Chapter 271: Facing Orochimaru
A few hours later, Yuna and Anko left Sasuke’s room with satisfied faces and a slight glow on their cheeks.
[DING! You have fulfilled the special condition: Have sex inside the base of an enemy you plan to take down while his boy-toy is in the same room. You gained the title: Degeneracy Behind Enemy Lines.]
‘Geez, you are extravagating, Kurama. It’s just Orochimaru; why do you make it sound like we did something dangerous.’
[It might not have been dangerous, but that doesn’t mean that it was something a sane person would do.]
‘Well, Anko and I were the ones who did it, so you are pretty much correct.’
[Mhh, that’s true, isn’t it? Oh, well.]
While Yuna and Kurama were chatting, Anko swept Orochimaru’s base with her [Spirit Sense] to determine Orochimaru’s current position.
This was actually the reason why Yuna and Anko waited so long with their attack on Orochimaru. He was ridiculously slippery, and Anko had no confidence in actually killing him without something to lock onto his position. If she had been satisfied with just defeating him alone and forcing him to run away, Anko would have looked for him much earlier.
Moments later, a vicious grin appeared on Anko was as she looked in a certain direction.
“Found you~”
Without a moment of hesitation, the skin around her eyes turned red, while her eyes turned crimson. She pointed the index finger of her right hand at Orochimaru’s current position while gathering massive amounts of Natural energy and chakra at its tip.
“[Flame Cultivation Arts: White Pillar]”
“Hey! Why did you shorten the name!?”
Anko ignored Yuna’s complaint and focused her attention on the white pillar of highly concentrated flames that was currently piercing through Orochimaru’s hideout like the whole thing was made out of cotton instead.
She noticed that Orochimaru managed to dodge her attack but wasn’t too bothered about it. She mainly used it to create a shortcut to his current location, after all.
When Anko saw the power of the attack she just used, she couldn’t help but smile. Before meeting Yuna, she couldn’t even hope to achieve an attack of this level, but now, she could casually use it as an opener.
The skin around her eyes and her eyes themself changed back to normal while a light chuckle escaped Anko. For now, she wanted to test out her current strength against Orochimaru without using Yuna’s cultivation techniques.
“Are you listening, Anko? The correct name is: [Dao of Fire Cultivation Arts: Piercing White Pillar of Heavenly Flames].”
After giving Yuna a nod of acknowledgment despite barely listening to her words, Anko bent her knees and jumped through the pathway she just created. Considering she literally melted the path into the stone, the temperature inside of it was incredibly high, but as someone who had a high affinity to fire cultivation, she barely noticed it.
Moments later, Yuna mimicked Anko’s movements while still grumbling about using improper technique names. Unlike Anko, environments with a high heat level could probably be considered Yuna’s weakness, but just a little bit of passive heat from an intense fire technique naturally doesn’t bother her.
When Anko arrived inside the same room Orochimaru was in, and she saw his current facial expression, which was twisted into shock and disbelief, she couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Hehe, what’s wrong, Orochimaru? Surprised to see my new jutsu?”
When Orochimaru heard someone speaking to him, he got out of his daze, but when he noticed that Anko somehow appeared inside his hideout and that she just admitted to shooting the previous attack, he could only look at her in bewilderment.
“You shot that attack? That is impossible; you don’t have what it takes to reach that level of power. I examined you multiple times over a long period of time while you were my student, and you simply do not have the potential to produce an attack like that.”
Before Anko could answer, Yuna landed next to her with a disdainful smirk on her face.
“Well, little snake, that is the difference between someone who thinks he knows how to teach someone how to become stronger and someone who actually does.”
However, Orochimaru barely heard Yuna’s words because the moment she appeared next to Anko, hatred flooded his body, which was quickly replaced by a feeling of glee.
“Kukuku, to think you would dare to show yourself in front of me again, Yuna Uzumaki. Today you will pay for what happened the last time we met.”
Yuna looked at him weirdly before shaking her head in dismay.
“Every time I meet you again, you somehow make it sound like our previous encounter didn’t end in you getting your ass kicked. I really wonder what kind of weird perception of the world you have.”
“Well, I won’t deny that our last encounter didn’t go too well for me, but this time I have prepared proper countermeasures against you. Well, my preparations are 100 perfect yet, but it shouldn’t be too much trouble to kill you with what I have prepared.”
Yuna could feel some excitement bubbling up when she heard Orochimaru’s words, but before she could say anything else, Anko stepped forward with an annoyed expression on her face.
“Oi, I’m still here. Yuna is just here for transportation and will not participate in our one-on-one fight. I’m not here to see Yuna tear you a new one; I am here to do it myself.”
Orochimaru couldn’t help but laugh when he heard Anko’s words.
“You? Defeat me? In a one-on-one? You sure have grown delusional over the last few years, Anko. I know what kind of potential you have, and you will never be my equal.”
“Hehe, big words, big words. During our encounter in the Forest of Death, I managed to cut your head off, but you managed to escape due to all the weird techniques, you know. This time, I will make sure that there is no next time.”
Orochimaru snorted in disdain before going through a few hand signs and slamming his right hand on the ground.
“I have no intentions of humoring your desire for a one-on-one. Frankly, I have no interest in you at all. [Edo Tensei].”
Moments later, three coffins rose out of the ground, causing a massive grin to appear on Yuna’s face.
“Seems like I will get the chance to have a little workout, after all, Anko. I assume you have no desire to fight whoever comes out of those coffins, right?”
Anko only shrugged her shoulders in indifference before answering Yuna.
“Yeah, I couldn’t care less. You can have them. Let’s see for how long Orochimaru is willing to ignore me after I set him aflame a few times.”
“Kukuku, you still dare to act so casually despite your death being this close? I am not sure if I should call your behavior courageous or plain stupid.”
Moments later, the three coffins fully emerged from the ground, and the first one opened. The moment Anko saw the person in the first coffin, she was overcome with absolute helplessness…