The wind died.
It happened instantly, as if someone had shut a valve. The rustling of leaves ceased. The birds, whose cries had filled the forest, fell silent. Even the insects stopped buzzing.
The Forest of Death plunged into a vacuum.
Team 7 froze on a thick branch of a giant tree.
Naruto, walking point, stopped so abruptly that the soles of his sandals carved furrows into the bark.
"What is it this time?" Sasuke began, irritated by the sudden stop. "Another bear?"
Naruto didn't answer. His back was tense as a steel cable.
Qi Sensory, running in the background, wailed.
This felt nothing like a bear. Nothing like Zabuza. And not even like the Fox.
It was a sensation of absolute, sticky cold. As if reality itself around them was filling with poisonous gas. The vibrations of the forest vanished—every living thing within a kilometer radius hid, trying to become invisible.
In front of them, on a neighboring branch, stood a person.
He was dressed in the beige tunic of a Grass Village shinobi. On his head sat a huge straw hat concealing his face.
He simply stood there. But his presence weighed on their shoulders with the heft of a gravestone.
The stranger slowly raised his head. Eyes flashed from beneath the brim of the hat.
Golden. Vertical. Serpentine.
"And you are... rare prey," a voice rustled.
It sounded like someone dragging sandpaper over bones.
In that moment, he released Sakki—Killing Intent.
Sasuke Uchiha's world shattered.
In his eyes, the forest disappeared. He saw himself. His head, severed from his body, rolling along the branch. Saw a fountain of blood gushing from his neck. Saw his death—inevitable and instantaneous.
Sakura behind him let out a strangled sob. Her pupils constricted to pinpoints. She saw the same thing. Her mind, unprepared for S-rank level pressure, simply shut down, falling into a stupor.
Sasuke tried to move. Tried to reach for a kunai. But his fingers disobeyed. His body betrayed him. He vomited right at his feet, bile and fear.
Death... This is death... I'm going to die... a single thought spun in his head.
Naruto felt it too.
To him, Orochimaru's Sakki looked like a tsunami of black, rotten mud trying to drown his consciousness. The pressure was colossal. His knees buckled.
But he didn't break.
In his gut, behind the seal, darkness stirred.
"HA!"
The Nine-Tails' roar sounded in Naruto's head like a gong strike.
"This little snake dares to bare its claws before ME?!" The Bijū's rage was so great he couldn't hold back a shout. To Kurama, the embodiment of hatred, Orochimaru's Sakki was a pathetic imitation.
This impulse of anger, mixed with the crystal clarity of Qi Concentration, instantly snapped Naruto back to reality.
He inhaled. The air tasted like ash.
He looked at Sasuke. The Uchiha was shaking, staring into the void with glazed eyes.
They can't move, Naruto realized. This isn't Genjutsu. It's pure terror. If I do nothing, we all die here. Right now.
Sensory perception screamed: this was no Genin. Before him lay an abyss. A monster compared to whom Zabuza was just a child with a knife.
Naruto activated Qi Circulation to the max to rush blood through his veins.
"RUN!!!"
Naruto's shout was amplified by chakra. It slammed into his comrades' ears, trying to rip them from their trance.
Sasuke flinched, returning to reality. He looked at Naruto with wild eyes.
"You..."
"GET OUT OF HERE!" Naruto yelled, turning his back to them and entering a combat stance. "That's no Genin! That's a monster! Forget the scroll and leave!"
The Grass Shinobi laughed quietly. His shoulders shook.
"What a loud child. And how... alive. You are the only one who didn't see your death? Curious."
He pulled out an "Earth" scroll and waved it.
"You want this scroll, don't you? I'll give it to you. If you can entertain me."
He swallowed the scroll. Whole. His throat bulged unnaturally to accommodate the object, then returned to normal.
"Here I come," he whispered.
In the next instant, he vanished.
Naruto reacted on instinct.
His fingers instantly formed a cross seal.
"Kage Bunshin!"
At the same moment, three standard smoke bombs flew at his feet. A thick grey cloud exploded with a hiss, concealing the team's position. In that same second, only three clones appeared in the smoke.
