Fujimoto Tōma had to admit it. Killing Orochimaru was a nightmare that refused to end.
The charred corpse of the giant snake suddenly twitched. The sealed jaws split open from the inside as two slime-covered hands forced their way out, prying bone and scale apart. A moment later, Orochimaru began dragging himself free from the serpent's belly like something crawling out of its own grave.
Tōma didn't wait.
A marked kunai left his hand in a clean arc. His fingers followed with seals, sharp and economical.
"Shuriken Shadow Clone Jutsu."
The single kunai fractured into hundreds, then thousands, flooding the sky in a metallic storm aimed directly at Orochimaru's position.
Tōma had always remembered this trick of his. Orochimaru's snake-substitution technique took time. Back then, he'd thought it was a weakness.
Now he understood. It was deliberate. Psychological warfare. Disgust first, danger second.
Orochimaru sensed it too.
He tore himself fully out of the snake's mouth in one violent motion, hit the ground, and completed his seals almost instantly.
"Wind Style. Great Breakthrough."
A blast of compressed wind roared outward from his mouth, shredding the airborne kunai clones into nothing. Only the original marked blade remained, blown somewhere far beyond sight.
The battlefield fell quiet again.
Orochimaru stood beside the smoking snake corpse, yellow eyes fixed on Tōma. It looked almost like the opening standoff all over again.
Almost.
Tōma took a controlled breath and checked his reserves. His chakra was steady. He hadn't burned through much. Most of his fighting style was efficient, surgical. Endurance was one of his few unfair advantages.
Orochimaru, on the other hand, was breathing hard.
Being cut into pieces tended to do that. Even for him.
Regeneration took chakra. So did summoning a replacement snake that size. Stack enough costs together, and even monsters started to feel tired.
"Fujimoto Tōma," Orochimaru said, tongue flicking across his lips. "So you do have a kekkei genkai. Magnet Release, was it? How disappointing. And yet… how fascinating."
During their earlier exchanges, Orochimaru had repeatedly used Shadow Snake Hands, only for each snake to be shredded apart by the iron fragments orbiting Tōma's body. None of them could get close.
Tōma felt the same frustration. Those blades were meant for Orochimaru himself, not his endless disposable snakes.
"So what if I do?" Tōma replied flatly. "And what if I don't?"
He wasn't about to explain anything.
Orochimaru chuckled, then suddenly dropped to all fours, jaws stretching unnaturally wide.
"Snake Art. Thousand Snakes Array."
A living tide poured from his mouth. Hundreds upon hundreds of small snakes surged forward, bodies tangling together as they rushed Tōma like a crawling wall.
Tōma felt his scalp prickle. It wasn't fear. It was disgust.
He mirrored Orochimaru's earlier hand signs.
"Wind Style. Great Breakthrough."
The resulting gale was louder. Sharper. Wind screamed across the field like invisible blades, ripping through the swarm. Snakes were flung into the air, torn apart, smashed back toward their summoner in broken segments.
Stronger than before.
Orochimaru raised an arm to shield his face, eyes wide.
Same jutsu. Greater output.
That realization hit harder than the wind itself.
This meant Tōma's mastery of wind chakra surpassed his own.
And Tōma was thirteen.
Orochimaru had been called a genius once too. Long ago. Before obsession replaced restraint.
Now he saw it clearly. This wasn't just talent. This was something that ignored time entirely.
Even without a bloodline, Tōma could reach this level.
Orochimaru laughed.
Yes. This was perfect.
The higher someone climbed, the more unbearable the ceiling became. When Tōma reached the end of what talent alone could offer, he would feel the same desperation. He would search for shortcuts. For forbidden paths.
Just like him.
Belief aside, reality still needed solving.
The Thousand Snakes Array had been meant to buy time. It failed. Completely.
Orochimaru slammed his hands onto the ground anyway. The seals were already finished.
Three coffins began rising from beneath the earth.
A flash of lightning cut across the field.
Orochimaru leapt aside as a railgun-like blast slammed into the crystal wall behind him, punching a massive hole straight through before the structure regenerated.
Tōma appeared between the three coffins in the same instant, driving them back into the ground with brutal precision. He looked up at Orochimaru with a thin, mocking smile.
"You really think I'd let you use Edo Tensei?"
Orochimaru's expression darkened.
He hadn't prepared it in advance because bringing extra forces risked Tōma escaping with Flying Thunder God. That caution had cost him.
He'd underestimated the boy.
Badly.
At this point, even Jiraiya might not fare better in a straight fight. Well, excluding that ridiculous Sage Mode of his.
Still, Orochimaru remained calm. Tōma didn't give him that feeling. That sense of unavoidable death.
He knew the truth.
Tōma couldn't kill him.
And Orochimaru couldn't keep him either. Not with that speed.
The idea of stealing Tōma's body was dead. Even if he succeeded, talent like this didn't transfer cleanly. What Orochimaru wanted were surface-level gifts. Things that worked the moment you took the body. Sharingan. Shikotsumyaku.
Not this.
Tōma frowned.
Killing Orochimaru was absurdly hard. Rasenshuriken was his trump card, but it required a direct hit. Once Orochimaru became cautious, that chance would vanish.
And the technique was loud. Too loud for ambush.
Sword, fire, wind. None of it worked.
Sealing was the answer. But sealing only worked if the target cooperated.
He didn't have a magic sword that solved everything on contact. Life wasn't written that conveniently.
Both of them sensed it at the same time.
Naruto had drawn on the Nine-Tails' power.
"Looks like my side has the advantage," Orochimaru said lightly, searching Tōma's face for concern.
He found none.
"You should worry about your people instead," Tōma replied. "I trust Naruto."
Kabuto Yakushi wasn't weak. Orochimaru knew that.
"So is Naruto," Tōma shot back. "Especially right now."
Orochimaru fell silent.
If the Nine-Tails' jinchūriki truly learned control, then this entire operation might collapse.
Time, once his ally, was slipping away.
Tōma stayed calm on the surface, but his senses never left Naruto. The chakra flaring in the distance was nearing one tail. Two was the limit. Beyond that, he'd have to intervene immediately.
Tsunade was there. That helped.
After a long breath, Orochimaru made his choice.
This battlefield no longer mattered.
He bit his thumb and slammed his hand down.
"Summoning Jutsu."
A colossal serpent erupted onto the plain. Manda.
At the same time, the crystal walls surrounding the battlefield shattered. Guren released her technique, finally free from maintaining the massive barrier that had been eating away at her chakra.
The entire plain was exposed.
Jiraiya's battlefield was a nightmare of bone swords piercing the earth, Kimimaro fully transformed under the curse mark's second stage. Jiraiya himself was wounded, but still standing.
On the other side, Shizune treated a trembling Tsunade while Naruto, bathed in red chakra, stood between them and Kabuto like a living wall.
Compared to those, Tōma's fight almost looked… clean.
But everyone understood the truth.
The decisive phase had begun.