Naruto: The Chosen Undead

[Adamos_Amet]

Spoiler: Author Note

Author's Note (Before You Start):

Hello to everyone reading. I hope you're having a wonderful day. Let me tell you more about this fanfic and what kind of story you're about to read.

You've already seen the title, summary, and cover, so there's no need to repeat all of that here. What matters most is this: this is a crossover between Naruto and the Dark Souls games, with a strong focus on Dark Souls 1.

Now, here's the question a lot of people probably have.

Do you need to play Dark Souls to understand this story?

No, you don't.

You won't be expected to know bosses, item descriptions, or deep lore. When something from Dark Souls matters, it will be explained in the story itself. If you've played the games or read the lore, you'll catch extra details. If you haven't, you'll be learning right alongside Naruto.

To give you a clearer idea of how this crossover works, here are a few examples.

Imagine Naruto wielding the Moonlight Sword against enemies like Madara or Pain. Or imagine the opposite: Naruto standing in the Dark Souls universe, charging a Rasengan and unleashing it against bosses like Ornstein and Smough.

But this story isn't just about cool matchups.

Every chapter matters. What Naruto experiences in Lordran directly affects who he becomes in the shinobi world, and what happens in the Naruto world changes how he survives in Dark Souls. Victories, failures, trauma, and growth carry over. Nothing resets, and nothing is forgotten.

One of the most important parts of the story is how chakra interacts with Dark Souls systems. What happens when chakra meets sorcery, miracles, or pyromancy? How does a world built on souls react to a power born from life energy and emotion? These interactions aren't just visual flair, they have consequences that shape fights, training, and the world itself.

Just as important is how the characters react.

Shinobi will notice that Naruto is changing, not just in strength, but in mindset, habits, and how he approaches danger. At the same time, characters in the Dark Souls world will be forced to react to a version of Naruto that doesn't fit their rules at all, someone who fights, survives, and grows in ways they've never seen before.

The chapters will alternate between the Dark Souls world and the Naruto world. Each chapter will have its own unique title so it's always clear where the story is taking place. If you end up more interested in one side than the other, the structure makes it easy to follow along.

This is also a slow-burn story. I'm balancing two separate worlds, their characters, their rules, and their lore. Power isn't handed out instantly. Growth takes time, and changes happen gradually.

Finally, I'll be including Author's Notes at the end of each chapter. These will go into more detail about Dark Souls lore, explain certain mechanics, and talk about my creative decisions for the story. If you're curious about how something works or why I made a specific choice, those notes are there for you.

If you're a Naruto fan who's curious but hesitant because of Dark Souls, this story is written to ease you in, not overwhelm you.

With that said, I hope you enjoy the journey and I hope you'll stick around to see where it leads.

---

Chapter One – Prologue

---

Giggles echoed through the dark forest, swallowed and returned by the trees. Naruto's knew how ridiculous he must have looked, standing alone beneath the moonlit canopy and laughing.

He didn't care.

After countless failures, bruised pride, and more frustration than he cared to remember, he had finally done it.

Naruto stared at the figure in front of him, barely able to keep still. It was him. The three whisker-like marks carved into each cheek. The spiky blond hair catching the pale moonlight. The bright blue eyes staring back at him in disbelief. Even the clothes were perfect. The orange jacket with blue shoulders and a white fur collar. The blue, open-toed sandals planted firmly on the forest floor.

"Great, with this I'll," he began, but the clone cut him off. "I'll take my first step into becoming Hokage."

Clones weren't supposed to talk. That was new.

Naruto reached out and poked it. He expected his hand to pass through, like all the failed illusions in the academy. But this time, his finger touched solid flesh.

"My clone is solid... and it can talk. You know what that means, right?"

The clone nodded, just as excited as he was.

"My clone jutsu is better than everyone else's."

The thought filled him with pride. He watched as the clone turned toward the forbidden scroll of seals nearby.

"What are you doing?"

"We have some time before Mizuki-sensei shows up. Let's learn another jutsu," the clone replied, voice eerily identical to his.

"Let's do it."

Naruto's excitement died the moment he opened the scroll. He had been expecting some powerful new jutsu. Instead, it was packed with dense, complicated seals designed to keep him away from anything actually useful.

When his shadow clone spread the scroll out across the forest floor, Naruto almost said it was pointless. He had never been good with sealing techniques, and he knew better than to mess with them. One wrong move, one mistake he didn't understand, and the whole thing could blow up in his face.

"It looks like a storage seal," the clone muttered.

The storage seal was a spatial fuinjutsu construct that generated a compressed subspace anchored to the seal formula. Access required a specific chakra input, which the seal verified before activation. Once unlocked, the supplied chakra temporarily stabilized and unfolded the subspace, allowing items to be stored or retrieved. When chakra flow ceased, the seal automatically collapsed back into an inert state, preserving its contents and preventing unauthorized access.

Judging by the size of it, the seal would probably need a ton of chakra. That wasn't a problem. If there was one thing Naruto never seemed to run out of, it was stamina. He remembered how even Sasuke, the academy's favorite show-off, ended up panting after the morning runs. Naruto never did.

"Let's open this up and see what cool item is inside."

They placed their hands on the center of the seal. The seal didn't just accept their chakra. It pulled on it. But something was off. The seal wasn't just absorbing chakra... it was draining it, faster and harder than anything he had ever encountered. The clone vanished in a puff of smoke.

Then it stopped.

The seal had taken what it needed. With a final, greedy gulp, it unlocked. A thick puff of smoke burst out.

For the first time in his life, Naruto felt true chakra exhaustion. His limbs trembled uncontrollably, his chest tightened, and every breath scorched his lungs. His body hit the dirt with a dull thud. The forest spun around him, swirling like ink in water.

The cold earth beneath him was the only thing keeping him grounded. He shut his eyes and tried to focus on his breathing.

The worst part?

The seal had opened to absolutely nothing.

"Bastard seal, you took my chakra, now give me your secrets!"

Naruto could feel the steady pulse of recovery, stronger than what most of his classmates could manage. He remembered how they always complained about chakra exhaustion, whining about how long it took to recharge. He smirked.

Guess their recovery speed isn't as great as the great Naruto Uzumaki!

That thought gave him a brief flash of smug satisfaction before his focus snapped back to the scroll. He wasn't finished with it, but he hadn't expected what happened next.

A glow stirred within the thinning smoke.

At first it was faint, barely there. The energy twisted upward in a slow spiral, moving with purpose, as if guided by an unseen hand. As it rose, the flames bent inward and took shape, forming a ring suspended just above the seal.

It pulsed steadily, expanding and contracting like a living thing drawing breath.

Gold shimmered along its edges while the center burned deeper and hotter, almost molten. The light washed over the trees, setting their shadows dancing across the forest floor. For a moment, it looked as though a fragment of the sun was being forged in front of him.

Naruto reached out on instinct.

The instant his finger touched the ring, the world vanished in a blinding flash.

---

Naruto opened his eyes and found nothing waiting for him. No light, no forest, no familiar shapes. Only an abyss stretching in every direction.

Where am I? Is this a dream? Did I pass out? What was that ring of fire?

No answers came.

"I'm pretty sure Ayame would be terrified of this place," Naruto muttered, trying to laugh. "Jiji, are you there?"

His voice echoed through the void.

"Is this because I knocked you out with the Sexy Jutsu? I said I was sorry."

He pinched his ears when apologizing. It felt silly. It was silly. But the silence that followed felt heavier than before.

"Is anyone there?"

His voice cracked. He didn't like the way it sounded. Small. Afraid. It reminded him of nights in his apartment, when silence was all he had. Then light exploded across the void.

Naruto staggered back, throwing his arms up to block the glare. He squinted through his fingers and saw ten rings of fire. They floated in the air before him, flickering with the same orange glow as before. One ring pulsed brighter than the rest. As he got closer, the ring expanded. Inside it, an image appeared.

It was him.

Or... an illusion of him.

He wore armor. A chest plate, shoulder guards and metal gauntlets. In one hand, a sword. In the other, a round metal shield.

"This is so cool," Naruto whispered, eyes wide.

Is this showing me my future? Or is it just an illusion?

"Do I get the sword if I touch it?"

Pausing, Naruto turned to survey the nine remaining rings. A spark of curiosity lit in his chest. Just then, a scroll unfurled in front of him, as words shimmered across the surface.

[Warrior Class: Weapon expert. High strength, dexterity.]

He glanced back at his armored self, mentally piecing it together.

"I think I get it now, Dattebayo!" he exclaimed. "If I touch you, I get to be a weapon expert and be super strong and... dex-something."

The boy had no idea what dexterity meant, but high strength was more than enough to sell him on the idea. Still, something tugged at his attention.

The next ring revealed the Knight Class.

[Low-ranking knight. High HP. Solid armor. Not easily toppled.]

The illusion wore far more metal than the warrior, practically encased in steel from head to toe.

"What the heck is a knight?"

No answer came, just the flickering of quiet flames. He shrugged and moved on.

[Wanderer Class: Wields scimitar. High dexterity.]

This version of him wore a dark leather outfit with a hood. A curved sword which he guessed was the scimitar. A small shield hung from his arm, shaped suspiciously like a ramen bowl. Dressed in all black with that moody look, he resembled someone far too familiar.

"At least if I pick this class, I can use the shield as a ramen bowl."

The next class was Thief.

[High critical hits. Has master key.]

Thief Naruto held a dagger not much bigger than a kunai and a shield so small it looked like it belonged to a toddler. He wasn't impressed, though the part about the key caught his attention.

"What's a master key do anyway?"

No one answered.

Next up was the Bandit Class.

[High strength. Wields heavy battle axe.]

Bandit Naruto was huge. Towering muscles. Biceps thicker than both of Naruto's arms. His armor included a chainmail hauberk, padded trousers tucked into heavy boots, and broad leather straps crossing his chest. A thick belt wrapped around his waist. One shoulder was armored with metal plates, and he carried a massive, intimidating axe along with a spider-emblazoned shield.

"Do I get that body if I choose this class?"

Naruto wasn't scrawny, but Bandit Naruto was on another level. He imagined Sakura taking one look at him and completely forgetting about Sasuke. That thought alone made him giggle. Still, he forced himself to move on.

The next illusion was the Hunter Class.

[Bow-wielding hunter. Decent at close range. Weak with magic.]

Hunter Naruto wore rugged leather armor, with a bow slung across his back and a quiver of green-feathered arrows.

"Weak to magic?"

That part puzzled him. What did magic even mean? Was it like another word for chakra? The thought left him with more questions than answers. The scroll for the next class unfurled without warning.

[Sorcerer of Vinheim Dragon School. Casts soul sorceries.]

Sorcerer Naruto looked... weird. Big, floppy hat and robes that screamed "nerd." It was disappointing. The name had sounded so cool... Dragon school? Soul sorcery? It sounded like he was getting a new ninjutsu.

"Let's just move to the next."

Still, part of him couldn't stop thinking about it. Dragon school? Do flying lizards teach there or something?

[Pyromancer Class: Swamp pyromancer. Casts fire spells. Wields a hand axe.]

Pyromancer Naruto stood tall, holding a worn axe and a wooden shield. His armor however...

"You look homeless," Naruto muttered.

But the fire spell detail made his heart race. He still remembered Sasuke practicing those fireballs during training. Naruto had always wanted to do something just as flashy. Maybe this was his chance.

Then came Cleric.

[Cleric on pilgrimage. Wields a mace. Casts healing miracles.]

The illusion was bald.

"Nope. Not going bald."

And finally, the last class: Deprived.

[Unclothed enigma. Armed with a club and old plank shield.]

"Gaaa!" Naruto clapped a hand over his eyes.

Deprived Naruto was practically naked. Just a loincloth, holding what looked like a piece of broken fence for a shield and a wooden club. He stumbled back, shaking his head hard.

"There is no way I'm choosing that. Nope. Never."

He looked over the ten rings once more, arms crossed, weighing his options.

It came down to two.

The Bandit was awesome. Muscles, armor, and big axe. And the Pyromancer? He could throw fire and look cool doing it. One had strength. The other had flash.

"My fireball is going to be better," he mumbled, already picturing Sasuke's face when he showed up with flames of his own.

The thought alone made the decision harder.

He closed his eyes, held out a hand, and began to hum an old rhyme he barely remembered. His hand floated between the two rings, back and forth, until it stopped. When he opened his eyes, his palm hovered above the Pyromancer ring.

A grin split his face.

"I can't wait to see the look on everyone's faces when they see my awesome fire jutsu."

The ring of fire shimmered as he grabbed it. Then, without warning, light erupted around him, swallowing the world in brilliance.

[ Class Selected: Pyromancer ]
[ Base Attributes Assigned According to Class Parameters ]
[ Starting Gift Added to Inventory ]

---

Naruto shielded his eyes, expecting the forest to return once the glow faded. But when the brightness dimmed and his vision cleared, he realized something was very wrong.

The boy gagged, instinctively pinching his nose shut as the stench overwhelmed him. The source wasn't hard to find. A dead rat, bloated and half-decayed, lay beside an old, wodden bucket that looked like it had been used as a makeshift toilet.

The smell made his eyes sting.

He'd seen plenty of unpleasant things in his short life, but this… this was on another level entirely.

The rest of the room wasn't much better. Moss blanketed the walls in slick, green patches that crept up from the floor to vanish into the arches above. The stones were damp and crumbling. A few slivers of light pierced through cracks in the ceiling. They barely reached the floor, casting long shadows that danced with the dust swirling in the gloom. Across from him stood a rusted iron door, bolted shut. From underneath it, a faint line of torchlight spilled into the room, glowing gold against the stone.

"I don't think I'm in Konoha anymore."

Naruto shifted to stand up, but a harsh clinking echoed in the room.

Thick metal cuffs were locked around his ankles, their ends bolted into the floor. Not only was he trapped, he was a prisoner. And he was no longer in his usual clothes. He wore the pyromancer outfit he'd seen in the ring of fire.

How? His thoughts spiraled. Why am I chained up?

Was this some punishment for stealing the scroll? The idea crossed his mind, but he dismissed it. The Hokage wouldn't do something like this. Not Jiji. He wasn't that cruel… right? Still sitting, Naruto forced himself to look away from the rat and the filth, focusing instead on the cold stone and the slivers of light trickling from above. He needed to think.

In the corner of his eye, a line of woodlice began crawling toward the rat's corpse, their tiny bodies inching along the floor like a living shadow.

"Where's a fire jutsu when you need it?"

The childish urge to solve everything with a fireball pulled his thoughts away from full-on panic. Naruto looked down at the pyromancer clothes again. Wait. I should have gotten a fire jutsu, right? I got the clothes... His brow furrowed. But where were the axe and shield that came with this?

Weird.

Deciding not to worry about it just yet, Naruto extended his hand toward the advancing bugs and shouted, "Fireball!"

Nothing.

He stared at his hand like it had betrayed him. "Where's my fireball? How am I supposed to one-up that emo bastard now? How do I change my status?"

The moment the word status left his mouth. A glowing screen appeared before him, floating just above eye level.

"Did saying 'status' summon this? What even is this thing?"

Maybe it could tell him what happened to his fire jutsu. Or better yet, maybe it held a clue on how to break out of these chains and escape the dungeon. Slowly, hesitantly, he reached out toward the screen, half-expecting it to vanish the moment his fingers got close.

But it didn't vanish.

"Okay," he breathed. "Let's see what you can do."

[ Name: Naruto Uzumaki ]
- [ Covenant: None ]
- [ Level: 1 ]
- [ Souls: 0 ]

[ Attributes: ]
- [ Vitality: 10 ]
- [ Attunement: 12 ]
- [ Endurance: 11 ]
- [ Strength: 12 ]
- [ Dexterity: 9 ]
- [ Resistance: 12 ]
- [ Intelligence: 10 ]
- [ Faith: 8 ]
- [ Humanity: 0 ]

[ Stats: ]
- [ HP: 573 / 573 ]
- [ Stamina: 93 ]
- [ Equip Load: 8.0 / 51.0 ]

[ Weapon Stats: ]
- [ R Weapon 1: 20 ]
- [ R Weapon 2: 20 ]
- [ L Weapon 1: 20 ]
- [ L Weapon 2: 20 ]

[ Defense: ]
- [ Physical Defense: 73 (20) ]
- [ VS Strike: 78 ]
- [ VS Slash: 73 ]
- [ VS Thrust: 73 ]
- [ Magic Defense: 73 (13) ]
- [ Flame Defense: 99 (21) ]
- [ Lightning Defense: 59 (16) ]

[ Resistances: ]
- [ Poise: 0 ]
- [ Bleed Resist: 104 ]
- [ Poison Resist: 194 ]
- [ Curse Resist: 35 ]

[ Miscellaneous: ]
- [ Item Discovery: 100 ]
- [ Attunement Slots: 2 ]

[ Attunement Slot 1: Fireball × 8 ]
[ Attunement Slot 2: Empty ]

Naruto blinked in confusion as he stared at the numbers and terms on the screen, not understanding what any of it meant. But his eyes locked onto fireball listed under something called an "attunement slot."

"Okay, so I have a fireball, but how do I use it?"

He tapped on the screen, hoping for some additional info to pop up, but nothing happened. Just as he was about to try something else, the entire room filled with a blinding light. He squinted upwards, shielding his eyes, and as his vision adjusted to the figure.

Naruto had seen armor before. Basic shinobi chainmail, the occasional flak vest, and even samurai armor displayed in the Hokage Tower.

But this was different.

Steel plates guarded vital points, layered over chainmail and thick padding, all bound together with worn leather straps. A blue surcoat hung over layers of chainmail and padding, its edges brushing against a mail skirt. A rounded bascinet helm concealed his face entirely, leaving only narrow slits for his eyes.

Scuffed greaves protected his legs. A Straight sword rested at his side while the shield in his other hand bore a golden lion, its surface scratched and faded as if it had survived more battles than Naruto could count.

"Hey, who are you?!"

"Oh, you haven't gone full hollow?"

"What does that mean?" Naruto shot back, but before the knight could explain, he threw down what looked like a corpse at Naruto's feet. The corpse's skin was pallid and sagging, its eyes hollow and lifeless, and it wore tattered clothes that hung off its frame like rags.

"Hey, weirdo! What's the big idea, huh?" Naruto yelled, his anger flaring up as much as his fear. The knight, unfazed, pointed toward a key hanging from the belt of the corpse.

A key? Yatta, I can finally go free. Oh, Jiji owes me a lot of ramen for making me go through this shit.

Just as this thought crossed his mind, the entire room began to shake violently, dust and small pebbles raining down from the ceiling. It felt like something massive was moving above them. The knight quickly moved away from the hole in the ceiling through which a sliver of sunlight had been shining. Glancing up, Naruto saw something huge nearly blocking out the light, its massive silhouette ominous and foreboding.

"He needs my help!"

Should he use a clone to build a ladder? Would that even work? If only I had my grappling rope...

Right then, the grappling hook appeared in his hand. It was his. His name was scratched into the side.

"Where did you come from?" he wondered, but the thought was cut short when the entire roof trembled overhead.

Naruto clenched the old chain while drawing chakra into his palms and flooding it through his arms. The metal groaned under the sudden pressure.

With a sharp exhale, he twisted and yanked.

The chains snapped apart with a loud crack, fragments clattering to the floor.

Shaking off the last bits of metal, he flexed his fingers.

Naruto crouched down and grabbed the key from the corpse. He stuffed the key into his pocket but the second it was in, it vanished. Confused, he slapped the pocket, then turned it inside out. Empty.

"Where did it go?" he muttered, glancing around in case he had dropped it.

A deep, thunderous roar ripped through the dungeon, silencing his thoughts.

"I'll figure this out later. Dattebayo."

Naruto tightened his grip on the rope and hauled himself through the opening. When he emerged, there was no time to take in his surrounding mountains. His attention snapped instantly to the figure waiting for him.

The creature loomed over the platform, a grotesque mass of swollen flesh stitched together in uneven folds. Its skin was stretched tight and slick, as if it might split open at any moment, and every labored movement sent ripples through its bloated frame. Its face was a nightmare carved into meat. Red eyes burned beneath a crown of jagged horns that twisted upward like the dead limbs of a rotting tree. There was no confusion or hunger in that gaze, only malice.

In one enormous hand, it gripped a club so large it looked less like a weapon and more like a torn-up tree trunk, its sheer size promising that a single blow would be enough.

This thing was bigger than his entire room back in Konoha.

Every ounce of bravado drained out of Naruto. He had fought bullies, sparred in the academy, and faced classmates in training. But this was different. This was life or death. And all the loud words he usually threw around meant nothing here. He was terrified. The thought of that club smashing down and splintering him into pieces shut everything else out.

It can kill me.

Suddenly, like lightning, the knight moved. He slid between the demon's legs. The blade bit deep into the demon's calf. A fountain of dark blood sprayed out with a sickening sound. The creature howled, stumbling back as it swung its club in wide, panicked arcs.

Naruto's heart still pounded against his ribs. But he wasn't frozen anymore. This thing wasn't untouchable. And if it could bleed, it could be beaten.

[Name: Asylum Demon]
[HP: 2,000 / 2,195]

A glowing window appeared in front of him. Naruto blinked, barely able to register it before the world seemed to slow down. The Asylum Demon raised its massive arm. The weapon came up for a brutal backswing towards the knight.

Naruto formed the cross sign as fast as his fingers would allow.

Ninja Art: Shadow Clone Jutsu!

A dozen copies burst into existence across the rooftop.

"Get that ugly bastard!"

The clones swarmed the demon, punching and kicking from every side. But their attacks did nothing. One by one, they were smashed away, vanishing into puffs of smoke.

The knight looked around in disbelief, stunned by what he was seeing.

"Come on! Let's get out of here!" Naruto yelled while grabbing the knight by the arm, and swung them both toward the hole in the roof. The two of them dropped fast. The knight gripped the rope with all his strength, wrapping it around one arm to slow their descent, feet bracing against the wall.

They hit the ground hard, but not broken.

Naruto dropped to his knees and began scrambling across the floor, eyes darting.

"What are you doing?"

"Trying to find the key! We need to get out of here before that thing..."

Naruto cried out, grabbing his head. Memories crashed into him all at once, like a wave slamming against a cliff. He saw every clone were destroyed. None of them had made it past a single strike.

He didn't even know that was possible. But he had felt all of it.

"Don't worry," the knight said, calm despite the chaos. "The demon won't come into the asylum."

"What?"

Naruto followed the knight's gaze.

The Asylum Demon loomed above the hole, staring down at them. Its massive eye locked on Naruto, burning with hate. It was measuring him. And it wanted him dead. But the demon didn't move. It stared a moment longer, then slowly turned and flew away.

"Are you alright?"

Naruto wiped his forehead and forced a grin. "Of course I'm alright. You think a fat ugly demon like that can scare the great Naruto Uzumaki?"

"Naruto Uzumaki," the knight repeated, rolling the name around like he was testing the sound of it.

"Yep. And I'm gonna be the greatest Hokage in Konoha!"

"You are a strange one, aren't you?"

"Well, this strange one just saved your life, Dattebayo!"

The knight chuckled and extended his hand. "That you did. I am Oscar, Knight of Astora. Pleased to meet you."

Naruto grabbed his hand and gave it a quick shake. "You're not from Konoha?"

"I know no such place. I am a knight of Astora, on pilgrimage to Lordran."

Naruto blinked. Lordran? Astora? The words spun around in his head, knocking loose every question at once. How did I get here? Where even is here? What happened to Konoha?

His pulse climbed, but he kept his face still. That alone surprised him. Usually his emotions poured out like an open faucet. But now, despite the storm building inside, he kept it contained.

"Is something wrong?"

"No," Naruto said quickly, though it rang hollow even to his own ears.

"Then, why are you still shaking my hand?"

"Oh... uh, right!" Naruto pulled back fast and rubbed the back of his neck, his face turning red. "Sorry, I just... I mean, with everything going on, it's a lot."

He stumbled over the words, then caught himself and pivoted. "Where's the key?"

The questions in his head could wait. Getting out of here came first. As Naruto turned, his eyes drifted toward the glowing system window still hovering in the air. And suddenly a thought hit him.

The grappling hook. It just appeared in my hand like it had been summoned. But I didn't carry it with me. I didn't see it on the ground.

His brow furrowed.

Could it be a storage seal? Some jutsu, I don't understand yet...

Curiosity burned through the panic.

"I wonder..." he whispered under his breath and focused on the thought. Item.

A new line of glowing text flickered to life.

"Okay... now we're getting somewhere."

[ Inventory ]
[ Upgrade Materials ]
[ Key Items ]
[ Spells ]
[ Weapons ]
[ Ammunition ]
[ Armour ]
[ Rings ]

Naruto opened the glowing window and navigated to Key Items. He focused on the Dungeon Cell Key and selected it.

A faint shimmer pulsed as the key had just appeared. Naruto held it up, still amazed by how the system responded not just to his actions but to his thoughts.

Oscar didn't comment.

Is this normal around here or something? Naruto wondered. He'd never seen any jutsu like this. Storage seals were one thing, but this was on a whole different level.

"Come on, let's get out of here," he said, shaking off the weirdness as he turned to the rusted metal gate. He slid the key into the lock, turned it, and pushed the door open with a long, low creak.

---

The hall stretched far ahead, the ceiling arching high above. Rows of prison cells lined the walls, their bars bent and broken like something had ripped them apart by brute force. Torches flickered in rusty sconces, casting long shadows across the stone floor.

But what made Naruto's skin crawl were the things standing in the distance.

Figures with their skin peeling away in patches, some revealing raw muscle and bone. Hollow sockets stared out from half-decomposed faces. Their bodies were hunched and malformed, and the only thing they wore were tattered loincloths. Each one dragged a broken sword hilt, moving with a strange, twitchy stillness.

"...What are these things?"

Oscar stepped up beside him, sword already drawn. "Hollows," he said. "The undead that have lost their purpose."

An undead that has lost its purpose...

Naruto didn't know why, but it hit something deep in his chest. He shook it off, and dragged his focus back to Oscar's sword.

He could use the kunai in his inventory, sure. But a sword?

"Man… maybe I should've picked a class that actually comes with one of those," Naruto said. "Could've saved me a lot of trouble. You might've even taught me how to use it, y'know."

"Very well," Oscar said, offering the weapon.

"Huh? Wait, really? I mean… I was joking. Mostly."

"You saved my life," Oscar said simply. "Teaching you is the least I can do. Besides, you should know the basics if you plan on surviving here."

Naruto grinned, practically glowing. He took the sword in both hands, feeling the cold weight of it settle into his grip.

Oscar nodded toward the hollows.

"They're empty and docile. Perfect for training."

No one had ever taken the time to teach him anything before. At the academy, Naruto was just the loud troublemaker. The kid everyone ignored or avoided. But here was this total stranger was offering to teach him something with no judgment and hesitation.

"This is the Astora Straight Sword."

The Astora Straight Sword was a straight, double-edged arming sword. The blade is moderately narrow with a shallow fuller running along its length. Its steel has weathered to a dull, matte finish, yet the edge remained clean and evenly honed. The crossguard curved slightly forward, forming hooked quillons. Fine engravings remain visible along the guard. A small green gem is set at the guard's center.

"So, what kinda special move are you gonna teach me?"

Oscar let out a quiet breath, almost a chuckle. "I remember thinking the same way when I was a squire. Always hunting for some secret strike that would win a fight outright."

Naruto stiffened, half-expecting a lecture. Instead, Oscar's tone stayed calm, almost thoughtful.

"But real fighting teaches you that there are no tricks that'll save you when steel is inches from your throat. What keeps you alive is discipline, structure and fundamentals."

Naruto straightened. I'm not wasting this. I'll take it seriously. Dattebayo!

"Forget spectacle," Oscar said. "Master the simple things, and they will carry you farther than any clever flourish."

He raised two fingers.

"I will show you two cuts. If you can perform these correctly, they will serve you in almost every fight you face."

Oscar drew his sword in one smooth motion, settling into a stance. His feet were shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent, and weight centered.

"First," he said, "the light cut."

He stepped forward and delivered a quick horizontal strike, driven by a turn of the hips and shoulders, the blade snapping back into guard almost immediately.

"That's looks kinda basic."

"Because it is. And because it works."

Oscar repeated the motion, slower this time. "This strike is about efficiency. One hand. Minimal commitment. You strike with the edge properly aligned, recover immediately, and remain mobile. Speed and control matter more than strength here. If your edge is wrong, or your balance is off, you are not cutting. You are waving steel."

