Chapter 18

It's a strange feeling, I know that something fucking bad is going to happen. I feel it with every fiber of my being, but I can't do anything.

I have a month to prepare for the fight with Gaara. I can't handle it myself, there's no point in guessing. Neji went to the clan, Hiashi is extremely pleased with him and even seemed to have promised a couple of personal lessons. Sasuke left with Kakashi, they have a similar fighting style, Uchiha will have something to learn. I'm left alone, although sensei promised to drop by occasionally, check on me.

I'm unlikely to be able to train myself to a sufficient level. I need a teacher. But who? It seems that Jiraiya should come to the village at this time. They assure me that he didn't go through the village posts and in general, he is God knows where.

I'm sitting on the second floor of the house, trying to figure out the structure of the barrier seal. Give an uninitiated person a diagram of the electrical circuit of any device, it's unlikely that he will understand anything. No, maybe he'll guess that this crossed-out circle is a light bulb, but nothing more. And so I'm sitting here now, trying to figure out what's what. And even if I understand individual elements, the whole picture doesn't want to come together.

- Ku-ku-ku. A simple scheme, frankly I don't understand why you're so slow, little panicker. - A hand reaches past his head, takes a pencil from the table and quickly writes on a piece of paper. You could die from surprise like that! - And now take the trouble to explain why I was torn away from the lab. - The voice is kind-kind, deceptively kind.

- Orochimaru-san? - I turn around slowly.

A tall man, long black hair, a little thin, unusually pale. A smile on his lips. His eyes are outlined in purple, cut in an oriental style, he looks with a squint. There are no traces of old age on his face. Dressed in a grayish kimono with a purple border, on the belt of the same color a wide belt ribbon, to which a scabbard with a katana is attached.

-I. - Nod of the head. Each movement is incredibly smooth, powerful. Even Sarutobi does not feel it so vividly. I see him for about ten seconds, and already feel that as a leader Orochimaru will be very strong, he will easily lead people.

- My respects. - I stand up and bow. - Forgive me for tearing you away from important matters because of me, but an attack by Suna is possible...

- I know. I have already been told everything and in much more detail, I should not have answered the question. - The voice is calm, slow, a little hissing. - I heard that you are somewhat unique.

I feel that there is some kind of genjutsu or something similar in it, forcing trust. The Sannin uses it unintentionally, apparently, just a habit, or the so-called "passive skill". Maybe he picked up something like that from the snakes. It's clear that Orochimaru came here only out of curiosity, he simply has nothing to do in the village, outside of his laboratory. So he decided to test something new in his spare time.

-Hai. I feel other people's emotions. Like - don't like, want - don't want. I can tell by the reaction what a person loves and hates.

-Interesting. Very interesting... - Orochimaru thoughtfully tilted his head.

-Orochimaru-san, could you help me understand the seals? - I stand up and bow.

The Sannin thoughtfully thought. Named the price. Then I thought about it. Then I noticed that Orochimaru was laughing inwardly with a serious face. Experimenting, it means, testing my abilities on the go. Apparently, the insult was reflected on my face, the sannin grinned.

-So you noticed. Curious... The third one asked to take a closer look at you. Said you wanted to become a sannin's apprentice. Which one? - Orochimaru was already serious, his voice had changed. It was no longer soft or playful.

-To be honest, I don't know any of you very well...

-Excellent, just excellent. - A sly smile. - Snakes, toads, slugs?

-I'd like to try my summoning. Snakes are beautiful and dangerous, but I'm unlikely to suit them. Toads and slugs are already disgusting to me. - In response, the sannin laughed, and then ruffled my hair.

Yeah. A completely different person, completely. Handsome, smart, charismatic, with a malicious twinkle in his eyes. Nothing to do with the canon, no mad scientist here. Just none. There is a curious and extremely strong Sannin Orochimaru.

-Okay, let's go to the training ground, let's see what you're capable of.

Orochimaru leads to one of the closed training grounds, he simply brushed off the Chunin on guard. Well, the test of my skills has begun, I need to show everything I can do. Sannin is not the level at which I should hold back.

Half an hour of all sorts of dancing. My potential teacher didn't even move from his place, lazily rolling me around on the sand.

Conclusion - I don't know if Orochimaru is human. He reflects all my attacks, some of them he even takes to his chest. When I freed one tail at his request, nothing changed. Two - the result is the same. At the maximum available to me now, I began to see the movements of the sannin. He, with the same smile of superiority, throws me around the training ground. Kuro is furious. I am unspeakably glad that this monster is on our side. Orochimaru, if he were a traitor, would simply walk through the village like a scythe of death, only another sannin or a real kage could stop him. The old man, despite his age, is still extremely strong.

