Mana and Kouta, who was still carrying Usuzoku around on his back, followed Mongohi to the room where, apparently, the rabbit could have gotten some help. The four kept descending lower and lower to the center of the Ziggurat, the deeper down they tread, the less they had to walk to complete circling the floor.

"How are you feeling?" Mana looked at Kouta with worried eyes. The young man had been treating Usuzoku this whole time from the site of their fight with Vasuki and the other snakes to the Ziggurat. Every thirty minutes to an hour, the rabbit required a small check and, even while this luxury was offered, he was still getting worse.

"I think I'm approaching the wall. I have some chakra reserved for emergencies but I'd rather it recovered unimpeded now." The young man admitted. Kouta was not the macho type to brag about having an infinite supply of stamina or strength. Mana liked that about him even though she had to admit the bragging, which Usuzoku very much tended to do, was beginning to seem sort of cute to her.

"It is a good thing then that you did not get to fight." The magician sighed easier.

"How is that?"

"I seem to recall that natural chakra requires replacing a certain percentage of your own chakra for a Jugo to transform into their Curse Seal." Mana brought up.

"True." Kouta nodded.

"That means that, if you even began taking in natural chakra, you'd have gone over the edge and lost control immediately."

"I don't think I follow…" Kouta scratched his head through a whole handful of messy hair.

"Think about it, if a Jugo requires a value of 200% to transform, it is much easier to cross that value when your own chakra is low. While it is much easier to tap into that power when worn out, it is also much easier to lose control without needing or wanting to." Mana expressed her worries.

"Huh… I guess that's why they call it a "Curse Seal"." Kouta smiled with some cheer in his tired face.

"Say, Mongo-whatevertwas," Usuzoku grumbled from the position of Kouta's piggyback. "Ye don' talk like dose other mongooses. What with dat whole "then" thing an' all…"

"I have spent so much time outside of the Ziggurat, fighting and interacting with other species and humans that I have come to abandon the speech quirks of my species. Some of you rabbits could also use that, I see…" Mongohi closed his eyes with a cocky smirk. While he felt glad to have found an opportunity to sting to a rabbit whom his kind has had a murky past with, he clearly did find some sense of enjoyment from just talking to one as well.

"I dunno what yer talkin' about…" Usuzoku grumbled. It was tough to say if his slurry speech and strangely blown cheeks were from embarrassment or if it was a symptom of the poisoning he was suffering from.

"Here. I'll help you get things done right, else you'll get nowhere…" Mongohi led Mana and Kouta into a much smaller room before leading them further to a small counter where a brown-furred mongoose with black stripes was located and doing her quite well maintained and blade-sharp claws.

"How then can I help ya?" the mongoose asked, her eyes did note the oddity of two humans and a rabbit being present in the room but she was not surprised enough to break the everyday monotony of her job.

"These humans need anti-venom. I think they've encountered Vasuki." Mongohi sighed. He clearly viewed interacting with this specimen of his own species as being more troublesome than talking to humans or barely conscious rabbits.

"You'll need to fill out this form then." The female mongoose gently showed a piece of paper to Mongohi who just cleared his throat in frustration.

"This appears to be a form for seeing a venom specialist. We do not need that, we know that the rabbit has been bitten by Vasuki. We are on a short time-schedule, I believe the rabbit was injected twice, which halves his survival time." Mongohi complained.

"Let's see then, anti-venom is provided by Mongolepius in that room. Mongolepius won't see you then without a request from a venom specialist. You won't see the venom specialist then without filling this form… Is the rabbit dead yet because I can keep going…"

"I'd better get started then…" Mongohi grunted, he took the assignment of enacting the council's will very seriously.

"He said it…" Usuzoku coughed on Kouta's back, shaking hard enough to inconvenience the young man.

"It was not an impediment, I just used the word in its context." Mongohi grumped out while his hand turned to a blur filling out the form. He was quite fast and very devoted to the deed, sometimes he turned back to get some questions answered by Usuzoku and looked genuinely displeased by how long it took the poisoned rabbit to answer.

"Very well, bestial one. Here is your form." Mongohi slammed the sheet of paper on the table before locking the claws on his paw around Kouta's hand and pulling the young man desperately towards the room where the anti-venom specialist was.

"There seems to be a lot of procedure for just one vial of anti-venom…" Kouta noted.

"Most of the mongooses are immune to the weaker snake venoms. We fight snakes without being able to help it since childhood and venom is introduced into our veins before mother's milk. The pups are even less able to control the rivalry urges than the stronger adults. The stronger venoms require anti-venom so it is both rare and rarely needed, that is why the procedure is making things difficult. It is an unusual request." Mongohi explained.

"So then only the younger mongooses require anti-venom and only on very rare occasions?" Kouta wondered.

"He said it…" Usuzoku chuckled. His state appeared to be somewhere between conscious and otherwise.

"No, Zoku-chan, it was Kouta who said it." Mana addressed the rabbit just so his brain felt involved in the conversation and did not let him fade away. The rabbit slipping into unconsciousness would not have been a good sign at all.

