Whoosh!
The moment the words left his mouth, the Eternal Mangekyou in Sasuke's eyes began to turn slowly. Black, sinister flames rose across his entire body, terrifying to behold.
"You..."
Orochimaru ground the words out through clenched teeth.
At last he understood. It was never he who had been treating Uchiha Sasuke as prey. It was Uchiha Sasuke who had been treating him as prey.
Layer upon layer of planning, drawing him step by step into a lethal trap.
What Orochimaru still couldn't understand was how Uchiha Sasuke knew this much about him. He felt stripped bare, completely exposed, as though he had no secrets left.
As deeply shaken as he was, Orochimaru knew this was not the moment to dwell on that.
Those sinister black flames surrounding Sasuke were filling him with a crushing sense of danger.
If those black flames touched him, he would die completely in this soul battle. There would be no coming back.
"Young fledgling of the Uchiha! If you want to make a venomous snake your meal, you had better be ready to be bitten to death!"
Orochimaru screamed with frenzied desperation. His body erupted with foul, sinister chakra, rising in an endless, violent tide like a raging sea.
"Good. Now we're getting somewhere."
Sasuke clapped his hands slowly and watched as Orochimaru's body swelled and expanded until it became an enormous, mountain-filling, sky-spanning eight-headed white serpent.
The Eight Branches Technique!
Drawing on the power of the White Snake to transform into a massive eight-headed serpent, this forbidden technique was the most powerful jutsu in Orochimaru's arsenal.
Orochimaru had decided to fight with everything he had. Having recognized that defeat in this battle meant certain death, the man who always kept his true strength in reserve abandoned every safety net and played his final card.
"In ancient times, there was a creature with eight heads and eight tails, its body as vast as eight mountain peaks and eight valleys. It was called Yamata no Orochi."
The eight-headed white serpent before him was naturally not the Yamata no Orochi of legend, but Orochimaru's Eight Branches Technique matched that mythological monster in both scale and presence exactly.
"There was a god named Susanoo, also known as Takehaya Susanoo no Mikoto, whose nature was inconsistent. At times without virtue, at times possessed of great courage. He was feared throughout the world and revered as the god of war, the god of battle, the god of destruction."
Sasuke murmured softly, the Eternal Mangekyou turning at a steady pace.
A tremendous surge of Yin Release swept outward and assembled into the form of a skeletal figure.
"Susanoo descended from the Plain of High Heaven and passed through the land of Izumo, where he encountered the descendants of the great mountain god, Ashinazuchi and Tenazuchi, weeping and clutching a young girl..."
As Sasuke spoke, the skeleton surrounding him slowly filled with veins, muscle, and flesh, and wrapped itself in magnificent armor.
The form grew larger and larger. At last a lower body and two legs took shape, the scale expanding enormously until it stood at the same size as the Yamata no Orochi itself.
Every muscle, every line, every contour of the giant radiated a savage and overwhelming power.
It was as though a god of war and battle had descended from the heavens.
Susanoo: Fourth Form!
A form only achievable with the Eternal Mangekyou.
It greatly enhanced balance and all capabilities while also adding exceptional mobility, closing the defensive gap that had existed beneath the original form's feet.
In this form, Susanoo could also be equipped onto a Tailed Beast as armor, becoming the "Susanoo-clad" mode.
It was the form second only to the Perfect Susanoo.
Though Sasuke had already obtained the Eternal Mangekyou, he had only possessed it for about a month.
That was not yet enough time to master the Perfect Susanoo, which required both the Eternal Mangekyou's dojutsu power taken to its absolute peak and an immense reserve of chakra within the user.
"This can't be!"
Orochimaru's expression broke apart. That towering, magnificent giant felt like his natural predator, the way a mouse feels about a cat. A suffocating weight pressed down on his heart.
The instant Susanoo appeared, Orochimaru knew his chances had become slim.
But slim chances were still chances. In this place of death, he had to find some thread of survival.
"ROAR!"
