"No, Yuan. These are for you."
Sarutobi Enjun stripped off his outer jacket and the pendant at his waist, then tossed both to Uchiha Gen without hesitation. After that, he rummaged through his ninja pouch, pulled out two bottles of kerosene, and shoved them into Gen's hands as well.
"I don't object either," Uzuki Ruri said. She took out her handkerchief and a few other small personal items and passed them over too.
Very good. It really had worked. In Orochimaru's absence, command had already settled into Gen's hands.
Without wasting another second, Gen removed several things from his own body and handed them to the ninja crows. "Then scatter."
Sarutobi Enjun and Uzuki Ruri obeyed immediately, peeling off in opposite directions. Most of the ninja crows snatched up the scent-marked items in their beaks and claws and flew toward different parts of the forest.
Gen wasn't worried about the crows' safety. The Forest of Death was used often enough for Chunin Exams that everyone in Konoha knew how dangerous it was for ordinary genin. Venomous insects, savage beasts, and even creatures capable of extracting chakra lurked everywhere within it.
Even so, Konoha still sent ninja into this forest to search for suitable summoning beasts. A proper contract with the right beast could strengthen a shinobi's combat ability and make up for weaknesses, and that was worth the risk.
Still, these ninja crows were different. They had formed a summoning contract with him, which meant he could cancel the summon the moment danger approached and pull them out before they were lost for good.
There were sixteen in total. Four remained beside him, including the biggest crow, the one with the strongest chakra signature.
"Stay near me," Gen said softly. "Watch for danger outside my line of sight and outside my sensing range. Find water if you can. Mud pits too. And pay special attention to snakes."
The last instruction was obvious enough. Orochimaru excelled in snake-based ninjutsu, and snakes hunted by scent. If he wanted to survive, then anything connected to scent had to be treated as a battlefield variable.
Water and mud had another use as well. If they masked the smell clinging to his body even a little, that little advantage might buy him his life.
As for right now…
Gen moved deeper into the forest, keeping his senses stretched taut. When he spotted a giant python coiled around a tree branch above him, he killed it without hesitation, then crushed a large handful of bitter leaves between his fingers and smeared the pungent sap over his body.
The smell was awful, strong enough to make his nose wrinkle. Whether it would truly help or not was impossible to say, but on a battlefield, even a slim possibility was still better than nothing.
Now all that remained was to see what Orochimaru would do.
***
Fifteen minutes vanished in the blink of an eye.
While Gen and the others were still squeezing every last bit of advantage out of the terrain, Orochimaru had already entered the field soundlessly.
From beneath the sleeves of his green jonin vest, a dense mass of snakes spilled to the ground and spread outward like living shadows. They became his eyes, his ears, and his hunting hounds all at once.
A few minutes later, Orochimaru stopped beneath a tree and looked up with faint amusement at the coat hanging from a high branch. In the same breath, he flicked out a wind blade and split a crazed boar charging through the brush into two neat halves.
Then he lifted his gaze toward the sky. There was a little lingering trace of smoke up there, barely noticeable, but enough for him.
Gen's crows had remained nearby as lookouts. The moment they spotted Orochimaru, they would dispel themselves so Gen could tell at once that his teacher was close and avoid him before he was discovered.
"Using this kind of trick to interfere with my judgment isn't bad," Orochimaru murmured. "It can buy a little time. But only a little."
He raised one hand and summoned again. Several enormous pythons appeared, their bodies thick as tree trunks, scales scraping across the earth.
Orochimaru pointed casually at the coat hanging above. "Track the owner of this scent. Find him and capture him."
***
At the edge of a river winding through the Forest of Death, Gen crouched with a lump of wet mud in his hand, smearing it over his body without any regard for appearance. By the time he finished, his clothes were damp, filthy, and heavy, but he stood and moved on at once.
Judging by the time, Orochimaru had already been inside the forest for more than twenty minutes.
So far, none of his teammates had been eliminated. Maybe the false scent trails and scattered decoys had actually bought them some time.
