Orochimaru held the scroll and silently walked deeper into the cave, no longer paying attention to Tsunade and the others.
What are you up to now, you snake?
"Tsunade-sama, where are we? What happened?" Anko asked as she slowly stood up.
"Orochimaru's laboratories," Tsunade said plainly.
"Orochimaru?"
"He's the one who rebuilt your body."
"This body..." Anko murmured to herself, her hands gently caressing her skin in disbelief.
The sensation from her fingertips felt strange. It wasn't that her skin had drastically changed, but the tactile perception from her fingertips had. For some reason, she now felt extremely sensitive to the fine ridges and textures of her skin.
Human skin, although it appears smooth, is actually covered with unique patterns of ridges that form in the embryonic stage and never change. However, these patterns are so small that human touch usually can't detect them.
Yet now, Anko could clearly feel every little texture. The sensation was incredibly odd.
"Ouch!"
Suddenly, she touched a small hair growing from her skin. While something like this wouldn't be felt by a human, to Anko, it was as painful as a needle prick.
"Anko, what exactly did you feel just now?" Tsunade asked.
She noticed something strange immediately. "Can you feel this?" she asked as she placed her hand on Anko's shoulder.
"Feel what?"
Anko hadn't noticed her hand on her shoulder, even though she should have sensed it.
"Touch the back of my hand," she said.
Anko did so, and a simple touch made her feel as though hundreds of needles were piercing her palm. She immediately cried out and pulled her hand back.
"Ouch! Tsunade-sama! It's like touching a thousand needles!"
"I see."
Tsunade realized what was happening. Anko's body now lacked any human genetic traits, yet it exceeded human limits in every way.
"Your body... it's operating on a whole new level of sensitivity."
"What does that mean?" Anko asked, panic rising in her voice. "Am I going to feel pain forever?"
"No," Tsunade reassured her. "We'll figure this out. Your body just needs... recalibration."
Take touch, for example. If touch sensitivity is rated on a scale from one to ten, most humans would fall between four and six. This balance ensures that life forms can experience pain without being overwhelmed, while still perceiving the world around them.
However, Anko's new body, created by the Shoggoth, had none of these inherited balances. It had selected the most sensitive touch—level ten. The Shoggoth had made this choice to please her brain, mistaking heightened sensation for a positive experience.
Life forms typically prefer voluntary sensory input rather than passive, external stimuli. This is an evolutionary mechanism in the brain: active contact equals perception, while passive contact equals harm.
That's why touching the own sensitive areas like armpits or feet won't tickle much, but if someone else does, it feels overwhelming.
The Shoggoth had picked up on these evolutionary traits in her brain and had adjusted her sensitivity. It enhanced her ability to perceive the world through touch but minimized any sensation from external stimuli, reducing passive touch sensitivity to almost zero.
"Think of it like a volume knob. Most people are at a comfortable middle setting. But your body is stuck on maximum volume for some things, and mute for others."
"So I can feel a hair like a knife, but not your hand on my shoulder? That's insane!" Anko exclaimed.
In theory, this adjustment would allow her to better explore the world through her own actions without suffering from external pain. But in practice, it created a chaotic sensory experience.
Now, she could feel a single hair as if it were a needle, but she couldn't feel Tsunade's hand on her shoulder.
Tsunade deduced that this wasn't the only issue with her body. The Shoggoth had reshaped it according to her ideal image, but the biological systems within her were completely out of balance.
Anko's new body could be compared to a phone equipped with AI.
Normally, phones come pre-programmed with settings suitable for human use, like screen brightness maxing out at 1000 nits in sunlight.
But the Shoggoth, acting as AI, had no preset limits. It made decisions based on each situation, like cranking up the brightness to 10,000 nits because it detected that its master couldn't see well in the sunlight.
Its logic was that if 1000 nits helps, then 10,000 nits must be even better! It didn't consider whether the master could handle such brightness.
This type of overcompensation can be dangerous. If an Elder Thing ordered the Shoggoth to kill another Elder Thing, it would deduce that eliminating the target would please its master and proceed to act without hesitation.
Fortunately, this state wasn't irreversible. Orochimaru had mentioned that the Shoggoth considered the human brain to be its master and would follow its commands. If Anko learned to control the Shoggoth and adjusted to her new body, she should be able to repair these chaotic systems.
For now, however, she couldn't move without experiencing excruciating pain from even the slightest voluntary contact.
"Don't move. Let me help you get dressed."
Tsunade put Anko's clothes back on, though she didn't feel it. Her skin's numbness made it seem as though she was still naked, despite seeing the clothes on her body.
I can see the clothes, but I can't feel them. Am I going crazy?
As she processed this strange disconnect between her sense of touch and sight, Anko suddenly had an embarrassing realization.
Was I just naked? And Orochimaru was here too? Ah! He saw everything!
She lowered her head in shame, though her face didn't blush.
In her memory, whenever she felt embarrassed, her face would flush red and she'd cover her face in shame. But the Shoggoth had interpreted blushing as a negative reaction, something harmful to its master.
So instead of turning red, Anko's face was now tinged with a faint green glow.
The Shoggoth thought: If red is a bad reaction, then green must be a good one. This will make my master happy. Yes, this must be right.
Tsunade didn't notice the subtle change in Anko's face because she was busy reviving Heiji's brain.
She then glanced around the cave. Since Orochimaru had gone deeper into the cave, he hadn't returned.
We need to get out of here before Orochimaru returns. But how? She scanned the cave for possible exits.
Could there be a secret escape route back there?
Regardless, Tsunade had to get Anko and Heiji out of there first. Taking a deep breath, she placed her fingers on Heiji's forehead.
