Chapter 993

"Monster! You have to believe me, there's a monster in that forest!" The lone survivor of one squad was clutching desperately at the Konoha medical ninja who was trying to leave.

It was a bit far, but the other party hadn't bothered to control their volume at all, so presumably everyone in the entire tower had heard clearly by now.

"You said monster, right? Of course there are monsters in the Forest of Death — otherwise why would I make you sign a life-and-death waiver? Ah, but don't worry. Since you fired the signal flare, it means your squad has already withdrawn from the exam. Right now your teammates are receiving Konoha's medical treatment. Think about it — those squads that vanished into the forest without a sound — at least you kept your lives."

Mitarashi Anko, who had been bustling back and forth between the tower and the forest, was already extremely irritable. On top of that, she was absolutely not the type of woman suited to comforting others — to be precise, she was more the sort of venomous snake that watched for the right moment to bare her fangs and bite down hard.

She walked straight over, separated the panicked genin from the somewhat awkward Konoha medical ninja, signaled the latter to leave, and then fixed the other squad — slumped nearby, heads lowered, silent — with a look that said, "You really are useless."

"He was scared out of his wits by a monster. So why did you fire the signal flare? There's barely a scratch on the three of you."

How casually she can poke at someone's wound without batting an eye!

Kakashi knew Mitarashi Anko reasonably well and was well aware of her terrible temperament. However, since he was also very curious about what had happened to reduce them to such a listless state, he had absolutely no intention of playing the good guy.

"That monster wasn't after the scroll at all — its whole purpose was killing! I saw it with my own eyes — it attacked those who surrendered without the slightest hesitation! How could we possibly fight something on that level?!"

He was already incoherent, but everyone present understood perfectly what the terrified genin was trying to say.

It seemed someone whose purpose was killing had mixed into this exam — and there was even a chance they weren't on the roster at all. If that were the case, Mitarashi Anko, as the chief examiner of this round, had to stop them.

"Tch, what a pain. Take them over to rest, and tell the Intelligence Division I need to see them." After giving the Leaf Anbu beside her some instructions, she turned her gaze toward Kakashi nearby.

Kakashi, as if he hadn't noticed a thing, turned his head and chatted cheerfully with Gai beside him.

"Completely useless when it matters most — damn it!" Mitarashi Anko cursed under her breath. If Kakashi would help, finding the target would be far easier, but the guy acted as if it had nothing to do with him.

"The ones who were attacked were children of our Kusagakure. If that's the case, might our team leader join the search party you're about to form, to deal with that 'monster' disrupting the exam?" A plain-looking Kusagakure woman had, at some unknown point, silently appeared beside Mitarashi Anko. Though she looked utterly unremarkable, her words carried an indescribable charm.

Mitarashi Anko, who had been a Special Jonin for so many years, had long since developed a perception surpassing that of ordinary ninja thanks to the knowledge she had learned from Orochimaru. This snake-like sense had never allowed anyone to get this close without her noticing.......

If this woman had come to kill her, she would probably already be dead.

"Y-you are?" The other party's face clearly bore a smile, yet Mitarashi Anko couldn't relax in the slightest. The feeling was as though her body were tightly coiled by a snake.

Ever since Orochimaru had once said there was nothing more to teach her for the time being, it had been a long time since she'd felt this deadly, suffocating sensation.

This woman was Orochimaru herself. After finishing her conversation with Young Yuanzi and confirming that her plans wouldn't conflict with Young Yuanzi's, she had set her sights on Mitarashi Anko.

After all, Anko was a promising talent she had taken a liking to, and she had once even planned to pass on the White Snake Sage Art to her.

If not for the many twists of fate in between that disrupted her plans, then Mitarashi Anko, having learned Sage Art, should now be able to handle the Shinobi World's fifty-fifty Hatake Kakashi without any pressure.

"Our Kusagakure takes this Chunin Exam very seriously. After all, the village has been silent for so many years — Konoha should understand perfectly well why it has become like this, shouldn't you?"

Mitarashi Anko couldn't make heads or tails of what the other party was saying right now. Her mind was in complete disarray. The other's aura seemed to suppress her by nature — just like the helpless, unable-to-think feeling she only got when facing Orochimaru.

Young Yuanzi watched speechlessly as Orochimaru toyed with Anko. She knew the full story of this master-disciple pair, and as for Orochimaru's purpose in joining the search party, it couldn't be simpler.

Most likely, until the second exam ended, they wouldn't be able to find that "monster" that Orochimaru had personally released.