- Not bad, Naruto-kun. More than good for you. - Orochimaru nodded his head with satisfaction. Was he praising me, or was he mocking me?

- Thank you, but I am still very far from you.

- I will take you as my student. It will be... interesting. Follow me.

Yes! I don't know what exactly he liked, but the fact that I would be trained by such a master for at least a month is worth a lot.

Orochimaru chose a huge speed, in half a minute we reached our destination, sensei with the same relaxed gait entered some house, and I dragged myself in with a wheeze.

- So, let's sum it up. - As if nothing had happened, the sannin sat down in the chair, apparently I was offered to sit on the floor. - Judging by what I saw, you handle the four elements with an average degree of disgust. You combine attacks well, but you do not have any truly deadly techniques. In terms of control, you are also behind your peers, many of them will spend much less chakra on the same jutsu. Strength is not used rationally. In tai, a complete failure. Have you ever done it? Shut up! I have not allowed you to talk yet. The use of seals is useless, even though you are an Uzumaki. Kenjutsu is also disgusting. No grace, no play of the blade, you just wave it at the enemy. Are you familiar with medical techniques? No, then. Well, we will correct that. How much sleep do you get per day? - A sadist's smile.

- Eight hours.

- Five will do. Now show me your usual training, Naruto-kun.

The fact that I got pretty tired testing my strength with him does not bother me at all. Six hundred clones. A hundred for control, a hundred for each element, the rest hone combined jutsu. I work on my body, stretching, coordination of movements, practicing taijutsu techniques, in general, things that you can't train with clones.

Orochimaru clicked his tongue and took everything into his own hands. For every hundred clones, two earth clones were added from the Sannin to supervise the process. To the silent question, the Sannin answered that he was close to perfection in all the elements. After which they demanded two hundred more clones from me. They went to listen to lectures and practice setting up simple barriers. Why so many? So that they would remember it better. After that, another ten were given a pack of medical scrolls with the order to learn them by heart.

I resignedly created clones over and over again, assuming that after so much time, a headache would roll in again. Orochimaru decided to deal with the real me in tai.

I also managed to find out about the Sannin themselves. First of all, I naturally asked about Orochimaru himself. He grew up an orphan, was raised in an orphanage. He does not know his last name, but he did not take one. The gift was revealed very early, almost immediately he entered the Shinobi Academy. He graduated with honors, trained a lot, became a personal student of the future kage along with two other lucky ones. He really did a lot of research, including gutting a lot of nukenin in experiments to acquire eternal life. He did not achieve significant results and abandoned the project. After that, he went into medicine, in which he became almost on par with Tsunade. He preferred not to talk about the war and his participation in it, brushed off questions. I noticed that he had a funny habit of sometimes sticking out the tip of his tongue, apparently he also picked it up from snakes. Tsunade, the last of the Senju. As a doctor, she is truly brilliant, strong in battle, but inferior to her comrades. She really has more than a lot of chakra. According to Orochimaru, she has a rather difficult character, drinks, gambles, often gets into fights. Now she has opened her own clinic somewhere in the capital and for huge amounts of money removes pimples from the asses of the nobility. If you don't care about the village, then not much. However, she did not take off the leaf protector.

Jiraiya. A bastard from the Hatake clan (at this point I felt a little sick), someone walked him in the "red quarter". He refused his last name. A dissolute pervert, likes to drink. A fetishist. He really does write some books, but he is not very popular. He trained my father. Strong, extremely strong. In the case of sparring with Orochimaru, the latter gives a chance of about 50 to 50. He hasn't appeared in Konoha for about seven years, wears a protector with the hieroglyph "oil" on his head.

I woke up from a mug of water on my face, otherwise after the sannin's training, I would hardly get up. I jump up quite cheerfully.

- Good morning, Naruto-kun. I think it's time for you to find a contract.

- Already?

- Earlier, better. After all, you still have to work off the call.

We went further away from the village, after which the sensei showed me the seals. He gave me a week's worth of food, several empty sealing scrolls, a survival kit, and extended ammunition.

I'm sitting on a large piece of paper, Orochimaru said that the calmer I am before leaving, the more accurate the result. The sannin himself is now drawing an intricate pentagram, in the center of which I am.

- Everything is ready, Naruto-kun. Here you go. - He hands me another scroll of quite impressive size. - It's empty. This is in case you get a unique partner.

