Chapter 35: Going Back

The beast’s hiss rolled across the ruined clearing like distant thunder. Its massive body shifted, bronze scales grinding against one another as it lowered its head. Yellow eyes fixed on the group with cold intelligence. The smaller snakes were gone, reduced to twitching remains and smoke. Now only the true threat remained.

Sasuke moved first.

Lightning crackled to life in his right hand, the sharp cry of a thousand birds cutting through the air. "Chidori!"

He shot forward in a blur of speed, Sharingan locked on the beast’s left eye. The glowing blue spear of chakra drove straight toward the thick scales protecting the serpent’s head. The impact landed with a sharp crack. Scales shattered. Black blood sprayed. The beast recoiled, its enormous body thrashing and tearing up the earth in a wide arc.

Kael watched from a short distance, a flicker of genuine envy passing through him. Chidori really is that cool, he thought. All these years watching it on a screen, and seeing it up close still hits different. He pushed the feeling aside. There was no time for it.

Sakura charged from the opposite side, green medical chakra coating her fists. She slammed both hands into the beast’s midsection with enough force to crack several scales and force a deep, pained hiss from its throat. The serpent’s tail whipped around; she leapt back just in time, the thick appendage smashing a crater into the ground where she had stood.

Samui, Karui, and Omoi attacked in coordinated strikes. Samui’s kunai found the softer gaps between scales along the beast’s lower neck. Karui’s aggressive dual blades carved long, bleeding lines across its side. Omoi stayed mobile, cutting at the tendons near the base of the tail whenever the massive body shifted. Mabui remained in the trees, senbon flashing down to pierce the thinner scales around the eyes whenever the beast raised its head too high.

Kael joined the assault.

He formed a standard Rasengan and slammed it into the beast’s right flank. The spinning sphere tore through armor and flesh, forcing the serpent to coil tighter. A clone appeared beside him and drove another Rasengan higher up the body. The beast retaliated with a sudden lunge, jaws wide enough to swallow a man whole. Kael flickered away with a Substitution, leaving a log that was crushed to splinters between those fangs.

The fight became a storm of movement.

Sasuke’s Chidori struck again, this time targeting the same damaged eye. The beast twisted, taking the blow on the side of its head instead. Lightning scored a deep, smoking wound, but the serpent’s body slammed sideways and nearly crushed Sasuke against a tree. He vanished in a flicker of speed and reappeared on the opposite side, already forming another Chidori.

Sakura kept pressure on the midsection, each punch landing with the force of a siege weapon. Blood and broken scales flew. The beast’s tail swept low; she jumped onto it, ran along the length, and drove both fists down into the base of the spine. The serpent convulsed.

Kael and a dozen clones attacked from every direction at once. Rasengan after Rasengan hammered the body, opening new wounds, forcing the beast to constantly shift and coil. One clone was caught in the jaws and vanished in a burst of smoke. Another was crushed under a heavy coil. The real Kael stayed mobile, using the clones as distractions while he looked for a decisive opening.

Minutes stretched. The clearing became a battlefield of torn earth, shattered trees, and spreading black blood. The beast’s movements grew slower, heavier, but its strength remained terrifying. One full-body thrash sent Sakura flying into a tree hard enough to crack the trunk. She dropped to one knee, coughing, then forced herself back up. Sasuke’s next Chidori was deflected by a sudden twist of the neck, the lightning skittering across scales instead of piercing deep.

Samui’s team was tiring. Karui’s strikes lost some of their earlier ferocity. Omoi’s breathing grew heavier. Even Mabui’s senbon came less frequently.

Kael saw it clearly. They were wounding the beast, but not killing it. Not fast enough.

He landed beside Sasuke and shouted over the noise, "Give me time! All of you pull back!"

Sasuke’s Sharingan flicked toward him for half a second. Then he nodded once and called out the order. Sakura, Samui, and the others disengaged in a coordinated retreat, putting distance between themselves and the thrashing serpent.

