Ren, clad in his Tobi costume, stood on a branch high in the canopy, watching Kabuto and his team resting on the ground under him.

Finding their team was no problem. Hinata did all the work for him already. She did not call him in a random location in the Forest. Instead, she was following Kabuto with her eyes while staying a kilometer away from him.

And while sensing techniques were nice, there was a reason why the Hyuga clan with their eyes was so precious to Konoha. No normal chakra sensor can detect people a kilometer away. There was no snowball chance in hell of Hinata’s team being discovered at such a distance.

Ren doubted that Kiba and Shino even knew they were tailing somebody as Hinata led them through the Forest.

The Byakugan was quite busted for things like this.

Deciding not to drag this out too much, Ren shrugged and hopped down from the branch, landing on the ground in a crouch directly a few feet in front of Kabuto’s team, startling them into action as they jumped to their feet, their freshly opened rations falling onto the ground.

“Yo.” Ren lightly exclaimed and raised his hand in a greeting as he rose from the crouch.

And it was instantly answered by Kabuto’s team leaping at him with the intent to kill him.

Ren easily sidestepped, Akado Yoroi coming at him with his blue, glowy chakra-leech technique covering his hand, and ducked under a kick from Misumi Tsurugi, chuckling in the process.

“Oh my. You two have a hidden talent.” Ren hopped back, evading their follow-up combo attack. “Please keep on hiding it.” He gave them friendly advice, but for some reason, it only served to enrage them.

Before Ren could comment further, a hand covered in chakra scalpel suddenly passed through his chest, to the utter surprise of its owner, Kabuto.

Ren huffed.

A shadow clone quietly materialized behind the shocked Kabuto.

Kabuto’s head rolled off his shoulders as the clone unsealed a tanto from his wrist storage seal and, in one swift motion, severed Kabuto’s head before the boy could even react.

‘Heh. Heal that, bastard.’ Ren glanced behind himself with a small, amused smirk as Kabuto’s headless body toppled onto the ground.

Retaliating while intangible was impossible. But creating clones was not.

Ren’s eyes turned toward Akado and Misumi, who froze in their places upon seeing their teammate decapitated. A chill went up their spines. Their legs flexed, ready to jump back.

And…

Their chests burst into pieces, blood and gore raining on the surrounding ground as the low-powered explosive seals Ren snuck on the middle of their backs while evading their attacks activated.

Needless to say, their hearts couldn’t handle it and broke into pieces.

Ren watched as the bodies of the two chunin-wannabe traitors powerlessly flopped onto the ground, and shook his head before he kneeled down next to Kabuto’s corpse and started searching it.

Kabuto was the only one who had a chance to run away from him here. It’s why he decided to take him by surprise with one decisive attack instead of giving him a proper fight.

The other two… they were at the level of low-chunin at best. Their survival was not in the cards against an S-ranked opponent.

“Nothing, huh?” Ren mumbled, a bit irritated. But he guessed that Kabuto had his reputation as a good spy for a reason. There was nothing on his body that could be worth taking, and nothing that could reveal more of Orochimaru’s plans.

Glancing at Akado and Misumi’s bodies, Ren inwardly scoffed. If Kabuto did not have any intel, then he doubted the two throwaway pawns would possess it.

But his training did not let him be careless. So, he dutifully searched them, too. It was as big a waste of time as he knew it would be.

‘Well, this was a bit underwhelming, but that’s not a bad thing.’ Ren thought to himself as he stood up and clapped his hands against each other a few times.

He didn’t dislike easy jobs. In fact, he preferred them!

‘If only all missions were this eas-‘

A snake suddenly passed through his intangible body, its fangs barred in an attempt to bite him before it crashed headfirst into a treetrunk and folded on itself like an accordion.

With a disgruntled frown, Ren slowly turned around, his eyes landing on a smiling Orochimaru whose narrowed gaze was firmly on Kabuto’s corpse as he walked from behind a tree.

Uh-oh. Despite his smile, he didn’t look very happy that his head butt-buddy was dead.

“What do we have here?” Orochimaru, in the body of the Kusa kunoichi with its face ripped off, slowly looked at Ren with anger shining in his eyes as he let out a menacing chuckle when he saw Ren’s makeshift duct-taped Akatsuki costume.

“You must have balls of steel to impersonate Akatsuki. If you hadn’t killed Kabuto, I’d offer you a position among my ranks. Let me teach you why angering somebody who was a part of that organization is a bad id-“

A hand with a Jutsu Scroll suddenly passed above the ground from the underground, right underneath Orochimaru, leaving the activated scroll before it burrowed into the ground again in an instant.

Orochimaru barely managed to blink as he noticed, before he was engulfed in a very concentrated ball of extremely hot, blue flames.

It lasted barely three seconds before it vanished, leaving only a charred, smoking corpse of the Kusa kunoichi that slowly dropped onto its knees, about to topple forward.

“Talking isn’t a free action.” Ren politely informed the charred corpse.

“Noted.” Ren heard from behind as the Kusanagi sword swept through his chest, finding yet again no purchase thanks to his intangibility.

