Kabuto stood before the corpse that had once embodied power, knowledge, and—twisted as it was—a sense of belonging.
His gaze was hollow.
"Orochimaru-sama… failed. He failed—and he died."
"Orochimaru-sama is gone. Then what about me? Who am I now?"
"What is the meaning of my existence?"
The familiar crisis of identity surged back with violent force. Now that Orochimaru—the final "coordinate" anchoring his sense of self—had disappeared, Kabuto had lost every reference point by which he defined himself.
To grasp at something—anything—to redefine himself, a dangerous and frenzied idea began forming within his mind, saturated as it was with scientific knowledge and warped obsession.
The Heavenly Screen revealed what followed.
Kabuto threw himself into experimentation.
Drawing upon the pinnacle of biological research and forbidden techniques he had learned from Orochimaru, he sealed himself inside a laboratory.
His objective was horrifyingly clear—
To transplant Orochimaru's cells into his own body.
The screen flickered with images of complex instruments, test tubes cultivating grotesque tissue samples. Kabuto's own body became the ultimate experimental ground.
The rejection reactions were violent and agonizing. His flesh began mutating in disturbing ways: irregular, scale-like patterns surfaced on his skin; his body temperature fluctuated abnormally; his chakra turned unstable, imbued with a cold, serpentine aura. At times, a forked tongue slipped out unconsciously.
His appearance and presence slid irreversibly toward something inhuman—something that blended with Orochimaru's traits.
And yet—
Faced with pain that would drive most people insane, Kabuto did not show fear.
He smiled.
A near-manic smile of exhilaration.
His eyes burned with pathological clarity and satisfaction.
"I can feel it… I can feel it again…"
He ran his fingers over the mutated skin and whispered, "Orochimaru-sama's power… knowledge… way of existence… they're merging with me. This way… this way I'll understand… who I truly am!"
Within his distorted logic, by consuming and merging with Orochimaru's existence, he could inherit Orochimaru's definition.
And thereby fill the hollow vessel that was himself with meaning once more.
It was both an extreme form of devotion—
And an act of desperate self-construction.
A collective hiss of shock rippled across the shinobi world.
"My God! He really did it?!"
"He transplanted Orochimaru's cells into himself?! That's basically eating him!"
"He's lost it! Completely lost it! This isn't just falling to darkness—this is mutation!"
"That's how he searches for identity?! That logic is terrifying!"
"So what is he now? Yakushi Kabuto—or 'Serpent Kabuto'?"
"This is way worse than just learning Orochimaru's techniques. He's trying to become another Orochimaru at the root!"
"Anyone who becomes a Heavenly Screen protagonist was never ordinary to begin with…"
"Wait—Kabuto didn't show up in earlier revelations. What if his experiment failed and he just… died?"
"That's possible!"
People watched with numb dread.
Kabuto's method—devouring another's existence to fill his own void—sent a chill deep into their bones.
The real Orochimaru observed the "future Kabuto" on screen with keen interest.
His gaze functioned like a high-precision scanner, analyzing every experimental detail: cellular rejection patterns, mutation markers, chakra fluctuations.
Then he shook his head.
"Too crude."
The words were quiet—but Karin and Kabuto both heard them clearly.
"Crude?" Karin tilted her head curiously. "What's crude about it? It looks pretty impressive. He's practically turning into a snake monster."
Orochimaru did not answer her directly.
Instead, he turned his golden eyes toward Kabuto, a faint trace of inquiry—and subtle instruction—within them.
"The cell extraction lacked purity. The fusion catalysts were chosen too aggressively. Suppression of rejection was one-dimensional and excessively damaging."
"More importantly, the conceptual framework is superficial. This is not true cellular integration—it is forced grafting. At best, it produces an unstable chimera, not genuine evolution… nor true inheritance."
He spoke as if critiquing a flawed research paper—calm, yet steeped in professional arrogance.
As though saying:
Look at the mess you made in that future.
If you're going to walk that path, at least learn properly.
Kabuto adjusted his glasses. His smile remained gentle, but behind the lenses, his eyes flickered.
"Orochimaru-sama is correct," he said with a respectful bow. "The 'me' shown in the Heavenly Screen was indeed… impatient. And immature."
"But I believe I can understand him."
A faint curve touched Orochimaru's lips.
Kabuto was far more obedient than the others.
Crude perhaps—but at least his actions were born of devotion.
Unlike certain unruly children nearby.
Time on the screen accelerated once more, symbolizing the long and grueling ordeal of Kabuto's inhuman experimentation.
Unlike many who perished under forbidden techniques, however—
Kabuto succeeded.
But that "success" was grotesque enough to unsettle even the strongest stomachs.
The former Kabuto—the bespectacled, mild-mannered young man—was gone.
In his place stood something twisted.
His frame had grown abnormally tall, structurally unnatural. His skin bore an unhealthy gray pallor, etched with serpentine markings and patches of hardened keratin.
A thick, scaled tail swayed behind him.
Most horrifying of all—
Embedded within his abdomen was a face.
Orochimaru's face.
Eyes closed. Pale. Wearing a faint, ambiguous smile—as if a dormant parasite fused seamlessly with Kabuto's body.
Above Kabuto's own head protruded two curved, sinister horns, further distorting his silhouette into something monstrous.
His original facial features were barely recognizable beneath the transformation.
And in his eyes burned an extreme fusion of obsession and madness.
Kabuto had succeeded.
He had fused portions of Orochimaru's cells and characteristics into himself—gaining superhuman resilience, regenerative capacity, and deeper access to forbidden knowledge.
But whether this was evolution—
Or self-annihilation—
Remained a far more troubling question.
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