Then Gen's eyes sharpened. He formed hand seals and summoned back one of the ninja crows.
"Where is Orochimaru-sensei now?" he asked quietly.
The crow hopped in place, turned in a circle as if orienting itself, then pointed with its beak and let out a string of long cries.
"That direction? Seven kilometers?"
The crow bobbed its head.
Seven kilometers was still far too close. "Go back and keep watch over the others," Gen said, patting the bird's head. "If you do well, I'll give you extra food tonight."
The crow flapped its wings and melted back into the forest sky. At that moment, the number of crows operating within a hundred meters of Gen had climbed back to nine.
Too close. Still too close.
The Forest of Death had a diameter of roughly twenty kilometers. To ordinary people, that sounded vast, but to ninja—and especially to Orochimaru—it was not nearly enough.
Orochimaru in his early twenties was already frighteningly close to the level he would later be famous for. Even if he kept himself within limits appropriate for testing genin, Gen had no intention of underestimating him.
Run, then. Keep running. The distance between them had to be ten kilometers at the very least before it could be called safe.
But just as Gen accelerated through the woods, another member of the team found himself in trouble.
Only three or four kilometers away, Sarutobi Enjun was racing through the trees, moving with the monkey-like agility characteristic of his clan's taijutsu. A ninja crow clung to the leather guard on his shoulder, crying out warnings whenever danger loomed in his path.
Behind him thundered a massive two-headed serpent over ten meters long. Its forked tongues flicked through the air, and despite its sheer size, it crashed through the forest at terrifying speed, smashing thick trunks apart like brittle twigs as it pursued him.
Enjun wasn't sure he could kill the thing. But one thing he knew for certain was that if it managed to hold him in place long enough for Orochimaru to arrive, then he was finished.
"I wonder if Yuan and Liuli are in trouble too," he muttered under his breath, then grimaced. "No point thinking about that now. I need to shake this snake first."
In truth, his luck still wasn't the worst. What was chasing him was only a snake.
***
Deep in the forest, Orochimaru stood in a small patch of ruined earth, watching the scene ahead with a smile that looked almost elegant in its cruelty.
Not far away, Uzuki Ruri fled through the grass with a kunai in her hand. Around her, traps she had set in advance were triggering one after another—wire, stakes, concealed angles of attack, textbook ambush positions.
They would have been impressive against an opponent near her own level. Against Orochimaru, they were an answer sheet with all the solutions written in the margin.
"My foolish student," Orochimaru thought, licking his lips slightly. "The trap itself is neat, but it's too neat. Too correct."
When the enemy's experience and strength vastly surpassed your own, a perfect textbook arrangement only made one thing obvious: someone had prepared this place in advance.
The moment you left signs of your passage, you were telling the enemy exactly where to start looking.
Orochimaru tilted his head and judged the time through a gap in the canopy. There was no need to rush. Less than half the allotted time had passed.
Since the mission in River Valley Town had not forced the three genin to reveal everything they were capable of, this was a useful chance. He could press them here, make them expose their full range of methods, and then decide how best to guide them after.
Only a few minutes later, another crow returned to Gen.
"Has Liuli been eliminated?" Gen asked.
The ninja crow gave an immediate affirmative cry.
Gen's expression tightened. Only half the time had passed, and one teammate was already out.
Worse still, most of the crows had now drifted back toward him. That meant Orochimaru had already swept through most of the Forest of Death and established control over the terrain.
With Orochimaru's ability, Gen had no doubt that the man had already left his own living scouts scattered throughout the woods. In other words, from this point on, there would be fewer and fewer places left to hide.
They would soon be reduced to one thing only: prey on the run.
"Ruri's elimination confirms Orochimaru-sensei's current position," Gen muttered, forcing himself calm. "The distance is fourteen kilometers. That's still safe—for now. But before he closes in, I need to deal with the problem in front of me."
He turned his head. Behind him, through the shattered undergrowth, a black-scaled serpent came surging forward.
Gen stopped running.
The crows around him burst into alarmed cries, and he raised his hands at once, fingers flashing through seals.
