him. Naruto braced his hands on his knees and panted for a while before finally lifting his head. His blue eyes were especially bright beneath the moonlight.

"Third Grandpa said you were leaving the village tonight and told me to follow you. He said I could learn things by following you."

Shinichi mentally drew a smoking pipe for the Third, then wrote the words "old fox" beside it. The Third's intentions were obvious—if Naruto stayed with Shinichi, his safety would be assured, his training would be of good quality, and the jinchūriki could spend more time around Senju Clan blood all at once. Three birds with one stone. As for where Shinichi was going, the Third had probably already watched him through the Telescope Technique. Not stopping him was the same as giving silent approval.

"What did you bring in that bundle?"

"Rice balls! Red bean buns! Soldier pills! And iodine! Bandages! Insect repellent ointment!" Naruto untied the bundle and took things out one by one. "Last time I got hurt falling from a tree, I didn't have any iodine, so I specially prepared some this time! Look, I even have a compass! Though I'm not very good at using it!"

Shinichi stared at the compass in silence for a moment. It was the standard model sold at the school store, its cardboard casing printed with a cartoon version of Hokage Rock. Naruto had probably bought it with the wages he had saved from helping Uncle Ichiraku wash dishes. He had prepared carefully—almost too carefully. Shinichi bent down, picked up the compass from the clutter on the ground, put it back into Naruto's bundle, then retied the four corners of the orange T-shirt into a sailor's knot.

"Stay close and don't make a sound. If you get lost, go wait at Ichiraku Ramen." Shinichi said.

"I won't get lost!" Naruto swung the bundle onto his back, brimming with confidence.

The two slipped one after the other through the gap in the drainage ditch's iron grating. Most of the moonlight was obscured by clouds, and visibility in the woods was poor. Shinichi's eyes had already fully adjusted to the darkness—the Sharingan was inactive, but the mental energy he had gained after devouring Tiger Mask had greatly expanded his sensory range, nearly doubling it. He did not need his eyes. Every swaying branch and trembling leaf within dozens of paces appeared clearly in his mind through chakra perception. Naruto stumbled along behind him, snapping several dead branches underfoot. At one point, he nearly walked into a crooked tree, only avoiding a face-first collision because Shinichi grabbed him by the back of his collar.

"Thanks," Naruto said in a lowered voice, rubbing his nose. "How do you walk like it's daytime?"

"Feeling."

"What feeling?"

"The wind tells you what's ahead." Shinichi released him and continued forward.

Naruto followed after him, half understanding and half not.

They reached the edge of the Death Forest around midnight. From the outside, the Death Forest looked no different from any ordinary woodland—trees, darkness, and the occasional flutter of bird wings. But Shinichi could sense the difference. The chakra density here was higher than outside, and the air was filled with a sticky energy fluctuation, as though something enormous lay sleeping beneath the ground, releasing chakra with every breath. Naruto sensed it too. His Nine-Tails jinchūriki constitution made him far more sensitive to chakra than ordinary people. As he stood at the forest's edge, his whole body shrank back slightly. But when he saw that Shinichi had not stopped walking, he gritted his teeth and followed.

After entering the forest, Shinichi no longer traveled in a straight line. Every short distance, he stopped, crouched down, and pressed his palm against the damp earth, sensing the faint chakra pulses beneath the surface. Slug chakra had a highly distinctive trait—it was primarily Yang-natured and carried a moist, sticky sensation, perfectly matching the description he had read in the records: "It feels like warm jelly to the touch."

As the sky began shifting from pure black to deep blue, Shinichi finally caught that trace of sticky fluctuation. It was faint, but unmistakable. He crouched on the ground with his eyes closed to confirm it for a moment, then rose and pointed southeast.

"You found it?"

"Probably. It's about another two hours away."

Naruto pumped his fist in a silent gesture of celebration, then wisely shut his mouth and continued following closely behind him.