Hearing Naruto's miserable scream, Sasuke and Sakura naturally rushed over to see what was going on.
Meanwhile, the Amegakure ninja lurking in the shadows, waiting for a chance to attack, didn't even have time to react before they were swallowed up by a writhing giant snake and turned into its meal.
That snake was easily over a hundred meters long. With one bite, swallowing several people whole wouldn't be a problem at all.
Sasuke and Sakura reached Naruto's side.
Sakura let out a sharp girlish scream, which was immediately followed by a crisp slap and a chorus of startled birds and beasts throughout the forest shouting in spirit:
"Pervert——!!!"
With a bright red handprint on his face, Naruto knelt properly on the ground and began explaining.
While he was peeing, his ninja pouch had shifted, and the mission scroll had slipped out and fallen to the ground. And just at that moment, he happened to be…
"So…"
"Then I screamed without thinking. I'm really sorry."
Naruto rubbed the mark on his cheek, apologizing pitifully.
The worst part was that when Sakura rushed over, he hadn't even had time to pull his pants back up.
Veins popped out on both Sasuke's and Sakura's foreheads. They were completely at a loss against Naruto's unexpected and absurd behavior.
More importantly, that mission scroll, far more important than either the Heaven Scroll or the Earth Scroll, had actually been dirtied by Naruto?!
Sakura planted her hands on her hips and shouted, "There's a river nearby! Go wash that scroll clean!!!"
Naruto obediently took the scroll and headed toward the river.
Hidden nearby, Orochimaru was just about to make his move.
Sakura muttered something casually but that offhand remark made his attack freeze in place.
"I really don't get it," Sakura continued. "The Fourth Hokage-sama was such an elite, handsome, and gentlemanly man. How can you, as his son, be completely clueless about a lady's heart? Hmph!"
Naruto puffed out his cheeks. "He never taught me stuff like that before…"
Those words made Sakura suddenly remember that Naruto had been an orphan until recently.
"Sorry, I didn't mean it that way," she said. She really hadn't meant anything bad by it. She was just too straightforward.
Sasuke said nothing. He had a faint sense of danger lingering around them and had no mood to chat. He focused instead on carefully watching their surroundings.
In fact, he had sensed someone nearby earlier, but their strength hadn't seemed impressive. He'd been waiting for them to reveal themselves, hoping this would raise Naruto's and Sakura's alertness.
Yet the moment Naruto screamed, those presences vanished completely.
That made Sasuke sense an even greater threat.
What he didn't know was that Orochimaru, who had been lying in wait, stopped his attack precisely because he heard Sakura Haruno's words.
A man as insidious as a snake…
At this very moment, he was participating in the Chūnin Exams disguised as a woman.
Orochimaru stared at the blond brat who didn't look anything like Minato Namikaze. If he had to point something out, it was only the blond hair and blue eyes that resembled Minato Namikaze at all.
This kid is Minato Namikaze's son?
And what did he mean by "before that"?!
The Fourth Hokage's death during the Nine-Tails incident was common knowledge. Could this be another scheme by that damned old Third Hokage?!
Driven by curiosity, Orochimaru didn't act rashly. Instead, he quietly followed the three kids, continuing to gather information about them.
A mission scroll?
His snake-like tongue flicked across his lips as he watched the blond boy reach the river and start washing the scroll.
"Wash it properly," Sasuke said.
"Tch, what, do you have a cleanliness obsession?!" Naruto complained.
"Shut up and wash it!" Sakura threatened, showing off her rock-hard fist.
Naruto rubbed the scroll pitifully. "Yes…"
Washing the scroll inevitably meant opening it, and Orochimaru sharply caught fragments of what was written inside.
[SSS, rescue, man...]
[D, Kakashi, read, Icha Icha...]
…
[S, seventy people, Chūnin Exams...]
[C, Gaara, ramen...]
…
Orochimaru's thoughts raced as he tried to piece together what all of this information meant.
Especially that mission marked SSS. Unlike his other missions, it didn't have the [Mission Status: Completed.] tag at all.
"Ah!!!"
"What are you freaking out about now?! You super idiot!" Sasuke snapped, still keeping an eye on their surroundings. He could feel a cold, sinister gaze, but couldn't tell where it was coming from.
Sakura noticed something else. At the very end of Naruto's mission scroll, two new lines of text had appeared.
"Another C-rank mission?" she blurted out without thinking.
Sasuke immediately turned to look. "What? A new mission?!"
Naruto sat down by the stream and opened the scroll.
[Mission Rank: C-rank]
[Mission Objective: Repel Orochimaru.]
"Orochi… maru?"
Naruto's mind immediately filled with the image of a snake tied into a knot like a dumpling. He rejected that, then imagined a takoyaki stuffed with a snake instead.
Sasuke and Sakura didn't know what Orochimaru actually was either, but they were almost certain it was an enemy they might run into later.
"Whatever Orochimaru is, we need to be extra careful," Sasuke said cautiously. "I keep feeling like there's a cold gaze watching us."
"Huh?" Naruto twisted his head, looking left and right. "I don't feel anything."
Sakura slipped her hand into her ninja pouch. Inside was a pair of gauntlets she had bought at the weapon shop yesterday specifically for this exam.
Snakes hidden among the trees were hard to detect in the first place. Orochimaru watched the three kids in the clearing with interest.
The most outstanding one was without question the last survivor of the Uchiha clan. The pink-haired girl also reminded him of Tsunade from long ago.
Only the one called Naruto Uzumaki puzzled him.
