Sukuna chose his ground carefully, not out of caution for himself, but out of convenience, as the stretch of forest he arrived at lay far beyond any patrol routes, far from trade paths, and most importantly far from the reach of any hidden village that might take interest in what he was about to do.
Well, how many shinobi villages are there to begin with…
Far too many for Sukuna's liking. If he could help it, there would be only one, the one he controlled. However, the point stands. He was further away from any hidden village, regardless of whether they were very popular or just another small fry.
What he actually looked out for were the lookouts and scouts. Many shinobi used these routes exactly because of how uncharted these woods were.
So he had to make certain he wasn't dropping on top of a small scouting unit from another village anytime soon.
He knew a few places like that, and one was the big forest quite nearby.
It was quiet, big, and most importantly dangerous and isolated enough from any other trading route or important habitants that very few people ever came here.
Sukuna stepped forward into the clearing, rolling his shoulder once as if loosening his body, though his attention had already turned inward, toward the thing sealed beneath his skin.
He was trying to figure out how the combination of curse energy and nature energy was different from the normal combination of nature plus chakra.
The hints were quite obvious. First, it combined easily, so easily that there was hardly any traction, making it hard to control. Like magnets of two opposite poles drawing each other closer. In this regard, this combination was exactly opposite of the traditional sage mode.
And second, the much more troublesome part, it made him lose control. Nothing out of the ordinary, normal curse marks did the same to their users, but his was far more chaotic.
Like both Nature energy and Curse Energy acting like fire and gasoline, feeding each other in an endless loop to create so much chaos that even he couldn't control it, even with his borderline absurd mental strength he developed while training with Ryomen Sukuna's memories.
Perhaps the worst part was that in that state, he became like Ryomen. A blood-lusted monster, hell-bent on killing and destroying everything in his path.
But he doubted it. Even bloodlust, uncontrolled, could be directed properly and would be useful in battle if one had no other way to control it. However, what really was causing him trouble was the state of mindlessness.
The fight against Orochimaru was the perfect example. A fight which he could have ended with a few strategically well-placed moves ended up destroying one third of the Forest of Death, and he still couldn't kill the snake sannin.
No… bloodlust was fine, but that state of mindless berserker was not.
He was strong, he knew he was, he had worked hard for it, but it wasn't power that he would describe himself by, that was Ryomen.
Sukuna was far more of a strategic fighter. Tricks, hacks, traps, he would rather use them first before falling back on the last inevitable resort of frontal confrontation.
Just as he described himself, if Ryomen Sukuna was a machine gun, then he was a sniper.
Both almost equally lethal but with different approaches. So if this curse mark were to take away his wits from battle, he was dead meat. He had to find a way to control it or else the entire fiasco with Orochimaru to gain the curse mark was useless.
Without hesitation, he released a fraction of its power.
The reaction was immediate.
Dark markings spread across his skin like ink spilling through cracks, twisting and coiling along his arms and torso as the foreign power surfaced, pressing against his control with an intensity that was far greater than before. Sukuna's expression did not change, but his eyes sharpened slightly as he focused, forcing the energy to stabilize rather than surge outward uncontrollably.
Well, calling it stabilized was the wrong word, it was already stabilized. As he said, both curse energy and nature energy mixed like water and wine.
But instead of diluting the good stuff, it just made it more intense.
"…Stay calm… stay calm," he muttered under his breath.
The first test was simple, do nothing. Just feel the power and maintain focus. That's all.
He increased the output.
More markings spread, crawling up his neck, across his face, pulsing faintly as the air around him began to shift, as if the space itself was being strained under the pressure of conflicting systems.
To even his surprise, it was exactly like the opposite reaction from what he first thought.
There were two stages of the curse mark. One manifested as markings over one's body and gave a sizable boost to one's power, that would be the first level if one had to rank it. Then there was the second level which completely altered one's body, twisted the mind more, and required a special drug from Orochimaru to even activate.
He, however, never needed that state. He achieved the second stage on his first activation of the curse mark. The reason lay here, the compatibility between both curse energy and nature energy was way beyond what chakra had with nature.
Perhaps because both originated from nature, or because both were violent energies? He couldn't pinpoint it.
And there was more, to make sage jutsu the chakra and nature energy had to be divided into correct proportions.
