Naruto was left wearing his white tank top, fully exposing his shoulders and arms, even if the forearms were covered with armor. He didn't like feeling so exposed but it could have been worse.
"Okay, so Chouji, you're on point, Naruto will be your immediate back," Shikamaru started setting up their formation. "Sakura, I want you to follow them but not too closely, you're our only healer and that means you need to stay alive no matter what. Ino, you and I will take the trail positions, it will be our job to do damage to any chakra mutations that pop up here. I would expect snakes and possibly alligators but you never can tell." Shikamaru added the last detail for Ino's benefit alone, the rest of them had seen the message when they entered the field.
The first chakra mutation they came across was a snake as expected. The snake being as thick as Naruto and ten times longer was not expected.
Anaconda Lvl 13
HP: 2200/2200 CP: 100/100
This snake is not only fast growing but also quite fast. Also be wary of his venom, it is very deadly.
"So, I'm guessing poisonous and probably very fast."
"Fast, look how big it is. How can it be fast?" asked Ino.
"It's all muscle," answered Sakura. "But it's an Anaconda, it shouldn't be venomous at all. Anaconda's are constricting snakes."
"Constricting?" asked Naruto, watching the thankfully sleeping snake.
"It means that it will squeeze you to death," she simplified.
"Right then, any plans?" asked Chouji, arming himself.
Naruto shrugged and leapt skyward, one kunai out and charged with chakra. He landed, slicing the head off the snake cleanly and killing it in one hit. "Not really necessary," Naruto said with a confident smirk.
"Troublesome," groaned Shikamaru. "What about the other five you just woke up?"
Naruto turned to look and indeed there were five more that he had just landed in the middle of. He never even saw them, even with his gamer ability, they were perfectly camouflaged to their surroundings.
"I just jumped into a trap, didn't I?" asked Naruto, suddenly ducking under the first snake then leaping over the next two only to be smacked away by the tail of a fourth. The tail didn't actually hurt that much, the tree that stopped him did, especially the small branch he impaled his shoulder through.
"Troublesome," complained Shikamaru again, his shadow quickly binding the snakes. "Chouji, start stomping them. Sakura, see if you can get Naruto off that tree and heal him. Ino, throw kunai into the snakes' eyes and try to blind them, it will at least dull their senses."
The group quickly followed orders, killing snakes, even Naruto joined back in after Sakura healed him. So that first group died quickly enough despite Naruto's rash decision.
"Sorry guys, I'll be more cautious in the future," said Naruto sheepishly.
"Oh, they left their fangs behind," said Sakura, moving quickly to gather them up.
"What would we want with their fangs?" asked Ino.
"Venom," replied Sakura, as if it was obvious. "We can extract some of their venom from the fangs. It won't be much but more than enough to coat a kunai or katana or whatever really."
"Okay, so maybe they are worth it," said Ino. "But how do we divide them up. There are five of us and twelve fangs."
"We wait until the end. I'm sure there a lot more snakes around here. I'm sure we'll kill plenty before we leave here," said Sakura.
Ino frowned at herself for such an obvious thing to miss. She was clearly still rattled from their earlier conversation. Even worse was seeing Sakura at work, she really had become a very good iryonin.
"Let's move on, we still have to meet Asuma-sensei after lunch," called Shikamaru, snapping Ino out of her reverie and getting the other up and moving again.
They continued deeper into the swamp, eventually coming across another group of snakes and killing them, even faster than the first group and claimed twelve more fangs. However, this time when they moved to go on the water rippled slightly causing Naruto to jumped back and pull Chouji with him.
"What is it?"
"The water, something is moving in it."
"Yeah, fish you moron," said Ino.
Naruto ignored Ino. He starred hard into the water, trying to see through its murky depths when he caught sight of something big. This time he tackled the whole group back as the thing shot out of water like a giant missile, its mouth big enough to eat any one of them whole. It landed with a heavy thud before swing around to face them. The alligator was huge, its skin was black as night and its eyes glowed an eerie yellow that warned of danger.
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