The eight-headed white serpent let out a howling cry, its voice dark and foul beyond measure. The vast, terrifying roar echoed endlessly through that space.
Its golden pupils flared into a blood-red, vivid as crimson sauce. The mountain-like body surged into motion, accompanied by a sound like the earth being overturned, and all eight heads opened their enormous jaws simultaneously, screaming and roaring, and lunged straight at Sasuke's Susanoo with a gust of reeking, blood-soaked air.
Facing Orochimaru's ferocious assault, Sasuke's expression didn't change. He continued his quiet murmur.
"To slay the great serpent, Susanoo commanded Ashinazuchi and Tenazuchi to brew a powerful sake. Eight vessels were hollowed from the earth, each filled to the brim with that sake, whose name was..."
As the words left his lips, a long sword appeared before Susanoo, wreathed in sinister violet lightning and blazing with boundless light.
Rumble!
The instant the sword appeared, an endless rumbling of thunder erupted across the dark sky above the dimensional space. Strange electric serpents flickered and crackled in every direction.
"Its name was Hachitatsu no Sake, the Eight-Fold Distilled Wine!"
The words fell from Sasuke's lips.
Boom!
At the very instant all eight serpent heads were about to close on Susanoo, the sky blazed with light.
Another thunderous crack, and eight lightning chains dozens of meters long transformed at once into eight violet spears of pure lightning, their killing light chilling to the bone.
With a ringing clash that shook everything around them, they drove downward with a force unlike anything before.
This...
Orochimaru's expression shattered. He tried to move, but there was no time.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
All eight heads of the white serpent were run through by the lightning spears, pinned hard into the ground.
Orochimaru strained and struggled to rise, but the unique paralyzing and slowing effect of the violet lightning made his movements grow smaller and smaller, until finally he was completely still.
"Afterward, the Yamata no Orochi surfaced from its raging waters. Catching the scent of the sake, each of its eight heads entered one of the eight vessels and drank deeply of that potent wine. Drunk, it fell, and slept without waking."
Sasuke stood at the brow of Susanoo, looking down from above at Orochimaru collapsed and unable to rise. His voice was calm and unhurried. "Orochimaru. I chose to kill you by reenacting Susanoo's slaying of Yamata no Orochi. Consider it a suitably grand send-off."
At those words, Orochimaru's expression was deeply ugly. His mouth opened as though trying to say something, but nothing came out.
"When the serpent lay drunk, Susanoo drew the Totsuka Sword and cut it down."
As Sasuke spoke, sinister black flames ignited in Susanoo's right hand and shaped themselves into a blade of black fire.
"I don't have the Totsuka Sword on hand. But using the divine weapon Kagutsuchi in its place is hardly a disservice to you."
"Your soul. I'll be taking it."
The moment the words landed, the giant plunged the Kagutsuchi straight into Orochimaru's mountain-sized body without hesitation.
'Damn it!
Damn it!
I haven't yet grasped the truths of this world.
I refuse to accept this.
I don't want to die!'
Orochimaru screamed in his mind, his body thrashing with everything he had. None of it made any difference.
Where the Kagutsuchi had struck, sinister black flames erupted from Orochimaru's body.
Within moments, the black flames had spread across every part of him.
"AAAAAHH!"
Orochimaru managed only one last howl of agony, as though torn from the depths of his soul, before the black flames consumed him entirely.
All that remained in his place was a single crystal-like fragment of black glass.
"Heh heh heh heh."
After Orochimaru was gone, Sasuke was quiet for a moment. Then a laugh broke loose, and the curve at his mouth kept growing. He bared white teeth, and the sound kept rising, growing more and more erratic and unhinged.
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
---
Note 1: Yamata no Orochi has eight heads, not nine.
Note 2: An ordinary Mangekyou can only reach the Third Form, which is the half-body form. Kakashi is the exception because he had Obito's Six Paths power at the time, which is what allowed him to manifest the Complete Body form with an ordinary Mangekyou.
Note 3: Sasuke only produced the Perfect Susanoo after receiving the Yin portion of Six Paths power.
___
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