Meanwhile, deeper in the cave, Orochimaru stood before a wall. He had already donned a pair of gray, wrinkled gloves and reached into the mural on the wall. When he withdrew his hand, he was holding a red-covered book.
At last, the fruits of my patience.
---
Inside the cave, Tsunade was doing everything she could to revive Heiji. Her brow furrowed in concentration, sweat beading on her forehead.
The method was quite similar to how she had revived Anko—stimulating the consciousness center of the brain without disrupting the output of Heiji's chakra. However, the chakra within his brain was far weaker than Anko's.
Ordinary people do possess chakra, but it's extremely weak and unusable in its natural state. Although Orochimaru had said he had boosted Heiji's chakra using the power of a curse mark, it didn't change the inherently weak nature of the chakra.
The chakra produced by trained ninjas is vastly different from the innate chakra found in an ordinary human body. If Heiji's chakra could be compared to water, then Tsunade's chakra was more like thick glue. When the glue mixed with the water, it caused a ripple effect that spread through his system.
Every time her chakra entered his brain, black waves rippled across his forehead. This was due to the instability of the chakra in the brain membrane, triggering a disturbance as the Shoggoth sensed organic matter for a brief moment. Although it recognized the human brain as its host, without the protection of the membrane, it would immediately act on its biological instinct to devour the brain as food.
Tsunade had honed her chakra control to its peak, but even so, waves of disturbance still occasionally rippled through.
Thanks to her effort, she finally detected an electric signal in Heiji's brain that indicated a shift from a dormant state. However, just at that moment, a voice came from outside the cave.
"Tsunade!"
No, not now! Tsunade's eyes widened in alarm. The voice caused Tsunade to momentarily lose focus. Her precise chakra control faltered slightly, which immediately caused a surge of chakra in Heiji's brain. Instantly, the Shoggoth on his forehead became agitated, sensing the presence of organic matter due to the loosening of the brain membrane.
From Heiji's forehead, sharp black spikes began to emerge, resembling the way a dog might poke its head through the bars of a cage when it smells food. To make matters worse, black mouths began to appear on the surface of these spikes, lined with sharp white teeth. Inside these rows of teeth was a pitch-black abyss.
Frightened by this sight, she quickly pulled her hand away.
"Damn, has it evolved this fast?"
The Shoggoth had the ability to transform, showing an extraordinary talent for evolving by learning from biological tissues. The Shoggoth inhabiting Heiji's body had already mastered the various human organs and tissues in this time, even learning how to utilize them.
The concept of mouth equals eating had already formed in its mind. Without Heiji's brain to regulate it, the Shoggoth would instinctively use these mouths for their biological function—feeding. Its first target for consumption would be Heiji's brain, which it had already encapsulated in its stomach.
Fortunately, as Tsunade's chakra withdrew, Heiji's chakra stabilized, and the black, spiked mouths retracted back into his forehead, restoring his skin to its human appearance.
She breathed a sigh of relief and angrily turned toward the cave entrance. From around the corner of the entrance, two figures appeared—one tall and muscular, the other much more delicate.
Jiraiya and Shizune.
Jiraiya immediately saw the body of a man lying beside Tsunade and quickly understood what had transpired.
"Damn, we were still too late," he said.
However, he didn't blame Tsunade but instead began scanning the cave for Orochimaru. She's always been reckless when it comes to saving lives, but this...
As he looked around, his eyes fell on a sight that would make any man's blood race—a beautiful body sitting on an operating table. The figure had a perfectly proportioned body, barely concealed by a loose green robe.
Focus, Jiraiya! You're here on a mission, not for... research! he scolded himself internally, but it was too late.
"Ugh!" Jiraiya's blood pressure instantly skyrocketed, causing both saliva and blood to shoot out from his mouth and nose.
"Ah!" Anko, realizing she had been seen, screamed in embarrassment. The Shoggoth, sensing that every time Anko made this sound, it was incredibly loud, amplified her scream to an exaggerated level.
The sharp, piercing sound caused the three people in the cave to immediately cover their ears. Her scream eventually died down, and Orochimaru emerged from the depths of the cave.
"Hmph, Jiraiya, you're as foolish as ever," he sneered, his voice pulling Jiraiya's attention away from Anko. Wiping the blood from under his nose, Jiraiya smiled, unfazed by Orochimaru's mockery of his weakness for women.
"A guy like you will never understand the joy of being with a woman. No woman could ever like a gloomy guy like you."
"Your childish obsessions are beneath me, Jiraiya," Orochimaru said coldly.
He ignored Jiraiya's childish taunts and instead tucked a scroll into his robe in full view of everyone. Jiraiya immediately recognized the scroll—it was the one he had used to seal the Dimensional Shamblers. If I can just get that scroll...
There were six people in the cave: Jiraiya and Shizune near the entrance, blocking Orochimaru's escape route, and Tsunade and Heiji in a corner, with Anko caught in the middle of it all. Jiraiya hesitated to make a move, aware of the danger.
He wasn't too worried about Tsunade. Even though she had stolen his scroll to save someone, she hadn't completely sided with Orochimaru. With her help, capturing Orochimaru and retrieving the scroll wouldn't be impossible. But the small size of the cave gave him an advantage and he had plenty of potential hostages.
"After all these years, the first time the three of us would meet again would be like this," Jiraiya said, breaking the suffocating silence.
He carefully chose his next words, "Let's talk this out, Orochimaru. No one needs to get hurt here."
Orochimaru's lips curled into a dismissive sneer. "Always the diplomat, Jiraiya. Some things never change."
"Allow me to join in."
Everyone turned toward the cave entrance. A hunched figure was slowly making its way inside, and behind them, a massive scorpion tail was extending from their back, clanking menacingly as it pointed toward the group in the cave.
Orochimaru's eyes narrowed at the newcomer. An unexpected player enters the game...