Naruto nodded, eyes tracking the blade.

"Now," Oscar said, shifting his stance, "the heavy cut."

He placed both hands on the grip, raised the sword above his head, and stepped forward as he brought it down in a powerful vertical strike.

"This one commits," Oscar said. "You put your body behind it. Hips, shoulders and legs. It is slower, but if it lands cleanly, it can end a fight outright."

"And if I miss?"

"Then you pay for it," Oscar replied evenly. "A heavy cut leaves you open. If you overreach, if your footing is poor, your enemy will answer before you can recover. Power always comes with risk."

He stepped back and demonstrated again. A short thrust from guard. A rising cut. Then another controlled downward strike.

Naruto watched closely, absorbing every detail, but a question finally slipped out.

"Hold on," he said. "Why only two attacks?"

"That's enough."

"What about something cool like a spin slash or reverse grip?"

Oscar gave a short breath, almost a sigh. "You want to look cool, or stay alive?"

"Stay alive."

"Exactly. You can learn more when you're not surrounded by danger. Right now, I'm giving you what matters. Solid footing. Clean cuts. Read the distance. Keep your guard up. That's swordsmanship."

Naruto's grip tightened on the hilt. "Got it."

Oscar stepped closer, adjusting his hands. "Keep your elbows loose. Let the blade move. Don't fight it."

Naruto inhaled, then faced the nearest hollow. It just stood there, barely moving.

"Okay, light cut," Naruto muttered while swinging at the first hollow but he misjudged the distance. The sword barely grazed the hollow's side as he nearly tripped over his own feet. His heart pounding as he jumped backward, expecting the hollow to lunge at him.

But it didn't move, just stood there, swaying slightly.

"Failure is part of learning, young man. Don't let it define you. Learn from it and do better."

"Yeah," Naruto whispered to himself, raising the sword and focusing on the hollow in front of him. This time, he swung with more control, keeping his movements compact. The blade connected solidly, cutting into the hollow's chest with a clean motion.

"Excellent," Oscar praised. "Now, the strong cut."

Naruto turned toward the hollow at the end of the hall. He raised the sword high, gripping it with both hands. "Here goes nothing," he muttered, and then he swung down hard, using all his strength. The sword cut through the air and struck the hollow with a force that reverberated up his arms. It wasn't perfect, but it was a huge improvement from his earlier attempts.

The boy let out a breathless shout, his heart racing with exhilaration. "Swinging a sword is awesome!" He turned, ready to ascend the stairs, when Oscar's voice stopped him. "Wait, young Naruto."

"Oh, yeah. This is your sword. I should give it back."

But Oscar shook his head. "No, you forgot to claim your prize."

Naruto followed Oscar's finger and saw a strange white vapour swirling above the fallen enemies, forming into small orbs.

"What's that?"

"This is a soul," Oscar explained. "It can be used to strengthen your aspects of your body, like strength, dexterity, and more."

Naruto glanced at the status screen that had appeared earlier, at the numbers that represented different attributes of his body. Maybe, if he collected these souls, he could make those numbers go up and get stronger.

"How do I claim this soul?"

"Just grab it."

Naruto reached out and touched one of the white orb. It seemed to dissolve, the light sinking into his skin and spreading through his body. It felt warm, a strange, almost tingly sensation that surged through him like a jolt of chakra.

"Do you still want your sword back?"

But Oscar just pointed down the hall. Naruto turned to see another hollow, this one moving toward them, its steps uneven and jerky.

"Looks like I've got a moving target now, Dattebayo!"

---

A minute later, Naruto grumbled as he climbed up the cold wet metal ladder. He could hear Oscar trying and failing, not to laugh above him.

The fight with that moving hollow had been a disaster. He'd missed his first swing completely, and the hollow went berserk, flailing its sword around like a madman. It nearly ended with Naruto getting skewered in the butt, all because he panicked and tried to run away.

Thankfully, the substitution jutsu saved his ass, literally. Naruto sighed, shaking his head at the memory. Suddenly a strange feeling washed over him like being wrapped up in a blanket on a cold night.

"Looks like there's a bonfire near us."

"Bonfire?" Naruto echoed, confused. What did a fire have to do with this weird sensation? He pushed on, finally reaching the surface, and found himself in a vast courtyard. The stones beneath his feet were worn smooth. Crumbling walls surrounded the space as weed and ivy crawled up the weathered stone, clinging desperately to the remains of archways and columns that spoke of a grandeur long faded.

It was huge, imposing, yet... so broken.

"Let's take a rest," Oscar said, breaking Naruto's reverie. He pointed towards a strange sword embedded in the ground.

"Is this place safe?"

"Of course. There's a bonfire here."

"The sword?"

Oscar walked up to it, removing his glove. Naruto blinked in surprise when he saw Oscar's hand as it looked like those hollows they'd fought earlier. He wanted to say something, but kept quiet, not wanting to disrespect the man after all he'd done for him.

Oscar sliced his palm and let the blood fall onto the sword's base. The moment it touched the ashes below, spark erupted rising into a sudden bloom of fire that bathed the courtyard in a warm, flickering glow.

And the sensation of safety overwhelmed Naruto.

The tension drained from his body as the stress and fear that had been gnawing at him since he arrived in this strange place melted away. Naruto let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding and sank to the ground. He laid back, staring up at the sky. His mind was blank, for the first time in what felt like forever, and he just let himself feel the warmth and peace wash over him.

I am safe.

Hearing a strange, low whooshing hum, Naruto's eyes snapped open.

Across from him, Oscar sat calmly, guiding the bonfire's flame into glass bottles like it was liquid.

Naruto rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn't hallucinating when suddenly only for a massive shadow to sweep over them. He looked up, and his pupils shrank."Sensei…"

"I know, I saw it as well."

They both looked up in time to catch the last glimpse of the Asylum Demon, its massive silhouette blotting out the pale sky as it soared away, disappearing toward the far end of the fortress where an enormous sealed door loomed. Stone groaned beneath its landing somewhere beyond, the sound reverberating through the walls like a warning bell.

Oscar rose to his feet, drawing his sword with calm, practiced ease.

"…You're not seriously thinking of fighting that, right?"

Oscar did not answer immediately. He simply adjusted his grip, rolling his wrist once as if testing the weight of the sidesword.

"Sensei, I can help make clones, distract it, give you openings—"

Oscar lifted a hand, stopping him without urgency. He studied Naruto for a moment, head tilting slightly. "…I have been meaning to ask, why do you call me sensei?"

"Uh… because you are?"

"That tells me what you believe I am. Not what the word means."

"It's just… someone you learn from. Someone who knows more than you and shows you how not to screw things up."

Oscar gave a quiet laugh. "In that case, I accept the title."

Naruto wasn't sure why that made his chest feel tight.

"If I am your teacher, then by astora's customs, that would make you my squire."

"Your what?"

"A squire," Oscar said. "One who follows a knight, learns from him, and aids him when he can."

Naruto's first instinct was to shake his head. "But… I didn't do anything yet."

"Do anything?"

"To earn it," Naruto clarified. "I mean… shouldn't I have to prove something first?"

Oscar was quiet for a moment. "A squire is not named at the end of the road. He is named at the beginning."

Naruto's thoughts drifted back to the academy. To being the loud one in the room while everyone else got praised for doing things right. To practicing jutsu over and over after class, telling himself he just needed to try harder, shout louder, and prove himself. Praise always felt like something you had to force out of the world, like it wouldn't notice you unless you made it.

Even with Iruka-sensei, it took time, screw-ups and getting back up after being told no.

Naruto only then noticed his chest felt tight, like he'd been bracing for something.

"…So I don't have to earn it first?"

"You earn it by continuing."

Naruto looked down at his hands. The idea sat strangely in his chest. Like a piece that didn't quite fit yet, but might if he gave it time. "…Okay," he said at last.

Oscar nodded, satisfied. "Then tell me. What is the most important thing in battle?"

"Uh… not getting hurt?"

Oscar smiled faintly. "A common answer."

Before Naruto could react, Oscar stepped in and thrust.

Naruto yelped and barely had time to bring up the Astora Straight Sword to block. Steel rang against steel. But the instant Naruto adjusted, Oscar twisted his wrist mid motion, turning the stab into a sharp, lateral slash that scraped sparks from Naruto's guard.

"Hey!" Naruto barked, hopping back. "If you wanted to spar, you could've just said so!"

"Aware," Oscar said calmly, blade already returning to guard. "Be aware."

"…Of what?"

"Everything."

Oscar stepped back, sword held loosely, as if the weapon were merely an extension of his arm. "Awareness is knowing where you stand, where your enemy stands, and where danger will be before it arrives. Strength matters little if you cannot see the strike that ends you."

Naruto frowned, thinking back to the way a hollow had nearly taken his head while he had been focused on the wrong target. "…Okay, I get that. But why the pop quiz with a stab?"

Oscar regarded him for a moment. Then he nodded.

"I wished to see if you had the will to walk the path," he said. "That is why I offer you the Knight's Crest, as my squire."

"The what now?"

"The Knight's Crest is a sigil carved by the gods themselves in the Age of Ancients. A miracle made flesh, granted only to those who walk the knight's path. You have passed."

"…I did?"

"You did."

"YATTA!" Naruto pumped his fist. "Man, if I had ramen right now, we could celebrate!"

Oscar huffed softly, something like a laugh. "Come," he said. "I will explain."

The Knight's Crest changed how a knight saw the world.

When it was active, the knight no longer viewed the battlefield only through their own eyes. Their awareness pulled back, settling into a fixed point above their body. From the third person, they could see themselves moving through the fight, along with the terrain and nearby enemies. This made distance and positioning clearer. The knight could tell where they stood, how they were facing, and how exposed they were without guessing. Enemy movement was easier to track because it stayed visible, even when the knight turned or stepped away.

With focus, the Crest allowed one enemy to be locked into attention. That target stayed centered in the knight's awareness, preventing surprise attacks from the sides or behind.

"Uh, so where does it go?" Naruto said, already tugging his shirt off. The boy paused when he took in his reddish-gray skin, shriveled and stretched tight over bone. The fingers were too thin, the chest sunken, the whole body reduced to a withered mockery of a person.

He looked like a hollow.

"…WHY AM I UGLY?!" Naruto yelled, as his thoughts spiraled. What happened to me?! Did my real body stay back in Konoha? Am I dead? Am I undead dead? Is this a side effect?!

Oscar calmly reached into his pouch and withdrew an orange soapstone. "Is everything alright?"

Naruto inhaled, exhaled, and forced a grin. "Y...Yeah! Totally! Just… got scared by my face."

Oscar studied him for a moment, then nodded.

"This will be painful," he said. "The crest marks the soul."

"Don't worry. I can take it, dattebayo!"

The soapstone pressed against his upper back, settling between his shoulder blades.

For a moment, nothing happened then the sensation turned inward. Not heat, but pressure as if something unseen were carving lines beneath his skin.

Naruto sucked in a sharp breath as the feeling spread through muscle and bone, reaching deeper than pain ever should. His vision blurred, the world paling at the edges, and his body tensed as if bracing against an unseen weight.

It didn't feel like a burn.

It felt like his body was being marked for a purpose it could no longer refuse.

Naruto's jaw locked until his teeth ached. His breath shook, but he didn't cry out. Whatever this was, it wasn't something meant to be screamed through.

Time stretched thin.

An hour passed, or perhaps only minutes.

When it finally ended, Naruto staggered and dropped to one knee, palms striking the stone floor as he dragged in air like he'd been submerged too long.

The crest itself was a perfect circle formed its outer boundary, enclosing the mark like a seal. Within it lay a diamond, rotated so its points faced the cardinal directions. Nested inside the diamond was a single upright triangle. Within that triangle rested a hexagram, two interlocking triangles overlapping in quiet balance. At the very center sat a small circle, and within it, an eye.

Naruto touched it gingerly. "…Okay," he wheezed. "That sucked."

"You bore it well."

"So, how am I supposed to activate this thing?"

Oscar drew his sidesword, and Naruto instinctively gripped his tighter. His heart pounded in his chest as he realized that Oscar was going to teach him through battle.

The boy swung horizontally, aiming to catch Oscar off guard. But the knight moved with such ease, sidestepping the strike and countering with a light tap of his blade against Naruto's wrist.

"Stay focused."

Gritting his teeth, Naruto adjusted his grip and went in again. He raised the sword high and brought it down with all the force he could muster. Even with chakra reinforcement, Oscar blocked the blow effortlessly.

"Remember this. Strength is secondary. What matters is structure. If your edge is aligned and your joints are stacked, the force travels through the blade. If your angle is wrong, all the muscle in the world bleeds out through the wrists."

It was like the knight could predict everything Naruto was going to do before he even did it.

Frustrated, Naruto launched another attack, this time trying to follow up quickly with a second strike. But the next moment, Naruto felt the flat of Oscar's blade press against his side.

"You're too powerful, sensei," Naruto grumbled, wiping sweat from his brow.

"Don't be discouraged."

"Discouraged?!" the blonde cut him off, his voice rising. "I don't even know the meaning of that word!"

"Discouraged means—"

"Are you stupid or something?"

"You're the one who said you didn't know the meaning."

"Well, let's see if you can explain the meaning of this ass whooping! Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu!"

In an instant, the courtyard was filled with twenty Narutos, all grinning confidently. He spread his clones out, trying to surround Oscar. This time, he thought, I'm going to overwhelm him. No more losing!

"Spells in a spar. A little unfair, don't you think?"

"All is fair in war and ass kicking, dattebayo!" all the clones shouted in unison before charging forward.

But that confidence quickly faded.

As soon as Naruto's clones started swinging their swords, things got… messy. They bumped into each other, some slashing too close, causing clones to pop in quick bursts of smoke. Inexperience was written all over the battlefield. Half of the army wiped itself out before even getting close to Oscar. By the time Naruto realized how bad things were, only a few of them were left standing.

Oscar did not even seem fazed as his sword flashed, stabbing one of the clones, which burst into smoke. "You need to learn battle formations for these… doppelgangers," he said as he casually struck down another clone with a precise thrust.

"I think I'll get the hang of it!" one of the remaining clones shouted as it rushed forward with a horizontal attack.

With a slight twist of his wrist, Oscar parried the sword, knocking it aside with a sharp clang. In the same motion, his sword shot forward in a clean thrust, catching the clone in the chest. Suddenly, the clones launched a barrage of shurikens. Naruto grinned, feeling like he finally had the upper hand. But just as he thought he had Oscar, the knight whipped out his shield, effortlessly blocking the kunai.

Naruto's smile faltered as Oscar charged with the shield in front.

Three of Naruto's clones rushed him, each using a heavy attack. For a moment, Naruto thought this would be it. Three against one. But Oscar blocked all three with ease, his shield taking the brunt of the attacks. Before Naruto could react, Oscar kicked the middle clone hard enough to make it pop into smoke.

The remaining two clones swung horizontally, hoping to catch him off guard. Oscar parried one of them with his shield, and to Naruto's shock, he turned his back to the other clone. Naruto expected the clone's sword to land a solid hit, but the blade clanged uselessly against Oscar's armour.

The armour was not just for show.

Oscar moved swiftly, popping the second clone with a stab and gut punching the last one so hard it dissolved into smoke. The courtyard was empty, nothing but the faint trails of dissipating chakra left behind.

Oscar stood in the center of the courtyard, looking around.

"Squire," Oscar said, "miracles do not answer doubt. Believe, and the Crest will let you see as the gods intended from beyond your own eyes."

What does that even mean? Naruto thought. How can you believe an effect into existence?

Hidden slightly to the side, Naruto was using the Transformation Jutsu, coating himself in a thin layer of chakra to reflect and refract the light around him, effectively camouflaging himself. He had always used this jutsu as a gag by turning into a sexy woman for laughs. But now, he realized why they had been taught this technique. It was actually useful.

Naruto watched as Oscar scanned the area. He was getting closer… closer…

Now!

Naruto sprang from his hiding spot, going for a stab with all the force he could muster. But Oscar was not surprised. Instead, he stepped back just as Naruto's sword missed. And without hesitation, Oscar returned with another stab. It happened so fast that Naruto barely had time to react. His hands moved on instinct, reaching for the sealing scroll in his pocket. He activated it, releasing a puff of smoke and summoning a log in his place, the Substitution Jutsu saving him at the last second.

The log clattered to the ground as Naruto kicked off in a sharp, panicked surge.

The edges of the world collapsed inward, sound dulling, color smearing.

He didn't see it happen.

He just knew Oscar's sword was coming.

The certainty slammed into him fully formed, sharp and immediate, like instinct without explanation.

Now, something in him said.

Subconsciously, desperately, Naruto believed that the Crest would work. Believed that miracles answered conviction.

The orange sigil burned against his upper arm.

And the world pulled back.

Naruto no longer saw through his own eyes.

His awareness lifted, snapping into place behind and above his body, as if an invisible eye had seized his perspective and dragged it outward. He saw himself from a bird's view.

Oscar was there too.

The strike was obvious now.

Naruto adjusted without thinking.

From this distance, his movements made sense. He raised his blade not where the sword was, but where it would be. Steel met steel with a sharp crack, sparks bursting outward as the blow was turned aside rather than stopped. The impact still traveled through him, but it didn't break him.

He stayed standing.

The world snapped back into his mind all at once.

Naruto staggered, gasping, heart hammering so hard it drowned out everything else. His limbs shook violently, adrenaline still flooding his system, breath coming in sharp, uneven pulls.

"Congratulations," Oscar said. "You've just experienced the knight's sight."

Naruto gave a shaky nod, still catching his breath, mind racing as the moment replayed over and over.

"It is natural to feel unsteady. Seeing the world from above is overwhelming the first time. It is a way of sight few ever know. But with practice, your mind will learn how to trust it."

Naruto nodded, awareness split between his own eyes and the view hovering above him. It was disorienting and kind of awesome.

"Are you ready?"

Naruto opened his mouth to answer, then stopped. An idea hit him. He made thirty clones. "Sensei, I've got an idea that could help me train both the knight's sight and swordsmanship."

"Go on."

"When I saved you from the Asylum Demon, a bunch of clones popped. Same when we sparred. But when they did, I got all their memories."

"So your spell shares experience...?"

"Exactly. So; if I have my clones train with knight's sight while you work with me on swordplay, I can learn both ten times faster."

"By Gwyn's great beard, what sort of absurd magic is this?"

Naruto just grinned.

"Well, if it works, who am I to argue? Come, my squire. Let us train."

For the next few hours, Oscar stripped swordplay down to its bones. Again and again, he corrected Naruto's feet, his wrists, the angle of the edge. Each mistake was met with the same patience. Eventually, Oscar lowered his blade.

"Focus," he said.

Naruto straightened, panting slightly.

"You are trapped in the second stage," Oscar continued.

"The… second what?"

Oscar adjusted his stance, even at rest perfectly aligned. "When one first takes up the sword, there is unconscious incompetence. You do not know what you are doing wrong, because you do not yet understand what right looks like."

That sounded like Academy Naruto.

"Then comes conscious incompetence," Oscar said. "You now see every error. Your guard feels wrong. Your timing feels late. Every movement must be thought through. You hesitate, because you are aware of how much you do not yet know."

"That's exactly where I am."

"As most are, if they persist long enough." Oscar raised a finger. "The third stage is unconscious competence. Your body begins to move correctly on its own. Your edge aligns without effort. Your feet place themselves. You no longer name the action. You simply perform it."

He tapped his temple lightly.

"And the final stage is conscious competence. When instinct and thought are both available to you. When you may act without thinking. And still choose to think when the moment demands it."

Oscar lifted his sword again. "You are thinking like someone who has learned enough to doubt themselves. That is not failure. That is progress."

He met Naruto's eyes.

"But if you cling too tightly to the mechanics, you will remain stuck where you are. Do not abandon structure. But stop arguing with your own body."

Oscar settled into guard.

"Trust what you have already learned," he said. "And let it move."

---

After what felt like an entire day of training, they stood before a massive iron door, its surface eaten away by rust and age. Naruto couldn't help but feel small in its shadow. The door itself was intimidating, but not nearly as much as whatever was waiting for them on the other side.

"Sensei, I still haven't mastered the knight's sight. I've barely maintain it for 2 minutes before the migraine hits."

"The Knight's sight is mastered on the battlefield, my squire," Oscar replied. "With your strange spell, I'm sure you'll survive. If anything, it's I who should be afraid of dying."

"Don't say that!"

"Are you afraid?" Oscar asked, his voice gentle, but Naruto could feel the weight of his question. He wanted to lie, to seem braver than he was, but he couldn't bring himself to do it.

"I am… I'm scared."

To his surprise, Oscar didn't admonish him or call him a coward. "Good. Only the fool and the arrogant aren't afraid of the enemy. And remember, both don't live long."

Fear wasn't a weakness. It was a sign he understood the danger. He could work with that.

Together, they pushed the heavy iron doors open, the groan of metal echoing in the empty space.

On the other side was a massive, open-ceiling courtyard. The tiled floor beneath them was cracked and weathered, with a layer of dust and debris covering most of it. Tall stone pillars lined the edges, and to the left, a massive metal door stood closed, like a prison gate. Old, broken pots littered the space.

Then came the roar.

The asylum demon landed with a thundering crash, its hulking form blocking the massive black door at the far end of the courtyard.

Shadow Clone Jutsu!

His clones sprang to life, each one taking up position with shields interlocked, forming a makeshift wall between them and the demon.

The demon roared and leaped into the air. His heart dropped as Naruto watched its massive form come crashing down toward them. The ground shook, and a deafening crack rang out as the hammer slammed into the formation. Most of the clones popped on impact, their forms vanishing into smoke, but the shield wall had done its job. The shockwave was dulled, and through the smoke, Oscar and Naruto saw their chance.

They moved as one. From the sides, they flanked the demon. Naruto slashed with quick horizontal attacks, while Oscar raised his sword high with two hands and brought it down with a heavy, downward strike on its leg.

[Name: Asylum Demon]
[HP: 1980 / 2,195]

The demon's HP dropped, and for a brief moment, Naruto felt a surge of hope. They were doing it! But that hope was short-lived. The demon flapped its small wings, lifting its grotesque body a few feet into the air.

"Ha, scaredy cat!" Naruto thought, the adrenaline making him bold. But that thought immediately turned into regret as the wings suddenly stopped and gravity took over. The demon came crashing down with the force of a house falling from the sky.

Run!

Naruto barely had time to think, as his body acted on its own. He sprinted, but the shockwave that followed its landing was devastating. The ground rippled like an earthquake, and he felt himself lifted off his feet, slammed face-first into the tiles.

Naruto tried to push himself up, groaning from the pain that shot through his body. His arms and legs felt heavy, like lead. His head pounded, and he could feel blood dripping from his lip. He forced his eyes open just in time to see the demon raising its hammer, ready to swing it down on him.

Move!

Naruto's hand instinctively raised Oscar's shield.

The next thing the boy knew, he was thrown backward, the force of the impact sending him flying through the air. His body hurtled toward one of the stone pillars, and he barely had time to reinforce his arms and back with chakra before he slammed into it. The pain was intense, like a shockwave of agony radiating from his spine. But the chakra reinforcement saved him.

Naruto slid down the pillar, gasping for breath, his hands shaking from the adrenaline.

The asylum demon leaped from one side of the courtyard to the other. The blonde barely had time to react as he dodged and sprinted up a nearby pillar, the stone trembling beneath his feet as the demon's massive hammer crashed down with a thunderous slam.

"Why are you after me?!" he shouted, panic lacing his voice as he jumped off the pillar just before the demon's hammer shattered it to pieces. He landed behind the demon, panting heavily.

In that brief moment, the knight's sight kicked in, and Naruto saw the demon's next move.

A backspin attack.

But even though he could see it coming, he wasn't ready. He could barely move, let alone dodge the attack.

Just when Naruto thought he was done for, he felt Oscar's hand grab him, yanking him forward. The demon's backspin slammed into the metal door with a deafening crash, the impact so powerful it created a massive hole, revealing a potential way out.

Naruto summoned a group of shadow clones, sending them to distract the demon as he and Oscar sprinted toward the opening.

As they ran, the asylum demon rammed its hammer into the wall, creating an even bigger hole in the process. The ground shook as the wall collapsed, blocking the demon's path but leaving them to feel the staircase beneath them trembled.

"Are you okay?"

"I'll live," Naruto managed, his voice shaky. But the second he stopped, all the pain came rushing back. His back throbbed, his legs ached, and his head felt like it was going to split in two. Basic chakra control and body reinforcement weren't enough to protect him from all the injuries. He healed fast, sure, but he still hated the pain.

Something warm touched his lips. Naruto opened his eyes to see Oscar offering him one of those strange bottles he'd filled with bonfire earlier. He hesitated but took a sip, immediately feeling a rush of warmth flood through him.

It was like the bottle had lit a fire inside him, burning away the pain and healing his injuries in an instant.

"Better?"

"Yeah," Naruto said in amazement at the light that had engulfed his body, "I would be if I had some Ichiraku ramen."

Oscar hummed in response.

They descended down the staircase, which led into a room filled with old, stagnant water.

"How likely am I to die if I drink that water?"

"You'll live," Oscar said, knowing undead don't exactly get diseases.

Naruto paused, unable to see his reflection clearly in the water, and hesitated about drinking. Suddenly, a sharp sound snapped his attention away. He looked up to see an arrow flying straight toward his eye. His heart skipped a beat as Oscar reached out and caught the arrow just in time.

"Can't this world just give me a break?" Naruto groaned as he saw the hollow archer responsible for the shot. It had the nerve to turn and run as soon as it saw him notice.

"All yours."

"You don't have to tell me twice," Naruto grumbled, bolting after the hollow. His footsteps echoed as he sprinted along the broken pathway, the hollow always just a few steps ahead. He was about to throw a kunai, ready to impale the hollow's butt out of pure pettiness. But then something caught his eye.

An axe, lying in the hands of a hollow that had long since died.

Isn't that my class item? Naruto thought but didn't care how or why it was here. But as he hefted the axe, another arrow came whistling through the air. His instincts kicked in. He swung the axe, cutting through the arrow with a satisfying thunk. Another arrow came as Naruto dodged to the left. In one fluid motion, he charged forward and swung the axe, decapitating the hollow in a single, clean strike.

"Maybe I am getting the hang of this, dattebyo!" Naruto glanced to the side, his curiosity piqued as he noticed a path leading to an upper floor. "Isn't that…" he mumbled to himself, before calling out, "Sensei, come here!"

A minute later, they were standing on the upper floor, looking directly at the bonfire below.

"Should we go down? We could use the grappling hook."

The asylum demon was still down there, thankfully oblivious to their presence for the time being.

"So, what now?" Naruto asked, feeling the weight of the situation press down on him. Oscar looked up. Above them, there was another floor.

"We should do a plunge attack."

"From the top floor?" Naruto felt a spark of excitement at the idea. He could already picture it in his head, dropping down on that giant demon from above like some kind of super ninja.

They quickly scanned the area, their eyes darting left and right. Both paths seemed to lead upward, to the top of the building. Without waiting for Oscar to say anything, Naruto took off toward the right as he reached the stairs, only to find them destroyed into rubble. But there was a weird ring, sitting right in the middle of one of the upper stairs. His fist lightly tapped his palm as he remembered the ring section in his inventory.

"This had to be important, right?"

Naruto summoned some shadow clones and had them form a ladder, their bodies interlocking to help him reach the ring. Climbing up, he grabbed the old rusted iron ring.

"Sensei, what is this thing?"

"That's a magic ring."

"You're kidding!"

"No, I'm surprised you found one."

"Why?"

"Well, Magic rings are incredibly rare treasures that are created by beings who can imbue pieces of their soul into the item, creating a magical phenomenon," Oscar explained, his tone calm, though Naruto could tell even he hadn't expected this.

The boy cheered, excited by the prospect of owning something so rare and powerful.

Without hesitation, he slipped the ring onto his finger, feeling the rusted metal press against his skin. He waited, expecting something to happen, maybe a rush of power or a flash of magic. But… nothing.

"How could a magic ring do absolutely nothing?" Naruto glared at it in frustration, about to yank it off when, suddenly, a system window popped up in front of him.

[ Item: Rusted Iron Ring ]
[ Description: This iron ring was used to shackle the guilty. It is terribly rusted, and faintly stained with blood. Those who find this strange ring to their liking will be pleased to find it easier to gain footing on poor ground such as swamps. ]

"Do you want this useless piece of junk?"