"Not quite. Snakes are mean bastards. They constantly grow and evolve, in many different ways than any other kind…" Mongohi's eyes began bulging out and getting bloodshot while his teeth started to peek from his snout and his claws let go of Kouta's hand just so they would not dig into the young man's flesh. Speaking of snakes was not simple for the mongoose.

"For that reason, even if the young grow older, whenever they face a species that has grown old enough to make its venom something special, they need anti-venom to assist their bodies a bit." Mongohi did his best to keep his focus and cool.

"But if snakes evolve, sometimes in the middle of the battle…" Mana asked something that popped into her head, recalling the odd evolution of a being like Nagendi, "How do you make anti-venom for something that appears and evolves so spontaneously?"

"How do you think?" Mongohi turned at Mana with a growl. He did not look angry at the girl, rather at the entire affair of speaking of snakes and the mighty task of rivaling them in nature. "We take the samples from the dead."

"That's so… Sad." Mana looked at the stone floor that the party was trekking on.

"They probably don't think so. Soldiers that patrol outside the Ziggurat keep injecting with different, newly discovered venoms to strengthen them without betting their life on the line all the time. Knowing that, any mongoose would be proud to die this way." Mongohi replied. It certainly seemed like he believed in what he preached and would have sacrificed himself if needed the same way as the weaker mongooses did.

"Dat's if ye even make it home… If de sneks don' gobble ye up…" Usuzoku's speech began slurring even more than it was usual to him. The mess in his intestines must have been making his fever rise up…

"Snakes do not usually eat us. Our rivalry goes beyond the natural selection." Mongohi proudly explained.

Mana tried to look at the upper layers of the Ziggurat then the ones they were walking on but, because of its reverse-pyramid shape, it didn't quite work. All she could see was more dark stone above her head extending to the sides. Since it was tough to see the uppermost layers of the Ziggurat, the whole place created an odd illusion that was quite disorienting as it was pretty difficult to say where exactly in the structure one was without the knowledge Mongohi had.

So then there were other reasons for why the Ninja Snakes and the Ninja Mongooses killed each other… More than just killing each other food, something that anyone could have understood. And yet, their instincts for rivalry and murder seemed so basic and primal. Mana very much wished to understand the source for that rivalry but she'd not find it out from someone from this generation or even many of the past ones.

She'd have to trace the very origin of the species, most likely, to see where the natural rivalries came from.

"Hmph. I wonder… The snakes prey on the rabbits, they have an intense rivalry with the mongooses and are hunted by hawks themselves, right? Then what do rabbits have a rivalry with?" Kouta turned at Usuzoku but only received unintelligible grumbles.

"Cabbages or some shit, probably…" Mongohi smirked as a mockery of the unconscious rabbit.

It was too bad that the female mongoose did not tell the party they would have to wait in line to get to the anti-venom specialist. Coming all the way from the room and halfway up to the higher floor was a line of ecstatic, nauseous or injured mongooses looking to supply the sample of venom in their blood to the specialist.

"I thought it was a rare occurrence for a mongoose to request anti-venom." Mana pouted, looking at Usuzoku with worry.

"I guess it is less rare for younger ones…" Mongohi cleared his throat.

The wait was immensely boring, after a short while Mongohi managed to make it less boring and more annoying by dragging his curved claws over the floor by moving his fingers. It was an interesting talent but the sound that the claws made was quite grungy and only made the boring wait excruciating for whole other reasons.

Before anyone could get driven to the point of insanity and about to the point where they'd complain about the constant claw-scratching sound, a loud boom and the sound of falling rocks interrupted the monotonous cacophony. A sudden burst of sunlight made the ninja and the mongooses who had gotten used to the moderate darkness of the underground cover their eyes.

"Is that Vasuki?" Kouta wondered looking up at the slithering invader. "Why would it just attack like this?"

The dark purple serpent coiled and hissed erratically, spitting death-bringing venom wherever its head turned in an uncontrollable spray. The venom began melting the stone on which it fell but it was too mindlessly aimed and delivered to cause any significant damage to the overall structure.

"It is going to bring down the Ziggurat…" Mongohi growled, his instincts began kicking in but the mongoose controlled himself through active chakra control that managed to suppress his more physical instincts.

"Not if it's shooting so blindly." Mana shook her head before noticing a couple of odd details. "Look at its eyes. I think it went berserk. What's that on its back?"

Kouta looked with more focus, trying to take into the unnatural blackness and the empty void inside Vasuki's stare. This could not have been the same proud and cocky hunter from earlier. It was just raging and flailing about completely in silence. Mongooses from all around the Ziggurat jumped up to engage the snake. It was then that Mana felt the flare of chakra coming from Vasuki, not the one emanating from the snake itself, it was something else, something very… Green.

"The thing on Vasuki's back is a ninja. Not quite as strong as Vasuki used to be but formidable. Its chakra feels so odd." Mana relayed her sensation to Kouta. Mongohi was about to join the fray of the mongooses' wild, defensive charge but Mana stopped him by grabbing him by the elbow.