"Fire Release: Phoenix Flower Jutsu!"
A spray of fireballs burst from his mouth and scattered through the air like blossoms in full bloom, streaking toward the black serpent from multiple angles.
The creature hissed sharply. The muscles beneath its slick dark scales bulged, twisting its body with astonishing flexibility as it dodged several of the attacks.
That was exactly why Gen had chosen the Phoenix Flower Technique. It did not match the Great Fireball in raw destructive force, but in speed, spread, and versatility, it was ideal for probing an enemy at range.
Nearly half the fireballs missed, but the rest slammed into the serpent's body. Explosions of sparks burst across its scales, leaving behind scorched marks and dislodging glossy black plates that fell to the forest floor.
Fast. Hard to shake. Strong defense, but not invulnerable.
That was enough. If he wanted to survive, he would have to cripple or bind the thing quickly, then move before Orochimaru could use the disturbance to home in on his real location.
The black-scaled serpent roared and lunged like a charging wagon, trees splintering beneath its weight. Gen leapt back while throwing out kunai attached to steel wires, sending them slicing around the trunks of nearby trees in a widening network.
Just from the way the beast flattened everything in its path, he knew close combat was suicide. His only chance was to exploit the forest, his small size, and the explosive power of ninjutsu.
Otherwise, the serpent would simply pin him down and become a moving marker for Orochimaru.
The wires pulled taut. Gen seized one, swung through the air, and skimmed past the serpent's strike. At the same time, he sent several kunai flying straight for its eyes.
The result disappointed him. The blades were knocked away by the transparent protective scales covering the snake's eyes.
So even that was protected.
Fine. He had expected as much. That was why he had prepared a second step.
"Now!"
Smoke bombs carried by the crows dropped one after another. Thick black smoke exploded through the forest, rolling over the churned-up earth and half-shattered trees.
The point was not vision. Snakes did not rely on sight nearly as much as humans did. The true purpose of the smoke was to interfere with scent.
As for heat sensing, Gen was grateful for the fresh layer of wet mud still plastered over his body. The moisture in it was helping cool his temperature and dull his outline.
Losing a clean lock on its prey, the serpent's hiss turned savage. It lashed out blindly, wrecking the area around it—right into the elastic steel-wire trap Gen had already laid.
Now.
Gen gathered all his strength and sprinted through the thinning smoke. He seized several steel wires in both hands and even clamped two more between his teeth.
He could never hold down something that massive by strength alone. The wires were nothing but a medium, a bridge between him and the target.
"The oil!" he shouted around the wires.
The largest crow, the smartest of the lot, reacted instantly. It snatched the bottle hanging from its neck, popped the stopper free, and poured the kerosene into Gen's mouth.
The fuel Sarutobi Enjun had handed him earlier finally showed its value.
Ordinary oil could increase the power of Fire Release to a degree, but this specially prepared kerosene—mixed with minerals meant to intensify flame—was far more effective.
"Fire Release: Dragon Fire Jutsu!"
Flame mixed with oil burst from Gen's mouth and raced along the steel wires. In an instant it transformed into several long, narrow streams of fire, like blazing dragons, and shot straight into the black-scaled serpent.
Within the Uchiha clan, the Dragon Fire Technique stood alongside the Great Fireball as one of the core C-rank Fire Release jutsu. Only those who had mastered both were considered qualified to study the higher-level, more destructive flames.
The true mark of mastery was the ability to release a thin, straight, high-impact line of fire directly. Gen's command of Dragon Fire was not yet at the same level as his Great Fireball, so he still relied on steel wire to guide the form.
But in this situation, that guidance was an advantage. It guaranteed the hit.
And compared to the Great Fireball, Dragon Fire had greater penetrating force when concentrated along a fixed line. Against a target with sturdy defenses, that made all the difference.
Under the influence of the special oil, the orange-red flames turned brighter and brighter until their cores seemed almost white.
As the smoke cleared, lines of fire could be seen coiling around the black-scaled serpent, searing its flesh. It writhed and hissed madly, its entire body convulsing under the burning assault.