"You are its finder, my squire. Let's wait and see what its magic effect is."

Naruto sighed, glancing at the system window. "It helps me gain footing on poor ground…" he muttered, clearly unimpressed. "Useless."

Without warning, Oscar shoved him, catching Naruto off guard. His body reacted instinctively, and he immediately caught his balance.

"Hey! What's the big deal?" Naruto snapped, annoyed, as he looked at Oscar. But Oscar just pointed at his feet.

"What?"

"You regained your footing immediately when I pushed you."

"Yeah?"

"The ring helped you regain your footing. If you're ever in a situation where you're about to trip or fall, you can regain your balance. That's the magic of the ring," Oscar explained.

"So, you are telling me that I need to see the usefulness even in things that seem useless, right?"

"No," Oscar said flatly, surprising Naruto.

"Hey! Then what was the lesson?"

Oscar glanced at the ring. "It is a stupid ring."

Naruto could tell Oscar was joking, so he played along, clutching the ring dramatically. "But it's my precious, you can't have it!"

They both chuckled as they walked ahead, but their lighthearted moment was cut short by a deep rumbling sound. They turned just in time to see a giant iron ball thundering down the stairs. Naruto quickly channeled chakra into his legs and leapt upward, dodging the trap. Oscar rolled forward, narrowly avoiding the ball as it crashed through the wall behind them, leaving shattered stone in its wake. The sheer force of the impact showed just how deadly it would have been if it hit.

Without hesitation, the knight surged forward and cut down the hollow that had sent the iron ball rolling. As the body collapsed, Naruto jogged after him, sounding far more upbeat than the situation deserved.

"Hey, sensei! So, uh, I kinda put that giant iron ball in my inventory."

Oscar paused, turning just enough to glance at him.

"We should totally use it to crack the Asylum Demon's skull," Naruto added, grinning.

After what felt like forever, Oscar finally spoke. "Naruto, you're not from this world."

Naruto blinked in disbelief. "What? What do you mean I'm… not from here?" he stammered, completely caught off guard. This whole time, he'd just assumed this place was some hidden part of konoha, a weird prison maybe. But another world?

"That explains a great deal," Oscar said at last as he eased himself down beside Naruto. "There were things that never quite added up. You accessing an inventory without a bottomless box… and your rather unusual way of looking at the world."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Naruto, you're… brighter than anyone I've met in Lordran," Oscar said, like he was choosing his words carefully. "You joke, you laugh… even when you're in danger. No one here acts like that. Even the children of Astora don't fool around the way you do. They're cautious. Untrusting. Afraid."

"What kind of stupid world is this?"

He hadn't meant it to come out so harshly, but he couldn't help it. The thought of kids not being able to mess around, not getting to laugh, to be kids… it was wrong. Sure, he hadn't exactly had the best childhood in Konoha, but he'd found ways to make it fun. He'd been a prankster, a fool, just to get a reaction. Just to get noticed. Even if it was for the wrong reasons, it was better than sinking into loneliness.

But here? Where even kids had to be afraid and serious just to survive? That wasn't a life.

"Life here… is harsh. Fear can become a shield, but it's a heavy one to carry, especially for children."

"But… why's it gotta be like that?"

Oscar sighed. "That… is a long story." He hesitated, then slowly reached up, removing his helmet. Beneath the metal was a hollowed face, an eerie reflection of Naruto's own form here. But despite the wear and darkness, there was something familiar.

Blonde hair.

"Guess we've got more in common than I thought, huh?"

"Naruto," Oscar asked quietly, "have you ever wondered what the world was like at the very beginning?"

"Uh… I dunno? Pretty shitty, since they didn't have ramen?"

Oscar let out a soft chuckle. "In the Age of Ancients, the world was unformed. Shrouded in fog. There were no kingdoms, no people as we know them. Only gray crags, towering archtrees, and everlasting dragons that ruled over everything."

"Okay, yeah, that already sounds bad. Dragons as in huge, fire-breathing lizard?"

"Ancient dragons," Oscar said. "Timeless. Their scales were like stone. They did not rot, did not age. The world did not change."

"…That sounds boring," Naruto muttered.

Oscar nodded slightly. "And then, one day, fire appeared."

Naruto perked up. "Fire fixes everything."

"With fire came disparity. Heat and cold. Life and death. Light and dark. For the first time, the world could change." Oscar paused before continuing. "And from the dark, beings emerged. Drawn to the flame. Within it, they found great power. Souls. The Souls of Lords."

"So… super important souls," Naruto said.

"Yes. The first of the dead, Nito. The Witch of Izalith and her daughters of Chaos. Gwyn, the Lord of Sunlight, and his knights." Oscar's voice lowered. "And one more. The Furtive Pygmy. So easily forgotten."

"If he's that important, why does nobody remember him?"

Oscar's mouth curved faintly. "Because he was small. Quiet. And because his soul was different."

"What kind of different?"

"The Dark Soul," Oscar said. "While the others wielded their power openly, the Pygmy divided his. Shared it. From that act, humanity was born."

Naruto's eyes widened. "Wait—so humans came from the Dark Soul?"

"Yes," Oscar said. "That darkness you carry inside you? It is older than the Age of Fire itself."

"…EH?!"

Oscar continued, "With the power of the Lords, war was waged against the dragons. Gwyn's lightning tore through their stone scales. The Witch unleashed firestorms. Nito spread death and disease. And Seath the Scaleless betrayed his own kind."

Naruto swallowed.

"And thus began the Age of Fire."

Oscar fell silent for a moment.

"But fire does not last forever," he said at last. "It fades. And when it does, only dark remains. Even now, the flame is little more than embers. Night stretches longer. And among humans appears the Darksign.

Naruto's mind wandered to the ring of flame sealed inside the forbidden scroll.

"The mark of the accursed. In this land, the Undead are gathered, sent north, and locked away. To wait for the end of the world." Oscar looked at Naruto then, meeting his eyes. "And now, that fate has reached you as well."

Naruto let out a long breath, trying to make sense of everything. "But… I wasn't gathered," he said slowly. "I just touched this Darksign thing and suddenly I was here."

Oscar's expression softened, an apologetic look crossing his face. "I wish I had a clear answer for you, my squire. All I know are rumors. As the Age of Fire weakens, the boundaries between worlds grow thin. Barriers between places, between even different timelines, begin to fray. When that happens, Lordran draws in those it should never have touched."

He paused, then added quietly, "Maybe, you were caught in that pull."

"So… how do I go back?"

Naruto tried to sound casual, but even to him, the question sounded desperate. Konoha was still his home. He didn't belong here in this place of endless decay.

"You miss it, don't you? Your home?"

"I mean… it's not like there's anyone waiting for me."

"You're an orphan?"

Naruto nodded, the word hanging heavily between them.

"That explains why you're so… full of life."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"When you've known loneliness… true loneliness… sometimes all you can do is laugh. It's the only way to keep the darkness from swallowing you whole."

Naruto looked at him, really looked at him, and saw the same loneliness he'd seen in his own reflection so many times before.

"Yeah… Beats the alternative, right?"

They sat in silence that spoke louder than words. In that moment, they both understood what it was to be alone and, somehow, to keep going. For the first time since he'd arrived, Naruto didn't feel quite so far from home.

"Do you still want to go back?" Oscar asked after a while.

"Yeah. My home might be crap, but it's better than this. Plus, the ramen is great there."

Naruto tried to laugh, but it came out weaker than he wanted.

"I'm sorry, but… I don't know how you can go back to your home."

Naruto wasn't sure how to feel. Part of him wanted to freak out, but another part… "Well, a break from Konoha does sound nice," he said, half-joking but half-meaning it.

Oscar watched him closely, probably trying to figure out if Naruto was putting on a brave face or if he really meant it. Honestly? Naruto wasn't sure either. He'd always looked on the bright side of things, and maybe this was just another thing to deal with. Or maybe… his life back home wasn't all that great, and he didn't mind the idea of a break from it.

Oscar stood up, his armor clinking softly. "Well, it doesn't matter. As long as you're here, I'll stand beside you as a teacher and as a friend."

The knight held out his hand. For a second, Naruto just stared at it. No one had ever offered him something like that before. A genuine smile spread across Naruto's face. As he clasped Oscar's hand, and Oscar helped him to his feet.

"Let's go kick this demon's ass."

---

The third floor of the asylum was a broken hall under a sky that seemed forever gray. The roof had long since crumbled, leaving debris scattered across the floor. But what caught Naruto's attention wasn't the destruction.

It was the land outside.

Instead of the lush green forests of Konoha, all Naruto could see were jagged mountains, rising like prison bars around the asylum. The air was cold, with a biting wind that whipped around him, tugging at his clothes and cutting through his skin like a kunai. Suddenly, Naruto felt warmth in the icy air. He turned, his eyes locking onto a corpse slumped against the wall. Unlike the hollows they'd fought before, this one looked more… human. But that wasn't what caught his eye. It was the embers glowing faintly on the fingers, as though they were still clinging to life even after death.

"Pyromancy Flame," Oscar whispered, breaking the silence beside him.

"What's that?"

"It's an item that can help pyromancers use flame arts."

That's what I need to use fireballs!

Without thinking, Naruto rushed forward, excitement bubbling in his chest. But a gut feeling, a sense that something wasn't right. His eyes narrowed as he scanned the corners of the hall.

Something felt off.

Naruto hurled a kunai toward the shadows. The sound echoed through the area, and sure enough, a few hollows began limping toward them.

"Good call," Naruto muttered to himself as he grabbed a few more shuriken. It was as good a time as any to practice. One of them dropped after the third kunai, while the other kept coming until Oscar stepped in and cut it down with a clean swing of his sword. The last hollow at the end of the hall was different. It was armored while holding a spear and shield.

"Remember, Naruto," Oscar said calmly, "There are two ways to deal with a spear, or any weapon with long reach."

Naruto hummed.

"One is to keep your distance. The other is to get so close that the weapon's range becomes its weakness."

Naruto nodded, fully understanding the strategy. Neither he nor the hollow moved. It stood there, waiting, its spear tip gleaming in the light.

"Your turn," Oscar said, stepping aside.

"Oh yeah!" Naruto shouted as he suddenly remembered the pyromancy flame. Without wasting a second, he sprinted toward it.

The pyromancy flame still glowed faintly on the corpse's hand. Naruto reached out and touched it, and as soon as his fingers made contact, the embers seemed to come alive. They slithered like vines, crawling up his arm, their heat warming his skin. The ashes of the corpse blew away in the wind, swirling in the air before magically attaching themselves to his hand.

"Naruto!" Oscar called from behind him, pulling his attention back to the battlefield.

The boy turned to see the undead spearman marching toward them. "I'm going to do a fireball, sensei! Back up, I don't want you to get hurt."

Naruto instinctively knew how to use this new power. It wasn't like chakra. This energy was different; more violent and chaotic. A beautiful orb of fire formed in his palm. The heat radiated from it, making the air shimmer.

The undead soldier paused in fear, raising its shield.

As it left his hand, Naruto felt a little disappointed as it wasn't as big as Sasuke's fireballs. But that disappointment vanished the moment it hit the soldier.

BOOM!

Flames erupted in a massive explosion. The blast was so intense that the walls themselves were charred black, and the undead soldier was engulfed in the inferno.

"Holy shit! My flames are definitely stronger than Sasuke's, right, sensei?"

"It's not dead," Oscar said calmly, and sure enough, the soldier walked out of the fire, its armor and spear melting. But it didn't stop. It started running toward him, faster than Naruto expected. His heart leapt into his throat as it charged. Acting on instinct, he swung his sword, slicing its neck clean through.

The soldier crumbled into a lifeless heap at his feet.

"Always make sure the enemy is down. Don't turn your back on them until you're certain."

Naruto nodded, taking Oscar's advice to heart. That had been way too close for comfort.

Suddenly, the entire place shook, the ground rumbling beneath their feet. The knight and the boy turned to the side, and there down below, pacing back and forth, was the asylum demon.

"Looks like our friend is getting anxious."

Oscar glanced at him, his calm demeanor never faltering. "This battle will be different, Naruto. Are you ready?"

"You bet! Let's take this thing down for good."

Oscar launched himself into the air and driving his sword down in a vicious plunge attack onto the demon's head. His blade cut deep, slicing off part of the demon's tree-like horns. The impact was so powerful it sent a spray of blood and ichor splattering across the ground, the demon roaring in pain. The knight landed in a roll, quickly making his way toward the gate as Naruto summoned dozens of shadow clones. They leaped toward the asylum demon, but none of them attacked. Instead, they popped, creating a massive cloud of smoke that engulfed the monster.

From the high ground, Naruto released a fireball, using the smoke as cover. The fireball soared through the air and exploded on the demon's face, flames licking up its grotesque features.

But the demon was tougher than expected.

It roared in fury, and its hammer shot up, smashing into the platform where Naruto stood. But the Knight's sight had kicked in helping him jump just in time, narrowly avoiding being crushed as the upper floor was obliterated beneath him.

Naruto summoned more clones and used them as a launchpad to propel himself back into the fight.

Meanwhile, Oscar charged in with a two-handed grip on his sword, delivering a devastating horizontal slice across the demon's midsection. The blade cut deep, blood spraying from the wound as the demon let out a guttural roar of agony.

"Sensei, dodge!" Naruto shouted as he landed, seeing the demon wind up for another attack. Oscar rolled to the side just in time, and Naruto took the opportunity to hurl another fireball. This time, he aimed for the Achilles tendon, the fireball exploding on impact. A chunk of the demon's leg was blown off in a fiery blast. Blood and chunks of flesh flying everywhere as the massive creature collapsed to one knee, roaring in pain.

The demon's wings flared open suddenly, and Naruto knew what was coming next. The demon began to rise, preparing for its butt-shockwave attack. Oscar and Naruto were near the gate, just outside the immediate area of effect.

"Now!" Naruto shouted, and his clones responded instantly, hurling fireballs at the demon. Each fireball exploded on contact, covering the creature in flames but it wasn't done.

With a savage roar, it lunged toward them.

Naruto barely had time to react when he felt Oscar's boot hit his back, shoving him forward. He stumbled, his jaw dropping as he saw his teacher do the impossible. Oscar parried the demon's giant swing, his sword cutting cleanly through the head of the demon's massive hammer. In one fluid motion, Oscar moved in for the kill, his blade plunging deep into the demon's stomach.

The demon screamed in a horrendous, bloodcurdling sound as its stomach split open.

Thick and dark blood pooled on the ground beneath it. Its intestines spilling out in long, grotesque ropes, steam rising from the exposed organs. The creature's body convulsed, twitching as the flames continued to burn through its skin.

[ Name: Asylum Demon ]
[ HP: 980 / 2,195 ]

For a moment, Naruto almost felt sorry for the thing.

But then, the hairs on his arms stood on end as the asylum demon lifted the broken handle of its hammer. He watched in disbelief as the handle began to twist and warp, almost like it was alive. The demon's hammer morphed into a staff, pulling the broken pots around them into its grip, fusing them together to form a jagged obsidian edge.

For some reason, its name change.

[ Name: Stray Demon ]
[ HP: 980 / 2,195 ]

Without wasting a second, Naruto threw his hands together and shouted, "Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Dozens of clones appeared in a puff of smoke, charging toward the demon in unison.

The demon swung wide with its new staff, and most of Naruto's clones dodged it with ease.

But then... Bang!

A deafening explosion ripped through the air. His ears rang, his head spun, and he barely registered the red flash of light before he hit the ground. His body screamed in pain, and he gasped for breath, trying to figure out what had just happened. His clones... most of them were gone. They had popped almost instantly, wiped out by whatever that blast was.

This demon can use ninjutsu?

The thought clawed its way through the haze in his mind. Before he could fully gather himself, he saw the demon again, gripping its staff like a baseball bat. He could barely react as it swung towards him, the jagged edge of the staff gleaming as it cut through the air with terrifying speed.

Naruto tried to move, but his body felt like it was moving through mud. His muscles refused to listen, still reeling from whatever weird spell had knocked him down. His chest tightened, and the cold realization hit him hard: I can't dodge this.

Is this the end?

The thought barely had time to form before the staff was already swinging toward him, the world stretching into a slow, horrible crawl. Suddenly, Oscar lunged into the path of the blow, shield raised just in time. The demon's staff struck with a thunderous crack, the impact violent enough to hurl Oscar off his feet. He was thrown through the air like a broken doll, crashing into the second-floor wall with a bone-rattling bang.

The blow sent the knight flying but it was deflected away from the boy.

"SENSEI?!" Naruto screamed, his eyes darted back to the demon, and it smiled at him.

A grotesque, mocking grin that made his blood boil.

Something inside Naruto snapped. His chakra surged violently, flooding his body as blue energy flared outward in a sudden, blazing rush, rippling through the air around him like living flame.

Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu!

A hundred... no, a thousand clones burst into existence, filling the courtyard. The sound of battle cries echoed around him as his clones charged, hand axes raised, each one filled with the same rage that burned in his chest. This demon wasn't going to get away with this.

The asylum demon slammed its staff into the ground.

The staff began to glow with a deep, pulsing red light emanating from it. Before Naruto could even process what was happening, the demon raised the staff high, and an orb of red energy formed at the tip. It hovered there for a brief second, crackling with power.

No…

Then it exploded.

The shockwave hit Naruto like a tidal wave, and in an instant, he felt everything. Thousands of thoughts, memories and fear, it all flooded into him like a crashing wave. His mind felt like it was being torn apart, the sheer overload too much to handle.

I… can't… breathe…

The orb's energy reached him. The sensation was like nothing he'd ever felt before like his body was being unraveled thread by thread.

There was no heat, no sensation, just a growing void where his body should've been. His mind screamed for something to hold onto, but there was nothing. He couldn't even tell where his body ended and the nothingness began.

His vision blurred, and all the sounds of battle faded into silence.

There was no more pain, but it wasn't relief.

It was terrifying.

[ YOU DIED.]

---

Author's Note

And with that, Chapter One is done. I hope you guys enjoyed what I've set up so far.

Now let's get into a short Q and A section where I answer some questions I think you might have, clear up a bit of Dark Souls lore, and explain some of my creative decisions.

---

1. Will Naruto be traveling between worlds?

Yes.

This was a big decision early on because it completely shapes the kind of story this is. A story where Naruto is trapped in Lordran and completely cut off from his own world would be very different from one where he can move between Lordran and Konoha.

This story is the second option.

Naruto will be able to travel between the two worlds. What happens in Lordran will affect the Naruto world, and what happens in the Naruto world will affect how he survives and grows in Lordran. He is not just visiting one world and ignoring the other.

More details on how that works will be explained naturally as the story continues.

---

2. Why did Oscar teach Naruto Light Cut and Heavy Cut instead of real swordsmanship?

This one is pretty simple. In Dark Souls, your basic melee options are light and heavy attacks, and I thought it would be a fun nod to build that into the story right from the start.

Also, this is still the prologue. There just isn't enough time for Naruto to learn proper swordsmanship in a meaningful way yet. Right now, basics are enough to get him through what's coming.

That said, Naruto will learn real swordsmanship as the story progresses. He can study kenjutsu back in Konoha, and he can also learn from NPCs in Lordran who actually know how to fight with a blade. This is just the starting point.

---

3. Why is Naruto smart all of a sudden?

Yeah, this one probably stood out to some people.

In this chapter, Naruto is definitely sharper than his early canon self. For example, he figures out the shadow clone memory training trick months, or honestly years, before Shippuden Naruto ever did. Canon Naruto had that jutsu for a long time, and it still took Kakashi spelling it out before he realized how useful it was. We all know that was Kishimoto pulling a retcon, but in-universe it makes Naruto look slower than he really should be. I know there are fanon explanations for this, but let's not dive into that rabbit hole right now.

So how is this Naruto smarter if he's still canon Naruto who just got thrown into Lordran?

The answer is the class selection. That process changed his base stats, including Intelligence. Those stat changes don't just affect combat. They influence how he thinks, adapts, and learns.

Now, a smarter Naruto comes with a risk I see in a lot of fanfics. He either turns into an out-of-character genius or basically becomes Sasuke 2.0.

That's not what I want.

My goal is to let Naruto become smarter without stripping away his personality and charm. On top of that, Intelligence isn't something he can just max out overnight. It takes time, effort, and a lot of grinding. As the story goes on, Naruto will be forced to deal with more mature situations, especially since jumping between worlds tends to attract attention. That growth will happen gradually, alongside the stats, not all at once.

---

4. How can Oscar and Naruto understand each other?

This is probably the biggest question most isekai stories love to ignore, so I figured I should address it directly.

The answer is simple: the system handles translation.

Anything Naruto says in Japanese, or whatever language is spoken in the Naruto world, is automatically translated for Oscar. Likewise, anything spoken in Astora is translated for Naruto. From their perspectives, it just feels natural, like they're speaking the same language.

That said, the system isn't perfect.

If a word or concept doesn't exist in the other world, it doesn't get translated. It just carries over as-is. That's why words like sensei don't automatically make sense to Oscar, and why things like dattebayo stay untranslated.

So basic communication works smoothly, but cultural terms, titles, and verbal quirks still stand out. I wanted to keep that distinction because it makes the conversations feel more grounded and avoids turning translation into a handwave that erases cultural differences entirely.

---

5. What is the Knight's Crest or Knight's Sight?

This is my in-world explanation for the lock-on mechanic in Dark Souls.

Since Dark Souls is a game first, I wanted to translate some of its mechanics into something that actually makes sense in a narrative. Especially combat mechanics. A huge part of what makes Dark Souls fun is how it plays, and I didn't want to ignore that just because this is a story. You'll see me do this with other systems later on. Yes, things like i-frames are coming.

Souls games are played from a third-person perspective, so the Knight's Crest or Knight's Sight is basically that. Naruto now has a way of perceiving the battlefield that exists outside of his normal vision.

There was also a practical reason for this choice. Real knight armor, especially helmets, had a massive flaw. Visibility was terrible. Narrow eye slits, limited peripheral vision, and restricted awareness were just part of wearing a helm. Against shinobi who already move incredibly fast and against the fantasy monsters of Lordran, Naruto fighting in armor would be a problem without some kind of workaround. The crest solves that issue cleanly.

Lore-wise, I wanted the crest to fit naturally into Dark Souls. We already know that magic writing/runes exist in the setting. You can see this clearly with things like the demonic runes binding the Bed of Chaos. So I expanded on that idea and introduced miracle runes, with the Knight's Crest being one of them. I chose the crest motif intentionally. Oscar drops the Crest Shield. Solaire wears a sun crest on his armor. Crests already exist visually in Dark Souls, so I leaned into that.

---

Additional Lore of Darksouls: Faith, Miracles, and Why the Knight's Crest Works?

One of the most interesting stats in Dark Souls lore is Faith, and I don't think it works the way the gods want people to believe it does.

Take Sunlight Spear from Dark Souls III.

Description: Miracle of Gwyn, the First Lord. Hurls a sunlight spear. The tales of Gwyn's Archdragon hunts describe the inception of the Age of Fire.

On the surface, this suggests miracles are gifts directly granted by gods.

But that explanation falls apart pretty quickly.

We can still cast Nito's miracles long after killing him. If the god in question is dead, then he clearly isn't actively granting power. That means miracles are not divine favors in the traditional sense.

The Archdeacon's Staff hints at this even further. Its description: The Archdeacon McDonnell's trespass, the sin of channeling faith for sorcery, transformed what was once merely a symbol of ecclesiastic authority into a catalyst for sorceries.

That line is important, because it acknowledges something dangerous. Faith does not actually come from the gods. The gods simply want people to think it does.

What Faith really represents is belief. Not belief in a god, but belief in an outcome.

In other words, Faith in Dark Souls is closer to a form of belief-based reality manipulation. You believe something strongly enough, perform the proper ritual, and the world responds.

This also explains why miracles require chimes, talismans, and specific prayers. You cannot simply decide to throw lightning out of your hand. But if you know that others have done it through a ritual, with a chime and a prayer, then it becomes believable. The tool, the words, and the tradition make the miracle feel real enough for your belief to manifest it.

As the Age of Fire faded and the gods lost their hold on the world, this became even clearer.

Near the end of Lothric's era in Ds3, humans began creating miracles that had nothing to do with the ancient gods at all. In the Cathedral of the Deep, the deacons twisted their faith toward the Deep itself, producing heretical miracles like Gnaw that drew power from stagnant darkness rather than divinity. In Londor, the Sable Church spread miracles centered on the suffering and salvation of Hollows, allowing people to draw power from their own darkness.

At that point, the subject of faith was no longer gods. It was people. Undead. Hollows. Belief turned inward.

That idea is the lore explanation for the Knight's Crest.

The crest works because Naruto, subconsciously, has enough belief in Oscar for it to function. He accepts that this world operates on rules, that knights see and fight a certain way, and that belief allows the effect to manifest. The crest is not powered by a god watching over him. It is powered by faith in the role he is stepping into.

In Dark Souls, that is more than enough.

---

That's It… For Now.

I want to thank you all for taking the time to read, comment, and follow along with this story. Your feedback means more than you know, and it helps push me to make each chapter bigger, sharper, and more true to the worlds of Naruto and Dark Souls.

Until next time,

Praise the Sun.

\-Adam-/

 

[Nicohals J Westerberg]

I really hope to see more

 

[Alchto]

I really hope to see more

Click to shrink...

+1

 

[Adamos_Amet]

I really hope to see more

Click to shrink...

Thank you; it makes me happy that people like something I worked really hard on. Anyway, the next chapter will be out on November 15th.

 

[M0rtimer]

It's really very well written, and the implementation of the concept is quite interesting. I'm looking forward to new chapters! Thank you for working for us!

p.s. But the part with lore from Oscar still needed to be done a little more and not such a retelling intro.

 

[Adamos_Amet]

It's really very well written, and the implementation of the concept is quite interesting. I'm looking forward to new chapters! Thank you for working for us!

p.s. But the part with lore from Oscar still needed to be done a little more and not such a retelling intro.

Click to shrink...

Thank you so much for the kind words, M0rtimer! I'm really glad you're enjoying the story so far, and I appreciate the feedback on the lore section with Oscar.

I took your advice to heart and reworked that part to make it feel more natural, focusing on the flow of the conversation rather than an info-dump. Hopefully, it comes across as more engaging and true to the characters this time around. If you get a chance, please take a look at the updated version and let me know if it flows better or if you think it still needs a bit more refinement. Your feedback really helps!

Thanks again for reading and supporting the story!

 

[M0rtimer]

Thank you so much for the kind words, M0rtimer! I'm really glad you're enjoying the story so far, and I appreciate the feedback on the lore section with Oscar.

I took your advice to heart and reworked that part to make it feel more natural, focusing on the flow of the conversation rather than an info-dump. Hopefully, it comes across as more engaging and true to the characters this time around. If you get a chance, please take a look at the updated version and let me know if it flows better or if you think it still needs a bit more refinement. Your feedback really helps!

Thanks again for reading and supporting the story!

Click to shrink...

Thanks! I read it. Yes, it's much better in my opinion.

One more piece of optional advice - do not chase the size of chapters. 5 - 10k is more than enough to accommodate. Especially for the first chapters (this is for future works).

 

[Adamos_Amet]

Moonlight slipped through the open window, pale and quiet, spilling across the small apartment. It settled on the figure lying awake on the bed, illuminating brown hair and the thin scar that cut across the bridge of his nose.

Iruka Umino stared at the ceiling, sleep refusing to come. His thoughts, as they often did lately, circled back to Naruto.

The boy he had failed earlier that day during the Genin Exam. The same boy who, despite multiple chances, still could not perform a simple Clone Jutsu.

Iruka exhaled slowly.

His feelings about Naruto were complicated. More complicated than he liked to admit. When Naruto had first entered the Academy, Iruka had hated him. Not because of anything the boy had done, but because of what he represented. Naruto was a walking reminder of the night Iruka had lost everything.

Twelve years ago.

Iruka had been a child then, standing at the edge of a world that was falling apart.

He remembered the Nine-Tails.

It was enormous, larger than the buildings it crushed beneath its claws. Its fur was the color of burning embers, its eyes like twin suns filled with rage. Each roar shook the air itself, rattling his bones and drowning out every other sound. The ground had trembled constantly that night. Houses collapsed. Fires spread unchecked. Smoke filled the sky until it blotted out the stars.

Iruka could still hear the voices.

Shinobi shouting orders. Screams of civilians. Someone yelling that they had to hold the line until the Hokage arrived.

In the middle of it all, Iruka had clung to his parents.