Kael stood alone in the center of the devastation.

He brought both hands together and began to gather chakra.

It started as a normal Rasengan—compact, spinning, blue-white. Then more chakra poured in. The sphere grew. The sound of it deepened from a sharp whirl to a low, continuous roar that shook the air. Clones appeared around him, feeding their own chakra into the forming technique before vanishing. The sphere swelled to the size of a cart, then larger still, the light bright enough to cast long shadows across the ruined clearing.

The beast sensed the danger. It reared up, mouth opening wide, and lunged.

Kael did not move.

"Get back!" he shouted one final time.

The massive Rasengan left his hands like a falling star.

It struck the beast directly in the center of its chest.

The explosion of spinning chakra tore through scale, muscle, and bone in a single catastrophic release. The force lifted the enormous body off the ground and slammed it backward into the trees. Wood shattered. Earth split open. A shockwave of wind and debris blasted outward, forcing everyone else to brace themselves or be thrown.

When the light faded, the beast lay still.

A massive, smoking hole had been punched clean through its torso. Black blood pooled beneath the ruined body. The yellow eyes stared at nothing, already glazing over.

Silence settled over the clearing.

Sasuke lowered his sword slowly. Sakura wiped blood from her mouth and stared. Samui’s team stood frozen, weapons still raised as if the fight might restart at any second.

Every person present understood the same thing in that moment.

The one who had just ended the battle with a single technique was not the loud, reckless genin they had known. The power that had erased an army of snakes and then a beast of that size in consecutive displays placed Kael among the strongest shinobi currently walking the continent.

Kael walked forward through the settling dust and stopped beside the massive head. He looked into the dead yellow eyes. Something about them—the shape, the cold intelligence that had lingered even in death—triggered a memory. Orochimaru’s eyes had carried that same quality. The suspicion that had been sitting at the back of his mind since the first report of the beast solidified into certainty.

Orochimaru had made this thing.

He straightened and turned back toward the others. No one spoke for several long seconds.

Samui was the first to move. She stepped forward, followed by Mabui, Karui, and Omoi. Her usual calm expression held something warmer now.

"Thank you," she said, voice steady but sincere. Her gaze stayed on Kael longer than necessary. "All of you. But especially you. Without that final technique, more of us would have died. Our village... owes you."

The prolonged look made the moment awkward. Sasuke’s expression remained blank, but Sakura shifted her weight. Karui glanced between Samui and Kael with clear confusion.

Mabui inclined her head. "The Cloud will not forget this."

Samui continued, "Come to our village. Let us host you properly. It is the least we can offer."

Kael shook his head. The lie came easily. "We have orders to return to the Leaf the moment the mission was complete. We can’t delay."

In truth, he wanted the relative safety of the village walls. Outside them, the plot—and whatever Orochimaru was planning—had already tried to kill him once. He had no desire to invite more of it.

Samui’s eyes narrowed slightly, as if she sensed the excuse, but she did not call it out. Instead she stepped closer, reached out, and took his hand. Her fingers were warm, the grip firm and lingering.

"Then we will come to the Leaf later," she said, voice dropping just enough to carry a quiet, almost intimate weight. "To repay the debt properly."

Karui’s eyebrows rose. "Are we really?"

Samui did not look away from Kael. "Yes."

Kael gently extracted his hand and gave a short nod. "All right. But for now, we should go."

He turned toward the direction of the Leaf. Sasuke fell into step beside him without a word. Sakura followed a moment later. Behind them, the Cloud team began gathering what they needed for their own return.

As the group moved back into the trees, Kael glanced once over his shoulder at the massive corpse. The yellow eyes were already dull. Orochimaru’s work. Another thread in a web he was only beginning to see.

He faced forward again and kept walking.

The road back to the Leaf stretched ahead, and for the first time in days, the immediate threat of death had been removed. That, at least, was something.

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Give me power!!!