The gloomy sky seemed ready to press down upon the canopy of the Forest of Death, while the air reeked of rotting earth.
"Crack."
Naruto stepped on a dead branch, snapping it beneath his foot, and his brows furrowed almost imperceptibly.
The muscles along the front of his right thigh protested with the aching soreness of having been run over by a heavy truck.
The backlash from opening the Gate of Limit to forcibly suppress Orochimaru was beginning to set in. His body, once light as the wind, now felt as though it had been filled with lead.
His speed and strength had dropped by twenty percent. This sluggishness, this inability to perfectly control his own body, made Naruto's teeth itch with irritation.
"Save... me..."
The faint, hoarse voice drifted into his ears again on the wind.
Naruto stopped walking but did not move at once.
He was feeling it.
Not through chakra perception, but through the part of his bloodline that belonged to the Uzumaki Clan, which hummed urgently like plucked strings.
The violent possessiveness buried deep within his genes was screaming: That belongs to you.
Orochimaru's debt can wait. The prey has to fall into my bowl.
A chill flashed through Naruto's blue eyes. He forcefully squeezed the remaining active energy from his cells, turning into a black streak as he crashed through the brush.
—Four hundred meters away, in a swamp covered in poisonous mushrooms.
"Smack!"
A loud slap echoed through the empty forest.
The red-haired girl was viciously slapped into the mud.
The filthy gray vest of the Grass Ninja was soaked through with muck, while her oversized black-rimmed glasses were knocked away, landing in a dirty puddle nearby.
"Quit playing dead! Roll up your sleeves!"
The tall Grass Ninja's face twisted viciously, his chest heaving