One third Yin Chakra, one third Yang Chakra, and one third Nature Energy. Only by maintaining this balance was senjutsu chakra created.
And even though Orochimaru's curse mark was a bastardized form of sage mode, the idea remained the same.
If anything, because the transformation was pushed through a seal and was not controlled by the user, the ratio never actually established itself correctly, and thus all the pain, loss of control, and demonic-looking transformation.
Real sage mode was supposed to look exactly opposite to that, calm, in tune with the world and nature, and most importantly, as close to human form as possible.
In comparison, his case was completely different.
The ratio itself was different, it wasn't one third anymore, instead 50%.
Half curse energy and half nature energy. Most likely because yin and yang were not concepts within curse energy to give them their separate ratios to balance the formula.
No wonder the boost he got felt so ridiculous back then. The output and power he experienced were far from anything he remembered, even when he was just at his 50% capacity and highly inefficient due to the new energy being unknown to him.
And that was why he had to control it, because if he could, then that power could push him beyond Kage level easily. He knew it would. A fully realized sage mode which was much stronger than any real sage mode this world had ever seen.
That too combined with his real reserves, just imagine how much curse energy he could pull in.
But more importantly, it highly improved his output. That was single-handedly the one thing which limited a sorcerer's power. Reserves were always an issue, yes, but not for him, he had enough curse energy to drown in it. In this case, he was much like Naruto or Hashirama.
But output, that was the Achilles' heel for him. What was the point of having a 100 Watt-hour battery if you could only output 5 Watts an hour?
Yes, it would last long, but who needed that? He needed stronger attacks to end the fight faster.
Sage mode did that, boosting his output.
"Good," Sukuna said quietly, as if acknowledging a challenge rather than a problem.
He pushed further.
The ground beneath his feet cracked slightly, subtle at first, then more pronounced as the pressure increased, and his body began to change, not gradually, but all at once, as if the restraint snapped just enough to let something else surface.
Two additional arms tore free from his form, followed by the shift in his face as his features sharpened, splitting into something more inhuman, more complete, as four eyes opened slowly, each one carrying a cold, calculating awareness.
The transformation settled. And for a brief moment everything stilled. His goal was still the same, just endure the madness and stay in control.
Then the forest reacted.
Branches trembled, leaves rustled violently despite the lack of wind, and the air itself felt heavier, saturated with something that did not belong to this world.
Once he found himself enough in control, he started testing out the output and efficiency.
Leveling parts of the forest, to be more exact.
Far from the clearing, moving swiftly through the trees, Killer Bee came to an abrupt stop when he felt this absurd pressure coming from not far away.
He had been tracking traces for months now, following instinct and fragments of information he had gotten from the villagers where his brother stayed before disappearing.
Searching for anything that might lead him to his brother, and he had found many things. From the presence of Tsunade Senju in that same village when his brother went missing, at least he learned that from the villagers, to the trail where his brother might have fought the enemy.
He found much, but had no proof or evidence to go after anything. He didn't even know whether his brother was alive or dead. It was grinding on his nerves.
And then suddenly he felt this pressure, even Gyuki inside him stirred.
"Careful Bee, this pressure, it's not normal. I feel strong malice from it," the Eight-Tails rumbled, its voice low and wary.
Bee said nothing, but his grip tightened slightly as his expression hardened, the usual rhythm and swagger that defined him completely absent, replaced instead by focus and something far more serious. He did not hesitate.
He moved. Whatever it was, if it could help him find his brother, he would see it through.
Back in the clearing, Sukuna flexed one of his additional arms slowly, observing the stability of his form, noting the slight fluctuations in control, the way the curse still attempted to assert dominance over his body. It was better than before, but not enough.
He was about to push it further. Destroy a bit more of the forest, good thing this place had no forest prevention act.
But he had to stop midway.
Sukuna turned his head slightly, four eyes shifting in unison toward the edge of the clearing, where a figure emerged without hesitation, stepping into the distorted air as if daring it to push back.
It didn't take long for him to realize who this was. Killer Bee.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Sukuna wondered what he was doing here, when it finally dawned on him. The place he killed the Raikage wasn't that far from here.
'Shit…'
xXx
A/N : Who is looking forward to this fight ?
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