His mother had knelt in front of him. His father had stood behind them, already wearing his flak jacket, eyes fixed on the distant chaos.

"We'll protect you," his mother had said, forcing a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.

His father had nodded. "It's a parent's duty to keep their child safe."

Iruka had believed them.

Then someone had grabbed him.

He never even saw the shinobi's face. Just strong arms lifting him off the ground, pulling him away while he struggled and screamed.

"Let me go!" he had cried. "My mom and dad are still fighting the demon!"

He remembered reaching for them as they grew smaller and smaller in the distance, swallowed by smoke and fire.

That was the last time he ever saw them.

The memory still echoed in his mind, sharp and unrelenting, even now.

Naruto was the jailer of that same demon. The container that held the Nine-Tails sealed away. Any shinobi worth their salt knew the difference between a weapon and the seal that contained it. Naruto was not the fox.

And yet.

It didn't change the fact that every time Iruka looked at him, he saw that night. The destruction, fear and loss. Naruto was a reminder of the tragedy the Nine-Tails had inflicted on the village, on him.

Iruka wondered, not for the first time, if that was all Naruto would have ever been to him if not for the Third Hokage. "I understand how you feel about the boy. But you must see him as more than the Nine-Tails' jinchūriki. He is a lonely child. Just like you once were."

As the years passed, as Naruto continued to show up to class every day with that loud voice and forced grin, those words began to sink in.

Naruto was lonely... painfully so.

Iruka had been glad when the Third assigned Naruto to his class. He told himself he would be strict but professional. That he would treat Naruto no differently than any other student. If Naruto was going to become a shinobi, then he would earn it properly. And yet, no matter how much effort he put in, Naruto still failed the graduation exam.

Maybe… maybe he should have done more. Maybe he should have offered extra lessons. One-on-one tutoring. Something to help the boy bridge the gap.

The thought barely finished forming when a loud bang echoed through the apartment.

Iruka jolted upright as the knock came again. He moved quickly, crossing the room and opening the door. Mizuki stood on the other side, his expression tight.

"What's up?"

"I'm afraid it's Naruto," Mizuki said. "He's stolen the Forbidden Scroll of Seals. The Hokage has issued an order for his immediate capture."

Iruka's stomach dropped. This wasn't a prank. This wasn't another instance of Naruto acting out. Stealing the Scroll of Seals was treason. The kind of crime that got people killed.

Naruto was in danger.

"We have witnesses that saw Naruto heading toward the western forest."

Iruka grabbed his flak jacket and headband, pulling them on as he moved.

"I'll head there first," he said. "You circle around. Make sure he hasn't doubled back or gone farther than we expect."

"Be careful."

Iruka was already moving, leaping across rooftops as worry gnawed at his chest.

Please, Naruto, he thought. Don't let this be the night you lose everything too.

---

Naruto stood in a small clearing, the Scroll of Seals unrolled before him, its massive length spilling across the forest floor.

Every inhale felt like a choice he had to consciously make, like his body had forgotten the rhythm and was waiting for instruction. He kept expecting to blink out. To scatter into smoke the way his clones did when they took a hit too hard.

He had died a few minutes ago.

The darkness had been real. The nothing had been real. And now he was standing in a forest with moonlight on his hands and air in his lungs, and none of it felt... real.

"Naruto!" Iruka landed hard behind him, anger and fear twisting on his face.

The boy didn't respond, which stopped Iruka cold.

"Do you have any idea how much trouble you are in?"

Still nothing.

A knot formed in Iruka's stomach. His hands closed around Naruto's shoulders as he turned him around.

Naruto's eyes were open but not seeing.

His mind was still somewhere else. Still in that last moment before the nothing took him.

Everyone knew death existed.

You grew up knowing it the way you knew the sky was above you, constant and unreachable and never quite real until it wasn't.

He had expected pain. He had expected fear. Every story he had ever heard about death made it sound like the worst thing imaginable.

It hadn't been.

The other side had been... quiet.

He didn't know what to do with that. Didn't know how to pick it up and carry it back into a world that was still moving, still loud, still full of Iruka's hands on his shoulders.

None of it fit together yet.

The part that unsettled him most wasn't the dying.

It was how peaceful it had been.

Iruka didn't know any of that. All he saw was a boy standing still in the forest, eyes weighed down by something far too big for him.

"Naruto," Iruka said, gentler now. "Talk to me. What did you do?"

Naruto's eyes finally focused, slowly, as if the world were sliding back into place. "I…" His voice came out hoarse. "I'm… alive."

Before Iruka could ask anything else, the kunai burst from the darkness.

Iruka shoved Naruto aside as steel tore into his own body. Pain exploded through his shoulder and side as the blades struck, driving him backward. He hit the ground hard, blood soaking into the dirt.

"Seriously," Mizuki said landing lightly on a tree branch above them. "You just had to go and save the demon brat."

Iruka pushed himself up on one elbow, glaring. "So that's how it is."

"Naruto. Hand over the scroll."

Naruto blinked, his mind still foggy.

"Don't," Iruka said, ripping the kunai from his flesh with a grunt. "Protect that scroll with your life. Those jutsu are more dangerous than anything you or I can imagine. Mizuki used you. He wants its power for himself."

"Don't listen to him, Naruto. He's been lying to you your entire life."

Iruka's eyes widened. "No. Mizuki, don't. That's forbidden."

"Lying?" Naruto looked between them, confusion giving way to something sharper. "What's forbidden?"

"The truth was sealed by decree from the Third Hokage. Do you know why the whole village hates you?"

Naruto had always felt their stares and whispers. Parents pulling their children away. He'd told himself it was because he was an orphan that caused trouble. But no one ever explained why.

"Yeah?"

"No, Mizuki, stop!" Iruka shouted.

"Roughly twelve years ago," Mizuki continued, ignoring him, "the Kyuubi no Kitsune attacked Konoha. The Fourth Hokage couldn't kill it, so he sealed it into the body of a newborn baby."

Naruto's breath caught.

"And that baby was you."

Everything about the way others had treated him suddenly made sense.

"That's why everyone despises you," Mizuki laughed. "You're the demon fox."

The world seemed to tilt.

Demon.

His mind betrayed him, dragging up the image of the Asylum Demon.

Was he like that monster?

Mizuki grinned, pulling a giant shuriken from his back. "And now I'll kill you and become a hero."

The giant shuriken tore through the air, spinning fast enough to scream.

Iruka moved without thinking.

Despite the blood soaking through his vest and the pain screaming through his muscles, he forced his legs to obey, sprinting toward Naruto with everything he had left. He threw himself between the boy and the weapon, arms already lifting in a desperate attempt to shield him.

At that moment, Naruto felt the familiar pull behind his eyes. The strange sensation of detachment, like his awareness had been lifted out of his body and set just above the battlefield. The Knight's Crest flared to life, invisible but absolute.

Naruto saw Iruka's trajectory before he finished the step. Saw the angle of the shuriken, the arc it would take, the precise point where it would tear through flesh.

No.

Ninja Art: Shadow Clone Jutsu!

Dozens of Naruto burst into existence in a tight formation between Iruka and the incoming shuriken. Their shields came up in unison.

The fuma-shuriken struck.

Metal shrieked against astoran steel as the clones absorbed the impact, the weapon grinding to a halt before clattering uselessly to the forest floor. Several clones vanished instantly, bursting into smoke, but the wall held.

Silence followed.

Iruka skidded to a stop, staring.

"That was… the Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu?"

An A-rank forbidden technique that had been learned in hours. And yet his eyes kept drifting to the crest shield.

"Where did that come from…?" Iruka murmured.

A slow clap echoed from the trees.

"How noble of you, Iruka," Mizuki said from the treez. "Throwing yourself in front of your family's murderer."

"Shut up."

Mizuki's hands began weaving signs. "Don't you see? The brat already learned a forbidden jutsu. With the scroll, he'll be unstoppable. It's only a matter of time before the Kyuubi uses that power to destroy Konoha."

"Shut the hell up," Iruka snarled. "You hypocrite."

Mizuki clicked his tongue. "You never see the big picture. This is your chance for revenge. Join me. We kill the brat, take the scroll, and leave. Power beyond anything we've dreamed of will be ours."

For the first time since learning the truth, Naruto didn't know what to expect.

Did Iruka hate him?

"It's true," Iruka said quietly. "I hate the fox."

Naruto's stomach dropped.

"But not Naruto."

The words landed like a hand on his shoulder.

"For him, I have nothing but respect for him."

Naruto's eyes widened.

"He's an excellent student," Iruka continued. "He works harder than anyone I know. Sometimes he's awkward and clumsy. A screw-up."

Mizuki scoffed, but Iruka didn't stop.

"He's been mocked, shunned and treated like garbage. And you know what that gave him?"

Iruka looked at Naruto.

"Empathy. He knows what it means to be in pain."

Iruka turned fully toward Mizuki.

"That boy is no demon fox."

His voice thundered.

"He is Uzumaki Naruto. The future Hokage of Konoha!"

Mizuki screamed in fury. "Then die together!"

He inhaled sharply.

Fire Style: Fireworks Jutsu!

An orb of flame burst from his mouth and detonated midair, scattering into dozens of blazing fragments that rained down like shrapnel. The remaining clones raised their shields, absorbing the blasts before popping in clouds of smoke.

"Okay, Naruto," Iruka said quickly. "I'll hold him off. You grab the scroll and run back to the village."

Naruto however moved forward, "Don't worry, sensei. It's the duty of a knight to vanquish evil."

The astora straight sword materialized in Naruto's hand.

Iruka stared. Was that… space-time ninjutsu?

Before he could think further, Mizuki burst from the smoke in a flying kick aimed straight at Naruto's head. Naruto didn't block as the kick passed through him.

Iruka's eyes widened. "A clone!"

Mizuki was using the lingering chakra vapor as cover. The Academy Clone had been nothing more than a distraction. The real attack came from below, hidden in the smoke. Shuriken linked by ninja wire skimmed across the ground, snapping toward Naruto's legs, meant to bind, pull, and bring him crashing down.

Iruka recognized the setup instantly. "Down!" he shouted, already snapping through hand signs.

Naruto reacted without hesitation, jumping upward.

Midair, the Knight's Crest flared once more. He saw the ninja wire shuriken arcing low through the smoke, and pinpointed Mizuki's position near the tree beyond it. The Astora Straight Sword vanished from his grip, replaced by the solid weight of a handaxe. Naruto twisted in the air and hurled it in one smooth motion.

The axe tore through the thinning fog and struck with a heavy thud.

As the smoke cleared, the blade could be seen buried deep in the tree trunk, embedded inches from Mizuki's head.

Iruka stared in disbelief.

How was Naruto seeing everything so clearly?

Mizuki bared his teeth and surged forward, killing intent radiating off him in waves.

The Astora Straight Sword equipped into Naruto's hand with a thought.

Mizuki closed the distance aggressively, kunai flashing in both hands. He used his longer reach and heavier frame to crowd Naruto, forcing him backward with raw pressure rather than finesse. A downward cut snapped toward Naruto's collarbone, driving him into a quick retreat. Before Naruto's foot had even settled, the second kunai thrust in low, aimed for his ribs.

The sword snapped out in a short, controlled cut, aimed at Mizuki's forward wrist.

The white haired chunin recoiled just in time, the blade shaving fabric instead of flesh.

"Tch."

Snarling, Mizuki rushed forward, abandoning clean technique in favor of speed and volume, kunai stabbing in rapid succession. Naruto kept moving, feet never still, always adjusting measure. He met one strike in a bind, guided it aside rather than stopping it dead, then ducked under the next, the sword snapping back into guard the moment the exchange ended.

Oscar's voice echoed in his head. Recover as fast as you strike.

Naruto flicked out another light cut, a compact horizontal slice that forced Mizuki to twist away. The blade was already back in line, point forward in a simple stance.

Mizuki dropped his center of gravity and lunged in shoulder-first, abandoning blade work entirely. His mass slammed into Naruto, driving the air from his lungs and knocking him back several steps. Dirt kicked up as Naruto struggled to keep his footing.

Mizuki capitalized immediately, stepping through the collision and stabbing downward with all his weight behind the kunai.

Naruto planted his rear foot, shifted his grip, and committed.

Both hands locked onto the hilt as he delivered a descending cut, a full-bodied strike driven by hips and shoulders rather than arms alone. The blade didn't land cleanly, but it crashed into Mizuki's forearm and weapon, battering the kunai aside with bone-jarring force.

Mizuki hissed and leapt back, barely saving his arm.

Naruto felt the cost instantly.

The strike had been powerful, but slow. His arms lagged as he recovered, muscles screaming as the sword came back into guard a fraction too late.

Mizuki saw it and smiled.

"Too slow."

He surged forward, ready to punish the opening.

Before he could, Iruka slammed his palm into the ground.

Ninja Art: String Light Formation!

Fuinjutsu symbols flared outward from Iruka's hand, glowing lines spreading across the forest floor like a net. Mizuki cursed and leapt upward, narrowly avoiding the barrier jutsu as it snapped into place below.

That was when Naruto's palm ignited in flames.

Fireball!

Naruto thrust his pyromancy flame forward.

A mass of fire erupted from his palm. Mizuki twisted midair and made a desperate hand sign.

Fire Style: Fire Resistance Jutsu!

Chakra flowed over his body, forming a thin protective layer.

It didn't matter.

Naruto's fire wasn't chakra. It was a flame born of chaos.

The explosion swallowed Mizuki midair.

He crashed to the ground in a rolling heap, screaming as fire tore across him. His flak jacket burned away, fabric disintegrating, skin blistering instantly. Angry red burns spread across his arms and torso, patches of flesh charred black, others bubbling painfully. He staggered upright, panting, smoke rising from his body.

"I'll kill you!" Mizuki screamed, hurling shuriken wildly.

Naruto jumped, clearing the blades as they buried themselves in the dirt.

Midair, the iron ball left his inventory.

It appeared above Mizuki who was distracted by Naruto landing before him.

Then gravity did the rest.

The iron ball slammed down with catastrophic force, crushing into Mizuki's back and driving him into the ground with a wet, bone-shattering impact. His spine snapped audibly. The earth cratered beneath him.

Silence followed.

Mizuki lay there, barely breathing, body twisted unnaturally.

Naruto approached slowly, sword in hand.

Mizuki looked up at him, tears cutting clean tracks through soot and blood. "P-Please," he croaked. "Naruto… remember when I… when I brought you ramen… when I—" His voice broke. "Please... spare me…"

The sword came down with a sickening crack, the edge splitting through Mizuki's skull in two.

Iruka stood frozen as the reality of his old friend's death finally sank in, made all the more unsettling by the look on Naruto's face.

It was emptiness.

Just a flat, distant calm, like killing had already been reduced to a task that either succeeded or failed.

For a long moment, Iruka could only stare. This Naruto didn't look like the boy who had shouted and laughed and painted the Hokage Monument just yesterday. He looked… older. Not wiser. Just worn in a way Iruka didn't have words for.

Iruka's eyes drifted to the sword, shield and fire still curling faintly around Naruto's hand. The massive iron ball half-buried in the earth.

Did all of that really come from the Forbidden Scroll?

He didn't know.

And if it did… then why did it feel like the Naruto standing there wasn't quite the same boy he had known?

---

[ Victory Achieved! ]

[ You have gained: ]

[ Fūma Shuriken 2 ]

[ 200 Souls ]

The blood was already drying on his hands.

Naruto stared at them. Turned them over once, then back. The lines of his palms were dark with it, filling the creases like ink pressed into a woodblock seal.

He waited.

He wasn't sure what he was waiting for. Some part of him had expected something to arrive by now. Nausea maybe. The desperate need to be somewhere else. He'd felt all of that after his clones were wiped out by the Stray Demon's blast. Thousands of deaths flooding back into him at once, each one a pale echo of the real thing.

This felt nothing like that.

He looked at Mizuki then he looked away.

That was all it was. Looking, and then not looking. Like stepping around a puddle on the way to somewhere else. He had split a man's skull and the most honest thing he could say was that he was tired.

That should have frightened him.

It didn't.

And the absence of fear was the only thing that came close.

Everything was happening too fast. His thoughts scattered, slipping over each other, refusing to settle. But one name cut through the noise.

Oscar.

He had to go back. He had to save his teacher… his friend. But how? How did he get here in the first place? There was no clear answer, no path in front of him. Just blood and confusion.

Hollows, Oscar, that world… how do I get back? Where was I supposed to go from here?

---

Tonight had been a disaster for the Third Hokage.

Hiruzen Sarutobi had ruled Konohagakure for more than forty years. He had faced wars, conspiracies, traitors, and monsters that threatened the village itself. Never, in all that time, had he imagined being momentarily outplayed by an Academy student using an illusion of a naked woman. A small, deeply buried part of him was grateful no one else knew. The last thing the village needed was the story of how the great "Professor" had been stalled by such a tactic making the rounds.

Still, humor aside, the situation was grave.

Naruto Uzumaki had stolen the Forbidden Scroll of Seals.

That alone constituted a massive security breach. Hiruzen had immediately ordered all available shinobi to begin searching the village. ANBU units were dispatched to the borders to ensure Naruto hadn't fled with the scroll or worse.

Hiruzen knew Naruto was good at slipping around the village. Better than most children had any right to be. But that didn't explain how he'd managed to reach the Hokage Tower itself and bypass its security so cleanly.

Someone had to be pulling the strings behind this.

Hiruzen peered into the crystal ball as its surface shimmered, then cleared into a focused image. Through the Telescope Technique, he could observe the current actions of anyone whose chakra signature he knew, no matter how far away they were or what stood between them. It was a jutsu he had long used to keep watch over the village and maintain order within Konohagakure.

What he saw made his blood run cold.

Mizuki being the mastermind was a shock in itself. How had a low-ranking chūnin, an Academy instructor, learned enough about the Hokage Tower's security to manipulate Naruto into this?

But it wasn't the worst part.

Mizuki revealing Naruto's status as a jinchūriki was a nightmare Hiruzen had hoped to delay for years. He had planned to tell Naruto himself, one day, when the boy was old enough to understand what it meant to carry that burden.

At least Iruka had been there.

Hiruzen watched as Iruka stepped between Naruto and Mizuki without hesitation, shielding the boy with his own body. The old Hokage let out a slow breath, relieved that Naruto hadn't faced that alone.

When Naruto used the Shadow Clone Jutsu, the old man allowed himself a brief smile.

Mastering a forbidden A-rank technique in mere hours was astounding, even with Naruto's vast chakra reserves. It was a clear glimpse of the raw, unrefined potential the boy possessed.

Hiruzen's expression hardened when the boy used what looked like a space-time technique.

Space-time ninjutsu was among the most complex and dangerous fields known. Even the most talented jōnin struggled to grasp its fundamentals, and Konoha itself possessed very few such techniques. Pulling objects from what appeared to be a pocket dimension, without seals, scrolls, or preparation, was entirely unheard of.

The closest comparison was storage fuinjutsu.

But Naruto carried no scrolls, no sealing arrays, and no visible formulas. More importantly, storage seals did not function like this. They required activation and release, not instant manifestation accompanied by a faint shimmer as matter formed directly into existence.

This was an unknown space-time ninjutsu.

And it was being used by a boy who had failed the genin exam.

If that weren't enough, the weapons themselves raised further questions. They were clearly well-made, expensive, and foreign in design, not something a child could casually acquire, and certainly not something forged by any smith in Konoha. The unfamiliar fire technique was just another troubling detail layered on top of everything else.

Taken individually, each feat was impressive.

Taken together, they were impossible.

Shadow Clone Jutsu. Fire-style jutsu. Space-time Jutsu. Even the most gifted shinobi required years of focused training to master just one of those disciplines. No one learned all of them in the span of a few hours.

What had begun as a security crisis had transformed into a mystery where questions were piling up.

Naruto pretending all this time made no sense. The boy wore his heart on his sleeve. Deception of this scale did not fit him.

And yet…

Hiruzen stared into the fading image of the crystal ball. For the first time in years, a deeply uncomfortable thought crossed his mind.

What if the Naruto they knew was merely a mask, worn so well no one had questioned it?

---

The first thing Hiruzen noticed was the slight tremor in Iruka's hands as two ANBU escorted him and Naruto into the office.

"Iruka."

"Yes, Hokage-sama?"

"It has been a hard night for…" Hiruzen's gaze shifted briefly to Naruto. "…for everyone."

Iruka straightened. "Your command, Hokage-sama?"

"Dismissed."

Iruka obeyed without hesitation, though the reluctance lingered in the air even after he turned and left. Hiruzen watched the door close, leaving Naruto alone with him.

"Naruto, why don't you sit down?"

Naruto snapped to attention as if struck by a sudden jolt, eyes darting around the room, unfocused and alert all at once. It was like he had only just realized where he was.

Hiruzen studied him carefully.

Was this the familiar troublemaker he had watched grow, or someone revealed only now? Hiruzen's hands came together, unease creeping in. How much could be demanded of a child already shaped by burdens meant for no one?

"Is something wrong?"

Naruto shook his head a little too quickly. "No. I'm fine." He hesitated, then added, "Can I go now?"

"You're not in trouble, Naruto. You know that."

"Then can I leave?" Naruto pressed, eyes flicking toward the door.

The urgency caught Hiruzen's attention. "Why the rush?"

Naruto opened his mouth, then stopped. His brows knit together, his expression uncertain, like he was reaching for words that wouldn't come. For a moment, he looked genuinely lost.

"I've just got… stuff to do," he said at last. "Important stuff."

The words themselves were careless, almost flippant, but the tone beneath them wasn't.

What could possibly matter more than answers after everything he had just endured? The boy who usually fought tooth and nail for every scrap of attention wasn't pushing anymore.

He had gone quiet.

The thought unsettled Hiruzen.

Did Naruto already know more than he was letting on? Was that why he wasn't asking? And if so… had the trust Hiruzen believed they shared been just another part of the mask Naruto wore?

"Naruto, there are things we should talk about."

Naruto's shoulders tensed almost imperceptibly.

"About the Nine-Tails."

For a heartbeat, Naruto simply stood there, eyes fixed somewhere past the Hokage's desk, as if bracing himself for something unseen.

Hiruzen watched closely, measuring that silence. Whatever Naruto was carrying right now, it wasn't exploding outward.

It was being buried.

Much to the old man's relief, Naruto hesitated only a moment before finally sitting. He perched on the edge of the chair, back straight, hands resting loosely in his lap, like he wasn't sure how long he was allowed to stay.

"Tonight, you were exposed to a part of the shinobi world most are not meant to face so young. The reality that not everyone who wears our symbol does so with loyalty."

Naruto didn't respond.

"Mizuki's actions were criminal," Hiruzen continued. "Stopping him prevented far greater harm. Whatever mistakes led you there, the outcome matters. You protected the village."

"…Sure," Naruto said, hi's gaze drifted downward. "Guess the demon brat has done some good."

The word hung in the air.

"Naruto."

"It's fine. Everyone else already thinks it."

"That does not make it true," Hiruzen said sharply. "You are not a demon."

Naruto paused, fingers tightening slightly against his knees. "…Then what am I?"

"You are the jinchūriki of the ninetails."

"Jin… what?"

"A jinchūriki is a human chosen to contain a tailed beast," Hiruzen explained. "The beast is sealed within you, restrained so it cannot harm others. You are not the beast itself. You are the one who holds it."

"…So I'm not…?" The boy hesitated, the word catching in his throat. "I'm not it?"

"You are not the Nine-Tails. And you must never allow anyone to convince you otherwise."

"Then why? Why do they look at me like I did something wrong?"

Hiruzen exhaled. "Because fear is easier than understanding," he said. "And because when they look at you, they remember the night they were powerless."

He met Naruto's gaze.

"You remind them of what they lost. Not of who you are."

Naruto absorbed that in silence. Then a logical question followed, "Then why did they know… and I didn't?"

"Seven years ago, I passed a law forbidding anyone from speaking of your status. I believed secrecy would give you a chance at a normal childhood."

Naruto let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh. "…Guess that worked out great."

The bitterness in his voice wasn't loud. But it struck all the same.

Hiruzen opened his mouth, then closed it again. There was no defense to offer that didn't ring hollow.

"Hokage-sama."

The title alone made Hiruzen pause. Naruto had always called him old man. Hearing the formal address felt like a line being drawn between them.

"Why did you tell them and not me?"

"Before his death, the Fourth Hokage asked that you be seen as a hero. The one who protected the village."

Naruto let out a short, humorless snort.

Hiruzen didn't blame him. Minato, bless his soul, had always been too trusting of the village, too hopeful. He had believed in the people's ability to see past their grief and pain, to see the sacrifice that had been made.

"The village wouldn't accept it. They were drowning in pain and loss. In that state, Minato's request asked more of them than they were capable of giving. Worse, there was a real danger that their grief could turn into hatred, and that you could become its target. So I chose restraint. I kept the truth from everyone, until the village was stable enough to honor Minato's wish properly."

His expression darkened slightly.

"But by the time you were five, your status was leaked. So I enacted the law. If the adults couldn't let go of their fear and hatred, then at the very least, the next generation would grow up without it. I wanted them to know you, not the burden you carry."

Hiruzen felt the change before Naruto seemed aware of it himself.

Chakra seeped from the boy's body, dense and oppressive, filling the room with a weight that pressed down like the first warning of an oncoming quake.

Emotion and chakra had always shared a dangerous relationship.

Chakra was not merely energy shaped by hand seals. It was tied to the mind, to intent, and to the emotional state of the one wielding it. Under normal circumstances, shinobi learned early how to keep that connection restrained. Control was drilled into them until instinct took over. But when emotions reached a breaking point, chakra no longer waited to be shaped. It surged outward on its own.

In heightened emotional states, chakra could be forced out of the body entirely, bypassing technique and control. For most shinobi, this resulted in sloppy output, wasted energy, or momentary instability. For someone like Naruto, with reserves as deep as his, it was far more dangerous.

The wooden floor creaked beneath his feet.

Fine cracks spread along the boards as pressure settled into the room, the air growing thick and oppressive.

And in that sudden surge, Hiruzen felt it.

For the briefest instant, it was as if screaming faces rose up around him. Distorted, hollow visages twisted in agony, mouths open in silent cries. They vanished just as quickly, but the sensation did not.

Hiruzen's breath caught in his throat.

"…Killer intent?"

In the shinobi world, killer intent was often spoken of as a badge of honor. Proof that one had crossed the line between innocence, bloodshed, and survival. To many, it was a symbol of a truly dangerous shinobi.

That belief had always troubled him.

In truth, killer intent was yin chakra shaped by memory, emotion, and death.

No one fully understood why, but killing sometimes left residue behind.

Some deaths passed without a trace, carried out in cold necessity or detached duty. Others left behind faint imprints in the chakra network, like scars too fine to notice until pressure was applied. Yin chakra, bound as it was to the psyche and the soul, seemed especially vulnerable to holding onto these marks.

When a shinobi bearing such residue stirred their chakra with the desire to kill, even unconsciously, those imprints responded.

Killer intent manifested.

For the average shinobi, killer intent was something they knew of, not something they truly possessed. A concept taught in classrooms and whispered about on battlefields, but rarely felt firsthand. Even veterans of the great wars carried it like buried shrapnel, lodged deep within their chakra and psyche, detectable only by sensitives or by those standing uncomfortably close. Simply killing a few times was not enough. It took years of repetition, a gradual erosion of the boundary between killing as a necessary act and killing as an instinctive response, before that weight could begin to seep outward.

Those capable of projecting it were rarer than any kekkei genkai, and almost without exception, they were monsters wearing human skin.

Zabuza Momochi was a famous example. A prodigy who slaughtered his entire graduating class without hesitation. His chakra had been permanently warped by the act, saturated with death so thoroughly that his killer intent felt like standing in front of a blood demon.

But Naruto Uzumaki had only killed Mizuki.

A single kill was never meant to give rise to killer intent, least of all one powerful enough to cause even minor illusory effects.

So how, in the Sage's great beard, was this possible?

Is this because of the Nine-Tails?

The simplest answer was often the most likely.

Minato's seal had been constructed to let the Kyūbi's chakra flow slowly into Naruto's own and the Kyūbi's chakra was infamous for its hatred. If that malice had bled through along with the power, then it stood to reason that traces of killing intent had taken root in Naruto as well.

For now, it was the only explanation Hiruzen could accept; one that kept him from spiraling into darker speculations about how a child could possess such killing intent at all.

One of the ANBU was already behind Naruto before most eyes could have tracked her movement.