“Now, that’s an annoying ability.” Orochimaru said as he jumped back, his interest in Ren spiking. The way he looked at him changed, and he reclassified him in his mind from somebody he would kill to somebody he just had to dissect and study.

Ren, however, did not care as he sullenly complained in his mind. ‘Should have used the black hole scroll.’

But he let out a quick inward sigh, knowing it was just wishful thinking. While he doubted Orochimaru could have evaded a black hole appearing right in between his legs, that scroll had not yet been tested, and Ren simply had no idea how big or powerful the black hole would be.

Hell, he had no way of testing it either for now. For all he knew, the black hole could keep on growing and growing… Ren had no intention of being yet another ninja killed by his own experimental technique.

Unfortunately, that meant no black holes for him quite yet.

“You have some very interesting trinkets.” Orochimaru remarked, his eyes glancing at the burned remains of the scroll, near his charred previous body. “What is your name? I need to know what to call you once you are one of my test subjects.” He casually threatened with a smile as he looked back at Ren.

“Tobi is Tobi!” Ren excitedly exclaimed and waved his hands before he, almost casually, hopped to the side, evading a bunch of snakes bursting from the ground under his previous position.

With an offhand gesture, the snakes were instantly shredded into mincemeat by a wind-natured cutting technique before they could reorient themselves and attack Ren again.

“And Tobi loves testing!” Ren said with a wide smile under his mask. “Ne! Ne! For example! What is one plus one?” He asked, just as Orochimaru attacked him again, probably hoping that he was too distracted to activate his intangibility jutsu, or just to see it again in action to gauge it better.

Orochimaru’s sword harmlessly passed through Ren’s gut just as he finished asking his question, making Orochimaru raise his eyebrow in amusement, clearly not feeling threatened at all.

He was not an S-rank ninja for nothing. He had already understood that Ren could not attack while intangible, and while his sword was buried through his gut, he had to stay intangible.

Orochimaru chuckled. “You are quite a peculiar one, aren’t y-?”

A shadow clone abruptly appeared behind him and used the same wind-natured cutting technique, only more focused. In an instant, Orochimaru, his face still wearing a conceited, easy-going expression, split into two pieces right through the middle from head to crotch.

Blood splashed onto the ground.

The two pieces of his body separated and started to fall in different directions.

Snakes burst from each piece and entwined with each other, about to pull the two pieces together.

“Bad snakey!” Ren yelled as he became tangible and used the technique again, severing the reconnected snakes that were trying to pull Orochimaru’s body back together.

“One plus one is two!” Ren’s clone exclaimed, too. As he did the same a moment later, when new snakes burst from the two parts of the bodies, and were immediately cut apart again.

Both Ren and his clone let out a giggle as they felt the noticeable dip in Orochimaru’s chakra reserves.

This was actually a bit of fun! Like an alive piñata!

Realizing that there would be no reconnecting the two parts, a snake, facing a different direction, burst from one part of Orochimaru’s body as it hit the ground. The snake opened its mouth wide, and a new Orochimaru whizzed outside of it at breakneck speed. His feet hit a tree trunk behind Ren, where he rebounded and jumped straight at Ren, his face no longer so casual.

Ren barely managed to sway his body to the side, evading the surprisingly fast lunge. His hand whipped up, kunai appearing within it with a puff of smoke, its tip nearing Orochimaru’s neck…

And passing through his body as Ren had to go intangible when Orochimaru’s Kusanagi almost stabbed him in the foot.

The two ninja leapt back, both sliding on the ground as they watched each other with a newfound respect.

To be fair, Ren had to admit that using his intangibility against Orochimaru was hard. He was fast. Reacting properly took a lot of focus, and one mistake could prove fatal.

He couldn’t really use his better seals, either, because that would give away his true identity.

It was becoming very obvious to Ren that he would not be killing Orochimaru today. Especially not under the guise of Tobi. He needed the skills and seals associated with his real identity to take the man down.

But the experience from this little battle between them would still serve him well when he started to plan his demise. Even if Orochimaru also doubtlessly gained his own insights into Ren’s abilities during it.

Their staring contest was unfortunately interrupted when Anko barrelled out of the canopy screaming Orochimaru’s name in fury, stopping in her tracks only when she noticed the stand-off between the two cautious ninjas.

“And that’s my cue.” Orochimaru chuckled at Anko before his body started to dissolve in mud, the man clearly long gone.

Noticing it, Anko shouted, “Wait!”

And Ren, just to be annoying, also exclaimed, “Yup. Me, too! Bye-bye, pretty lady!”

He disappeared into a swirl of space in the air just as Anko quickly turned toward him and outstretched her hand as if in an attempt to stop him.

“Y-” She started but stopped herself when she noticed there was nobody around.

Her hand fell back next to her body, and she speechlessly stared ahead, the anger boiling in her building up and up, until she started loudly screaming and throwing techniques around.

“What the hell, you two fucking pieces of *beep beep beep*!?”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep