The so-called "Oracle" projection had not even fully faded when that teeth-grating sound of metal scraping came again from the depths of interstellar space.
The noise was astonishingly loud, like ten thousand rusty broken bells being struck at once.
Yoru leaned against the control console, holding a belt buckle he had just searched off that alien vanguard officer, one carrying a sour stench.
He casually tossed it away. The buckle clanged against the alloy floor, then rolled along the tilted deck and into the gap beneath the hatch.
"Lord Yoru, the Ōtsutsuki Main Family's vanguard fleet has cut off the spatial jump routes in this sector."
Orochimaru's pale, sickly face leaned closer. His white lab coat was wrinkled like a lump of pickled vegetables, and the dried coffee stain at the collar had gone stiff, giving off an old moldy smell.
Orochimaru's slit pupils gleamed with perverse excitement beneath the lights as he stared at the enormous holographic scanning screen.
The entire stretch of deep space was densely packed with white dots.
They were not stars.
They were the Ōtsutsuki Clan's distinctive biological warships.
Every one of them looked like a skull enlarged thousands of times over, reeking of decay and blood, its surface covered in grayish-white bony armor.
That armor was embedded with countless tiny spheres.
They were all Byakugan.
Thousands upon thousands of Byakugan were staring fixedly at Iwagakure's few pitch-black transport ships.
It felt like hundreds of thousands of flies staring at a piece of rotten meat, enough to make one's skin crawl.
"Well, hell, looks like these bastards cleaned out every last bit of their savings on the moon."
Yoru pulled out a piece of stale gum that had somehow gotten stuck to him and shoved it into his mouth, chewing hard a few times.
The