He was said to be Minato Namikaze's son, yet this dead-last look made it impossible for Orochimaru to associate him with the Yellow Flash.
If he had to say…
An image surfaced in his mind of a white-haired, spiky-headed idiot from decades ago.
A genuine dead last, yet always shouting about wanting the spotlight. Hmph.
"Wash it clean and let's move," Sasuke said. "This place is too exposed. It's not safe."
Naruto shook the water off the scroll, rolled his sleeves back down, and stood up to leave.
They headed into the darker part of the forest, where towering trees and dense foliage nearly blocked out the sky.
Orochimaru, who had been following them the whole time, deliberately let a trace of his presence leak out. Not all at once, but little by little, gradually increasing it, letting fear trail after the three genin.
Sasuke, Naruto, and Sakura felt chills run down their spines. They had sensed it for a while now.
Compared to an enemy suddenly appearing in front of them, being stared at like prey by Orochimaru felt far worse, like a harmless rabbit locked in the sights of a massive tiger.
Unsettling. Frightening. Irritating.
In the end, the first to snap wasn't Naruto, but the more sensitive Sasuke.
"Who's there?! Show yourself!!!"
His shout startled a flock of birds hidden in the trees, sending them scattering into the air.
The once dark and silent forest gained a bit of movement, but that didn't make the three of them feel any safer. If anything, it only made the atmosphere more eerie.
"Yare yare such an impatient child"
The voice was neither clearly male nor female, seductive and strange. It sounded as if it was behind them, yet also as though it was coming from all directions at once.
Naruto jumped up like a bristling fox and yelled, "If you've got the guts, come out!! Stop pretending to be spooky and scaring people!!"
The instant his words fell—
A filthy, pink mass reeking of stench slammed straight toward him!
Naruto didn't even have time to react.
Sasuke activated his Sharingan a split second earlier, grabbing Naruto and Sakura and leaping upward through the branches.
In just one or two seconds, the three of them had bounded up and down the trees seven or eight times in rapid succession.
Naruto and Sakura finally looked down and saw what had been chasing them.
It was a massive python, one that could easily swallow all three of them in a single bite.
That foul-smelling, dirty pink flesh was the inside of its mouth. Thick, sharp fangs lined both sides. If it bit down, a person would be skewered straight through without any trouble.
"Could this be…?" Naruto screamed in terror as Sasuke hauled him up by the collar. "O-o-o-o-o—Orochimaru?!"
"That thing is way too big!!!!!!" Sakura shrieked.
Sasuke's head throbbed from the two of them yelling.
"Jump!"
He let go of their collars and shot upward, his hands already forming seals.
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!!"
After being personally trained by Madara, Sasuke's Great Fireball was a full three meters larger in diameter than before.
The giant snake couldn't dodge in time.
Its gaping mouth failed to swallow a person and instead gulped down an enormous fireball.
Seeing the snake writhing on the ground in agony, Sakura and Naruto lit up with excitement. Sasuke also felt a faint sense of pride at stealing the spotlight, but maintaining his cool demeanor, he only let out a cold snort and said nothing.
The fireball didn't go out after being swallowed. Instead, it continued to scorch the snake's body, making it thrash violently and smash everything around it.
The smell of roasted meat spread from its body, and to their surprise, the three of them actually felt a little hungry.
However, having had very few chances for wilderness training, none of them had ever eaten snake meat before. They exchanged looks, their gazes clearly waiting for someone to make the call.
Sasuke didn't want to look this undignified. Even at a time like this, the young master's airs had to be preserved.
Sakura, meanwhile, absolutely couldn't afford to appear unladylike in front of Sasuke.
Naruto sniffed the air. Growing up, he had learned to catch fish and boil wild mushroom soup on his own, so he wasn't as bothered as the other two.
Seeing the giant snake lying motionless on the ground, he immediately jumped down from the tall tree.
"Hey, be careful! Idiot!" Sasuke shouted, but it was too late to grab him.
Thinking the snake was dead, Naruto walked straight over.
"Gurgle… gurgle…"
The snake's charred head suddenly twitched.
Naruto froze. Sasuke and Sakura thought it might be explosive tags and yelled at him to get back.
Naruto leapt backward, but a kunai shot out from the snake's mouth and still managed to slash across his face.
Right after that, the giant snake opened its jaws wide and slowly spat out a black-haired woman, her entire body covered in sticky slime.
The scene was so grotesque that Naruto's legs nearly gave out, and he hurriedly jumped back to Sasuke and Sakura's side.
The woman crawled out of the snake's mouth and peeled the slimy membrane off her body.
To the three of them, it was utterly disgusting.
Especially when the woman let out a strange laugh. "Hehehe…, heehee…"
Sakura felt goosebumps rise all over her arms.
Sasuke looked at the giant snake's corpse sprawled on the ground, then at the woman standing there with her head lowered, laughing strangely.
"You're… Orochimaru?!" he asked.
Naruto was shocked. "What?! Isn't Orochimaru the snake on the ground?!"
Sasuke and Sakura immediately took up fighting stances.
[Repel Orochimaru!]
It was the C-rank mission written on the scroll.
The last C-rank mission had only been Naruto treating Gaara to a bowl of ramen, and the real reason it succeeded had been the power of Kotoamatsukami. Because of that, the three of them had made a serious misjudgment of the strength of this strangely behaving "woman" in front of them.
This C-rank mission… they could still handle it, right?
But then again, what would the mission reward be this time?
…
Publicly Available Information—
C-rank mission reward: A person from another parallel world crossing into a different parallel world.