“What are you going to do now?” Cale asked, his voice refreshed. It was much better than inside the cave where he was always so gloomy. As he waited for Draco’s answer, he looked around, embracing the feeling.
“Probably going to save my friends, if they are still alive, that is,” Draco answered, staring at the sky. The moon looked much bigger than the one in his world, mesmerizing him for a few moments. He took a deep breath, devoid of blood and sweat accumulated in that prison.
It was refreshing to finally break free, but he couldn’t relax just yet.
He still had to deal with that matter.
“Friends? You have friends?” Cale glanced at Draco as his eyebrows knit. He was no longer there. Looking around, he found no traces of him anywhere. There were no sounds or fluctuations in the air. Draco simply vanished from the spot.
What the hell happened?
While Cale still wondered whether he had gone mad, Draco once again appeared in the familiar white room as he glanced around. This time, something was different. There were no doors to the treasury.
[Commencing scanning]
Draco saw a screen pop in front of him, depicting these words as a peculiar white light shined from it, scanning Draco from head to toes. A few moments later, he saw the words on the screen changing.
[An otherworldly energy has been detected in the user’s body. It is extremely evil and can affect the overall constitution of the user. It is also connected to a creature of ‘Naruto’ planet, meaning that the user’s body could face permanent damage after a long time.]
Draco frowned as he read through this screen. He had been using the curse mark for a long time and every time he could feel his emotions turn more violent, meaning that this screen wasn’t lying at all.
[After the evaluation, the user had been proposed a deal that would be the best for his future. The user can either choose to have this energy removed altogether and then pick a reward in accordance with the evaluation of the quest, or keep this energy with all its defects terminated.]
Draco placed his hand against his chin. He could clearly see which of the two was better, but he decided to have some time to think. This world was definitely strong, but he couldn’t be sure to get anything better than the curse in that treasury.
[Note that upon getting this energy cleansed of its natural evilness, the user will experience pain comparable to torture.]
Draco closed his eyes for a moment. Some pain was nothing in his path to getting stronger. He made his choice, which was obviously the latter one. Before, he was troubled by whether the curse mark would negatively affect him, but that part could be excluded now. Besides, this curse mark was absurdly strong. It could boost his power and positively change his body during the battle - prolonged nails or even wings.
Draco was about to say something when he suddenly halted and looked around the whiteness. This screen...it talked oddly, almost like it wanted him to get stronger, letting him choose everything that would only benefit him.
He had these thoughts for a long, but this skill, coupled with this screen, was too mysterious. Normally, screens only depicted the usage of the skills and stats, but they never responded to people. But the screen here almost seemed to have a personality within it, as it even responded to Draco.
He grew a bit more cautious but went along, anyway. It was too mysterious right now, and he knew nothing about it, except that it was somehow connected to his past.
There was only one way to find out.
Get stronger. Much stronger.
And [World Travel] was something that helped him to become more powerful, so why wouldn’t he use it?
“I want to keep this energy,” Draco said with resolution in his eyes as he prepared for the upcoming pain. It came like a tsunami, crashing against him as if he was an insignificant being.
He fell against the ground, gasping for breath, his organs twisting, his skin burning. It felt like every inch of his being was getting torn apart from him. Draco didn’t know how much time passed, for he was completely lost in the pain. Every second seemed like an hour.
Thankfully, at last, the pain stopped and Draco could stabilize his breathing. He had been tortured before, and it was much better than this energy cleansing. Draco took a mental note for himself to choose another reward next time.
Soon, Draco felt a peculiar sense overwhelming him and he understood that he was about to go back. He put on an emotionless expression and prepared for the worst.
A few moments later, Draco disappeared.
However, the screen didn’t vanish.
It remained flying in the air.
Some words appeared on it.
[The creator smiles]
***
Orochimaru walked through the destroyed arena, dead bodies underneath his feet. Eventually, he came to a halt as he glanced at Kabuto sitting against the cracked wall, his hand missing.
Fortunately, he was still alive.
There were three figures beside him, their bodies evincing signs of being cut by something sharp. It was a miracle that Kabuto survived this ordeal. No... it was a miracle that something like this happened in the first place.
Most of the prisoners were failures of his experiment, who were given one last chance of being useful. They weren’t in the right state of mind, however; it seemed that not all of them were like that.
Draco, who was given his strongest curse seal, was interesting from the beginning, but now it was even more than that. The fact that he wrecked this chaos was less impressive than the fact that he escaped by creating a hole in that prison’s wall.
Even Orochimaru didn’t know that there was a path out of the cave from there. However, that wasn’t the most fascinating thing. Draco had been cursed by his strongest curse, hence, Orochimaru could always find his whereabouts since he had quite a bit of his mana inside of him.
But that wasn’t the case anymore.
Orochimaru couldn’t feel a thing, as if Draco had perished from this world.
“Draco, right?” Orochimaru licked his lips, his eyes turning lustful. “You are an interesting fellow. I will remember you.”