Purple hair slipped from beneath a porcelain cat mask as she appeared in his blind spot. A tantō slid free without a whisper, the blade angling toward Naruto's throat. Not to kill but to restrain. With the killing intent pouring from him, he had become a potential threat.

Naruto moved first.

A kunai left his hand in a sharp snap, slicing through the air toward the space behind him as if he already knew she was there.

The ANBU twisted, knocking it aside, but her eyes narrowed behind the mask.

That reaction alone was troubling.

Even seasoned chūnin struggled to track ANBU-level body flicker techniques. For Naruto to counter from a blind angle meant one of two things: he had been hiding a far greater skill level than anyone suspected… or he possessed a sensory ability no one had documented.

Another crack in the version of Naruto he thought he understood.

Seeing Naruto and ANBU Cat poised to clash, Hiruzen released his chakra.

"Stop."

The word with it chakra that cracked the walls and splintering the floor as pressure slammed down on everyone present. ANBU froze mid-motion. Naruto stiffened, unable to move.

The room remembered who ruled it.

"This is the Hokage's office," Hiruzen said calmly. "Stand down."

The cat-masked ANBU immediately disengaged, stepping back into the shadows.

An uneasy silence settled over the office. Naruto stood rigid, impatience radiating off him in sharp, restless waves. Whatever was keeping him here, it clearly wasn't where his mind wanted to be.

"Where's the guy who ruined my life?"

Danzō.

Even in exile, the man's influence lingered like a stain that refused to wash out.

"I've handled it," Hiruzen replied evenly. "You will not have to concern yourself with him."

The answer hadn't satisfied him, and it showed. Without waiting for dismissal, he turned toward the door, already moving, as if whatever lay beyond these walls mattered more than anything Hiruzen could say.

"Naruto."

The name stopped him, but only for a second.

Hiruzen rose slowly from behind his desk as an old man watching a boy walk away. "There are things I cannot undo," he said quietly. "Mistakes I've made. Choices I stand by, even if they cost me your trust."

Naruto's hand tightened on the doorknob.

"But whatever you are facing, you do not have to face it alone." Hiruzen stepped forward, the weight of decades in his voice. "If there are answers you seek, come to me. If there are burdens you carry, let me share them. I may not have told you everything when you were younger… but I have never stopped watching over you."

For a moment, Hiruzen allowed himself hope.

Hope that the boy would turn back. That he could still bridge the distance between them, understand what was happening to him, learn where these new abilities had come from… and maybe, just maybe, preserve what remained of their bond.

"Save it."

The words were flat.

"I'm done listening."

The handle turned.

"And if you really cared," Naruto added, voice colder now, stripped of its usual heat, "you would've told me the truth from the start."

The door opened.

Hiruzen's last thread of hope frayed, but he still tried. "Naruto..."

"Fuck off."

The door slammed shut, the echo rolling through the office like a verdict. Hiruzen stood there long after the sound faded, staring at the empty space where the boy had been, wondering when exactly the distance between them had grown so wide.

---

Dinner was quiet, just the way Inoichi Yamanaka liked it. His daughter, Ino Yamanaka, sat across from him, a fair skinned teen with average height, her long platinum blonde hair framing the right side of her face. Her green eyes were glued to one of those cheesy romance novels she was always reading, and he tried to ignore the irritation building up as she skimmed through the pages rather than her food.

Today, Inoichi had made sure to include a few high calorie dishes. Things she wouldn't notice were meant to keep her from getting too skinny with that damn diet of hers. He knew she wouldn't appreciate the extra calories, but as her father, he had to make sure she stayed healthy enough to be a proper shinobi in the field.

"Ino chan, let's try something different today. Imagine you're walking through a dense forest. As you walk deeper, you come across a house. It looks familiar, but you've never seen it before. You step inside. What do you see?"

Ino's mind snapped to attention as she considered the question. Her father always made sure to ask her one psychological question every night before bed to keep her mind sharp.

A ninja's greatest weapon was their mind, after all.

Ino chewed thoughtfully on her food. "The house is cozy, old but well kept. There's a warm fireplace and the walls are lined with books." She paused, a slow smile spreading across her face. "And obviously my dream guy would be waiting for me there, tall and handsome."

"This is about Sasuke again, huh?"

"Of course! He'd be there, probably with a cup of tea already made for me. It's romantic."

Inoichi couldn't fault her for this, not yet anyway.

She was a young girl at the start of puberty.

Let her have her fantasies.

The crush was innocent enough, but Ino was now a genin. Life as a shinobi was anything but a romantic novel. Maybe that's why Inoichi let her indulge in these little daydreams. For now, her innocence was fleeting, and he knew it would be stripped away in time.

But even as he told himself that, his gaze drifted toward the picture of her mother, his late wife, who had died during the Kyuubi attack.

Don't worry, my love, he thought. As long as I'm breathing, nothing will harm our daughter. I just have to make sure that she is ready for the real world.

"Interesting answer. You know, how you interpret that house reveals a lot about how you see your inner self."

"My inner self?"

"The house represents your subconscious mind. What you see inside is a reflection of how you view yourself, your strengths, comfort zones, and even your desires."

"So, you're saying my mind is a cozy cabin?"

Inoichi smiled. "More or less. It suggests you value comfort, warmth, and intellect. But the fact that you brought your dream guy into the picture indicates something else."

Ino blushed slightly. "What does it mean?"

"It means that, subconsciously, you believe someone like Sasuke is important to completing your vision of happiness," Inoichi explained. "It's natural to want connection, Ino, but you should also be mindful that relying too much on others to create your inner peace can lead to disappointment."

She sat quietly for a moment, processing the information. Then, with a sly smile, she said, "Well, Sasuke can be part of my cozy cabin if he wants. I'm not kicking him out."

"Just don't let your cabin rely on someone else's presence. Make sure it stands on its own, with or without him."

"Yeah, yeah, I know."

Suddenly, Inoichi was on guard as an ANBU agent appeared before them. "The Hokage has requested a meeting, Inoichi sama."

Inoichi nodded, his mask already switching from father to shinobi.

"Dad, can you maybe bribe the Hokage to make sure I end up on Sasuke's team?!"

"I'll try, my lemon," Inoichi said, using the nickname she pretended to hate. She stuck her tongue out at him, a playful glint in her eyes.

"Remember the routine: all leftovers go in the fridge, and make sure Choji gets them tomorrow."

"Especially the seaweed chips!"

"Those are for you."

"Fine… whatever."

Inoichi smiled softly at the exchange, savoring the moment. "Goodbye."

"Just go already!" Ino said, waving him off like he was an embarrassment.

Inoichi glanced at the ANBU agent, and with a final nod to his daughter, the two of them vanished with a body flicker.

---

The moment Inoichi stepped into the Hokage's office, he knew something was wrong. Hiruzen looked more stressed than Inoichi had ever seen him. It was as if the announcement of the Fourth Shinobi World War had dropped on his desk.

A knot formed in Inoichi's stomach.

Please, anything but that.

The thought of war sent a chill down his spine. Not only did he fear war himself, but he could not bear the thought of his daughter experiencing the horrors that came with it.

"Hokage-sama," Inoichi greeted, his voice steady, yet his mind was racing through worst case scenarios.

Hiruzen seemed to sense his growing unease and offered Inoichi his smoking pipe.

"Thank you, Hokage-sama, but I'd like to live long enough to see my daughter marry a bastard that doesn't deserve her," Inoichi said with a small smile, though the humor did little to settle the tension gnawing at him.

"Don't worry, Inoichi. I need your mind."

My mind?

Inoichi narrowed his focus on those words. If Hiruzen needed strategic advice, he would have called Shikaku. The Nara clan head was a genius when it came to battle plans and strategy.

But this was not about strategy. Hiruzen needed him for psychological insight.

"What can I do for you?"

"It's Naruto."

Inoichi's mind slammed to a halt.

Naruto?

Uzumaki Naruto? The prankster of Konoha? The orphaned son of the Fourth Hokage? The current container for the Kyuubi no Yoko, the very being that had ravaged their village twelve years ago and killed his wife?

Inoichi had never blamed the boy for what happened. He knew the difference between Naruto and the Kyuubi. But the very idea of the Kyuubi was enough to make him take this seriously.

His mind raced through everything he knew about Naruto.

From the rumors around the village to the comments Ino had made about him.

"Is this about his failed graduation?"

Perhaps Naruto was angry about failing, or maybe he had a violent outburst. It was not impossible that the Kyuubi's chakra had been released in a moment of anger. The boy dreamed of becoming Hokage, and Inoichi could imagine the frustration building inside him after failing to become a genin.

"If only it were that simple," Hiruzen said, rubbing his head before revealing everything that had happened with Naruto.

Inoichi listened quietly as he tried very hard to ignore the seemingly impossible things Naruto could suddenly do. Any shinobi worth their salt would analyze these abilities. But Inoichi's mind went to the boy.

"What do you know about Uzumaki Naruto?"

Hiruzen found the question odd at first. Then he remembered who was asking it, and it became another issue entirely.

He answered carefully.

"What do you know about Uzumaki Naruto personally?"

The guilt arrived quietly, the way it always did when it was deserved. Hiruzen answered what he could. The boy had a fondness for ramen. A penchant for pranks. He was loud, boisterous, and wanted nothing more than to become Hokage.

"What else?"

What else?

Well...

That is...

The Third Hokage of Konoha felt his lips press into a thin, sad line.

That was, as a matter of fact, all he knew.

Had this been anyone other than Yamanaka Inoichi, Hiruzen might have dismissed the line of questioning as paranoia, or worse, some hidden bias against the boy. But Inoichi had known, worked, and fought beside Minato.

Beyond that, Inoichi had known Kushina. Had known her well enough that certain things didn't need to be said out loud. Whatever complicated feelings a younger Inoichi had quietly carried for Kushina Uzumaki, they had never translated into anything, and time had a way of filing those edges down. But they had left the particular tenderness a person holds for someone they once wanted to protect and never got the chance to.

He would not hold the sins of this village against her son.

"I do not see how this relates to our current problem, Inoichi."

"The problem, Hokage-sama, is that we are human beings. Not one dimensional cardboard cutouts." Inoichi's voice was measured. "It is impossible for a person to have only three features that make him memorable. Only three aspects to his personality and character."

He shook his head slowly.

"To put this into perspective. What does Uzumaki Naruto do when he is neither pranking people, nor eating ramen, nor declaring his intention to steal your hat? Where does he go? How does he spend his time when he is not performing for an audience? What does he do at the end of a long and exhausting day, when there is no one left to perform for?"

The answers to all three questions were equally unknown.

The weight of that settled over Hiruzen slowly, the way a verdict does. He had watched over this boy. Had told himself that watching was enough. Had convinced himself that proximity was the same as presence.

It wasn't.

"There is a concept that we use in psychological evaluation. We call it the social self. It is the version of a person that exists in relation to others. The face that forms in response to how the world treats you, what it rewards, punishes, and refuses to acknowledge entirely."

He paused.

"When a child learns that who they are is not wanted, they do one of two things. They collapse inward and disappear entirely. Or they build a version of themselves that is loud enough to be noticed, simple enough to be understood, and harmless enough to be tolerated." Inoichi's voice didn't rise, but something in it sharpened. "Naruto chose the second. He found the things that got a reaction, and he repeated them. Because any response, even a negative one, was proof that he existed."

Hiruzen said nothing.

"The boy we knew was not wearing a mask. That implies awareness, calculation, and sustained effort over time. No child maintains that for twelve years without cracks slipping through."

Inoichi's expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes did.

"And that is where it becomes complicated. Because that kind of construction works both ways. It keeps the world out. But it also keeps the person in. Over time, even they begin to lose track of where the performance ends and the self begins. The loud boy stops being something Naruto chose to be. He becomes the only Naruto that Naruto himself knows how to access."

He let that settle for a moment before continuing.

"This is why what you saw tonight concerns me far more than any jutsu." Inoichi's gaze was steady. "Whatever Naruto experienced out there, it reached past years of layered reflex and pulled someone else to the surface." He paused. "In psychology, we call this a dissociative break. When the constructed self can no longer contain what is underneath it, the pressure finds another way out."

Hiruzen's jaw tightened.

"We have no idea what Uzumaki Naruto has been through. We have no idea who or what shaped that part of him." Inoichi's voice was quiet, but the weight behind it was not. "And that, Hokage-sama, is the real problem. Not the jutsu, the weapons, or the killer intent. The problem is that somewhere, in the life of a child this village was supposed to protect, someone reached him before we did. And whoever it was, it left marks we are only now beginning to see."

The office was very quiet.

His age was rapidly catching up to him. He knew and believed that he had tried to do his best for not only the village, but also for the son of his successor.

Everyone Minato knew that was capable of taking care of Naruto was not available. Kakashi Hatake was a mess, psychologically speaking. After the loss of his teammates, he retreated into ANBU and took only the toughest of missions of the S rank caliber, and it was clear that he possessed some sort of death wish.

He clearly could not leave the upbringing of a child to him.

Jiraiya was far too busy maintaining Konoha's spy networks, or at least, as his job did include him travelling from place to place drinking in bars and taverns and peeping on women in hot springs. Of course, even if he was not basically a wanderer, the Third could not in good conscience leave Jiraiya all alone to raise a child.

Tsunade would have been perfect, but she was now an alcoholic gambling addict lost to her own grief, and he would not want her raising an impressionable young child either.

Mikoto Uchiha had once offered, but the clan politics were against such a thing. As the Uchiha clan had just been suspected of the ones masterminding the Kyuubi's attack in the first place, it would be tremendously bad if one of their own had then decided to adopt the boy.

The Hyuga were out of the question, and part of his village they might be, but Hiruzen had never appreciated or favored a clan that could and would so callously brand their own family members as slaves in the name of preserving and protecting a bloodline. Such a place was not where he wanted Naruto to grow up, believing that such practices were the norm.

The Aburame once again offered, but it was likewise impossible as at the time, the Kyuubi's chakra and presence made their Kikaichu bugs scared and wary. And of course, there was the issue of Naruto eventually growing up to feel like an outsider, as he vastly contrasted the majority of the Aburame.

The ideal clans would have either been the Nara, the Yamanaka, the Akimichi, or the Inuzuka.

However, there was once again the question of allowing a single clan that much power. It was not viewed as a clan attempting to train and foster the son of their hero. Rather, as a clan potentially raising and shifting the loyalty of a Jinchuriki away from the village and into their own hands.

And so Naruto had grown up unloved and uncared for, and Hiruzen had told himself that watching from a distance was the same as protecting him.

It wasn't.

"Hokage-sama?"

He surfaced from his deep thoughts slowly. "Forgive me."

"What should we do?"

"Observe him for now," Inoichi said. "If we move too quickly or too obviously, we risk pushing him further away than he already is. But there is something more important than understanding his abilities right now."

"Oh?"

"We need to give him a reason to stay." Inoichi's voice was quiet but certain. "Not the Will of Fire. Not duty or obligation or the memory of his parents. Something that belongs to him and not to this village's idea of what he should be." He met Hiruzen's eyes. "Konoha failed that boy for years. If we want him to stand with us, we have to earn it. And we have to start now, before whatever is happening to him pulls him somewhere we cannot follow."

Hiruzen nodded slowly.

"And the abilities themselves? We still don't understand where they came from."

"No, we don't."

Hiruzen's mouth curved faintly, tired humor finding its way through. "It would all be considerably simpler if Naruto weren't the Kyuubi's Jinchuriki. Under normal circumstances, I'd authorize your department to conduct a memory reading on a suspect and have answers before morning."

"Yes. Unfortunately, sending a Yamanaka into the mindscape of a child housing the Nine Tailed Fox is considerably above the threshold of acceptable risk."

"Indeed. So we observe, plan, and find another way in."

"What did you have in mind, Hokage-sama?"

---

Naruto burst through the door of his apartment, nearly taking it off its hinges.

He didn't stop to kick off his sandals. His eyes swept the apartment in one quick scan and he was already moving, muscle memory carrying him through the chaos he knew better than anywhere else in the world.

The entryway was its usual disaster.

Boxes stacked crookedly against the wall, bottles he kept meaning to throw out, shoes kicked in every direction. He stepped over all of it without looking down and hit the storage cabinet first.

Top shelf. Left side. Behind the instant ramen he'd been saving.

His hands closed around the first pouch and he shook it, listening for the familiar rattle of shuriken before holding it out in front of him. It shimmered and vanished.

[ Shuriken Pouch x1 has been added to Inventory ]

Second pouch behind it, full set of kunai. He'd counted them yesterday out of habit.

[ Kunai Pouch x1 has been added to Inventory ]

He moved to the desk next.

It was buried, as always, under open books and empty cups and papers covered in half finished notes on his assignments from the Academy. He shoved most of it aside and yanked open the bottom drawer. Explosive tags, bundled in groups of five the way he'd seen it done in a book he'd borrowed from the Academy library and never returned. He grabbed all four bundles, held them out, watched them shimmer away one after another.

[ Explosive Tags x25 has been added to Inventory ]

Smoke bombs were in the kitchen.

He ducked around the corner and pulled open the cabinet above the stove, the one that was supposed to hold cooking supplies but mostly held things he didn't know where else to put. Eight smoke bombs wrapped in a cloth he'd torn off an old shirt. He took all of them. The paint bombs were underneath, four of them, red and blue, left over from a prank he'd been planning before everything went sideways.

[ Smoke Bombs x8 has been added to Inventory ]

[ Paint Bombs x4 has been added to Inventory ]

Medicinal kit was under the bed.

He dropped to one knee and reached into the dark, fingers finding the worn strap immediately. He dragged it out and flipped it open on the mattress, checking by habit. Bandages. Antiseptic. Soldier pills, only two left. He needed to get more. Needle and thread still sealed. He snapped it shut and held it out.

[ Medical Kit x1 has been added to Inventory ]

The cloak was the last thing from inside.

It was hanging on the back of the bedroom door where he always left it, treated with a chakra reactive dye that responded to the transformation jutsu and helped the illusion hold against trained eyes.

Then he stepped out onto the balcony.

It was the one part of the apartment that wasn't a disaster.

He'd started it small, just a few pots he'd found abandoned outside the building, soil he'd carried up four flights of stairs in a bucket. But it had grown over the years into something he didn't have a word for. Rows of mismatched containers lined the railing, clay pots, old cans, and one cracked bowl he'd wired back together rather than throw away. Every one of them had something growing in it.

Yarrow first. He pulled a generous handful of the dried flower heads, the ones he'd hung upside down last month specifically for this. Good for bleeding. He'd learned that the hard way after a prank went wrong three years ago and he'd spent a night figuring out how to stop a cut on his arm from soaking through everything he pressed against it.

[ Dried Yarrow has been added to Inventory ]

Ginger root next, two thick pieces he'd been drying on the balcony ledge. Good for pain, nausea, and the kind of deep bone ache that came after the body had taken more than it was meant to.

[ Dried Ginger Root x2 has been added to Inventory ]

He went back down the row and stripped every medicinal herb bare.

Oscar was worth more than a careful harvest.

He stood at the railing for a moment, hands loose at his sides, looking out over the village. Rooftops and lamplight and the distant shape of the Hokage Monument carved into the mountainside. Four faces looking out over everything they'd built and everyone they'd left behind.

He turned away from the balcony and went back inside.

The jacket was draped over the back of his desk chair where Iruka had left it after his last birthday, still folded the way it had been when it came out of the wrapping. Navy blue, slightly too big for him, which Iruka had said was intentional because you'll grow into it. Naruto had worn it exactly twice since then.

He picked it up and held it for a moment.

Then he started lining the inside with explosive tags.

It took him four minutes and every tag he had left.

The plan had come to him while he was stripping the balcony, the way his best ideas usually did, arriving fully formed and slightly unhinged. He would wear this suicide jacket and make shadow clones. Each one wearing exactly what he wore, jacket included, identical down to the last detail the way only shadow clones could manage. And then he would send them running straight at the demon.

In the half second before the demon figured out what it was holding.

Boom.

Kamikaze Shadow Clone Jutsu. Naruto pressed his lips together very hard and failed to stop the grin.

It was certainly a plan.

[ Explosive Tag Jacket x1 has been added to Inventory ]

Sorry, Iruka sensei. You'll have to get me a new one for my birthday.

Naruto smiled at the thought and grabbed the cup noodles.

You are going to enjoy these, sensei.

He stood in the middle of the apartment and realized, for the first time since he'd burst through the door, that he had absolutely no idea how to get back to the asylum.

He looked at the ceiling.

Then, because nothing else came to mind, so he raised his fist into the air and announced to the world, "Send me back to the Northern Undead Asylum."

Silence.

Somewhere outside, a crow cawed in the distance.

"Shut up," Naruto told it.

He turned back to the room, cup noodle still in hand, heat crawling up his neck so fast he was surprised smoke wasn't coming off his ears. His hand tightened around the cup out of pure frustration and it shimmered away before he'd even decided to store it.

Oscar's words came to his head.

The Darksign does not simply mark you. It defines what you are in this world. Death triggers it. It returns you to the last bonfire you rested at.

Do I need the Darksign to go back?

As if on cue, a system window blinked open in front of him.

[ Item: Darksign ]

[ Description: The Darksign signifies an accursed Undead. Those branded with it are reborn after death, but will one day lose their mind and go Hollow. Death triggers the Darksign, which returns its bearer to the last bonfire rested at, but at the cost of all humanity and souls. ]

Do I have to die to use this?

The thought sat in his chest with a particular kind of weight. He could do it again if he had to. But before he'd finished the thought, a second window opened beneath the first.

[ Do you wish to use item: Darksign? ]

[ Yes / No ]

Naruto let out a breath that was almost a laugh and pressed Yes.

The back of his neck erupted.

The burn drove him to one knee before he could brace for it, a searing heat that moved outward from his spine in waves, each one worse than the last. He grabbed the edge of the desk with one hand and held on as the sigils spread across the floor beneath him, yellow light carving itself into two concentric circles, symbols forming in the space between them.

The light built until he couldn't see the room anymore.

Until he couldn't see anything.

But even through the pain, through the white consuming everything, one thought cut clean and clear.

Don't worry, sensei. He felt himself coming apart at the edges, the apartment dissolving, Konoha dissolving, and everything falling away into the light. Your squire is coming. We're going to kick that demon's ass. And then we're eating ramen, dattebayo.

The light took him.

---

Naruto's messy apartment settled into silence after he vanished, the faint shimmer of the Darksign fading from the floorboards like the last ember of a dying fire.

It didn't stay silent for long.

A figure shimmered into existence on the ceiling. ANBU Owl had been assigned to Uzumaki Naruto by the Hokage himself less than an hour ago, with a single directive that had seemed straightforward at the time.

Observe. Report. Do not interfere unless the subject's life is in immediate danger.

He had expected a troubled twelve year old to go home, eat something, and cry.

Instead he had watched the subject systematically strip his apartment of every weapon, explosive, and medicinal supply he owned, store all of it using an unknown space time technique, tend to a balcony garden with the focused efficiency of a field medic preparing for a siege, line a jacket with explosive tags, and then stand in the middle of the room and attempt to verbally summon a teleportation.

Owl had been ANBU for six years.

He had seen things that had permanently rearranged his understanding of what was possible.

He updated his report without moving a muscle.

Subject has demonstrated using an unclassified long range space time technique. Technique bears surface resemblance to reverse summoning jutsu but does not match any documented variant in Konoha's classification system. Subject shows no signs of surprise or difficulty during activation, suggesting prior familiarity with the technique.

Unknown summoning clan affiliation cannot be ruled out.

Subject's current location: unknown.

Subject's destination: unknown.

Owl looked at the floorboards and the concentric circles burned into the wood. At the symbols carved between them in a fuinjutsu language he did not recognize and had never seen in any scroll, any briefing, or any classified file he had ever been cleared to read.

This is going to be a very complicated report.

While Owl was in thought, something snaked toward him from the shadows below. He jumped backward and drew his tantō in one motion, slashing through it. The tendril split apart and dissolved into a liquid, leaving only a faint smear of ink on the blade.

What shinobi uses ink for their ninjutsu?

The answer came from the dark in the form of a body moving very fast. The figure that rushed him was young, barely older than Naruto himself if the build was anything to go by. A plain white mask covered his face entirely.

Their blades met with a sharp ring of steel.

Owl held the bind for half a second, reading and assessing the enemy. Whoever this was, they had learned to fight on the field.

He threw a smoke bomb and broke for the window.

Suddenly a foot connected with his chest from outside and drove him back into the room hard enough to rattle the shelving.

Sealing Jutsu: Crouched Tiger Bullet!

Owl turned in time to see an ink illustration of a tiger on the scroll. As the hand signs completed, the drawing peeled itself free of the paper and lunged.

The Anbu went for the swing.

When a kunai took him clean in the hand. And the tantō was on the floor before he had consciously registered getting bit by a three dimensional drawing. The tiger dragged him backward into the scroll, the sealing jutsu folding around him, pinning him flat within the confines of the illustration.

He wasn't going anywhere.

"Excellent work as always."

The voice came from the window.

The young man who dropped into the apartment had auburn hair and amber eyes. A short black jacket with red shoulder straps that Owl recognized immediately and with a particular sinking feeling.

Root.

"Thank you, Fu senpai," the one with the faceless mask said while removing his mask.

A thirteen year old kid with short black hair and dark eyes. Skin pale enough to look like it hadn't quite decided to commit to being a color.

"Agent Sai. Create a report for Lord Danzō regarding the Kyuubi Jinchūriki. Be thorough." Fu crouched beside the pinned ANBU. "While I make this ANBU into my puppet."

Owl wanted to activate his suicide seal.

He couldn't move his chakra.

The sealing jutsu pressed down on his chakra points. That included the specific two points he needed to activate the seal that would have ended this cleanly. He strained against it. And got nothing back.

Fu's fingers pressed to his temple.

Owl understood then, exactly what was about to happen. False reports would reach the Hokage. Konoha's picture of tonight would be built on whatever Fu decided to put in it. And the Hokage would move on that picture, make decisions on it, trust it.

He couldn't stop any of it.

He could only hope Konoha was ready for the storm that was approaching.

---

Far away from Konoha, hidden deep within a rugged mountain range, lay a small, secluded temple. From the outside it looked like any ordinary place of worship. Ancient stone pillars standing stoic against the weathered landscape. Moss creeping up the walls in patient increments.

The Fire Zen Temple.

A remote location where banished shinobi who were too dangerous to be left free, yet too valuable to be discarded, were sent to live out their days in carefully managed obscurity.

In a small garden to the east of the main building, a man knelt in the dirt.

He was old and frail in the way a blade left to rust still cuts. Shaggy black hair hung limply around a face marked by an X shaped scar on the chin. He wore a simple white shirt beneath a dark robe that covered him from his feet to just over his right shoulder. And he was pressing pumpkin seeds into the earth with his bare hands, one by one.

Behind him stood two shinobi guards.

The picture they composed was almost convincing.

To the outside world, Shimura Danzō had been broken. Stripped of his influence, exiled to this remote temple, and watched around the clock by loyal Konoha operatives. The War Hawk of Konoha, the boogeyman of the shinobi world, reduced to gardening in isolation while the village he had shaped from the shadows moved on without him.

That was the story Konoha told itself.

The truth was considerably more inconvenient.

Danzō had taken control of Fire Zen Temple within six months of his arrival. The guards behind him were not Konoha's men. The reports filed about his behavior were not accurate. The isolation was a costume he wore with the same ease he wore everything else, as a tool, as a performance, and as a means to an end that nobody outside these walls was yet equipped to see.

A Root ANBU appeared at the garden's edge without sound.

"Speak."

"Danzō sama. A report from our agents in Konoha."

Danzō continued pressing seeds into the earth with the other hand while his eye moved across the page. He had long ago trained himself to read without expression, to let information arrive and settle before allowing it to mean anything.

He reached a specific section and stopped.

Confirmed space time ninjutsu.

Unknown summoning clan.

Subject departed to unconfirmed location via unknown technique.

Hokage has authorized ANBU observation. Intelligence remains incomplete.

He read those last four words again.

Intelligence remains incomplete.

Danzō set the report down in his lap and looked at the garden. The pumpkin seeds he had planted would take weeks to show anything. You pressed them into the earth then you waited. The waiting was where most of the work actually happened, underneath the surface.

"Your command, Danzō sama?"

"Activate all sleeper agents currently embedded within Konoha. Their objective is to keep Konoha from truly understanding Uzumaki Naruto." Danzō pressed the last seed into the earth and smoothed the soil over it with two fingers. "I do not need Konoha blind. I need Konoha working with half a picture."

