Chapter 39: A Gruesome Scene-At Least Kage-Level

Anko did not wait for the ANBU.

She knew Orochimaru's escape techniques and countertracking abilities all too well. No more than three people in all of Konoha could keep track of his presence.

No matter how fast the ANBU were, they could not outrun one of the Sannin who was determined to do something in the Forest of Death.

"Seal off the scene. No one is to approach." Anko left those words behind as she darted out of the bushes.

She headed into the Forest of Death to find Orochimaru.

The deeper she went, the stranger the surroundings became.

At first, there were only broken branches and churned-up soil, as though they were the aftermath of some Taijutsu strike.

But farther in, the way the trees had broken grew increasingly unnatural.

Entire ancient trees had been uprooted, dark soil still clinging to their roots, as though some immense force had heaved them out of the ground.

Anko's pupils narrowed slightly.

These were not traces an ordinary ninja could have left.

At least Kage Level.

She slowed a little, gripping three shuriken in her left hand and pushing her senses to their limit. Chakra burst continuously beneath her feet, yet she made not the slightest sound when she landed.

Suddenly, she stopped dead.

The scent on the wind had changed.

The stench of blood was so thick it nearly made her vomit.

Not just human blood, but snake blood too.

Anko stared fixedly ahead.

What should have been a dense stretch of woodland had been completely leveled.

Not a single tree within a hundred meters remained standing. Shattered trunks lay scattered across the ground like a heap of crushed twigs.

At the center of the clearing was an enormous depression with a radius of over ten meters. The earth had sunk nearly two feet, and a deep crater lay at its heart, as though a meteor had struck.

"You've got to be kidding..."

Anko's voice was painfully dry.

With light steps, she crossed a charred, broken log and landed on the edge of the depression.

Then she sensed them.

Two traces of chakra still lingered in the air.

One belonged to Orochimaru.

And the other...

Her brows drew sharply together, and she could not help sucking in a breath.

What was that?

For the first time since becoming a Special Jōnin, Anko encountered chakra whose nature she could not identify.

That presence felt like fire, yet also like lightning.

Or rather, it kept shifting between fire and lightning.

Without warning, the Cursed Seal on the back of Anko's neck throbbed violently.

As though resonating.

She instinctively covered her neck, cold sweat instantly coating her forehead.

How could this be... this presence carried a reaction from a Cursed Seal, and its magnitude far exceeded that of the seal inside her own body.

Impossible.

Only Orochimaru himself knew how to wield his Cursed Seal of Heaven.

Yet this power clearly came from someone else.

Anko's knees felt weak, but her gaze only grew sharper.

She turned slowly, looking toward the direction where the unfamiliar chakra residue was strongest.

That direction led deeper into the Forest of Death.

It was also the area where the Chunin Ninja Exams candidates were operating.

Something seemed to squeeze her heart viciously, and her pupils trembled faintly.

"Who was Orochimaru fighting?" she murmured, almost forcing the words out of her throat. "Who could push him this far?"

Inside the deep crater lay half a white snakeskin that had melted, then cooled and solidified. It was charred and twisted, with a few scales glimmering with phosphorescence still stuck to its edges.

Hideous wounds crisscrossed the snakeskin's surface, as though it had been brutally cleaved apart by some sharp weapon—or burst open from within.

This was no ordinary summoned snake.

Anko recognized the pattern, broken in two, on one of the scales. Her pupils instantly shrank to pinpoints.

Manda's scales.

Orochimaru had even summoned Manda?

She whipped her head around to look in another direction.

The trees on the western side of the clearing had all been burned into black charcoal.

Anko walked over and lifted the scrap of cloth with a kunai.

The fabric was ordinary, but a third, extremely faint presence lingered on it, identical to that unfamiliar chakra from before.

"Two people..." Her voice was barely audible. "Orochimaru's presence and another were left at the center of the explosion... but this cloth means a third person was here..."

Or perhaps the first unfamiliar presence and the presence on this cloth belonged to the same person.

Perhaps that person had simply been so outrageously powerful that even after death, their chakra could linger in two completely different forms.

But...

Anko's face had gone utterly bloodless.

She was no stranger to the world.

She had fought more than a few battles to the death.

Yet the scale of destruction before her still made her knuckles whiten slightly around her kunai.

Just then, a very faint yet unusually distinct fluctuation of chakra spread out from deep within the Forest of Death.

It lasted less than half a second.

Her pupils contracted sharply, and her breathing almost stopped.

"There's something else hidden in this exam that even Orochimaru can't take down right away."

She hesitated no longer. Her figure blurred into an afterimage as she raced toward the source of the fluctuation.

Anko swept past one broken tree after another, her toes making almost no sound as they touched the leaves.

The deeper she went, the closer that chakra felt.

Just as she sensed she was nearing the battlefield—

The wind suddenly stopped.

Every sound vanished from the deathly still forest.

No chirping insects, no birdsong, not even the rustle of leaves.

Anko abruptly halted, landing on a fallen tree trunk.

She simply sensed it.

Something was watching her from the darkness a hundred meters ahead.

Amid the foul, bloody stench, the Cursed Seal on the back of her neck throbbed violently again, hurting so badly she nearly cried out.

Two pairs of dark golden, slit-pupiled eyes lit up deep in the thick fog, silently meeting hers.

Snake, or human?

Anko gritted her teeth and tightened her grip on her short blade, crouching slightly into a fighting stance.

From deep in the darkness came an exceedingly soft chuckle.

"Heh heh... do you like joining the fun too, Anko?"

"Orochimaru! So you really are here!"