The forest had a life of its own, and was not at all eager to make life easier for the participants of the exam. Somewhere in the distance there was the unhappy roar of disturbed tigers, and some team was probably being cut into ribbons of meat, judging by the shrieks that were intertwined with the roar.
Hoshi and her friends paid it no mind, too focused on tracking their surroundings as they made their way past the plant giants. As Ryo-sensei had shown them, rushing through the Forest of Death was deadly, and if you weren't a jonin, you had to keep your eyes peeled to make sure you didn't get snacked on by any of the locals.
The girls still shuddered at the memory of the encounter with the bear, which was three times the size of their usual relatives, but moved no slower than a jounin. If it wasn't for the teacher, the giant would have gotten his lunch, because all the weapons were stuck in the thick skin and fat, and the genin's techniques were not powerful enough to inflict a large wound, only to inflame the animal even more. And even genjutsu was useless, unable to instill fear, and vision was clearly not a major part of detecting prey.
Asani found a hive of wasps in one of the trees, and the kunoichi preferred to go around it in a wide arc - if it was still possible to escape or fight off the other inhabitants, it was possible to hide from hundreds of flying poisonous insects only in a body of water, a river or underground, if you had the proper technique.
As Hoshi waded through the roots of the giant, she threw a kunai, pinning a snake as thick as her arm to the wood, almost invisible against the bark.
- Here's our lunch," Surizawa said quietly, pulling out a scroll and sealing the prey in it.
Despite the ration briquettes available, the girls preferred to eat more tasty food, even if it had to be sourced and cooked on their own. And snakes in this case suited best of all, distinguished by relatively low danger, compared to other animals, of course, if you can spot them in time, and dying from a single blow to a vulnerable point, relative ease of cutting and acceptable flavor of meat. Tested repeatedly.
Having looked around and having found nothing suspicious, Hoshi called her partners - it was necessary to determine the plan of further actions.
- Where shall we go? - She asked and immediately suggested her own option. - Given the three days of the stage, the teams would sooner or later get to the river as the most accessible source of water, so we could ambush them in one of the convenient places or on the approaches.
- But the risk of running into several teams at once increases, not to mention the fact that many will decide to fish in troubled waters," Asani shrugged, "I think it would be easier to go first to the tower and wait for the prey there, because we have to go to it from one side and there is only one entrance, unlike the river, where we have to guess the place.
- Surizawa suggested, "All the strongest candidates should be far enough away from us, and the probability of running into more teams in the forest is much lower than at the river or the tower, where the strongest will be the first to reach.
- I think we're forgetting one more possibility," Asani shook her head, "not all of them are so united that they'd give up the idea of taking the bracelet from a weaker teammate and going through this stage alone.
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