The Root ANBU bowed without a word.

A shinobi operating on incomplete information does not sit still. Danzō knew this the way he knew everything about Hiruzen Sarutobi, from decades of watching the man govern from a place of love rather than logic. Love made a man predictable. Love made a man fill silences with his worst fears rather than his best intelligence. And fear, applied correctly, was the most reliable weapon in any arsenal.

Hiruzen feared what he couldn't understand.

He feared losing what he loved.

And he feared, above all else, making the same mistake twice.

Let him be afraid of what the boy is becoming, Danzō thought quietly. Let him pour everything he has into understanding abilities he has no framework for. Let him scramble.

His eye moved to the tree line. To the distance where Konoha sat warm and unsuspecting in the dark.

"Search all you like, Sarutobi."

His hand rested briefly on the doorframe, the temple swallowing his shadow as he stepped inside. "By the time you understand what that boy is, he will already be mine. And through him, everything he has become will serve this village."

Danzō let the door close behind him.

"As it always should have."

---

Author's Note

Well, well, well, we've now completed the Naruto side of the fanfic, and quite a lot has happened. Many players are moving and developing their own schemes for our Dark Souls Naruto, yes, that's what I'll be calling him from here on out.

I also wanted to let you know that I've created a patron with an E where I've already uploaded over 200k plus words of content related to Naruto: The Chosen Undead and more. If you're interested in supporting me, you can do so for as little as a dollar. But no worries if that's not possible. Just reading my fanfic means a lot to me.

Every dollar goes toward keeping me alive on caffeine and instant noodles.

Important reminder. Anyone who hides their fanfic behind a paywall is the literary equivalent of a wet sock. That will never be me.

Everything I write stays free. Always.

If you want to tip me, great. If not, great. Reading my stuff is already enough to keep my overinflated writer ego happy.

Now, I'd like to clarify a few things that I think need explaining.

---

Q: What is Killer Intent?

In canon Naruto, killing intent is a very vague thing.

We see it used two times in the entire story as far as I know:

When Zabuza first appeared against Team 7. Team 7 was frozen in fear.

When Sasuke and Sakura encountered Orochimaru and thought they were killed.

According to the Naruto Wiki, killing intent is simply the user exuding pure killing intention and having it affect their opponent, themselves, and others around them, up to the point of paralyzing them with fear. When the killing intent is particularly strong, it can even give the victim visions of their own gruesome death. This can cause killing intent to be confused with a genjutsu, despite it not being a jutsu at all.

So using this opportunity, I want to explore killing intent further than canon.

Here is my interpretation of killing intent for this fanfic. When you kill someone, a trace of their chakra lingers, and since it's a result of death, this lingering chakra is Yin chakra. Yin chakra is typically used for genjutsu, so when a ninja flares their chakra while having murderous intent, the residual Yin can create an illusion of death, otherwise known as bloodlust or killer intent.

Now that is cleared up, why does Naruto have this ability?

DS1 Naruto can absorb souls, which means his chakra contains a higher Yin component, even though he hasn't killed many yet. This high Yin chakra causes his bloodlust to cast the illusion of Hollows clawing at you.

This topic will be explored later on, as I plan to introduce levels to this, because Zabuza's and Orochimaru's killing intent were very different.

---

Q: Why is Ino's mother dead? Isn't she alive in canon?

Well, in canon she's barely a character. Making her dead in this story adds more weight to Inoichi's character. He's a single dad dealing with the grief of losing his wife, running T and I, and raising his daughter, who he still has a strong bond with. Without even much explanation, it gives him a lot more depth than canon ever did.

Wouldn't you agree?

---

Q: How do Naruto's stats work?

A question I got last chapter and one worth addressing properly.

Think of Naruto's stats as his baseline. Strip away every drop of chakra he has, with no Kyuubi influence. What remains is the person underneath.

That is what his stats represent.

This is why his numbers aren't extraordinary at first glance. Some of you wanted to see a Vitality of 30 or higher, which makes sense on paper. He's an Uzumaki. They're legendary for their life force and endurance. But those numbers reflect Naruto without chakra, and an Uzumaki without chakra wouldn't have huge vitality or endurance.

Don't worry though. I have something specific planned for the Uzumaki clan that will affect his stats down the line. That's all I'll say about that for now.

As for augmentation, yes, Naruto can absolutely enhance his stats through chakra. A Strength stat of 12 already lets him hit hard enough to fracture bone. Layer chakra reinforcement over that and the math changes considerably. The same logic applies to Endurance, Dexterity, Resistance, and similar physical stats.

However, not everything can be pushed higher with chakra. Intelligence and Faith are internal.

The short version. Stats are the foundation. Chakra and jutsu are what you build on top of it.

---

That's It… For Now.

I want to thank you all for taking the time to read, comment, and follow along with this story. Your feedback means more than you know, and it helps push me to make each chapter bigger, sharper, and more true to the worlds of Naruto and Dark Souls.

Until next time,

Praise the Sun.

\-Adam-/

 

[Boomer1945]

This shit really slaps, man. Been watching The System Files on scribblehub as well and this one is just as good.

Also, if you wanna crosspost, you can post it in the NSFW section even if there's no NSFW content because the engagement there is just much better than here.

 

[Nicohals J Westerberg]

Nice

 

[M0rtimer]

This is a great chapter! I read it with pleasure.

It's quite unusual that you decided to make Hiruzen "relatively kind". On the other hand, fanon that makes it actively malicious has become a kind of cliche.

The dialogue with Iruka was pretty good, as was the solution to the situation with the store.

I hope in the future there will be a different way of returning \ moving than the "Dark Sign". Because he does not allow the use of souls obtained in the Naruto world and therefore shares what is happening, focusing the bulk of the plot development on the world of "Dark Souls".

A small tips on the text:

"Naruto turned from a dumb ninja into some kind of emo"

Emo sounds too modern and catches the eye. It might be appropriate in "Boruto", but not now, IMHO.

Thanks for the chapter!

 

[Peanuckle]

I know very little of Naruto. But I love me some Dark Souls.

Kinda funny to consider the Dark Soul to be a gamer-type system, but I suppose it works for the fic. What I'm curious about is the effect of Naruto's new soul on the Kyuubi. The fox demon is sealed inside a soul that is a gaping, all-consuming wound. It's probably not having a good time right now.

 

[trashtaker]

I know very little of Naruto. But I love me some Dark Souls.

Kinda funny to consider the Dark Soul to be a gamer-type system, but I suppose it works for the fic. What I'm curious about is the effect of Naruto's new soul on the Kyuubi. The fox demon is sealed inside a soul that is a gaping, all-consuming wound. It's probably not having a good time right now.

Click to shrink...

Hey. At least it would have more company as long as Naruto doesn't die and drop the souls.


Oh god. Imagine naruto accidentally sacrificing his parents souls when leveling up?

 

[Adamos_Amet]

The crackling of the bonfire entered his ears before anything else did.

The bright flash of the Darksign faded from his vision in patches. The familiar warmth pressed against him from all sides. He did not know how a sword embedded in ash and bone managed to produce that feeling. He had stopped questioning it somewhere between the first hollow and the magic ring.

RRRAAAAGHHHHKK

The Asylum Demon filled the gap beyond the large open doors.

Naruto had approximately one second to process this before the demon swung his hammer.

Both doors tore free of their hinges simultaneously, each one becoming a massive projectile. The first door crossed the courtyard and hit the far wall at full velocity. Stone exploded outward in a cascade of dust and rubble. The wall folded inward before the force punched through it entirely, chunks the size of a grown man's torso raining down across the courtyard floor. The pillars caught the worst of the shockwave and simply came apart, the upper section tilting sideways in slow, terrible increments before hitting the ground.

The demon surveyed its work.

While Naruto held perfectly still against the wall beside the doorway, cloak pulled tight around him.

Ninja Art: The Cloak of Invisibility Jutsu!

It was a generous name for being just the Transformation Jutsu applied through a cloak treated with chakra reactive dye. The dye responded to a sustained chakra flow, bending light around the wearer.

A simple camouflage technique that any halfway decent genin could spot if they were looking for it. Against a demon that was specifically waiting for a boy to dramatically explode out of the rubble and attack it?

It was enough.

The demon made a sound of dissatisfaction and turned back toward its area, squeezing its massive frame through the ruined doorway and disappearing from view.

Naruto let out a breath he had been holding for the last minute.

He stayed still for another ten seconds. Then he moved toward the hidden door set into the courtyard's eastern wall, partially obscured by the debris from the demon's entrance and easy to miss.

He pulled a senbon from his inventory and crouched in front of the lock. It took him forty seconds to lockpick the old rusted door and rush up the stairs to the second floor.

Naruto was looking for any signs of Oscar when the Knight's Crest ignited on pure instinct, his awareness snapping upward as he saw it.

An iron ball coming down the upper staircase toward him.

The boy backflipped, letting the ball pass beneath him before it hit the wall behind him and took a section of it clean out.

"Didn't I encounter this exact same trap last time?"

The hollow that ran down was, without any question, the same one Oscar had cut down in this exact spot the last time they had walked this floor together.

"What is going on here?"

Naruto stepped to the side and decapitated it in one motion, the Astora Straight Sword already back in guard before the body had finished falling. He held his hand out and felt the soul absorb into his skin.

Maybe the world fixed up any damage after a while.

He filed it away and kept moving. This world had rules he did not understand yet.

"SENSEI, where are you?!"

Silence.

Then, from somewhere past the broken wall, barely audible over the distant sounds of the demon below:

"N... Naruto."

The boy was through the gap in the wall before the sound had finished reaching him.

The room beyond was small and half collapsed, rubble piled against the far wall where something had impacted it with tremendous force. Sunlight came through a hole in the ceiling in shafts that fell on Oscar.

The knight lay motionless on the rubble. The blue surcoat was dark with something Naruto did not want to look at directly.

Naruto's legs carried him across the rubble, his knees hitting the stone hard as he dropped beside Oscar.

Up close, it was worse.

"Sensei?"

"...You. You're... you're alive."

"Yeah." Naruto's voice came out smaller than he intended. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and tried again. "Yeah, I'm alive. I woke up back in my world, sensei. Found out a whole lot of things about myself." He attempted a grin. "But none of that matters right now because I'm here and we're going to beat that demon and then you're going to eat the food of the gods, dattebayo."

Oscar's chest moved in a silent laugh.

"...Food of the gods," the knight repeated, faint and fraying at the edges.

"Ramen," Naruto said firmly. "Trust me."

"...I am sorry, Naruto."

"What for?" Naruto was already pulling the medical kit from his inventory, hands moving fast, trying to look for injuries. "Do not apologize, just tell me where it hurts the most and I'll..."

"...Save them." Oscar's hand moved slightly. "Save them... for yourself. Oh, one more thing... Here, take this."

[ You have obtained an Estus Flask ]

"I got these for you." Naruto said, ignoring the message as his hands were shaking badly enough that the medicinal pills rattled in their container. He pressed them still against his knee. Come on. Calm down.

"So you don't get to tell me to save them. That's not how this works."

"Naruto. I am... beyond this. I can feel it."

A pause that went on long enough that Naruto's chest tightened.

"My mind... it is already... slipping. I will go Hollow... soon."

"What does that mean."

"When humans die... they can rise again as undead. The curse... sees to that." Oscar's breathing was shallow and deliberate. "An undead can die multiple times. But every death... takes their memories. The pieces of yourself that... make you who you are. Until nothing remains... but the shell. An undead turns into a hollow."

"You mean... you're going to become like those things in the asylum."

Oscar said nothing.

"Then we go back." The words came out before Naruto had finished thinking them. "Sensei, we go back to Konoha. I'll beg the old man to help you, we'll figure something out, there has to be something."

"...Naruto."

"There has to be."

"Naruto."

Everything blurred through Naruto's tears.

"We all... must stop at the end of our journey, someday," Oscar said.

"Please. Sensei, please don't go. Please don't... don't leave me."

"...I am sorry, my squire. I cannot... keep my promise."

That did it.

The tears broke free all at once, streaming down his face faster than he could wipe them away. Naruto clenched his jaw until it ached, trying to hold the rest of it in, trying to be something other than a kid sitting in the rubble of a broken asylum crying over a friend dying.

It was unfair.

"...Do not cry, Naruto." Oscar's voice had that faint edge to it. "Be... brave."

"I'm trying." Naruto pressed the back of his hand against his mouth. "I'm trying, sensei, I just... I don't know how. I don't know how to do this."

"...Bravery is not... the absence of fear. Or pain. It is... standing despite them. This world is cruel, Naruto. It does not deserve... your innocent tears." Oscar's voice was thinning at the edges. "Standing tall... when everything falls. That is... what it means."

Naruto wiped his face with the back of his hand. Then the other hand. His eyes were swollen and burning. He could not make himself stop entirely, but he sat up straighter, his spine finding something to brace against.

"I'll be brave, sensei," he whispered. "I will. I promise."

A silence settled between them.

Naruto's body was shaking from the thing building in his chest that wanted to become a scream. That wanted to send him charging at the Asylum Demon with everything he had left until one of them stopped existing.

"...Naruto."

Oscar's voice cut through the fog.

"Yes, sensei."

"...The bonfire sword." A pause. "Bring it... to me."

"Yes, sir."

Naruto did not ask why. He just formed the hand sign and hundreds of clones burst into existence, flooding out of the room and down into the courtyard below, their voices rising in a chorus of battle cries as they swarmed the Asylum Demon from every direction. The sound of the fight rolled up through the stone like thunder.

While the demon's attention pulled entirely toward the wave of clones climbing its legs and throwing themselves at its face, the original crossed the courtyard, both hands closing around the coil sword buried in the bonfire's ash, and pulled.

He was back at Oscar's side before the last clone had finished popping.

"...Thank you," Oscar said.

Sometime while Naruto had been gone, Oscar had removed his armor. The Elite Knight set lay in pieces around him, arranged with a care that hurt to look at, each piece placed deliberately despite everything. What remained was just a hollow faced, blonde haired man.

He did not look smaller without the armor.

"Sensei, what are you going to do with this sword."

"...Die as Oscar the knight. Rather than wander... as a mindless hollow." Oscar's eyes found Naruto's and held. "It is... a better end. You understand."

Naruto pressed his lips together and nodded once, because Oscar deserved a dignified death even if Naruto would have fought tooth and nail to find another way.

"I leave... my armor... to you."

"No. Sensei, I can't."

"...Naruto. It is the dream... of every knight. To pass their blade and armor... to their squire." A breath that cost him. "To know that what they carried... will be carried... forward." He reached up slowly, both hands lifting the helmet, his arms trembling with the effort.

"This is... my wish."

Naruto took it with both hands.

It sat on his head and dropped immediately down over his eyes.

Oscar snorted. "It seems... you will have to grow... into it."

Despite everything, Naruto laughed too. Wet and broken, yet real.

What followed was slow and careful and tender in a way that Naruto knew he would never have words for.

"Listen closely... my squire," Oscar said while guiding him through each piece. A knight performing a knightly duty to the very end. "The precepts... of a Knight of Astora."

Naruto nodded.

"...A knight's purpose... is to serve. To stand between those who cannot protect themselves... and the things... that would destroy them. Not for glory. Not for reward. Because it is... right."

The boy carved it in.

The dozen precepts that followed, Naruto carved those in too.

"...And finally." Oscar gathered himself. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped to almost nothing, and Naruto had to lean until their foreheads were nearly touching to catch it.

"A knight does not measure himself... by how brightly... he burns. He measures himself... by how long... he keeps the flame... alive. When everything is dark... when he is alone... when there is no one... left to see him stand."

The gaps between words were very long now.

"That is when... it matters... most."

Silence.

"Now... stand tall... for me."

Naruto looked like a child wearing an older man's armor. Yet Oscar looked at him. Something in his expression traveled a great distance and arrived somewhere peaceful.

[ You have equipped the Elite Knight Armor Set ]

The armor began to shrink.

The leather warming against his skin, the straps drawing in, the plates finding the angles of his shoulders, chest and legs like they were remembering a shape they had always been meant to hold.

When it finished, the armor fit him like it had been made for him.

Naruto looked down at his hands inside the gauntlets.

"...I said you would grow into it." A pause long enough that Naruto thought that was all. "...I did not mean... quite so quickly."

"I also once got stuck in a trash can for forty minutes trying to prank the old man. The armor probably figured I could not do worse than that."

"Perhaps it simply recognized... a future knight."

"A very short knight."

"The best ones often are."

They laughed together.

The silence that followed was different from the ones before it.

Naruto looked at his master and felt something settle over him that he did not have a word for yet. He had spent his whole life cataloguing the people around him without meaning to. The Third Hokage was a grandfather. Iruka was the cool older brother. Teuchi was the uncle and Ayame was the big sister.

He had never had a father.

He had never let himself want one badly enough to name the wanting.

But watching the light go slowly out of the eyes of this man, Naruto understood with a quiet and complete certainty that Oscar had become exactly that. Not because of time or anything that could be measured. Just because of how it felt to be seen, taught and chosen by him.

And now he was going to lose him.

"...Help me," Oscar said quietly. "I do not have... the strength."

His hands were shaking when he helped Oscar lift the coiled sword. Together they guided the blade and Naruto kept his eyes open because Oscar deserved a witness. Looking away would have been the easier thing and Oscar had taught him that easy and right were not the same.

The sword found its place in Oscar's chest with a squelch sound.

"...Regrettably, I have failed in my mission... But perhaps you can keep the torch lit... There is an old saying in my family... Thou who art Undead, art chosen... In thine exodus from the Undead Asylum, maketh pilgrimage to the land of Ancient Lords... When thou ringeth the Bell of Awakening, the fate of the Undead thou shalt know... Well, now you know... And I can die with hope in my heart..."

"Was that your dream, sensei?"

Oscar nodded.

"Then I'll carry it. I will become the Chosen Undead. I swear it. Dattebayo."

Oscar looked at him for a long moment.

"...I could not have asked for a better squire."

Naruto looked down.

The burning sensation had started across Oscar's skin, yet the man asked, "...What is the matter."

"Do I deserve this, sensei." The words came out louder than he intended. "Back home I am a failure. People hate me for something I did not do. I have lost count of how many times I have fallen short of everything I was supposed to be." He swallowed. "I do not want to fail this. Your dream. Your legacy. This..." He choked on whatever word was supposed to come next and gave up trying to find it.

"...You will not fail."

There was no hesitation in Oscar's voice. Not even a pause.

Naruto smiled at that.

The flames were spreading now, moving up from Oscar's hands, climbing slowly.

"...One last thing, Naruto."

"Yes."

"...Live for yourself." Each word arrived separately now as Oscar's dying words. "Not to prove something... to someone else. Not to earn... what should have always been yours. The world is yours... do not spend it... looking for permission... to exist in it."

Naruto's throat closed.

"I promise," he managed.

The light left Oscar's eyes the way light leaves a room when the last candle goes out. Gradual. Then complete.

Naruto knelt beside his master in the rubble of the broken asylum and cried without trying to be brave about it, without trying to be anything about it.

Just a boy in grief. Just two words that were not enough and were all he had.

Thank you, sensei.

Goodbye.

---

[ Name: Naruto Uzumaki ]
[ Weapons ]
[ R Weapon 1: Astora's Straight Sword ]
[ R Weapon 2: Pyromancy Flame ]
[ L Weapon 1: Crest Shield ]
[ L Weapon 2: Fists ]
[ Armor ]
[ Head: Elite Knight Helm ]
[ Chest: Elite Knight Armor ]
[ Hands: Elite Knight Gauntlets ]
[ Feet: Elite Knight Leggings ]

[ R Weapon 1: 96 ] [ R Weapon 1: 174 ]
[ Equip Load: 10.0 / 51.0 ] [ Equip Load: 29.8 / 52 (57.31%) ]
[ HP: 573 / 573 ] [ HP: 594 ]
[ Stamina: 93 ] [ Stamina: 95 ]
[ Physical Defense: 73 (20) ] [ Physical Defense: 118 ]
[ Magic Defense: 73 (13) ] [ Magic Defense: 60 ]
[ Flame Defense: 99 (21) ] [ Flame Defense: 67 ]
[ Lightning Defense: 59 (16) ] [ Lightning Defense: 54 ]
[ Poise: 0 ] [ Poise: 49 ]
[ Bleed Resist: 104 ] [ Bleed Resist: 101 ]
[ Poison Resist: 194 ] [ Poison Resist: 72 ]
[ Curse Resist: 35 ] [ Curse Resist: 30 ]

The Elite Knight armor was the heaviest thing Naruto had ever worn.

He took three steps and stopped.

Naruto did the mental math of how long it was going to take him to cross the asylum at this pace and arrived at an answer he did not like. He thought about Oscar moving fast in this armor, cutting and rolling with fluid efficiency.

"Sensei, just how strong were you?" Naruto looked down at the armor. "Should I take this off for now?"

The thought lasted approximately three seconds before he remembered whose hands had buckled every strap.

"Yeah, no."

Then the boy remembered.

It had been a Thursday afternoon in the Academy, one of the rare sessions where Iruka had put down the chalk and actually looked like he was about to say something worth remembering. He had held up a single leaf.

"Chakra control is the foundation of everything you will ever do as a shinobi."

He had pressed the leaf flat against his forehead.

"Channeling chakra into your muscles with enough control and your body becomes stronger. Not stronger in the way that training makes you stronger. Stronger in the way that a river is stronger than rain."

Naruto had fallen asleep approximately four minutes after that.

He was regretting that now.

Still, he formed the ram sign and pushed chakra into his legs first, then his shoulders.

The load became manageable.

Fifteen minutes, he thought. Probably less if I am being honest with myself. My chakra control has always been the thing everyone laughed at.

He kept moving and reached the upper floor. The hollows came out of the shadows with their rusted blades already swinging.

Clang.

The sword bounced against the chest plate and

Naruto swung the Astora Straight Sword in a single sweeping arc. The hollows in front of him stopped being a problem. "Guess that is the benefit of wearing armor."

He absorbed the souls without stopping.

A faint whistle reached him from his left.

The Knight's Sight activated, the arrow now visible at the very edge of his far peripheral field. Naruto pivoted and lunged in one motion, the blade driving into the hollow archer's chest before the second arrow had finished being nocked.

He absorbed the soul without stopping and walked to the ledge that dropped into the arena below.

Naruto took a breath.

"HEY!"

The demon looked up, red eyes finding him on the ledge above, and something shifted in its expression. Recognition maybe. Or appetite. The distinction did not matter much either way.

"My name is Naruto Uzumaki. Squire of Oscar of Astora. You killed my master."

The demon made a sound low in its chest.

"Prepare to die."

He leaped.

The air rushed around him, the world narrowing to a single point, the Astora Straight Sword raised high above his head in both hands.

The blade drove into the demon's skull with a sound that echoed off every wall of the asylum.

"ROUND TWO, YOU UGLY BASTARD!"

[ Name: Asylum Demon ]
[ HP: 1900 / 2,195 ]

Dark blood welled up around the steel, thick and steaming in the cold air. The demon made a sound, its entire frame shuddering, and then it jerked its head.

Naruto hit the courtyard floor at high speed, rolled, and came up in a crouch with the sword.

He looked up.

The plunge attack had taken the demon's left eye clean out.

Its remaining red eye found him.

The hammer came up.

"You're going to try the same move again?"

Naruto threw the smoke bomb to the ground, and a thick cloud enveloped the arena.

The demon took the bait, lunging straight into the smoke.

That was when his clones moved, their shield formation snapping into place. The hammer came down hard, colliding with the shields.

Boom!

The kamikaze shadow clone plan worked. Even though the yield of the clone explosives was weaker than the original explosive tags, the sheer number of clones made up for it.

The blast threw the demon backward. Its hammer shattered into pieces, fragments flying everywhere.

The force was so strong that the demon stumbled back, arms flailing, its ugly head jerking wildly.

Before it could even process what had happened, Naruto hurled a fuma shuriken from behind one of the pillars. He watched it spin through the air, slicing straight toward the demon's face in a perfect arc.

Just a little more...

The demon's head jerked back to dodge, and Naruto shouted, "Kai!"

The flashbangs attached to the fuma shuriken erupted with a blinding light. The demon let out a guttural howl as the brilliant flash seared its vision, stumbling backward, its massive hands flying up to clutch its face in agony.

The demon thrashed wildly, disoriented.

"Now!"

From the top floor, two clones stood tall. On either side of the arena, hidden amongst pots and pillars, were clones, their hands glowing with pyromancy flames.

The barrage of fireballs consumed the demon.

Blisters rose and burst across its hide. Where the sword wounds crossed the burns, the flesh had stopped trying to hold itself together, the edges blackened and pulling apart. Blood ran from its wounds in slow, dark sheets, pooling in the cracks between the courtyard stones.

[ Name: Stray Demon ]
[ HP: 900 / 2,195 ]

The asylum demon had destroyed the mental chains that once held it down. Chains forged by gods to bind the demon's soul as the first major trial of the Chosen Undead.

Maybe these flames reminded the demon of its home.

Izalith, the land of chaos and demons.

The demon's eyes locked onto Naruto.

Naruto gripped the Astora Straight Sword in his right hand, while his left held the Crest Shield firmly in place. "I'm ready. Come on, you bastard, make your move."

It did not attack.

Instead, the demon slammed its staff into the ground with a force so powerful that the floor beneath them crumbled.

They crashed into the basement of the asylum.

The room was a massive circular chamber with a weathered stone floor. Broken tiles lay scattered everywhere, and stone pillars loomed around him. Naruto looked around, his breath catching in his throat when he realized the truth.

The entire asylum was built around this demon's cage.

Naruto did not have time to consider the implications of the thought. The demon swung its staff in a wide horizontal sweep that filled the entire width of the chamber.

The basement walls were too close and the staff was too wide and there was simply nowhere for a boy in full plate armor to be that was not directly in the path of it.

Damn it.

He slammed through the hand sign.

Ninja Art: Substitution Jutsu!

A puff of white smoke swallowed the space where Naruto had been as he appeared behind the demon.

The substitution jutsu was not a teleportation jutsu.

It just looked like one.

That was the entire point.

A shinobi moved fast, left something behind in the space they had just vacated, and let the brain of whoever was watching fill in the rest. The brain wanted an explanation for what it had just seen and the smoke gave it one that was not the truth.

A simple deception dressed up as something more impressive than it was.

With the help of the inventory, what Naruto had left behind was the iron ball, twelve explosive tags pressed flat against its surface.

The demon's staff was already committed to the swing.

The detonation filled the basement in a violent flash, the shockwave slamming off all four walls at once and doubling back on itself. The iron ball turned into shrapnel, peppering the demon's body from point blank range.

The demon dropped to one knee.

Naruto rushed forward, as an opening was an opening.

In response, the demon's hand swept across the floor and came up with a fistful of stone and debris and threw it.

Naruto caught the spread in the Knight's Sight and understood immediately that there was no gap to move through. The debris covered too much space. He pulled the shield up hard against his forearm.

The impact hit him like the asylum wall had hit the doors. He was airborne before the pain registered, and the pain registered before he hit the pillar, and hitting the pillar reset everything.

He ran a quick inventory.

His shield arm was broken between the elbow and the wrist. At least two ribs had pierced his internal organs. His vision was providing stars in quantities that made it functionally useless. Naruto stopped trying to see through his own eyes and just closed them.

The Knight's Sight came out in full effect as it locked onto the demon.

Get up, he thought.

His body submitted a formal objection.

The demon's staff hit the ground, and Naruto knew what that meant.

GET UP!

Naruto threw himself into the corner of the chamber and the red orb detonated behind him. The blast radius swallowed everything that was not the corner, the pressure wave slamming into him, heat washing over the armor, debris clattering off the plate like an argument.

Naruto saw the demon's grinning face. It was enjoying watching him struggle and suffer.

Oh, that made the boy's blood boil.

"You think this is funny, you overgrown sack of shit?"

Naruto growled as he bit into the soldier pills.

The pills were made up of powerful stimulants and nutrients that were near instantly absorbed into the intake's body, and were said to allow the user to keep fighting for three days and three nights without rest or sleep.

The soldier pills and the Knight's Sight were doing something interesting together.

Everything had slowed. Not actually, he knew that, but the combination of the stimulants pushing his mind past its normal ceiling and his crest produced something that felt like time stretching at the edges. He could see the demon's weight shift before the movement committed as it prepared a brutal stab.

