Having just finished eating the centipede, the group leisurely made their way deeper into the forest.
Before they knew it, something had begun to feel wrong about the wind in the forest.
What had been nothing more than a cold, gloomy draft suddenly became a wild current carrying sand and stones.
Leaves thrashed wildly, and visibility became extremely poor.
"Don't get separated!" Sasuke shouted, reaching for the teammate beside him.
But his hand caught nothing.
When the wind and sand eased a little, only Sakura remained nearby, trembling against a tree trunk.
"Where's Naruto? Where's that glutton?" Sasuke scanned their surroundings warily.
No answer came.
Instead, there was a suffocating sense of pressure.
The ground began to shake.
A rustling sound began, like something scraping against tree bark.
It was so loud that it sounded as though some enormous creature were slithering right beside their ears.
"S-Sasuke..." Sakura's voice trembled with tears as she pointed a shaking finger ahead.
Sasuke jerked his head up.
An enormous snake's head emerged from between the dense treetops.
Its golden, slit-pupiled eyes were cold and merciless, regarding them as though they were two insignificant little mice.
It was several times larger than the centipede from earlier.
Sasuke felt all the blood in his body turn cold, his body so stiff it refused to obey him.
Was this the ruler of the Forest of Death?
The giant snake opened its mouth wide, blasting them with a foul, bloody stench, its throat resembling a bottomless pit.
Move! Move, you damned legs! Sasuke roared inwardly, wanting to draw his Kunai, or even just run away.
But his legs felt as heavy as lead.
The giant snake suddenly lunged down, its gaping maw enveloping them both.
At that critical instant.
An orange figure dropped straight down from a branch above.
Thud!
A dull impact rang out.
The giant snake's seemingly certain strike abruptly stopped.
A heavy stomp landed on its head, forcing its entire head downward until it nearly got a mouthful of dirt.
Sasuke and Sakura's eyes widened.
Son Goten stood firmly atop the enormous snake's head, both hands in his pockets, looking critically at the scales beneath his feet.
"So this is that big snake?"
Son Goten tapped the hard scales on its head with his heel and curled his lip.
"It's really ugly. This is why I don't like eating reptiles. Just looking at them ruins my appetite."
Who exactly had been enjoying that centipede so much earlier?
The giant snake was clearly enraged.
No prey had ever dared climb onto its head and shit on it.
It shook its head frantically, its enormous body whipping from side to side through the forest, snapping several trees so thick it took a person's arms to encircle them.
Wood chips flew everywhere, and dust billowed.
Sasuke had to shield Sakura as they retreated again and again to avoid getting caught in it.
But Son Goten seemed nailed to that wildly thrashing snake's head.
No matter how the giant snake pitched and rolled, even scraping upside down against tree bark, Son Goten's feet remained firmly attached to its scales, his body not swaying in the slightest.
"Stop shaking. Keep that up and you'll scramble your brains. That'll ruin the texture."
Son Goten was getting a little impatient.
He suddenly bent down, spread his two small hands, and wrapped his arms directly around the absurdly thick body where the snake's head met its neck.
The sight was utterly incongruous.
Son Goten's arm span was less than a tenth of the giant snake's diameter.
Yet he had wrapped his arms around it all the same.
"Up!"
Son Goten gave a low shout and drove his feet hard against the ground.
The ground beneath him did not collapse, because all his strength was perfectly transferred into his arms.
What happened next completely shattered Sasuke and Sakura's understanding of the world.
That giant snake, weighing dozens of tons and so long its tail was out of sight, was actually hauled right off the ground by Son Goten.
It was as easy as pulling up a radish.
The giant snake hissed in terror, its tail frantically lashing the air, but it was useless.
"Down you go!"
The muscles in Son Goten's arms bulged slightly as he gripped the snake's head, twisted at the waist, and swung it through a semicircle in the air.
Whoosh!
The enormous snake's body streaked through the air, whipping up a fierce blast of wind.
Then it slammed heavily into the ground.
BOOOOM!!!
The entire Forest of Death seemed to undergo a magnitude-eight earthquake.
The ground rippled like waves around the point of impact, blasting dirt and broken stones more than ten meters into the air.
Every tree within a fifty-meter radius snapped from the shock.
The dust cleared.
The forest's formerly arrogant ruler now lay limp in an enormous crater, crosses in its eyes and its tongue dangling weakly from its mouth, clearly knocked out cold.
"Bleurgh-!"
A large gush of thick liquid suddenly sprayed from the giant snake's mouth.
Immediately afterward, a blond boy covered in unidentified slime slid out along with the liquid.
"Cough, cough, cough! That's disgusting!"
Naruto lay on the ground retching, desperately wiping the acidic fluid off his face.
"I thought I was going to get digested... It was pitch-black in there. I couldn't see anything, and then everything spun around and I got flung out."
Looking at the scene of destruction that seemed like a miracle, Sasuke swallowed with difficulty.
Did this still fall within the realm of being a ninja?
This sheer display of brute force was more despair-inducing than any Ninjutsu.
Son Goten jumped down from the now-motionless snake's head and dusted off his hands.
He walked over beside its limp body, his eyes gleaming like a middle-aged woman picking out pork at the market.
"Not bad, not bad. It may be ugly, but it's all firm muscle."
Son Goten took a Kunai out of his ninja tool pouch and twirled it in his hand.
"Naruto, stop puking and hurry up and gather firewood!"
"A snake this big-remove the head and innards, and everything left is a treasure."
Son Goten traced the Kunai over the snakeskin, considering where to cut to make skinning it easier.
"You guys don't know this, but wild snakes like this have six times the protein of beef!"
"Whether you roast it or make soup, it's incredibly nourishing!"
"Especially this gallbladder. They say it improves your eyesight. Sasuke, want one? It'll definitely be good for your Sharingan."
Sasuke's face turned green, and he shook his head desperately.
Who would want to eat the gallbladder of a monster that swallowed people alive?!
Son Goten did not mind and raised the Kunai, about to stab the snake in its vital spot just below the head.
Just then.
The temperature of the air, which had been fairly normal, abruptly dropped to freezing.
The birdsong and insect calls in the forest vanished completely at that moment.
A chill so thick it made one want to vomit surged in from every direction.
Son Goten's hand stopped in midair.
The tip of the Kunai was only one centimeter from the snakeskin.
He frowned and twitched his nose, an expression of utter disgust appearing on his face.
"Tch."
"What a stink."
Son Goten turned around and looked toward the shadowy woods behind him.
"That smell, like rotten eggs left to go bad for three months..."
"Who's playing spooky tricks over there?"
Before you continue