Team Sakumo quickly began breaking down the sturdy walls this time around to move toward the path the beast took to reach them and soon came across a gaping wound of a hole within the floor and jumped into it after an initial inspection. Their entry point was a large... cave. It was manmade, of course, and the rugged, uneven surface of the cave was all designed. The first thing Kai did was, again, disable the seal around the cave meant to trigger some sleeping gas and transmit voices over and then the Team began to observe their surroundings.

Instead of an isolated cave, the section branched out through many tunnels.

"It feels like we're hunting for some lost treasure," Minato remarked with a wry smirk as Sakumo was quick to add it to the list of real possibilities, "Could be just that. Maybe Kumogakure's discovered something of great material importance here. At this moment, we can't afford to discredit any theory."

"Then I say they are searching for an even stronger beast!" Tsume grinned, "Stronger than the dog before."

Minato and Tsume turned to Kai who shrugged, "I just think they are trying to research something in a distasteful, or rather, the most efficient method known to them outside of their own land."

"Well, that was no fun—" Tsume huffed.

"Of course," Kai cut her off, or rather, continued before he was rudely cut off by Tsume, "They are using the blood from the corpses to summon a massive demonic monster through that strange circle!"

"And that's even more disturbing," Sakumo rubbed his temples, if the hair on his sides was already grey, he wouldn't know given the color of his hair.

The team picked a direction based on Sakumo's choice which wasn't really that planned out. They were here to explore the location and luckily, the Kumo nin were letting them. Of course, they didn't need a third party to reveal how shady this sounded but... it was one of the better scenarios currently.

As they walked, Kai kept alert to pick on any sentient being's emotions he could. He had long tweaked it to use it with Senjutsu Chakra, too, but he needed to be in Sage Transformation to be a Sage Empath. So, at the moment, individuals with Senjutsu Chakra who have the instinctual ability to emulate nature and evade the senses of regular chakra sensors were still a threat to him.

The group marked paths and continued to go on for seven minutes until Kai sighed, "My clone's done in."

"Oh? Was it that beast alone?" Sakumo questioned.

"No, just that my clone blew up all the chakra it had to test the beast. It's interesting."

"What is?" Minato inquired.

"That the beast's entire body has grown heads. It's like an experiment gone wrong or... something else. But no natural beast would exist with a limitation as freaky as having so many heads that it covers the entire body and is unable for it to move, much less fill its mouth with something to eat."

Kai's words made the trio suck in a breath of cold air. If nothing else, it was quite freaky for such a chakra beast to exist.

They didn't have to travel for too long when Kai sensed a few shinobi on their tracks. It was clear that constantly disabling surveillance seals had finally made the upper level unrestful and even if they weren't picking their speed, the group of scouts behind them kept a large distance.

Notifying the others about it to keep his track record as stellar as ever, they ventured deeper into this primitive-like tunnel system until Kai sensed another individual and steered the group towards it. While this stranger didn't have too large of a chakra capacity, it wasn't far off from Sakumo but what attracted Kai was the utter euphoria he sensed from the individual...

It was a state Mikoto only shared when she climaxed the sixth and ninth time.

But this stranger was in a constant state of such euphoria. Surely... this person wasn't on a streak of wanking off, right?

Their advance was cut short when a low, raspy groan slipped into the tunnel attached to yet another cave not far away, "Aaah~ I didn't have to move after all. Did you get past my stupid neighbor? Is the world's most rude playmate dead?"

Coming to a stop, Sakumo signaled the team with his hand and made Kai cover their backs as Sakumo bore the responsibility of going to the front.

The cave, again, was barely lit. But Team Sakumo, more specifically, Tsume and Minato had adapted to the low visibility and light somewhat.

Unfazed by the rather jovial tone of the dubious resident this deep into a Kumo facility whose last level was specifically designed for a dog and this individual.

---

"Aaah~ I didn't have to move after all. Did you get past my stupid neighbor? Is the world's most rude playmate dead?"

The voice spread in the well-lit but somberly decorated office. The wooden aesthetic of the office worked well with the tender and subtle scent of Greenoak that naturally relaxed one's body and calmed the mind to make better decisions.

Since Kai had yet to enter the cave and destroy the remaining surveillance seals, the dark-skinned bespectacled man with his dark grey hair in a thick bun leaned forward over to the scroll placed on the table. Until now, they had yet to identify the intruders except for their origin— Konoha.

At this point, the man turned to look at a light-skinned blonde youth who wore an untainted white labcoat over the obvious grey flak-jacked with a single strap tapering diagonally over his right shoulder and a kumogakure's forehead protector around his neck through which a nasty scar snuck out.

"What's the condition of Cerberus, H?" The dark-skinned man questioned as the youth named H shook his head, "Adopting his physical behaviors, even despite growing head around his stomach, Cerberus has yet to die. In fact, it is as lively as ever but we haven't been able to scan the body. Cutting it open would now mean harming the head and more heads would sprout out in that manner."