"Please, finish your assignment, get Usuzoku some anti-venom. I'm sure the specialist won't listen to us." Mana asked.

"Hmph," Mongohi smirked. "I guess the council was right. Just associating with you has already brought a snake to our doorstep."

"What about me?" Kouta wondered.

"You're tired, rest up. You'll do more harm than good if you lose control." The magician reasoned.

"Yeah, see to it that this bastard doesn't throw up on me, or something." Mongohi showed his teeth to Usuzoku before changing his grimace into a more thrilled one for the medical ninja.

A chubby fur-ball rolled out from inside the room. The anti-venom specialist had noticed the invasion and lost control as well. He did not feel like a particularly powerful fighter but he was rushing in headlong nevertheless. What an overpowering instinct these animals had!

Mana grabbed the mongoose by the belt tied around his waist. Despite her not being a particularly brawny type, her strength was easily enough to restrain the absolutely rabid anti-venom specialist. Mongohi assisted Mana with her attempt but not before the belt began slowly getting damaged and appeared to be on the verge of snapping.

"We'll get this guy all chipper." Mongohi nodded his head at Mana.

The magician sighed before rushing on ahead to join the madness of mongooses rushing at the enraged, titanic predator and getting swatted or sprayed aside. The rate at which the mongooses got blasted to the bottom of the mongoose grounds after getting hit by Vasuki or how many stayed down covered in its acidic venom looked quite gruesome.

It was not like the mongooses did not earn any good shots. Once in a while, the sides of Vasuki got covered with stripes of blood-red. Whoever this ninja on its back was, it was fighting the mongooses that got closer off with some taijutsu prowess. This guy may just have been Mana's target.

The magician was also tired. Not quite anywhere close to how tired Kouta was or how worn out the other rabbit warriors were but she was still involved in the massive fight before. She may have had about a half of her chakra resources still useable due to getting knocked out early on and skipping a whole stage of the fight early on as well as having trained a higher overall chakra level but her stamina was still not infinite.

Before revealing herself and committing to this battle, the magician looked around, trying to find the other rabbits. If all of the weaker mongooses lost their collective minds and the stronger ones were planning a response, there may not have been enough mongooses to guard the other rabbits. The magician tried to extend her chakra sensory to the upper levels. It was just on the edge…

All the familiar rabbit signatures were clumped together. All the strongest rabbit warriors were worn out, perhaps too much so for Mana to expect any help from them. They also may not have wanted to fight their struggling mongoose guards so to keep the relationship as stable as it somehow managed to get.

Vasuki was worn out too. It had managed to regain all of its bodily integrity and had completely recovered from all the damage it had taken during the battle with the rabbits but it was tired. Why did it attack then? Unless…

Mana leaped a couple of floors higher up, using the walls the Ziggurat was touching as support for a back dash onto the floor platform she may not have been able to reach as easily otherwise. Vasuki was still in a blind berserk state but the ninja noticed her, Mana was quite tough to miss, she made a career out of that.

The magician weaved a pair of hand seals before whistling a soft tune. She did her best to make it as audible as she could and expanded the genjutsu all the way to the ninja resting on Vasuki's back, just as a test of how well it could deal with it. The mongooses plummeted down, unable to deal with the sudden influx of pleasure. They were tough bastards, they may break some bones but they'd survive. The illusion would also temporarily alleviate the pain of the injured ones in a close range around Mana.

"Damn it…" the ninja grunted. It weaved a hand seal using a massive build-up of chakra to dispel the illusion from where he was standing. He was at the very edge of Mana's range, it would have most likely have been weakest there but still… That was remarkable self-control to be able to resist so many sensations so early in the illusion, usually dispelling Mana's Sweet Lullaby Jutsu required at least a bit of time to get used to the illusion's effects.

The girl leaned to the side, sensing an attack from the side. Just in time for the attacker's image appeared almost unwarned. His leg just narrowly missed the side of Mana's head. The insane flare of chakra inside the man's body suggested that he meant this kick as a kill-shot. It looked like it may have snapped Mana's neck or, at the very least, made mush out of her brain as it bumped inside her skull.

"That's some impressive genjutsu resistance." Mana commended Vasuki's unexpected ally. She needed to get him talking, slow down a bit. If he wanted to connect with a hit like that he'd likely give her another sign by building up too much chakra for her to miss an impending attack in his body but it was the less focused and powerful blows that worried the magician.

"I am familiar with the illusionary arts." The attacker smirked. It would have made sense that someone with an acquaintance with illusions would identify and dispel a genjutsu faster. Still, the range also must have played a role and Mana may have used that to her favor – he thought her illusion weaker than it actually was.

"That's some reflexes," he added.

"I'm pretty tough to hit." The magician tried to sound less tired than she actually was.

This was to be a very uncomfortable meeting, surrounded by a mindless, raging serpent, which may have returned to its better senses anytime soon as it had few enemies left to fight.