Orochimaru narrowed his eyes as he watched the Satellite Orbital Cannon complete its simulated startup on the screen without any problems.
"Tailed beast chakra... The easiest Tailed Beast to get my hands on right now should be Takigakure's Seven-Tails, but... a Tailed Beast is still a Tailed Beast. With my current strength, defeating one without a Jinchūriki controlling it wouldn't be difficult.
"But taking a Tailed Beast away without a sound clearly isn't very likely. Once word gets out that I captured the Seven-Tails, heh... Continue."
After briefly weighing his options, Orochimaru abandoned the plan outright. Tailed Beasts were useful, but they were still beyond what he could handle at present.
"Secondary recommendation: senjutsu chakra. Senjutsu chakra contains an enormous amount of natural energy relative to nonliving entities. It can also be utilized through the Energy Converter currently under development.
"However, the Satellite Orbital Cannon requires an extremely large quantity of natural energy. Delivery through the ground-to-air channel alone would make activation difficult. A rough estimate indicates that firing a single orbital shot would require seven energy units, with Manda serving as the standard for one unit."
The electronic voice continued its report.
Orochimaru couldn't help raising a hand to his forehead. Clearly, this plan wouldn't work at present either.
"Forget it. Put the Satellite Orbital Cannon on hold for now. Snake One, pull up the cultivation data for my tissue-slice clones."
Gently rubbing his temples, Orochimaru dismissed the large screen before him with a wave of his hand, then continued speaking.
"Yes."
The Land of Grass.
"Send Gen to the Kirigakure battlefield? Why?"
Minato Namikaze stared at Jiraiya in astonishment, his brows tightly furrowed.
"Kirigakure suddenly attacked our Land of Fire's border defenses. They also carried out a large-scale assassination of the officials in Muyun City, one of