"Hmm... so the two really may have attained some level of immortality. Still, this will be our last event of note. Order the escort to remove all non-essential personnel, seize the research material, and pack up. First Iwagakure and now Konoha... this facility is already exposed. Use chamber AC3 to capture and transport Cerberus." The man gave out a series of orders before exhaling a soft sight, "I wish we can quickly develop fuinjutsu that provides visual feedback..."

"We would have if we successfully invaded Uzushiogakure..." H shook his head.

"No matter," the grey-haired man smiled, "We'll develop it eventually. All that raid would have done was jump the pace of our development by a few years. Now, we just need to make up for it by doing extra work and finding revolutionary talents from our own village."

H gave the calm boss of his a deadpan, "Easier said than done, boss. If finding talent was so easier, we'd have more B in our village."

Turning to look at H, the man chuckled, "B isn't a talent. Far from it. He just... made up for the strength he would have had in a few years by working for it in accumulating intensity now..."

"What about your daughter, Mabu—"

"Who are you?" Before H could complete it, the scroll with a pitch-black circular seal suddenly relayed the live audio feedback. Raising his hand to silence H and in turn, their idle chatter, the man grew focused once again while H nodded and went out to carry out the orders given before.

Meanwhile, the chat continued as the facility's first captive and the cause of such a location practically giggled, "Me? Ooh~ The Two blades on my sickle mean that I am the second one to be blessed by the great savior Jashin! Now, who might you be?"

"Blessed by great savior Jashin, huh..." the 'intruder' remarked, "Hi, Blessed by great savior Jashin, I'm dad."

While the expression of the leader of the facility froze, a loud but pleased groan rang followed by the guttural sound of something stabbing into flesh.

---

Sakumo, like usual, spoke while trying to deduce as much as he could from the half-naked pale middle-aged man with a thin frame and a large red dual-sided, chained sickle resting atop his lap. The man's shaggy, overgrown brown hair gave him a haggard experience and his sinister smirk was nothing to feel appreciative about. But Sakumo had seen such a pair of tenacious, almost crazy eyes a few times and none of these encounters was something Sakumo recalled fondly.

"Who are you?" Sakumo inquired calmly as he noted a large patch of dried blood around the man with imprints of paws around the youth... a large beast. Cerberus certainly fits the bill for it, White Fang realized. But the main question was whose blood was this? Was Cerberus fighting this man? Well, to be frank, and a crass individual that judged people simply by appearance, Sakumo did feel that this individual may be the 'freak' who accompanied Cerberus which meant that this man's strength or ability would be nothing to scoff at.

"Me? Ooh~ The Two blades on my sickle mean that I am the second one to be blessed by the great savior Jashin! Now, who might you be?" The man spoke rather politely. His strange pair of crimson pupils revealed relief as his thin lips tugged further into a placated smile.

Sakumo narrowed his eyes and returned an equally polite smile.

"Blessed by great savior Jashin, huh..." he remarked, "Hi, Blessed by great savior Jashin, I'm dad."

Sakumo didn't care if the man got the joke or not. The strange surroundings and an even stranger individual were simply a recipe for disaster not to mention the Kumo shinobi tailing them. The moment the opposition's expression was marred by confusion, Sakumo blitzed forth. His White Fang gave off a piercing white glow, a feature of the blade if injected with regular chakra, and caused the opponent to go into a daze and a state of temporary blindness. Instead of a pained hiss, however, the man let out a sick moan!

The blade was plainly stabbed into the man's head and only then did Sakumo breathe out a sigh of relief.

Pulling back the blade with blood pouring through the thin stab wound of his saber, the man slowly fell back and Sakumo diverted his attention.

"Keep a lookout. If this tunnel system is just a place to keep that beast then—"

While Tsume, Kuromaru, and Minato were hearing Sakumo's order, the first to show a change was Kuromaru who suddenly charged at Sakumo but the dog's speed was similar to his partner— Tsume. Strangely, Minato, with an equal look of shock ran and was quicker than the duo but still too slow compared to Sakumo and...

The strange follower of Jashin whose head still bleeding was upon Sakumo the moment he turned around with the blade of his sickle almost upon the White Fang.

Turning around, his saber even quicker than his body's reaction, sliced the man in half but Sakumo finally 'looked' at his eyes...

He was still alive.

His grin grew wider. As the tip of the scythe that once aimed for his chest was now steered to his shoulder and reached Sakumo, his gaze grew visibly frantic at a speed only visible to a few.

*Fwip*

A figure... blinked in front of Sakumo and the blade. The youth's grin was even more devilish than the scythe-wielding maniac as he held the handle of the scythe with a grip too mighty and thus, held the 'Freak,' midair, too, whole legs were still on the ground but after the initial loss of blood, the man's upper body strangely contained the blood without even healing the insides of his body that still twitched.

***

Shoutout to Ulesys, j n, No Title, and Judd!!

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