Reika's part of the battlefield was cold.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
The moment Orochimaru's clone forced her away from the others, she exhaled once, quietly, and the temperature around her began to plummet.
Frost crept across the grass in spiderweb veins.
Her pale-gold eyes narrowed.
"Keep your distance," she murmured to no one, breath crystallizing.
The clone smiled with Orochimaru's lazy, predatory amusement.
"Such a dangerous child."
Then he dove in.
Reika didn't wait.
She slammed both palms onto the frozen ground.
The earth cracked.
Ice Fang Spears erupted in a jagged circle, stabbing upward toward the incoming snake-bodied blur.
But Orochimaru's clone simply twisted midair, shedding his skin as he spun, the discarded layer exploding in a burst of slippery fluid that smothered her ice tips mid-growth.
He slid around the attack like a serpent in water.
Then came the retaliation.
A coordinated, pre-sealed blast of wind and flame from two small snakes on his shoulders, the elements braided together by expert timing.
Scorching Gale.
The hybrid jutsu tore the air apart, flames spinning inside compressed wind, the heat so intense it liquified the frost under her feet.
Reika lifted one hand calmly.
Ice Dome Defense.
A sphere of reinforced ice bloomed around her, the blazing vortex crashing against it in a shower of steam and shards.
When the dome cracked, she broke it herself, stepping out with a cool breath as the last fragments dissolved into mist.
The clone lunged again, snapping forward with his grotesquely stretched neck, blade in mouth, snakes from his sleeves spitting hardened bone-shards he'd stolen from some unfortunate body in the past.
She vanished backward in a blink, leaving behind a trail of frost.
Permafrost Prison.
The ice formed instantly beneath him, a block shooting upward to trap him waist-deep.
The clone hissed, more amused than alarmed.
His lower body melted into a pile of snakes, scattering out of the ice at once, reforming his torso a few meters away.
And he didn't stop.
A second clone appeared beside him, produced through a casual hand-seal and a puff of smoke.
The two wove their signs together, blending chakra seamlessly.
Lightning-riddled steam surged toward her.
Boiling Tempest.
Wind, steam, scorch, and lightning mixed into a roiling storm that hit her from three angles at once, making the frozen ground beneath her scream.
Reika didn't flinch.
Her hands were clasped together.
The air dropped to deathly cold.
Absolute Zero. S-rank.
The world flash-froze in an instant.
The vapor storm crystallized mid-surge, shattering like glass against her advancing wave of cold.
Even Orochimaru's clone had to pull back, skin paling unnaturally from the sudden temperature crash.
But he still moved with a scientist's fascination.
"You command the broadest power among them… I actually have to raise my own output just to keep you contained, and escalate my elemental ninjutsu a step or two, for the first time..."
He hissed with amused appreciation, eyes gleaming as he drank in the sight of her freezing the battlefield under her feet.
A third clone, with just enough chakra necessary, emerged behind her — Orochimaru layering them intentionally now — and together the three formed a triangle around her.
Fire roared.
Wind spun.
Lightning crackled.
Three dragons of pure elemental force spiraled toward her simultaneously, melding into a single monstrous helix.
Tri-Element Tempest Coil.
A technique no normal shinobi could ever perform without a small army.
Reika didn't retreat.
She closed her eyes.
The Yin Seal at her forehead pulsed heavier than ever before.
Frozen World Burial.
Another S-rank.
The temperature plummeted again, frost exploding outward in a shockwave that turned a ten-meter radius into a solid sheet of ice.
The dragon-coil hit the frozen field — and the world detonated into steam and shards.
Reika skidded backward, boots sliding across the ice as she stabilized herself, arms trembling slightly from the force.
Her breath came shallower now.
Yin Seal reserves were bleeding fast.
Orochimaru's three clones slithered out from the steam-cloud, untouched, reforming new skin, new bodies, new masks of amusement.
He was testing her.
Dissecting her.
And he was not running dry.
Reika already knew the conclusion.
Her Ice Dragon rammed forward, serpentine and roaring, but a mud clone surged up to swallow it whole, chakra devouring chakra, dragon collapsing into powder.
Three snakes dug beneath the ice, erupting behind her ankles.
Reika spun, flash-freezing them in mid-lunge — but another elemental blast followed immediately, shattering her defense and forcing her back again.
Every technique she used cost a massive chakra.
Her Yin Seal was still relatively 'young' and precious after all.
Her ice storm raged across half the clearing, transforming trees into statues, soil into frostwork, air into shards.
But Orochimaru's clone kept pace with effortless cruelty, weaving combination A-rank and fusion-style techniques as quickly as she froze them.
The worst part was how calm he looked.