I nod gratefully, putting the scroll in the fuin cache of my backpack. Well, let's see where this world takes me. I fold the seals, carefully dosing my chakra.

- Summon, search!

A slightly unpleasant feeling of teleportation and I'm there. Dark, damp, cool.

I look around. A cave, apparently, two tunnels go in different directions. The rocks barely glow blue, mushrooms growing in a couple of places add a little green. Water drips from stalactites. I'm standing in a shallow puddle, barely covering my feet. The light, reflecting from it, plays on the walls in a bizarre net. You can breathe, the air is really a little musty and damp. And where did this throw me? This is not a tropical forest of slugs or a swamp of snakes, and certainly not a mountain of toads.

Okay, there's no point in standing. I carefully move forward, carefully looking around. Empty, dead, quiet, only occasionally an echo from another fallen drop of water is heard.

I walk through the cave, scratching arrows on the walls with a kunai, just in case. The light is barely enough to see, but I can't light my own source of fire, I'll blind myself.

I hit a dead end. I look at the wall with doubt, a solid monolith. I'll have lunch and head in the other direction. I had a snack, took a sip from the flask, and headed back.

The second branch led me to a rather narrow crevice leading down. Should I just stick my nose in there, without preparation? There might be gas there, for example. Throw a burning piece of paper? It's hard to think of anything more stupid. You'll fly up together with the cave!

After some thought, a clone goes down, which will dissipate and report how things are down below.

It's clean, there's no deterioration in health or suspicious smells. I follow him down, retracing the clone's steps. The wet rocks are extremely slippery, but I hold on thanks to my chakra. Damn, it's cramped, I could get claustrophobia!

With a sigh of relief, I touch the floor with my feet. Where did I end up? I can't imagine who could live here. What bats? They have nothing to eat here. There would be nothing to eat here for anyone! Maybe I was thrown into an uninhabited world? Unlikely, sensei said that this had never happened, well, I'm not that unique.

The same stones around. Nothing new. I walk on, the sand quietly rustles under my feet. The silence presses on my nerves, but I'm somehow afraid to break it. I walk further and further, making marks.

I go to bed, posting a guard of clones. They are also sleepy, but at least some kind of guard, they will wake me up.

I woke up because I started to choke. A terrible feeling. I couldn't open my eyes either, I couldn't move a finger. Judging by the sensations, I am in a standing position. What kind of heresy is this? I saturate my body with lightning and wind, but the bonds still hold. Damn, damn, damn, what the hell? What's up with the clones? Damn, they all vanished at once, without even noticing anything.

Damn control, I pump up my chakra to the limit, I rip apart the barrier with a powerful flash and I get the feeling of falling down, I try to hold on with the wind, in a couple of seconds I win I open my eyes and get the opportunity to land normally. Web on my hands. That's it. However, what are they eating here? - a thought comes out of place.

Finally, I can look around. The vault of the cave is high, everything around is covered with patterns of web that glow silver. Finally, I see the inhabitants of this place. Spiders and similar creatures, both of them are quite decent in size, the smallest are larger than the palm of your hand. A spider base with legs from which a humanoid torso grows, but all this is crowned by a head with mandibles, red eyes are located in a semicircle to the temples. Many have different limbs, there are multi-jointed needles, there are sickles, there are practically human hands. The number varies from one pair to three.

The sickle of one of the inhabitants strikes from above, with a backhand. I try to deflect it with a kunai and fall to my knees in surprise - the blow is simply immeasurable in strength.

- I don't want to fight! Let's talk! - Zero emotion, only a new blow, which I dodge. The others watch, but do not interfere.

Roll, slide, jump. The creature silently attacks with its pincers. Enough! Several cutting streams of air on the paws, wind chakra in the kunai. The chitin held up! It creaked, there were notches, but it held up! The next moment the spider breathed a stream of fire at me. Surprise, they can use the elements! I dodge the attack, try to respond with water, but it seemed to have stopped playing, techniques fly one after another, I have never seen anyone do them so fast! Horror! I barely have time to dodge. To hell with it, I can't run forever, we work with mass jutsu. A large wave covers me and rushes towards the enemy, extinguishing entire lines of fireballs. I poured in enough chakra to drag the spider along the stone floor, despite the fact that it was grinding (on stone, that is) its paws. While the enemy is still wet and the water has not gone away, I launch a whole galaxy of lightning. Got it! I rush to finish him off, but the spider only makes a bow with its head and retreats to the flock of comrades. Another one gets out of it, it already has human limbs, four of them. I prepare for battle.

