Naruto scratched the back of his head looking slightly guilty. "Yeah, well . . . when I found it I got excited like you did and tried to learn it. Said I need a ton of wisdom to learn it and knowledge of poisons, something I don't really have at all."
"Okay, no longer feeling guilty," said Sakura, not really angry but slightly miffed anyway.
"Well, we've rested enough, let's go check out the right tunnel," said Naruto.
"What did your clone find out?"
"He stopped when he saw another group of those eels," Naruto answered then shivered slightly. "I still say they are damned creepy."
"You'll get no argument from me on that but at least they die easily."
Naruto shrugged and lead the way into the cave.
The pair continued to explore the cave, killing as they went. The right side tunnel started climbing after the first fifty meters before finally emerging outside to a rocky outcropping that faced a small bay that was enclosed by sharp pointed rocks, wave crashing against it from the ocean beyond. It reminded Naruto strongly of a prison or giant teeth. Meanwhile the beach before them was extremely muddy mess and very hard to see anything in, it even turned the ocean water murkier than normal.
"Hey, we're back outside, was that the end of it?" asked Sakura, looking around.
"I doubt that," said Naruto, seeing something moving slowly, subtly in the muddy beach ahead of them.
"What the hell is that?" asked Sakura, now seeing the movement as well.
"I'm guessing it's the boss," said Naruto, arming himself quickly with a pair of kunai.
"But what is it?"
"Namazu, a giant catfish that lives in the mud," said Naruto, simplifying the [Observe] he'd just used.
"So what do we do?"
"For starters, avoid its spines, they are poisonous, coated in some kind of paralytic," said Naruto, adding a bit more information. "So we try to stay at range if we can."
"Right, range fight," said Sakura, nodding once. She then formed a few handseals trying to ensnare it immediately in a genjutsu. "What the hell? It's immune to my genjutsu."
"Maybe because it's level twenty-seven and you're only level nineteen," suggested Naruto. He suddenly had to move as the creature was now pissed off thanks to Sakura trying to put it in a genjutsu. Namazu had shot some of its poisoned spines at the pair precipitating evasive maneuvers.
Naruto tossed a handful of shuriken at the moving mud hitting nothing for his efforts but successfully drawing the ire of the beast.
"We have to get it out of the mud," said Sakura. "It's acting like a natural armor."
"Gotcha," said Naruto, this time throwing a few [Shrapnel Kunai] into the mud around the well camouflaged fish. The kunai detonated causing the fish a chunk of damage but also causing it to thrash about wildly, shaking the ground all around them. It felt as if the whole island was shaking.
"What the hell is this?"
"I think the fishes thrashing around is causing it," said Naruto, trying to keep his balance, and slipping in the mud anyway.
"We're going to have to kill it faster," said Sakura. "We can't have it thrashing around like this."
"Agreed," said Naruto, climbing back to his feet now that the shaking had stopped.
The mud started moving again, this time building up into a mound of dirt and water that started running off its sides. Finally the mud finished falling away and the duo was faced with a giant catfish, easily twice as tall as either of them while it sat on top of the mud, shining red eyes glaring at them both.
"It was his idea," shouted Sakura, pointing at Naruto.
Naruto looked at her briefly before focusing on the giant fish in front of him and now having to dodge like a mad man as wave after wave of poison spine was shot toward him.
Naruto tried tossing the occasional [Shrapnel Kunai] at the thing but it barely did any damage, in fact the shrapnel seemed to get stuck to the beast in some kind of mucus layer or left over mud.
Then the giant bastard opened its mouth and took a giant bit of the muddy beach only to spit it out like a giant mud boulder right at Naruto. "Sakura, explosive kunai in the mouth while it's open!"
Sakura threw a kunai with an explosive tag into the things mouth before it closed. A moment later there was a muffled boom followed by another earthquake as well as a screech of pain from the giant fish.
Naruto breathed a sigh of relief as the mud boulder seemed to lose its shape and fall apart after that.
Naruto and Sakura were once again doing their best to keep their feet under them. Naruto saw that Namazu's health dropped about a tenth with that one explosion in its mouth.
"Okay, next time he fires one of those mud balls at me you need to fill up that giant fat mouth of his with as many explosive kunai as you can. We can't afford to have this fight drag on."
"Will do," said Sakura, pulling a handful of kunai and starting to prep them while Naruto went back to doing what he did best, pissing ugly things off.
It didn't take Naruto long to antagonize the ugly bastard into opening his mouth and firing another mud boulder at him.
Sakura capitalized, throwing as many kunai as she could manage into the opening before it closed.
The kunai detonated knocking Namazu's health down into the red.
Naruto couldn't help smirking as the fish's lips parted slightly to let smoke out and a stream of blood to flow out. It didn't last long as the fish reared up exposing its belly. There was a slight bubbling of the skin before two legs emerged. When it landed again, it was now on two feet and dragging its hulking body and tail behind it.
"Now what?" asked Sakura, trying to put more space between the monster and herself.
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