Kuromaru pleaded with Snowy: "Lord Snowy, think all you want, but can you please not use my head as a scratching post?"
"What are you barking about? What are you barking about?"
Snowy swiped at Kuromaru twice, and Kuromaru immediately stopped barking.
Snowy released its senses to detect Kabuto's aura. Before this, it had been curious about a certain aura within Root; that aura felt like a snake.
Snowy had never met Orochimaru. If it had felt Orochimaru's aura, it would have been able to distinguish that the aura in Root was very similar to Orochimaru's.
"This snake-like aura? It cannot be underestimated. Come on, let's go take a look!"
Snowy took Kuromaru to the location of the aura it had sensed.
Kabuto lived next to the cells where Root held captured Shinobi.
Because Edo Tensei required living sacrifices with chakra, Kabuto needed to practice it hands-on while learning Edo Tensei.
Therefore, the Shinobi in the Root prison were all sacrifices for Kabuto.
Currently, Root was pouring all its resources into Kabuto, hoping he would master Edo Tensei as soon as possible.
After all, he was the only one who could contain Orochimaru's white snake cells.
Kabuto was diligently studying Edo Tensei in his room. When he got tired, he would glance at the calendar on the wall.
A very conspicuous red circle was drawn around a date in the middle, looking like a day of execution.
This wasn't Kabuto's execution day, but the execution day for the children at the orphanage.
Danzo had given Kabuto seven days.
Kabuto could use the Shinobi in the cells as sacrifices every day, but after seven days, if he still couldn't summon a spirit from the Pure Land...
...then the new sacrifices would be replaced by Kabuto's companions, those physically disabled people from the orphanage.
The sacrifices for Edo Tensei didn't necessarily have to be Shinobi; as long as they were living people, Edo Tensei could be activated.
It was just that people with chakra were better able to bear the power of the deceased.
In the original work, the sacrifices Orochimaru used for Edo Tensei to summon Hashirama and Tobirama were his subordinates Zaku and Kin, both of whom were just Genin.
They weren't particularly elite Shinobi, but they were still able to summon the Senju brothers.
This proved that the core mechanism of Edo Tensei was a life for a life.
Kabuto didn't want to see his companions become his sacrifices, so he was racing against time to learn Edo Tensei.
But Edo Tensei was a Forbidden Jutsu. While it was true that Kabuto had mastered advanced Ninjutsu like Medical Ninjutsu, his Medical Ninjutsu was still only the very basic Mystical Palm Technique.
His level was still that of a Genin who had just graduated from the Shinobi Academy. Expecting a newly graduated Genin to learn a Forbidden Jutsu from the Ninjutsu system...
...and a Forbidden Jutsu among Forbidden Jutsus at that—Edo Tensei.
This was a bit difficult for Kabuto!
But no matter how hard it was, he had to overcome it.
Because outside the door was a jinx—a Root Shinobi wearing a Crow Tengu mask, watching Kabuto.
The Crow Tengu's gaze at Kabuto held no trace of humanity; his eyes were cold and stiff, as if an evil spirit were sizing up its prey, making Kabuto's scalp tingle.
Under such dual pressure, Kabuto's hair had even turned white from fear!
Suddenly, there was a commotion outside.
It sounded like a thud, then silence returned.
Kabuto was a bit curious; he twitched his nose and flicked his snake tongue out of his mouth.
Kabuto smelled the scent of a cat and a dog.
Because Kabuto had integrated Orochimaru's white snake cells, his snake-like sense of smell was highly developed, although not as extreme as a dog's.
But a snake's sense of smell was 3D imaging.
Snakes had stereoscopic smell. The rapid flicking of the snake tongue wasn't showing off how high the frequency of its tongue was, nor how good it could make you feel.
Instead, it was collecting scent molecules from the air, and the scents would form a 3D image in the snake's brain.
This was the sensory ability brought by Orochimaru's white snake cells.
Under Kabuto's scent perception, he saw a tabby cat extend its claws, grab the Crow Tengu's feet, and pull him under the floor.
The tabby cat absorbed the Crow Tengu's chakra, sucking him dry into a husk of a person, and killed him with a swipe of its claws.
Immediately after, that tabby cat actually transformed into the appearance of that Crow Tengu.
Kabuto was terrified. If it hadn't been for the 3D sense of smell that the white snake cells had given him to smell all of this...
...he probably wouldn't have been able to tell that the Crow Tengu had been possessed by this tabby cat.
A Demon Cat, it was definitely a Demon Cat.
If the Shinobi World still adhered to any science, then this Demon Cat would belong to the realm of legendary monsters and ghosts.
Kabuto was extremely terrified. Even after fusing with Orochimaru's cells, he was still just a small Shinobi who had just stepped into the Shinobi World and was living a precarious life.
Snowy, disguised as the Crow Tengu, pushed the door open and entered, seeing Kabuto, who was feigning calmness.
Snowy found Kabuto's appearance strange; he felt like a certain person.
Kabuto had short silver-gray hair, snake-scale-like markings on his cheeks, purple-black eyeshadow around his eyes, and a pair of golden slit pupils.
He wore round, black-rimmed glasses, looking quite well-behaved, but he gave off a cold and eerie aura.
Snowy remembered; Kabuto looked a lot like Orochimaru.
Although Snowy had never met Orochimaru, it had seen his photos, because Ryou had once been a classmate of Orochimaru.
His graduation photo included Orochimaru's appearance as a child.
Snowy had seen it.
Seeing Kabuto now, it felt he was very similar to Orochimaru, just with an extra pair of glasses, making him look somewhat refined, with the air of an intellectual.
But Kabuto wasn't like this. Nonō's photo of Kabuto was on Snowy, and the Kabuto it had seen was not this snake-like appearance.
What was going on?
Snowy had used Ryou's spore to absorb the Crow Tengu Shinobi's chakra to turn into his appearance, but it only absorbed the chakra, it didn't eat the other's brain.
Snowy wanted to ask clearly, but it was currently playing a Root Shinobi and couldn't voice these questions.
But what should it say?
"..."
Snowy and Kabuto fell silent for a moment.
One knew the other was named Kabuto and was the adopted son of the orphanage director, Nonō; the other knew the opponent was an evil cat that had killed the Crow Tengu and transformed into his appearance.
Both the human and the cat were thinking about how to act against each other?
After a long while, Kabuto broke the silence: "Sir, does Lord Danzo have any orders for me?"
Snowy tested Kabuto: "Yakushi Kabuto, do you still remember your foster mother, Yakushi Nonō?"
Upon hearing the three words "Yakushi Nonō," the feigned expression on Kabuto's face shattered instantly, his brows knitted fiercely, and he carried a trace of subtle tension.
He stepped forward, somewhat agitated: "Sir, do you have news of the Director? Didn't Lord Danzo say that Director was killed by Uchiha Ryou?"
"..."
Snowy was stunned, so it simply stopped acting: "Your Director isn't dead, but she's no different from dead now, because she has been controlled by my master!"
As Snowy spoke, it used Ryou's spore to extend a vine and pulled Kuromaru from beneath the floor.
"Kuromaru, guard the door. If anyone breaks in, I'll chop your head off!"
"Woof!"