Honestly, it reminds me of some kind of theater of the absurd. I woke up in an unknown place, I'm fighting with an unknown person, and most importantly, it's unclear why. The only thing I understood now is that this call is quite strong. At first, I thought about running away, suddenly there will be some kind of Aburame.

The spider attacks, spitting a white lump at me, which in flight opened up into a web. I dodge at the last moment, the piece of my trouser leg that was touched was torn out after the web, almost knocking me off my feet. I rush forward, breathing out a fireball and strengthening it with the wind, the roaring projectile quickly flies past the enemy. In response, several water bullets fly, my cheek flies into pieces. I heal myself on the go, just chakra is enough for that. In response, I send an air ram, and immediately after that a swarm of bullets of the same element. The enemy staggered, and the bullets knocked out pieces of his chitinous shell. Lightning in the body, I break into close combat. I dodge the swing of the paws and another sticky projectile, after which I freeze, putting a kunai, saturated to the limit with wind, to the throat (I hope it's the throat) of the enemy. The knife is buzzing with chakra.

I hope I'm doing everything right. Step back and bow slightly. The spider does the same.

- Congratulations, you have proven your right not to be prey. Say your name. - Someone's voice sounds in my head, but I can't determine whose exactly.

- Uzumaki Naruto.

- Neither true nor false. And you are interesting ... - A quiet whisper. - What brings you to us, strange creature with a name that doesn't exist? - The voice is gaining strength.

- I wanted to sign a contract for a summoning, so that I could learn something from you and call you to battle with me.

A strange chirping sound arose. Paws rustled, joints clicked, everyone around talked in a quiet squeak. Finally, one of the spider kind stepped forward.

- Follow me. - A voice in my head. Are they all telepaths here? Horror. Suddenly and right now, they are rummaging through my thoughts...

They lead me through a cave, strange galleries of web. The soft light of threads. Creepy, to be honest. But damn, how beautiful! And then I saw who I was led to... the gods. A spider, a huge spider, covered in a black chitinous shell with veins that pulsate with white light. Large claws on its paws, four mandibles that are sharp even to look at. And the most important thing is that this creature is many times larger than Kyuubi, and you can feel the chakra in it, any biju would strangle themselves with envy. The king of the people? Well, I will never be able to summon him, not the same level of power, and there are no worthy opponents for him there.

However, I was wrong. They lead me past the motionless giant. Scary. I had an agreement with the sannin that no matter what happens, he will pull me out with a reverse summoning the next morning. Time can go in different ways, as long as I live.

Deeper and deeper down, the interweaving of corridors becomes more beautiful. I understand less and less. How does air come in? What do these people eat? Where are they taking me? What kind of fight was that at the beginning?

- We have arrived. The Elder will listen to you, summoner.

A kind of cocoon-house with a round entrance hole. The escort stopped. Apparently, I should be the only one to enter. The size of the passage is very small, I have to bend my back.

It's empty inside, white glowing walls and that's it. I don't feel even a trace of chakra, I don't sense anyone's emotions. Silence.

- I'm listening to you, the newcomer. - This time a voice, but it's clear that the speech is not native to this creature. It hisses and draws out the vowels too much. I still don't feel someone else's presence.

- I would like to learn something from you and call upon your warriors in battle. I used a special technique to find...

- I see. - The voice interrupted me. - What can you offer us?

But this is a weak point. Orochimaru helped the snakes oust competitors from some swamp, Tsunade got along with the slugs. Jiraiya was practically raised by toads.

- It depends on what you need.

- Experience. Interest. Fights. Prey. - The speaker hisses and makes long pauses. As if stamping it with every word.

-All this can be taken in battle. - I answer.

Spiders do not have a contract scroll. That's where Orochimaru's came in handy. We write out the terms, carefully cutting my finger (how disgusting it is to inflict wounds on myself), I write my name at the end. Now it's the spiders' turn to sign the contract. As if from nowhere, several greenish drops fall. Yes! That's it, I have a summoning. Even if it is very strange. Honestly, very strange - but I have it. And not a weak one.

-Can you teach me any art? - I ask, putting the scroll in my backpack.

- No. Not now. We do not trust you yet, summoner. Later! Maybe... later we will open it to you. Go. - A voice rustles.

Phew, you can become a sannin with them, just great. Some do not teach the use of natural chakra.

So I talked to the oldest spider. I can't even imagine what he looks like. A ghost or something? They took me through the interweaving caves again, showing me the domain. I saw all kinds of representatives of the arachnid family! Small, huge, on thin needle-like legs, and on thick hairy logs. Smooth, spiked, of all possible colors and shapes. The variety is off the charts.

Time to go back.