Chapter 52: Ash

~Orochimaru~

Orochimaru slowly made his way to the back of the compound, wanting to gain the element of surprise on the bandits in the back.

He arrived and saw the men dumping the dead bodies of what seemed to be men, women, and children in a bonfire.

However, just as he was about to attack them, he heard a noise come from where the hostages were held.

"What was that noise?" asked one of the bandits.

"I don't know, you two go check it out." said another while he grabbed another body while preparing to throw it inside the fire while the two he pointed at began to walk in the direction of the noise.

'Tch. You idiot.' Orochimaru thought as he knew Jiraiya messed something up.

He then jumped towards the two men who were leaving and began weaving handsigns before he yelled

"Fire Style: Phoenix Sage Fire Technique!!"

Small fireballs erupted from Orochimaru's mouth and which then expanded into more as it bombarded the two men from behind, killing them instantly.

This caught the attention of the remainding bandits as they turned and spotted Orochimaru.

"Catch that little bastard and bring him over here to me, I wanna be the one who kills him!" the leader of this group of bandits shouted as they all ran directly towards Orochimaru.

'The six in the back are moving at low speeds even though they boosted themselves with chakra, this means they're probably around the level of genin and aren't properly trained. The leader of the group and the one whose at the front are most likely around the level of chunin, since Tsunade didn't identify them as jonin level. That means I should deal with the ones in the back first.' Orochimaru calmly thought as he quickly formulated a plan and prepared to take them down.

Orochimaru ran directly at the bandit in the front, however, instead of engaging him in combat, Orochimaru used his small size to jump over him and throw his kunai at the 6 behind him.

Three were able to dodge it, one only got a minor stratch by it, and the remaining were hit directly in the chest by the kunai, though them both pulled them out easily as Orochimaru didn't put much force into his throw.

"You'll have to do more than that if you wanna kill us kid." said one of the bandits mockingly, though that changed as three of the bandits fell to the ground.

"Poison. One that stuns the nerves and even though it only lasts for 5 minutes, it is strong enough to even keep a chakra beast down for that time." Orochimaru said with a smirk that gave all the bandits chills.

'Is this why Tsunade always calls me a snake when I'm making poisons?' Orochimaru asked himself upon seeing the look upon the faces of the bandits.

While he was extremely talented in the use of ninjutsu, genjutsu, and had even learned medical ninjutsu to a decent degree from Tsunade, Orochimaru seemed to also have an unnatural talent in the aspect of creating poisons. He had created around 100 different poisons just by using the materials he found around the village.

Using the poison he completely turned the dituation around as the bandits began trying to both dodge Orochimaru's kunai and shuriken while also trying to attck him, though t was a difficult task due to his unnatural flexibility.

The chunin level bandit and the leader both began weaving handsigns at a slow speed, before they both yelled

"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!!"

Both men sent moderately sized fireballs at Orochimaru, onky for him to shake his head in disappointment when he saw them.

'These fireballs have practically no shape transformation or nature transformation. If you can't use the ninjutsu right, then don't use it at all.' Orochimaru thought.

He then weaved handsigns of his own at an extremely high speed before he yelled

"Fire Style: Dragon Flame Release Song Technique!!"

Orochimaru spewed multiple fireballs that were each shaped like dragons heads, which surrounded all the bandits from each side and completely negated the fire balls.

The dragons heads then flew into all the bandits and incinerated them, turning them all to ash.

Orochimaru stared at the ash for a bit longer as he thought 'If my goal is to become Hokage, then I can't become heartbroken after one kill. My mother always said that any successful shinobi has their name built on a mountain of corpses."

Orochimaru then turned to go assist Jiraiya, but an explosion went off from the other side of the compound.

'Sarutobi-sensei is inside the building, so that should be Tsunade.' Orochimaru thought as he quickly headed over to help Tsunade.

Read chapters ahead on P@treon.com/KillerDJ2023