Orochimaru was suddenly interested in my work and even helped me in some places, demonstrating a good level of knowledge, even if I had to explain some of the nuances of Fuin unification on my fingers.
Of course, for a full-fledged training was not the place and time, but judging by the interest shown, it was another hook on which I managed to hook the snake sannin, which I wanted, without outwardly demonstrating it in any way and answering only to direct questions from a colleague.
My favorite work, which appeared very suddenly, distracted me from the tense waiting - even though according to intelligence reports, Kumogakure's forces crossed into the territory of small countries by the next evening from my arrival at the front, but did not go immediately into a reckless attack, taking advantage of the guaranteed numerical advantage, and sent scouts first.
Naturally, they were immediately hunted down by our forces, who did not at all want the available billets to be discovered and bypassed or destroyed beforehand.
Thanks to enough sensors in the person of Hyuga, this phase was left to us and on the third day, Kumogakure's army, along with the allies, crossed the border of Hyuga no Kuni, advancing in a fairly wide front and using battlefield reconnaissance.
The reports flowing to the headquarters from all sides painted a rather gloomy picture - the enemy troops in the first army was not less than twelve thousand, even if one and a half or two of them belonged to small villages, but this did not comfort the defenders who opposed the whole mass.
No normal confrontation was out of the question - the clanmate chose the tactic of dagger strikes, with an instant attack on the teams ahead and immediately retreat to the pre-prepared positions, despite the effectiveness of the attack, where the pursuers were quickly taken apart thanks to traps and prepared battlefield.
Yes, Konoha's forces were also taking casualties, including some unrecoverable ones, but this allowed us to slow down the enemy's advance until they were willing to take heavy casualties in order to come at us with all their might.
Most importantly, there was no presence of Kumogakure's elite forces on the front lines, which meant that Orochimaru and I remained in reserve, waiting for the moment when we needed to move to intercept them. Even a pseudo-jinchuriki can be detected from a very long distance and no fuin can help it for long - biju chakra is too conspicuous even in a passive state and Kingin Kyodai will definitely not be able to go unnoticed.
While leading the iryonins to the field hospital and receiving the liquid stream of bodies of dead ninja (which I then passed on to my youngest colleague, handing over the appropriate scrolls), I even considered the possibility of serving as bait - not personally, of course, but with the help of reinforced kage bunshins - but then I put the idea aside, as any delay before the direct confrontation was to my advantage, not only for me, but also for Konoha.
After all, the creation of shadow clones, which I hoped to use in the coming war to replenish the prisoners, was not a quick job either, especially when it was necessary to maintain combat readiness twenty-four hours a day.
And the pseudo-jinchuriki would have to be backed up by a whole army that posed a serious threat even to the elite, and even as support... It would be better to wait for the arrival of our main forces and then enter the battle.
But all plans go to hell when the enemy decides to do things their own way.
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