Naruto timed the stab and jumped.

His feet hit the staff the moment it drove into the wall, already running up the length of it. The demon had not processed what was happening yet, its weight still locked into the recovery from the thrust, and Naruto used every fraction of that window.

He leaped from the end of the staff.

Everything Oscar had drilled into him in that asylum courtyard compressed into a heavy cut aimed at the demon's remaining eye.

The demon roared, snapping its jaws at Naruto. He was ready for it. A shadow clone launched him backward midair just as the demon's mouth closed in, exploding with a deafening boom inside its gaping maw.

Chunks of flesh and teeth sprayed from the explosion as the demon's lower jaw ripped apart into a gruesome mess. The demon's roar was now a garbled mess of pain, more like a guttural growl than anything resembling a scream.

The demon slammed its staff into a nearby pillar.

Naruto read it as desperation. A blind demon trying to bring the ceiling down to take him down.

He was wrong.

The Knight's Sight caught the red glow building behind him. Naruto spun and dozens of shadow clones burst into existence in the space between him and the detonation, shields locking together in a wall that took the explosion full on before dissolving into smoke all at once.

The chamber went white for a moment.

Then Naruto heard the flap of wings.

He looked up.

The sound of wings filled the chamber.

Naruto looked up just in time to see the demon reach the apex and fold its wings inward.

That, Naruto thought, watching several tons of demon begin its descent, is a lot of ass coming down very fast.

His fingers were already flying through the hand signs.

At the last second, he flickered away, leaving behind a very special gift.

A fuma shuriken embedded into the floor.

And the demon landed on it.

Naruto did not even have time to savor the moment before he shouted, "Kai!" activating the explosive tags wrapped around the shuriken's blade.

The blast ripped through the demon's body. A mess of blood, entrails, and what looked like shredded organs sprayed out in all directions.

Naruto tried not to vomit at the sight, but he could not tear his eyes away from the mess he had created.

Part of him felt a flicker of sympathy for the monster, but then he remembered Oscar's precept burned into his mind:

"Precept number five: Do not show sympathy for the enemy, for they shall show you none when you fall."

No sympathy for a beast that would have torn me apart without a second thought.

Naruto saw it flapping its wings again. The demon trying to fly away.

"OH, HELL NO! You're not getting away, not after everything you've done. Dattebayo!"

The demon shot through the hole in the ceiling, its wings catching the open air above the asylum, rising fast and getting higher.

Naruto jumped toward it but felt the distance growing between them.

Ninja Art: Shadow Clone Jutsu!

The clone grabbed him by the back of the armor and threw him upward with every ounce of strength it had before dissolving into smoke.

The demon was still above him.

The armor was too heavy and gravity had opinions and he was already losing altitude before he had finished gaining it.

I've got it.

A kunai blade tore through the membrane of the demon's wing, and the ninja wire attached to it went taut the instant it hit, pulled by the weight of a boy in full plate armor dropping through open air.

The wing failed to generate enough lift against the drag of Naruto's weight pulling down while the demon's momentum carried it forward.

They began to spiral, the demon's roar mixing with the wind, the ground rising toward them from a direction Naruto was trying not to think about.

He yanked the ninja wire hard.

The tension inverted, gravity doing the rest, pulling the demon down while Naruto swung upward along the wire's arc, his body describing a clean parabola that placed him above the demon for exactly the window he needed. The Astora Straight Sword appeared in his free hand, the blade leveled downward at the demon's skull.

The demon pointed its staff at him.

The red orb formed at the tip, the chaos fire building with an intensity that turned the air around it the color of a wound.

Staring at what could be his end, Naruto's mind seemed to replay everything that had led him into this moment.

He thought about a knight sitting beside a bonfire in a broken courtyard, explaining the Age of Fire to a boy from another world like it was the most natural conversation two people could have.

He thought about the man who had died with hope in his heart because his squire had promised to carry the torch.

I told you I would.

"I WILL KILL YOU!"

Chakra erupted from every tenketsu in his body simultaneously, wrapping around him in a cloak.

The greenish gemstone of the Astora Straight Sword caught the light of his conviction as the faith enchantment answered in a white luminescence building from the base of the blade upward, edge to tip.

White and blue wrapped into a visage of Oscar beside Naruto.

The boy did not know if it was the soldier pills doing something creative with his brain chemistry or the exhaustion or the grief or some combination of all three. But he found that he did not need to know.

Oscar stood beside him for this final attack.

The collision was a conversation between two forces that hated each other.

Maybe it was Oscar's armor protecting him, or his chakra cloak, or maybe it was a combination of both.

But Naruto did not stop.

White and blue converging at the edge of the sword aimed at the skull of a demon in a broken asylum at the end of a promise.

Oscar and Naruto's Combo: Lion's Claw!

The impact cratered the chamber stone, cracks tearing outward in every direction at once, a wave of dust and debris rolling across the entire space before breaking against the walls.

The demon's body lay still, the broken blade of Astora lodged deep in its skull, the once pristine steel now shattered from the final blow.

Naruto sat there, panting, barely able to keep himself upright.

He had done it. He had won. He had slain the demon.

The adrenaline left him all at once. He collapsed backward onto the demon's corpse, every nerve frayed and spent. His vision blurred as he lay there staring at the hole in the ceiling.

It was over.

The soul rose from the demon's body and gathered above him, swirling into a massive ball of light, pure white with a black shard at its core. Pulsing with energy, more beautiful and more terrifying than anything he had ever seen in either world.

He raised his broken hand toward it.

I did it.

A single tear slipped down his cheek as the soul descended and absorbed into him, filling him with a warmth that reached past the exhaustion and the grief.

We did it, sensei... We did it.

[ Victory Achieved! ]
[ You have gained ]
[ 10,000 Souls ]
[ 1 Humanity ]
[ Titanite Slab ]
[ 1 Homeward Bone ]
[ Big Pilgrim's Key ]

---

Author Note

Before we move on, a moment of silence for Oscar of Astora.

...

...

...

Alright. Q and A time.

---

Q. What is the Curse of the Undead?

For those of you who do not know the lore of Dark Souls.

Let us get into this.

The curse of undeath was created when Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight and ruler of the Age of Fire, began to feel threatened by the descendants of the Furtive Pygmy. Humans were immortal beings, born from the Dark yet able to live in a world enlightened by the Fire, whose souls did not lose power despite being endlessly split and multiplied.

According to the Primordial Serpent Kaathe, the gods were intimidated by this unexplored potential of the Dark Soul. They had briefly glimpsed the smidgen of life emanating from the primordial human knights and feared the eventual overthrow of Anor Londo and its Age of Fire. Therefore, a complex and ingenious apparatus was set in motion with the goal to mold humanity into a subservient, weak people that would not only serve the Age of Fire but also refuse to relinquish it to make way for the Age of Dark.

The knights of the human armies were the first ones to be marked with a Sigil of Fire that would contain their Darkness and numb their abilities. The strength of Fire was strong enough to leave an imprinted mark that would become, through a few generations, genetically inherited by every newborn. The seal restrains the Darkness within Man, and once the consciousness of that part of the self is lost, Humanity's presence and nature remain unknown, its abilities nullified, its feelings ignored, its role forgotten. When a human dies, its Darkness is not strong enough to keep it alive, and death affects men just as it would affect any other creatures born from Fire. However, their Humanity is still present within their bodies and, unless it gets pillaged, there it shall remain forever.

When the First Flame begins to fade, it cannot sufficiently power the Darksign, which therefore cannot contain Humanity any further, and humans slowly revert to their original immortal form, being revived from death. However, Humanity has never been acknowledged, understood, and trained, and after a lifetime constricted it is deprived of any lucidity and control and, most importantly, it holds no trace of the self like the soul did. Therefore, gathering souls is essential to retain sanity, for strength is the only defense against the mind's decay.

Unlike the living, the Undead do not perish with death. Instead, they are resurrected at bonfires. However, in time they gradually lose their sanity and intelligence, a process called Hollowing. This covers many stages of sanity and consciousness until the last trace of identity is lost. An Undead that has fully lost its sanity is known as a Hollow.

---

Q. Why did the world reset?

If you have played Dark Souls, this one is already familiar. Resting at a bonfire resets the world. Enemies respawn. The loop continues.

Funny enough, there is actually a lore reason for this game mechanic.

According to Solaire: "We are amidst strange beings, in a strange land. The flow of time itself is convoluted, with heroes centuries old phasing in and out. The very fabric wavers, and relations shift and obscure. There is no telling how much longer your world and mine will remain in contact."

That is the foundation for the reset.

Time in Lordran does not move forward the way it does everywhere else. It folds, loops, and bleeds into itself. Ancient kings still walk their old halls. Dead gods still haunt their temples. Nothing truly ends because time itself has forgotten how endings work.

The bonfires are anchors in that distortion. The wiki describes them as: "Bonfires are fueled by the bones of the Undead. They serve as checkpoints and places of rest. When an Undead rests at a bonfire, the world around them resets, enemies returning to their posts as if they had never fallen."

In this story, I treat resets the same way. Every reset is another loop. Another weight added to the burden of being Undead in a world that has forgotten how to move forward.

Naruto does not know any of this yet.

But he will.

---

Q: Why did I combine the Asylum Demon and the Stray Demon?

For those of you who do not know, the Asylum Demon and Stray Demon are two different bosses in Dark Souls. I combined the two.

Simple. I wanted to make Naruto's life harder.

The Asylum Demon is a tutorial boss. He exists to teach you dodge and attack. He is effective at that job and not much else.

The wiki describes him as: "The Asylum Demon is the first boss encountered in Dark Souls. It serves as an introduction to boss encounters and is relatively simple compared to later bosses. The same basic model is reused for the Stray Demon and the Firesage Demon later in the game."

That reuse of the model is why I combined the two to make an absolutely memorable boss fight.

Classic first phase. Brutal second phase with magic.

The Stray Demon specifically felt like a natural second phase because the wiki describes his abilities as:

"The Stray Demon is a stronger variant of the Asylum Demon, capable of casting powerful magic attacks that produce an area of effect blast. Unlike the Asylum Demon, the Stray Demon wields a staff rather than a hammer."

That transition from hammer to staff, from brute force to something more dangerous and unpredictable, gave the fight a natural escalation.

Fun fact. My original plan was for the Asylum Demon to shift into its Stray form and then escape at the last moment, setting up a revenge match against the Firesage Demon later in the story. I cut it because in every draft I tried, the revenge angle came out wrong for Naruto's character. Too brooding. Too focused on settling a score. That is not who he is and it was not the tone I wanted.

The cleaner ending served him better.

---

Q: What was the white light covering Naruto's blade in the final moment of the fight?

The Astora Straight Sword's official description reads: "Straight sword of an unknown knight, likely one of Astora's superiors. High quality weapon with a powerful blessing."

That blessing is exactly what the white light was. When Naruto's conviction and chakra pressed against it hard enough, the blessing responded. That was the white luminescence building from edge to tip in the final moment of the fight.

Now here is where I have to be honest with you all.

The Astora Straight Sword is, by general community consensus, not a great weapon. In fact, the community abbreviation for it is A.S.S., which should tell you everything you need to know about its reputation in the game. It starts decent and falls off hard as the game progresses. Scaling is brutal. By mid game, most players have moved on entirely.

Obviously, I was never going to have Naruto just quietly shelve Oscar's sword because the stats were not competitive. That is not how a narrative works. The connection to Oscar alone makes it irreplaceable to him regardless of how it performs on a damage spreadsheet.

So I made a decision.

I gave it one enormous moment. Let the blessing do something worthy of the weapon's history and the knight who carried it. And then I broke it.

The hilt is all that remains.

Naruto will carry that hilt for a long time.

But his main weapon going forward will be something different.

Now, if you were choosing Naruto's main weapon from Dark Souls one, what would it be and why? Drop it in the comments. The best suggestions might just influence where this goes.

---

Q: Is "Oscar and Naruto's Lion Claw" a reference to Elden Ring?

Yes. It is absolutely a reference to the Lion's Claw Ash of War from Elden Ring. If you have played it, you know exactly what that looks like and why it fit the moment.

But Lion's Claw in Elden Ring is itself a callback to Artorias of the Abyss, specifically his iconic backflip attack. So technically, the Lion Claw in this story is a reference to a reference, which I find genuinely satisfying.

Here is where my headcanon comes in, and I will get into this more deeply next chapter if you want it, but I personally believe Artorias was from Astora. Since that headcanon holds in this story, then the Lion Claw being named as a joint technique between a knight of Astora and his squire carries an extra layer of meaning that I think rewards paying attention.

And finally, the Oscar and Naruto combination attack was a direct tribute to the Family Kamehameha. If you know, you know. A master and student combining their power for one final technique in the moment that matters most is one of the oldest and most genuinely moving archetypes in anime, and I wanted this story to have its version of that moment.

Both in the story and out of it, that felt like the right way to say goodbye to Oscar.

For now.

---

Q: Why did I kill Oscar instead of using his cut storyline?

For anyone who does not know, Oscar originally had a much larger role in Dark Souls before content was cut.

From the wiki: "Oscar was originally meant to play a much larger role in Dark Souls. His removed dialogue suggests that he was supposed to be a summonable character in Anor Londo and the Darkroot Garden. In addition, he seemed fated to confront the player at the end of the game, while serving the primordial serpent that the player did not serve."

Some of his cut dialogue is genuinely fascinating. In Darkroot Garden he was supposed to say:

"You must be the same as I, in search of the grave of Sir Artorias. But be careful. This forest is the territory of a fierce band of thieves. They assault any and all who seek the graves. What if we were to join forces?"

And depending on your ending choices, his final confrontation dialogue was:

"I have waited for thee... Foolish slave of the Gods, and pawn of Frampt... I will kill you... And become the true Dark Lord."

That is genuinely compelling material. A knight who starts as your ally and becomes your enemy depending on the choices you make. A man slowly losing himself to the same forces the game warns you about from the beginning.

I loved discovering it.

Here is the honest truth though.

I did not find any of this until I was already deep into writing this story. By the time I went down the Dark Souls lore rabbit hole and found the cut content, Oscar had already become something specific in this narrative. A mentor. A father figure. The first person in either world who looked at Naruto and decided without hesitation that he was worth teaching and worth staying beside without Naruto having to earn it.

The one guy who would treat Naruto as worthy of respect from the start. The one who will be the first domino to change who Naruto will grow up to be compared to his canon self.

Retrofitting the cut storyline onto that version of Oscar would have meant dismantling everything his relationship with Naruto had already built. It would have meant rewriting chapters, restructuring Naruto's growth, and fundamentally changing what the first arc of this story was about.

I chose not to do that.

But here is where it gets interesting.

Oscar was stabbed by the coil sword. And Dark Souls three established what the coil sword actually does to an Undead. Not kill them, but suspend them. Lock them between states. The wiki's description of Iudex Gundyr sitting in the Cemetery of Ash for an eternity with a coiled sword in his chest, neither dead nor hollow, simply waiting, applies here too.

Oscar is not gone.

He is waiting.

What that means for this story, whether that waiting ends, whether the man who comes back is the same one who was sealed, whether the cut content's darker version of Oscar has any relevance to where this narrative goes, I am not going to answer right now.

Some things are better discovered than explained.

What I will say is this. Oscar of Astora earned his place in this story. He was not going to be a footnote. He was not going to be the NPC who hands you a flask and disappears. He was going to matter, and I hope that came through in how his arc was written.

His story is not finished.

May his flame never fade.

---

Thank you. Genuinely. To everyone who has been reading, commenting, leaving reviews, and following along since the beginning. This story exists because of that support, and it gets better because of your engagement with it.

Writing two worlds simultaneously, balancing two sets of lore, two casts of characters, two rule systems that were never designed to interact, is the most ambitious thing I have attempted as a writer. Your enthusiasm makes the difficulty worth it.

Until next time.

Do not you dare go hollow, my friend.

- Adam

 

[trashtaker]

Oh fuck the feels.

Naruto straight up finding someone that won't judge him, taught him, and even in that short amount of time, cared enough to die for them.

Also fuck the damn leaf village and fuck danzo. I hope when Naruto absorbs his soul, he uses it to upgrade the most shittiest of weapons and just throw it out

 

[Adamos_Amet]

Naruto lay flat on his back atop the Stray Demon's corpse and stared at the sky through the hole in the ceiling.

His mind was somewhere high above him, running on a cocktail of adrenaline, stimulants, and exhaustion. It took a moment for the rest of his senses to catch up.

The smell of the corpse was horrible.

Like rotting meat left out in the sun too long in a lather of sulfur and ash. It was the kind of smell that had him gagging every time he inhaled as the pain from his broken arm and internal injuries began to simmer.

"I need to get healed."

Naruto held up the empty Estus Flask, tilting it hopefully. Well, I do not have a bonfire to refill this thing, he thought, frustration bubbling. But before he could dwell on it, a heavy thud echoed through the room.

"Oh, come on! Can't this place just give me a break?"

The figure stepped forward, and even in his half dazed state, Naruto could not help but think, Whoa, that's some badass armor.

The intruder was clad in jet black armor. Twin horn like protrusions jutted from the helmet, and layered plates covered the figure from head to toe.

[ Name: Black Knight ]
[ HP: 1393 / 1393 ]

Naruto blinked as the Black Knight moved with blinding speed toward him.

A smoke bomb hit the ground with a crack and smoke swallowed everything.

The Black Knight's sword cleaved through the smoke cloud and the Stray Demon's corpse in one uninterrupted arc, splitting the massive body in half. The shockwave cleared the smoke around them.

"Nope!" Naruto said it with a pop, already at the ladder.

Jumping up, the boy found himself in a long, shadowed corridor. One end was sealed off by an empty jail cell, while the other had collapsed into rubble. From the layout, he guessed that twin halls of prison cells must have circled the chamber on each side.

A metallic clanging snapped him out of his thoughts.

The knight was climbing the ladder.

"Oh hell no!" Naruto said, pushing the ladder and sending the knight back down to the floor below. He almost wanted to laugh and mock the knight, but he was in too much danger to act like his typical self.

Something glowing glimpsed in the darkness of the cell caught his eye.

Maybe that's something.

He ran toward it, only to find a doll.

It was a small bronze puppet that had long since turned green with age. Naruto turned it over in his hands, half expecting it to spring to life or whisper directions to a secret passage or do literally anything useful.

It did nothing.

What does this thing even do.

The faint glow he had seen from across the cell was gone now, or maybe it had never been there and he was hallucinating it.

Still. Something about it feels important.

BOOM.

The right wall of the corridor ceased to exist.

The Black Knight jumped through the hole it had made. Naruto had approximately one second to register the massive black knight sword in motion. The doll shimmered into his inventory as the thrust came forward aimed to split him clean in two. Naruto got his shield up, deflecting the blade to the side by a margin that he was choosing not to think about, and ran.

The Knight's Sight fired.

A spinning backhand cut came at head height from his right. He dropped low and felt the blade pass through the air where his skull had been a half second earlier, the stone wall behind him taking the hit instead, the sword biting deep into the rock.

Stuck.

Naruto slapped an explosive tag onto the knight's chest and sprinted. The explosion filled the cell behind him, shaking the corridor, dust raining from the ceiling in sheets.

He looked back.

[ Name: Black Knight ]
[ HP: 1300 / 1393 ]

The Black Knight walked out of the smoke with no sign of damage.

How does something take a point blank explosive tag and just keep walking.

Naruto kept running.

I can't fight this thing.

Even at full strength, with two working arms and a sword that had not been shattered, he was not confident he could put that thing down.

Iruka sensei, Naruto thought, said that a shinobi's greatest weapon was knowing when not to fight.

He had said it during a lesson on tactical withdrawal, which was the Academy's polite name for running away, and Naruto had rolled his eyes at that. Why would the Hokage run away from a strong enemy?

"I owe Iruka sensei an apology."

Naruto pulled the fuma shuriken from his inventory and hurled it at the knight. The Black Knight bisected it with a single swing without breaking stride. Naruto stopped running, turned around, and put his hands into the serpent sign as chakra became visible outside his body.

"AHHHHH!"

The knight's shield came up immediately, its whole frame dropping into a defensive posture.

Naruto stared at it.

So, it does have some form of intelligence.

"AHHHHH!" he screamed again with the full commitment of someone preparing to do an enormous and devastating jutsu.

He then jumped out of the hole in the wall.

The Black Knight seemed to register a second too late that nothing had happened and nothing was going to happen. It had just been outwitted by a screaming twelve year old. It jumped after him. And found him standing in the chamber below surrounded by thirty shadow clones, every single one of them holding a smoke bomb and grinning with his face.

"Try finding us now, big guy."

Every clone threw simultaneously.

The chamber disappeared into black.

What followed was the sound of the Black Knight finding clones with systematic efficiency. The first clone went down with a single swing that sent it popping into smoke before it had finished its attack. The second tried to stab from behind and got backhanded hard enough that it dissolved on impact. Three clones attempted a coordinated rush from three angles and were dealt with in two swings.

A clone threw a kunai directly at the knight's face.

The sword bisected it midair.

The explosive tag split with it, the seal formula dead before it could activate.

By the time the smoke thinned, every clone was gone.

The grappling hook caught the top of the chamber wall and Naruto dropped into the corridor on the other side before the last of the smoke had finished clearing. The hallway ahead of him was full of hollows who turned toward the sound of his landing with lurching attention.

Behind him, the Black Knight jumped into the corridor.

Seeing himself stuck between a rock and a hard place, Naruto kept running deeper into the hallway.

Silence filled the chamber below.

Then, from inside the demon's corpse, something moved. Naruto pulled himself out one handed, trying very hard not to vomit. "That is the second worst thing I have ever climbed into, dattebayo!"

He chose not to think about what the first was.

From somewhere far above, an explosion rattled down through the stone, distant enough to be muffled but close enough to feel in the floor.

A moment later the clone's last memory of a very short fight arrived.

Naruto allowed himself a small, exhausted smile.

Good. Let it think I am dead.

He pulled the grappling hook from his inventory, aimed for the hole in the wall, and swung up.

The black gates of the asylum waited at the end of the corridor beyond.

[ Item: Big Pilgrim's Key ]
[ Description: Key to the inner door of the Undead Asylum main hall. Big key belonging to a chosen Undead pilgrim. But this Chosen Undead knows not what this pilgrimage has in store. ]

"Thanks for the ominous warning," Naruto mumbled at the system, not really caring about its dramatic tone right now.

The door creaked open into a long cliff path. Moss covered everything it could reach, crawling up the broken stonework, softening the edges of old ruins that dotted the landscape on both sides.

Now what? Naruto stood there for a moment with no answer to that question. The Bell of Awakening. The land of Ancient Lords.

He did not know where either of those things were.

But first, he needed to do this.

Naruto found a patch of ground beside the asylum wall. He pulled a kunai and started to dig, one handed. The work was harder than it should have been and mattered more because of it. When the grave was deep enough he reached into his inventory and retrieved Oscar's corpse with both hands, broken arm protesting the weight which he ignored.

He laid his master down carefully.

Folded the hands the way he had seen it done in Konoha, in the funerals he had watched from a distance.

He stepped back and looked at what he had done.

It was not enough. It was never going to be enough. But it was what he had.

Naruto found a flat stone nearby and dragged it to the head of the grave. He set it in place and picked up his kunai. He was not a particularly good writer under the best of circumstances and these were not those. But he kept at it until every character was legible, until what he had put into the stone was real and could not be taken back.

Oscar of Astora.
Knight. Teacher. Friend.
He gave his kindness freely.
That is rarer than any blade.

Naruto set the kunai down.

And sat down in front of it, crossed his legs, and started talking.

"I got him," he said. His voice came out hoarse and smaller than he meant it to. Naruto pulled at a piece of dead grass near his knee. "It was really close. You would have said my footwork was sloppy for most of it and you would have been right." He paused. "The iron ball was my idea though. I think you would have liked that part."

The wind moved across the cliff.

"I do not think I could have done it without you... I do not know if you were actually there or if it was just the drugs or whatever the Astora sword's blessing does but it felt like you were there." He pressed the back of his hand against his mouth for a moment. "So I am counting it. That was our victory. That was us against the demon."

He pulled at another piece of dead grass.

"I am going to find the Bell of Awakening," he said. "I do not know where it is. I do not know anything about this world really, you were supposed to be the one who..."

He stopped, swallowed and tried again.

"You were supposed to come with me."

His voice cracked on the last word and that was it.

A wave of grief hit him unlike anything in his entire life and Naruto's first instinct was to look for someone to tell.

There was no one.

No Iruka to show up at the wrong moment and say exactly the right thing. No old man Hokage to sit across from him with his pipe and patience. No Teuchi to put a bowl in front of him to make him feel better.

Just a twelve year old boy with a feeling he had absolutely no tools for.

He sat down hard in the dirt.

He had spent his whole life learning to outrun feelings he could not understand. Fill the space they occupied with noise and motion until they could not find him anymore. It had worked, more or less.

It was not working now.

The grief was too big, immediate and specifically shaped.

Naruto pressed his forehead to his knee and stopped trying to outrun it.

He ugly cried.

His shoulders shook. He made sounds he would have been mortified by under any other circumstances and did not care. There was no one to be composed for and nothing left to be composed with.

He cried until his throat was raw. He cried until his eyes were swollen almost shut. He cried until his body ran out of the energy grief needed to express itself and settled into a deep, bone heavy exhaustion that pressed down on him from every direction at once.

CAWWW!

Naruto jolted upright, his hand reaching for a weapon.

CAWWW!

The sound came from somewhere along the cliff edge, and curiosity did what it always did with Naruto, arriving before caution could stop it. He slowly walked toward the edge of the cliff.

The world opened up before him in every direction at once. Vast and endless mountains with peaks lost in gray mist.

This place is so beautiful and lonely at the same time.

Naruto was still thinking it when the shadow fell over him.

The crow was enormous, as dark as the night with a body the size of a carriage. Its talons were outstretched and descending toward him. It grabbed him before he finished the thought of moving.

The world lurched as the cliff edge disappeared. Everything disappeared except the wind and the talons locked around him. The mountains dropping away below at a speed that made his stomach attempt to relocate somewhere above his head.

He did not scream.

He wanted to scream.

Okay. Okay. Calm down, Naruto. This bird is going to land somewhere. Birds always land. Just conserve your chakra, get ready when it does, and do not look down, dattebayo!

He looked down.

That was a mistake.

---

The bird flew for three days.

Naruto ate from his inventory suspended in midair over landscapes that had no names he knew, drank water from a canteen he had to angle carefully to avoid it going straight up into his nose, and slept in shifts with his hands locked around the talons. Somewhere in those three days and the sheer relentless enormity of everything passing below him, his grief went quiet.

Not gone.

He could still feel it, sitting at the back of everything.

On the third day the crow began to approach a place that caught Naruto's breath.

A kingdom sprawling across the landscape below in a scale that made Konoha look like a small town sketch on a map. He stared at it with his mouth open and the wind pushing against his teeth.

The crow twisted its path toward a circular structure perched on a cliff.

The talons suddenly opened.

He fell.

The roll on landing was instinctive and deeply unpleasant, dirt and stone scraping against the armor as he tumbled across the ground and came to a stop on his back staring at the gray sky. He lay there for a moment. A warmth moved through him from the inside out. Broken arm. Cracked ribs. Three days of being in the sky in a giant crow's grip. The warmth seemed to heal his mind and body.

Naruto closed his eyes, letting the magic do its thing.

---

The Firelink Shrine was hauntingly beautiful.

Crumbling stone archways and pillars draped in moss and vines, concentric rings of stone surrounding the bonfire at its center. A dead gnarled tree stretched up toward a misty sky where pale blue light filtered through in shifting rays.

A man sat near the bonfire.

Full suit of dull chainmail. Short black hair. An expression that communicated clearly that he had seen everything the world had to offer and had arrived at the conclusion that none of it was particularly worth the effort. He did not look up when Naruto arrived. Just sat there with a hollow, broken stillness.

"Yo."

Naruto hoped for friendly. After everything, seeing an actual human being was almost comforting enough to overlook the dead expression.

"Well, what do we have here? You must be a new arrival." The man still had not looked up. "Let me guess. Fate of the Undead, right? Well, you are not the first. But there is no salvation here. You would have done better to rot in the Undead Asylum." A pause. "But too late now."

"Geez," Naruto muttered to himself. "Real ray of sunshine."

Still, he managed a crooked grin and raised a fist into the air, more tired than triumphant. "Well, the Undead Asylum has been conquered. Dattebayo."

