Soon, the members of Anbu arrived at the site of engagement. The area was charred, destroyed to the point that anyone who didn't know couldn't associate the place with a forest.
"We are late, quickly inform the Hokage." One of the Anbu ordered. For them to arrive this late was their negligence. The loss of Root had inevitably reduced the movable manpower under the Hokage's hand and was a huge loss.
And even he himself, the current Anbu Captain, was a previous Root operator. He knew that Root, even under Danzo's control, was very valuable manpower. Given orders, even Danzo had to send his operators on missions. Not that it was ever an issue, Danzo himself offered to take many missions previously that should have been taken by the Anbu for his Root.
There were two reasons. First, the mission money was taken by Root besides the village's own cut. Yeah, Danzo didn't believe in the honest pay for honest work philosophy, anything his Root operators earned was Root's money.
Was Hiruzen aware of this? Most likely. Did he stop it? Of course not.
But now that Root didn't exist, Konoha was facing a huge manpower shortage. And that, with the Chunin Exam on the way, the manpower was indeed stretched.
Once the Anbu member was sent back to report to the Hokage, the current Anbu Captain Tenzo, with his team, started to investigate the matter.
The entire half-kilometer area was damaged, burned, and majorly cut open. Tenzo, being a Jonin and captain of the current Anbu squad, still couldn't recognize what kind of ninjutsu was used here.
The burns were clear enough. What stumped him were the deep gashes.
Rows of trees were cut open like they were made of paper. Even boulders and the very earth had deep grooves. The power of whatever ninjutsu was used here couldn't be less than S-rank if it was one jutsu. And if it was a single attack performed multiple times, then it was even worse, meaning a powerful attack like this was either chakra-efficient and easy to use, or the shinobi had extremely high chakra volume. Both were bad news for them.
"Quickly isolate this area. Also check on the Chunin participants, from casualties to possible culprits." Tenzo ordered and formed a hand sign.
Chakra infused inside him and the next second the entire area seemed to burst open with water pouring out of the ground.
Instantly raging fire met the water and smoke covered the entire area.
Once the fire was put out with his water style jutsu, Tenzo formed another hand sign and the next second a miracle seemed to take place.
The diameter of the entire 500-meter radius which was destroyed started to pour out with new bulging trees.
Some of the Anbu members looked at this with fascination in their eyes. This was the Wood Style which the First Hokage used. The importance of Wood Style in Konoha was huge.
Even after years of working under Tenzo, the fact that their captain could use Wood Style was unbelievable.
Tenzo ignored them, he was now kind of used to this. If anything, he believed that Wood Style itself wasn't that impressive, it was the First Hokage who was impressive.
His eyes traced the place with a solemn look on his face. The amount of destruction caused was so vast that even a Jonin-level shinobi couldn't do this. It had to be a Kage-level shinobi, or even worse, a Biju.
—-<>—-
Team 7 and Team 11 finally came to a stop. They felt like their lungs were burning. By now they were about a kilometer or so away from where they left Sukuna with Orochimaru, perhaps further, it was hard to tell distance inside a forest.
Now that place seemed like a ruin. It had turned into a burning furnace the moment it was set on fire. There was no way either of them could go back now.
"Karin, what happened to Sukuna? Can you sense him?" Sakura was still in dismay about her brother. Not that Karin was any better.
She was frantically trying to locate Sukuna's location, however the natural energy earlier made it harder to locate him.
The natural energy after Sukuna went berserk was everywhere, the signature in his unfocused state became so unconcentrated that even for Karin locating his exact location became hard.
"I-I don't know. I can't sense him. Not him or Orochimaru." Karin muttered, panting out of breath and anxiety gnawing at her.
Her words made Sakura even more depressed.
"Don't worry, Sukuna will be alright. He is Sukuna." Naruto said, optimism trying to cover the tension he was trying to mask. Naruto had complete belief in Sukuna, he was after all the first person who acknowledged him, however, he was worried.
Ever since Sukuna's strange transformation, the Nine Tails' chakra inside him had become restless.
"On this one, I agree with the idiot." Sasuke grunted.
Naruto immediately scowled. However, he didn't retort like usual. His eyes, just like everyone else's, were darting back to the destroyed burning forest a bit further away.