Reika's vision narrowed for a heartbeat, frost gathering on her lashes.
She stood her ground, the cold around her thickening into a blizzard.
She could still fight for a while.
But she wouldn't last forever.
Her Yin Seal markings pulsed again, chakra burning rapidly.
Reika inhaled slowly, lips tightening.
She would not fall easily.
But now… now she understood the scale of what they were facing.
'I can't give up without giving the biggest struggle of my life…'
'For a Shadow Clone to throw around this many advanced techniques, it has to be carrying a sizeable chunk of his chakra.'
'Then, the more I keep it here and drain it successfully, the easier it'll be for the others… for Kimimaro most of all, who is facing the real body.'
'I need to keep the output the same somehow… without bleeding chakra like this.'
Reika clenched her teeth, ice mist curling from between them.
She hadn't felt this level of pressure since the time her mother died.
That same cold premonition clawed at her spine, whispering that history might be preparing to repeat itself in some way.
She gathered ice-chakra again, slower this time, steadier, and something in her spiritual energy and kekkei genkai shifted with it.
A quiet, dangerous change.
The clash continued.
Yet, the deeper she was pushed into a corner, the more her attacks began to sharpen, condense, and resonate with a new, harder edge.
It was as if she'd begun relying less on her Yin Seal's raw reserves and more on something else entirely.
The same area-of-effect output, but with noticeably less chakra burned each time.
Almost like her kekkei genkai was… adapting.
Refining itself.
Evolving in real time with every clash, every inch she was pushed back, every fragment of feedback she wrested from Orochimaru's assault.
'How intriguing…' Orochimaru mused mid-strike, the thought sliding through his mind with a quiet curl of satisfaction. 'If the others also show surprises like this, the challenge may be less… trivial than I assumed.'
He knew exactly what he was seeing.
Not only were the girl's tactics adapting on the fly, her spirit was shifting too.
Subtle, but unmistakable. And spirit, will, inner drive… that was half of chakra.
Most shinobi, when cornered, spiraled downward until they broke.
The ones who evolved in the middle of a life-or-death struggle?
In all his long life, Orochimaru could count such cases on his hands.
And it wasn't just her resolve that was changing.
Her kekkei genkai itself was mutating under the pressure.
Emotion, stress, desperation, chakra depletion — all of it was catalyzing something deeper in her bloodline.
Rare… but not impossible.
After all, no clan rivaled the Uchiha when it came to emotional evolution, yet other bloodlines could undergo similar, if lesser, awakenings.
Kekkei genkai weren't fixed things.
In the right shinobi, under the right strain, they could sharpen, bloom...
And this girl… had something in her that was waking up.
...
And at that same moment, coincidentally, Orochimaru's true body, still clashing with Kimimaro, flickered into something sharper than amusement.
A brief analytical, complete seriousness.
Because he was sensing it too, not only Reika's shift, but the extraordinary and unlikely ripples running across the entire battlefield through his clones.
The Yuki girl… Something in her bloodline was sharpening itself under pressure.
The Chinoike girl… she was undergoing a similar metamorphosis.
Her mid-range blood arts were also no longer the reckless brutality and forcefulness of a newly gifted beginner.
She was starting to layer them, sequence them, read him, learning from his movements in real time.
Worse, her own body was pulling spilled blood back into itself, knitting superficial injuries with a strange, instinctive regenerative draw.
And her earlier bravado had gone silent.
Utter focus.
A dangerous kind of clarity for someone with a dojutsu like hers.
Not ideal for his clone there.
Then there was the Hyūga.
Her Byakugan burned brighter in his senses — literally brighter.
The range of her gentle fist techniques slowly pushed outward by meters as dozens of minutes passed already.
She was also refining herself, sharpening her stance, like someone who now had something very personal to prove.
One after another, tiny awakenings.
One after another, unacceptable variables.
Orochimaru did not miss any of it.
Not a single shift.
'Enough,' Orochimaru decided, the thought sliding through his mind like a blade.
'I can't afford restraint here. There are far too many useful anomalies standing in front of me, too many potential vessels, bloodlines, and little mysteries I refuse to let slip away because I feel like toying with them.'
His gaze cut toward Kimimaro.
'Game over. Before even this main brat starts evolving any further for some reason…'
The decision crystallized in an instant.
He stopped holding back.
The clones had more than enough chakra to pin down the girls for as long as needed.
The real battle was always the Kaguya.
Break the spine of the mini-group, and the rest would collapse in moments, both psychologically and literally.
Orochimaru's body coiled.
And he moved to finish Kimimaro first.
He was ready to reach for any advanced technique he possessed and had saved so far, whatever it took to end the boy as efficiently and as quickly as the situation demanded.