The first, stomping loudly and breaking branches, dashed right—perfect bait for a predator reacting to movement. The second jumped vertically, preparing to attack from above. The third, along with the original, instantly suppressed chakra to a minimum and silently slid under a thick branch into a blind spot.
WHOOSH!
A gust of wind, sharp as a razor, sliced through the smoke screen. The bait-clone and the attacker-clone were bisected before they could even touch the enemy. But they achieved their goal—they bought a second and a half and forced the enemy to attack emptiness.
The real Naruto threw kunai with explosive tags.
BOOM!
An explosion engulfed the branch. Smoke and fire.
But flying out of the fire wasn't a scorched figure, but a giant snake.
It opened its maw, intending to swallow Naruto whole. For its size, it rushed forward faster than expected.
Kawarimi! Uzumaki barked internally, but not with a standard log.
He switched places with the hiding clone created beforehand.
The snake's jaws clamped onto the double. POOF! The clone vanished in a puff of smoke right inside the beast's mouth, disorienting it.
The real Naruto, appearing a meter above the snake's head, was already twisting his body for a strike.
Qi Control: Reinforcement!
He directed Qi into his heel and, using the inertia of the fall, drove his foot into the reptile's flat skull.
The impact was heavy. The snake's jaw crunched, and it was knocked aside. But in that same moment, out of the snake's mouth... climbed the Grass Shinobi himself. He was dry, clean, and unharmed.
He stretched like rubber, his neck elongating five meters, and lunged at Naruto, opening his mouth from which the blade of the Kusanagi protruded.
"Fast!" the monster hissed.
Uzumaki barely managed to block with a kunai.
CLANG!
The impact was of monstrous force. Naruto was flung away. He crashed through a branch with his back, flew through the canopy of another tree, and slammed into a trunk, knocking all the air from his lungs.
"Gah..."
He slid down the tree, tasting blood. His ribs ached. If not for Body Tempering, his spine would have definitely snapped.
He raised his head.
The Grass Shinobi stood on a higher branch. He looked at Naruto with unconcealed interest.
Sasuke and Sakura were still where he had left them.
Sasuke was on his knees, clutching his head. He saw the fight. Saw Naruto fighting.
But he couldn't force himself to stand. Fear bound his muscles in chains.
Move! he screamed at himself. Coward! Useless! Naruto is dying! Do something!
But his body showed no signs of movement.
The enemy addressed Naruto.
"You use a strange power, boy," he noted, licking his lips with a long tongue. "That doesn't feel like the Fox's chakra. It's something else. Dense. Hard. Who taught you?"
Naruto spat blood. He understood: this was the end. He couldn't win. His current level was clearly below Jonin. And this monster was far stronger than a Jonin. Such a gap in power was insurmountable.
But he had to buy time. At least a minute.
Naruto slowly stood up. His legs trembled, but he forced them straight.
"I was taught by..." he rasped, forming a seal. He tried not to abuse this technique in combat due to the risk of exhaustion. "...survival instinct."
He closed his eyes for a split second.
A massive Reserve of Chakra flooded his channels.
"Tajū Kage Bunshin no Jutsu! (Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu)"
The forest exploded with white puffs. Hundreds of clones filled the space—branches, trunks, bushes below. But they didn't rush to attack.
In a unified impulse, this black mass scattered in all directions.
"Sasuke, grab Sakura and go!" one clone yelled, running left.
"I have the scroll, freak!" shouted another, jumping right.
"No, I'm the real one!" a third screamed, throwing a smoke bomb at Orochimaru's feet.
This wasn't an assault. It was an operation to create absolute chaos. Dozens of Narutos darted about, crisscrossing trajectories, creating false chakra signals and noise, overloading the enemy's perception. The goal was singular: force the predator to lose the real prey in the crowd.
The monster froze for a moment, his snake eyes darting, trying to isolate the original from this madness.
Then he laughed.
He spread his arms. Thousands of snakes burst from his sleeves.
The slaughter began.