"Hm… on this I agree. You people don't understand Sukuna Haruno. If anything, that enemy shinobi we fought, he should be worried about him, not us." Kiyomi grunted. It wasn't the blind belief Naruto, Sakura, Karin, or Sasuke had, this was the influence ingrained into her by years of staying in a Jujutsu clan. Learning about the height of jujutsu in the Heian Era and the strongest sorcerer of ancient times.
Ryomen Sukuna.
"And you mean to say you know him more than us." Sakura almost threw an annoyed look at the girl.
Kiyomi just shrugged, not planning on explaining her stance, there was no simple way to explain why she thought what she said anyway.
"Both of their signatures are gone. I can't sense them anywhere." Karin stated once again. If earlier it was harder to locate their exact location, then now she couldn't even sense them in the Forest of Death. Like both disappeared from existence.
A silence once again spread between them. While their hearts refused to even entertain the thought of something happening to Sukuna, their minds were readying for the worst outcome.
"Should we go to the Hokage office? This is an emergency, right!" Karin asked, worry filling her tone.
"There is no need, just look at the scale of the destruction. Do you really think Anbu wouldn't notice that?" Sasuke snorted.
"Then what should we do? We can't just leave him alone there." Naruto whined.
Kiyomi too pursed her lips and finally stated, "We have to wait, doing anything stupid right now on impulse would undermine all the danger Sukuna went through for us. He fought that monster so we could leave safely, going back would just ruin all that." Kiyomi stated, trying to be reasonable.
The others didn't like it, except Sasuke. However, they knew they really were no match for that snake man.
Just like Karin, Kiyomi too was using her senses to sense Sukuna's curse energy. She was no sensor, in fact she was terrible at it, however, since there weren't many curse users, sensing either Sukuna or Izumi was rather simple.
However, even she couldn't sense Sukuna's curse energy. This worried her.
And Team 7 and 11 weren't the only teams which witnessed this rampage between the titans. Other teams were even more baffled at the sudden chaos in the Forest of Death.
Team 8, 9, 10 or teams from other villages like Sand, Mist, Sound. They all witnessed the clash.
Perhaps there were casualties as well? Who knows.
—-<>—-
And while outside in the real world, everything was fussing over the nuke which went off in the Forest of Death, inside the Kamui dimension, things were rather calm.
Blood pooled beneath his feet as the six-headed white snake carcass was torn open a little further away from him.
On one of the mouths of the snake, emerged an almost lifeless form of Orochimaru with an even paler complexion.
"How?" Orochimaru's complexion was bad. He barely was able to speak and all of his chakra was exhausted. If anything, it was a miracle that he was even alive.
"Soul damage. That pain you feel inside, it isn't flesh. It's your soul rupturing." Sukuna patiently explained.
Orochimaru's eyes shook like he heard a death sentence.
"B- but." Orochimaru struggled to say.
"But I didn't use that before, I know. Because I wasn't quite myself back then as is obvious. If not for this mark of yours." Sukuna pointed at his neck where the curse mark was still present, however, it had run out of natural energy.
"If I was like I am now earlier, you would long have been dead, how else do you think I took care of your soul." Sukuna said with an almost bored look on his face.
Orochimaru's eyes were bloodshot.
This was indeed correct, Sukuna planned to immediately kill off Orochimaru once he took care of his soul fragment inside the Curse Seal of Heaven.
But he didn't account for the natural energy being so out of control after mixing it with curse energy.
All that pointless destruction was such a waste when a few punches could have done the trick as long as he targeted the snake's soul.
Of course, Kamui also played an important role. Since stopping Orochimaru if he planned to run was extremely hard, the snake had more ways to escape death than Sukuna had to kill.
Thus bringing him into the Kamui dimension was an important step to kill him.
And even now he didn't actually kill him since Anko still had Orochimaru's soul fragment.
"Sigh."
"Goodbye Orochimaru, perhaps we meet again in the future." Sukuna said and once again brought his hands together in enma-ten sign. And then…
"FUGA…."
xXx
A/N : Another chapter done. And yes, Sukuna when composed and planning is far more deadiler enemy when going like a killing machine.
As for if the chapter have any mistakes, please tell me, I'm currently traveling and don't have time to fix everything. I'm fix things ASAP.
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