Something shifted in the man's face. Gone before Naruto could read it, replaced by the same hollow expression. "Oh? So you defeated the Asylum Demon."

Something in his tone suggested he found this mildly amusing lie.

"Yep."

"Kekekeke."

"Laugh it up. It is the truth."

"Sure it is, boy," the man said, still chuckling to himself. "No Undead has ever managed to kill that thing. Either you die, or you escape. Those are your only two options."

Naruto bit his tongue so hard he tasted blood.

Precept the Fourth, he reminded himself. Show virtue of patience, humility, and honor through your actions.

He took a breath.

"Whatever. Can you at least tell me where the Bell of Awakening is?"

"There are actually two Bells of Awakening. One is up above, in the Undead Church. The other is far, far below, in the ruins at the base of Blighttown. Ring them both and something happens." The crestfallen warrior gave Naruto a mocking smile. "Brilliant, right? Not much to go on. But I have a feeling that will not stop you. So off you go. It is why you came, is it not? To this accursed land of the Undead? Hah hah hah hah."

"Prick," Naruto muttered under his breath.

All he wanted, right now, was to go home. To sit at Ichiraku's with both elbows on the counter and eat ramen until Teuchi told him he had had enough, which had never once actually happened. To take a warm bubble bath. To sleep in his own bed.

Let's go back for now.

He made the decision quietly and turned back toward the crestfallen warrior.

"My name is Naruto Uzumaki."

"An Undead that actually has a name. In these parts, a name means nothing."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever."

Naruto swung into palm in a hammer motion. "I am going to call you Older Emo."

Blank stare.

Then back to the ground.

Wow, Naruto thought, genuinely impressed. This guy is even more emo than Sasuke. How did I end up talking to someone more depressing than Sasuke.

He shook his head and let his mind drift back to the actual problem.

Getting home.

The last time he had gone back to Konoha, how had that worked?

The Asylum Demon killed me. And then I woke up in Konoha.

He turned that over carefully.

Maybe that is the trick.

The thought sat in his stomach in a way he did not entirely like.

"Alexander."

Naruto nearly jumped out of his armor. "What?"

"You do not have to wait for my name," Alexander said. "It is Alexander. I have long since abandoned it alongside everything else. I am but a Crestfallen Warrior."

Part of him was relieved to finally have a name to put to the face. Another part recognized the particular sound of someone opening a door they had been keeping shut for a very long time and immediately regretting it.

"Now leave me alone."

There it was.

This is my problem with emos, Naruto thought while walking away. One second they crack open and the next they act like the whole world revolves around their misery.

He returned to the problem at hand.

Do I really have to die to go home?

He stood there with that thought for a moment longer than was comfortable.

Oscar had told him that dying stripped away memories. That each death chipped away at who you were until nothing remained but a hollow shell. But Naruto had died in Lordran and woken up in Konoha with every memory intact. Which meant either the rules worked differently for him, or something about being sent back to Konoha rather than to a bonfire was interrupting the process before it could take anything.

Or maybe I need to die a certain number of times before it starts taking effect.

He did not know.

He stood at the edge of Firelink Shrine and looked out at what lay beyond it, the dead kingdom sprawling below.

Now what do I do?

He already knew the answer.

He looked down at the drop below the cliff edge, unequipped his armor and jumped.

---

Defeated the Asylum Demon, Alexander thought, staring at the bonfire. What a joke.

Nobody beat that monster. You died, or you ran. Those were the options available to Undead in the Northern Asylum, and everyone who had ever passed through Firelink on their way to whatever pointless end awaited them had confirmed it one way or another.

So why could he not dismiss it?

The warrior heard running, causing him to look up. His brain, which had long since stopped being surprised by anything Lordran produced, went completely blank at the boy's suicide attempt.

Maybe going hollow really is better than the hell that waits out here. Maybe I should do it too.

But he was too much of a coward to act on it. Too much of a coward to die and too much of a coward to live properly either.

He looked back at the bonfire.

And waited.

Waited for the inevitable rush of essence reforming, the Darksign pulling another Undead back from the edge of finality and depositing them at the nearest bonfire whether they wanted it or not.

It was their curse.

Death, rebirth and another piece scraped away each time until the loop was all that remained.

Yet the boy did not respawn.

Alexander frowned as a minute passed. Then another. The flames gave no indication that it had received anything at all from the cliff below. Something uneasy stirred in his chest, which surprised him because he had assumed that particular capacity had been scraped away some time ago.

"Why is he not respawning?"

Then he felt it.

A surge of souls at the cliff edge. Larger than it should have been for a mere child. The crestfallen warrior's eyes widened at the colour of the soul drop.

Green.

Not the pale yellow of a common Undead's soul.

Alexander had heard about green soul drops once. In stories about souls from other worlds that were called to Lordran's lands. The warrior had dismissed it as the kind of thing people invented to make the darkness feel more interesting. The size of the soul drop told a different story.

The kid was telling the truth. He actually killed the Asylum Demon. And he actually is from another world.

"Wow, guess I have seen it all now."

And the brat has absolutely no idea what a soul drop is or what will happen if something else absorbs it before he comes back.

The hollow at the far cliff had already turned toward the green glow like moths to a flame.

Alexander cut it down with a single swing.

Another came from the left. A third emerged from the shadows near the broken wall and he dealt with those too. He stood his ground over the green soul drop and waited.

Great, Alexander thought, bisecting a hollow that had gotten too close to the green glow. Now I am a soul drop guardian. This is what my existence has been reduced to.

Another hollow. He cut it down.

If something absorbs that drop before the boy comes back, whatever it becomes is going to be my problem. My problem, because a stupid child did not go to the firekeeper to absorb his soul.

Alexander shoved a hollow off the ledge with his shield.

Brat. You owe me for this.

Yet as he cut down another hollow he noticed his breathing had changed.

The battlefield had always been the one place where the hollow weight behind his eyes went quiet and left only the present moment, only the next hollow, only the dance.

Alexander was here because an empowered hollow would be his problem.

That was all this was.

But as he blocked a hollow, there was a quiet gratitude sitting in his chest for a strange boy in armor who had accidentally reminded him of his humanity.

---

Morning had come slowly, and Hiruzen was grateful. After last night's chaos, a slow morning was more than welcome. His task was simple and enjoyable. Going through the genin registration forms and finalizing the candidates for the jonin to choose from.

A small smile crept onto his face as he reviewed the names, each one representing a future leaf of the village.

He could have let his team handle it.

They were more than capable of combing through those forms. God knew how much he relied on them to keep up with all the paperwork in Konoha. It was not that he could not do it himself, but it ate away at his time. Something he wished he had more of. Then, as he reached the final registration form, his smile was replaced by a frown.

There was no form for Naruto.

Of course. How could I forget? Naruto had not properly graduated.

At his finger tap, an Anbu operative appeared in front of his desk.

"Bring me Naruto Uzumaki," the old man ordered, watching her bow before disappearing in a whirl of leaves and reappearing ten minutes later with something he was not prepared to see.

Naruto Uzumaki wore armor.

Hiruzen had seen armor of every kind that the shinobi world produced. Yet he had never seen anything like what Naruto Uzumaki was wearing.

The helmet was a bascinet, or something that resembled one closely enough to classify it as such. A rounded skullcap with a pointed apex designed to deflect rather than absorb. A visor with narrow ventilation slits that spoke to a maker who understood that breathability in combat was not a luxury but a necessity. The cloth wrap at the neck was worn and dark, a detail that suggested the armor had seen considerable use.

He moved down.

The torso was a composite construction. At the foundation, barely visible at the edges, was a padded undergarment. Over that, chainmail hauberk by the look of it, covering the torso and extending downward in a skirt that protected the upper thighs. Over the mail, a surcoat in blue fabric, its embroidered edging faded but still legible as an indication of status.

Whoever had made this armor wanted the wearer identified.

The plate reinforcement over the torso was not a solid breastplate. That was interesting. Instead of a single cuirass, which would have been the simpler solution, there were layered steel plates over mail. Spaulders at the shoulders strapped to a leather harness that crossed the chest and back. Additional lames at the upper torso.

The arms had couters at the elbows. Vambraces along the forearms, steel bracers strapped with leather at multiple points. The gauntlets were a mismatch. The right was a worn leather glove while the left was a steel gauntlet. The legs followed the same philosophy. Plate reinforcement over mail. Poleyns at the knees. Greaves along the shins. A broad leather belt with a bunch of utility pouches and a broken sword.

Hiruzen sat back.

This style of armor did not belong to any tradition he had ever encountered. Not in the shinobi nations, not in the Land of Iron, not in any historical record he had studied or any intelligence report he had received in his decades of governance. And considering how perfectly fitted the armor was to the boy's frame, Hiruzen felt with quiet certainty that it had been made for the boy.

That observation opened upon a lot more questions than answers.

"Where did you get that armor, Naruto?"

The look on Naruto's face made Hiruzen's heart skip a beat. The look of someone who had lost someone recently and was still in the part of grief where the loss kept arriving in new ways.

"My master gave it to me, Hokage-sama."

Hokage-sama.

Hiruzen absorbed that formal address. The deliberate distance built into two words that a few days had been old man delivered with the particular irreverence of a boy who felt comfortable enough to be rude. The change said considerably more than the words themselves.

Yesterday there had been impossible jutsu and killer intent. Today there was a mysterious master.

The Third noted Naruto's body language.

The grief was recent.

How recently, he could not say with certainty, but the rawness of it suggested days rather than months.

Hiruzen looked at the armor again.

He did not know what to make of any of it.

It was as if Naruto had been living an entire different life. A life with a dead master and skills that had no framework in anything Hiruzen understood. And the boy had simply arrived back in Konoha carrying all of it in his body and saying almost nothing about any of it.

Inoichi's words echoed in his head.

Do we truly know who Naruto is, Hokage-sama? Not what he can do. Not what he has become. Who he actually is. Do we know what he does when no one is watching? Where he goes? How he spends the hours that are not accounted for?

I am beginning to think the answer is no.

Hiruzen looked at Naruto across the desk. Even if I want answers, I cannot reach for them directly. Not now. Not with this boy in this state. Every question I push for is a door I risk closing permanently.

Hiruzen tapped his finger against the desk three times. From the corner of the room, the ANBU acknowledged the signal and withdrew further into the shadows.

The silence that followed might have become awkward. It was not because the chair had begun to creak under the armor's weight.

"That armor is heavy," Hiruzen observed.

"Yeah." Naruto shifted slightly, which produced additional commentary from the chair. "I actively have to channel chakra into my muscles to move freely in it."

"That is one approach. Though I would recommend supplementing that with dedicated physical training while wearing it."

"Why? If I can just use chakra..."

"Because the armor's resistance does the work your chakra is currently compensating for." Hiruzen folded his hands. "Train in it long enough without chakra reinforcement and your baseline strength increases to accommodate the weight. Your cardiovascular endurance develops under load, which means in combat your body performs at a higher ceiling before it needs to draw on chakra reserves at all. Your joints and connective tissue adapt to the demand. Your posture corrects itself because the armor punishes poor posture immediately and without mercy." He paused. "Chakra reinforcement is a tool. The body underneath it is the foundation. A stronger foundation means the tool goes further."

Naruto stared at him for a moment.

"Ah. That's... actually a great idea. Ol—" He caught it. "Hokage-sama."

Hiruzen said nothing about the near miss.

But he felt something loosen slightly in his chest. The specific relief of a door that had been closed and bolted showing the faintest hairline crack of light underneath it. He had not earned back what he had lost with this boy. He was not naive enough to believe one conversation accomplished that. But the crack was there.

He would have to earn it.

Meanwhile Naruto was thinking about the bonfire. Specifically about the bonfire's healing properties.

If I train in this armor. And push my muscles past failure. Then I go to Lordran. Rest at the bonfire.

He thought about how much faster a body could develop if the recovery phase was measured in minutes rather than days. He thought about what that compounded over weeks, over months.

Sensei, he thought, I think I just figured out a genuine way to train my body.

Suddenly the door flew open.

Konohamaru stood in the doorway, all six years of him, brown hair spiking through the hole in that ridiculous gray helmet. The child wore a yellow shirt with a crooked Konoha symbol and a large blue scarf hanging off one shoulder.

"Incoming! On guard, ol' man!" Konohamaru shouted, brandishing a shuriken. The child then tripped over his scarf and landed face first on the floor.

The Third closed his eyes and tipped his Hokage hat. It was all he could do not to let out a tired sigh.

"I get it, it's a trap!"

Another voice came from the back.

"A-Are you alright, Honorable Grandson? And for the record, there are no traps."

Konohamaru's tutor had dark hair and ever present sunglasses. He was in the standard Konoha shinobi outfit, lacking only the flak jacket.

When did my office become a playground?

Then, to top off this circus, Konohamaru pointed an accusing finger at Naruto.

"Aha, so you tripped me! It was you! Right?!"

Naruto responded with a flick to Konohamaru's forehead. "You fell over that stupid scarf."

Konohamaru rubbed the spot on his forehead, looking like he was on the verge of tears.

"How dare you harm the honorable grandson of the Third Hokage!"

Hiruzen really disliked it when people measured someone's worth based on their bloodline. As if Konohamaru's value was solely tied to being the Third's grandson. And then there was Konohamaru's smug little smirk. It clearly said he expected Naruto to apologize.

This whole debacle made Hiruzen realize his grandson needed a lesson in humility.

"Hey, apologize to me!" Konohamaru demanded, puffing out his chest like a little rooster in front of Naruto.

"Here is my apology."

Naruto raised his fist and gave the six year old the middle finger.

Hiruzen snorted before he could stop himself. Whatever else had changed, Naruto was still Naruto.

Ebisu and Konohamaru stood with their mouths hanging open like fish in open air.

"But... but I am the honorable grandson!" Konohamaru sputtered.

"And I am the Squire of Oscar." Naruto said it with a straightness in his spine that had not been there before.

Oscar.

The name matched no regional dialect Hiruzen knew, bore no resemblance to any naming tradition across the Five Nations or their neighbors. It was simply a foreign word with no origin point he could triangulate toward. And squire meant nothing to him at all.

"Ha!" Konohamaru recovered quickly. "That sounds lame."

Naruto looked the six year old a death glare.

Konohamaru immediately relocated himself behind Ebisu's leg with considerable speed. "I-I'm sorry."

"Next time you say something stupid like that," Naruto said, with a calm that was somehow more effective than shouting would have been, "there will be consequences."

"How dare you threaten—" Ebisu began, hand moving toward his kunai pouch.

Naruto made a hand sign.

A shadow clone materialized directly behind Konohamaru. Ebisu's kunai was already moving on reflex, the blade driving toward the clone's chest.

It shattered on the armor.

Hiruzen and Naruto both noted this at the same moment with the same expression. Looks like shadow clones with that armor are more durable than regular clones.

The clone's elbow found Ebisu's ribs and sent him stumbling back into the wall.

Konohamaru was vibrating like a leaf in the wind. He looked at Hiruzen with the expression of someone searching for a lifeline in open water.

"Don't bother," the clone said pleasantly. "I have already defeated the old man."

Ebisu's gasp could have been heard from the floor below.

Hiruzen coughed.

"Ebisu. Take Konohamaru out of my office."

"But..."

The Third Hokage gave him a look.

Ebisu grabbed Konohamaru by the arm and moved toward the door. On his way out Ebisu aimed a sideways glare at Naruto, who picked his nose. Konohamaru, dragged along behind him, looked back at Naruto with an expression that was equal parts terror and absolute hero worship.

The door closed.

The clone popped.

"Didn't want your grandson to know how you lost to my sexy jutsu?"

"I do not know what you're talking about," Hiruzen said, with complete composure.

Naruto chuckled to himself. Then the amusement faded as he asked, "So why am I actually here?"

Someone knocked on the door.

"Come in."

Iruka opened the door and his eyes went wide as saucers the moment they landed on Naruto's armor. He stood in the doorway for a full two minutes doing nothing but staring.

"Iruka," Hiruzen said. "What brings you here?"

The chunin snapped back to attention while fighting a hangover through sheer professionalism.

"Yes. Hokage-sama." He straightened. "This is my letter of recommendation for Naruto Uzumaki's graduation to genin."

He read it one final time then placed it on the desk.

Hiruzen smiled.

"Well. Another reason to graduate Naruto."

"Another?" Naruto and Iruka said together.

"Last night Naruto demonstrated everything we look for in a field shinobi. Espionage by infiltrating a secure building and extracting a high value target. Successful navigation to a rendezvous point under pursuit. And the elimination of a chunin level threat." The old man paused. "If that does not qualify someone for genin, I am not certain what does."

Naruto's ears went red at the praise.

"Hokage-sama." Iruka reached up and removed his own headband. "May I?"

"You will need a replacement."

"You have one in your desk."

"That I do."

He gestured for Iruka to continue and sat back. This moment belonged to them. He was a witness, nothing more.

Iruka held the headband out. The boy looked at it, then at his Elite Knight armor.

"I'll just wear it on my arm," Naruto said, holding out his forearm.

Iruka fastened it carefully, making sure it sat properly against the armor's vambrace. Then he straightened and looked at his student.

"Naruto, I have watched you fail that exam three times. I have watched this village look at you and decide, before you ever had a chance to show them otherwise, that you were already the sum of their worst fears."

He paused.

"Last night you stole a forbidden scroll and master a jutsu that jonin struggle with. Then stand over the body of a man who tried to use you and feel nothing about it." His jaw tightened slightly. "That last part scared me, if I am being honest."

Naruto did not look away.

"But you know what scared me more?" Iruka continued. "The fact that I understood why. Because I know what this village has given you to work with. I know what you have had and what you haven't had and what you built out of the difference." He met the boy's eyes. "You are stubborn, reckless and make everything harder than it needs to be. And you have never, not once in all the years I have known you, quit."

A pause.

"You are a genin. You have earned it a hundred times over. And whatever you are becoming, Naruto, I am on your side."

Naruto looked at the headband on his arm.

"Thanks, Iruka-sensei," he said quietly as he got up to hug the chunin.

Hiruzen cleared his throat after a moment.

"Congratulations, Genin Naruto. Now I just need your graduation form."

"Here," Iruka said, producing the documents.

Hiruzen reviewed them, signed where necessary, and set them aside. Iruka stepped back and gave Naruto a thumbs up.

"Everything's in order. Now, before you leave, there is the matter of your mission reward."

Naruto and Iruka both looked perplexed.

"By technical definition, you were manipulated into an infiltration mission, successfully completed the objective under hostile conditions, and neutralized a traitor to the village in the process." Hiruzen's expression remained entirely neutral. "That will be logged as a solo mission on your record. The corresponding payment and mission points will be allocated accordingly."

Iruka's eye twitched.

"Hokage-sama, is that... strictly allowed?"

"I am the Hokage," Hiruzen said pleasantly, "so."

Iruka chose not to pursue this.

Naruto, wisely deciding not to look a gift horse in the mouth, asked, "Hey. Can I get a jutsu as a reward instead?"

Inoichi's words surfaced in Hiruzen's mind.

If the boy has undisclosed abilities, he will find ways to justify acquiring more without revealing what he already possesses. Was this that? An excuse to demonstrate something he had already learned? A test of how much they were watching?

"Any particular jutsu in mind?" Hiruzen asked, keeping his voice completely even.

"I don't know. Something that lets me run away really fast."

There were things in Lordran that could not be beaten. The Black Knight had made the lesson very clear. Speed had not saved him that day so much as creativity had. But creativity needed distance to work, and distance required getting away first.

Hence the request.

"Iruka, do you know the Body Flicker Jutsu?"

"Of course." Iruka paused as the Hokage's implication settled. "You want me to teach it to Naruto."

Hiruzen nodded.

Naruto's face showed pure excitement. He launched himself out of the chair with the full weight of the Elite Knight armor behind him.

The chair collapsed completely.

"I'll be at the training grounds, Iruka-sensei!" Naruto was already at the door, as running away was the best response to broken furniture.

"Guess he is still Naruto," Iruka said.

"And that's for the best," Hiruzen replied quietly.

"Hokage-sama, about the graduation tallies, the placement lists, the..."

"I'll have it handled." Hiruzen waved a hand. "Go and teach."

"Go and teach," the chunin instructor muttered, bowing, and leaving Hiruzen alone in the office.

---

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

The clock on the wall marked the silence after the door closed. Hiruzen blew smoke upward in slow, unhurried ribbons.

"Report."

Inoichi appeared and placed a scroll on the desk. He had been there for the entire conversation. That was what he had his ANBU do.

Hiruzen looked at the scroll without touching it. "This is?"

"ANBU Owl's overnight report on Naruto." Inoichi folded his hands behind his back. "The boy returned to his apartment, slept, and came here this morning. The apartment was searched while he was en route. Officers found nothing unusual beyond what we already knew about."

Hiruzen drew on his pipe slowly.

The mysteries were compounding. Each answer producing two new questions. Each observation opening a door onto a corridor with no visible end.

"What is your honest assessment of Naruto?"

"The grief is real. The observation of his body language and how he spoke in relation to his master was authentic." He paused. "Whatever happened to him was real and it cost him something significant."

"And yet," Hiruzen said.

"We are looking at a boy who appears to have lived an entire chapter of his life that we have no access to and no framework for."

Hiruzen set down his pipe. "Is he hiding it deliberately?"

"That's the part I find most interesting." Inoichi moved to the chair yet chose to stand. "In my initial assessment I assumed the mask was the whole story. A child who learned to perform because performing was safer than being seen. But what we observed this morning does not fit that model cleanly." He looked at the door. "He told you about the master. He wore the armor openly. He did not deflect when you looked at it. A boy running a deliberate concealment operation does not do those things."

"So he's not hiding."

"I think he's being selective," Inoichi said carefully. "He's sharing what he's comfortable sharing and keeping the rest close, the way anyone does after losing someone." A pause. "The question is whether what he's keeping close represents a threat or simply something he isn't ready to speak about yet."

"He's not a threat," Hiruzen said. More to himself than to Inoichi.

"No, he's not a threat."

A pause.

"But we should understand what he's carrying," the Yamanaka added carefully, "before it becomes one."

The clock marked the silence.

"My recommendation remains the same. We observe. We do not push. We create conditions where cooperation with Konoha becomes something Naruto chooses rather than something imposed on him," Inoichi stated. "Pushing that boy right now, with fresh grief and fresh distance between you, would close every door we still have open."

"Find me everything that exists on the word squire," Hiruzen said quietly. "The name Oscar. And the design philosophy of that armor."

"Already assigned," Inoichi said.

Hiruzen took a drag out of his pipe.

"What about the jonin sensei?"

"I'm working on that."

---

Naruto stood in the open field and breathed in.

Trees stretched in every direction as far as he could see, the training ground quiet except for the wind moving through the branches overhead.

Iruka had his instructor face on.

"Body Flicker Technique," he began, settling into the cadence Naruto had heard a thousand times in a classroom and was only now learning to actually listen to. "A ninja uses chakra to temporarily vitalize the body and move at extreme speeds across short or long distances. The amount of chakra required scales with distance and elevation. The further you go or the higher you climb, the more it costs."

"Sensei, what's the difference between Body Flicker and Substitution? From the outside they look the same."

Iruka had a surprised expression that Naruto had asked something worth answering. "That's a good question actually."

"I know."

"Both techniques release chakra from the ankles," Iruka continued. "That's where the similarity ends. Substitution releases a single concentrated burst, short range, fast, and leaves a replacement object behind in your position. The log, usually. Body Flicker works differently." He paused to make sure Naruto was following. "It doesn't release all the chakra at once. It releases it in sequential waves."

"Like what?"

"Hold out your hand."

Naruto held it out.

Iruka tapped his palm once, then twice, each tap slightly harder than the last. "First wave gets you moving. Second wave builds on the momentum of the first. Third wave builds on the second. Each release of chakra from the ankles compounds with the velocity you already have rather than starting from zero." He stepped back. "That's why Body Flicker accelerates as it goes rather than moving at a fixed speed. The longer the distance, the faster you're moving by the time you arrive."

"Like ripples in a lake."

"Exactly like that. When did you start thinking in analogies?"

"I have always been the smart one, Iruka sensei."

"You failed the graduation exam three times."

"Strategically."

Iruka laughed while performing the hand signs. Half tiger and ram.

His body flickered.

Thirty feet away before Naruto's eyes had finished tracking the motion. Iruka was standing casually at the treeline like he had always been there.

"Any questions?"

"Can you fight while flickering?"

"Evasion and dodging, yes. Chunin and jonin use it the way a genin uses Substitution, to exit a bad position very quickly. Direct combat is harder," Iruka explained. "The sequential wave acceleration produces tunnel vision. Attacking from that state means committing to something you can barely see."

"So you can't fight with it."

"Most people can't," Iruka said. "But."

Naruto looked up.

"There was a shinobi who found a way to use Body Flicker directly in combat," Iruka said with a deeply respectful tone. "How exactly, I don't know. What we know is the result. He pushed the technique past every conventional ceiling and at those speeds his body left afterimages solid enough that opponents couldn't distinguish them from the real thing in the moment." He paused. "People compared him to the Fourth Hokage."

"Who is this awesome guy?"

"Shisui of the Body Flicker."

Naruto gasped.

"I met him a few times," Iruka said quietly, the warmth in his voice belonging to something specific and kept. "A good man who died too young."

Naruto went quiet as a form of respect, while an idea had been assembling itself in his mind. Body Flicker in direct combat.

Nobody knew how Shisui had solved the tunnel vision problem. But Naruto did not need to find that answer.

He already had a different one.

The Knight's Sight did not operate through his eyes. It lifted his awareness above his body entirely, indifferent to the direction he was facing or the speed he was moving.

The grin arrived before he had finished the thought.

Naruto of the Body Flicker.

He liked that considerably.

---

Author Note: This was a quieter chapter than the last two, but I think it did a lot of necessary groundwork. Relationships are being established, mysteries are being layered, and pieces are being put in place that are going to matter considerably later. I hope it landed the way I intended.

Onto the Q&A.

---

Q: Naruto spent three days traveling to Firelink Shrine but only one day passed in Konoha. Was that a mistake?

That was completely intentional.

There is a time dilation between Lordran and Konoha. The ratio is three to one. Three hours in Lordran equals one hour in Konoha. This applies in both directions.

I built this in deliberately because without it the two storylines would create a logistical nightmare. Lordran is a massive world with enormous distances between locations and a lot of things that need to happen before Naruto can move through it meaningfully. If time moved at the same rate in both worlds I would either have to rush through Lordran to keep pace with the Naruto timeline or stretch the Konoha side so thin it became filler.

The dilation solves that problem cleanly. Naruto can spend days in Lordran accomplishing things while only hours pass in Konoha. Both storylines get the breathing room they need to develop properly.

It also opens up some interesting narrative possibilities down the line that I am not going to spoil here.

---

Q: What is the green soul drop? Is that in the game?

Sort of. It is my own addition to the lore but it is directly inspired by a game mechanic.

In Dark Souls, when you die you leave your accumulated souls behind at the point of death as a green smear on the ground. You can retrieve them by returning to that spot before you die again. Lose them a second time and they are gone permanently.

That green smear is where the idea came from.

In this story, soul drops manifest as visible orbs of light rather than a smear, and their color indicates their origin. Every Undead in Lordran produces a yellow soul drop when they die.

Naruto's is green because he is not from Lordran.

What exactly that difference means for Naruto in terms of the curse, the hollow process, and how his soul interacts with Lordran's systems is something I will be exploring as the story develops.

---

That's It… For Now.

And if you can't wait for the next update, you can read ahead to Chapter 100 on Patreon.

Thank you all for your support—you make writing this story such an incredible journey! As always, thanks for reading.

—Adam

 

[Nicohals J Westerberg]

Amazing

 

[Adamos_Amet]

Teuchi Ichiraku was not a shinobi. He had never wanted to be one.

His family had been among the first civilians to settle in Konoha. Before that, during the bloody Warring States Era, civilians had no real place amongst shinobi unless you were a noble. But the First Hokage had understood that a village needed more than warriors to survive.

So the civilians came.

Farmers, craftsmen, traders, and artisans. The Ichiraku came all the way from the Shina province of the Fire Nation, carrying little more than a worn recipe for shina soba and the hope that a better life was waiting for them here. Over the years, their recipe had changed until shina soba became something else altogether.

Ramen.

The man rose before the sun with a stretch and cold water to his face. Teuchi wore a white tunic and red apron.

"Ayame chan. Time to wake up."

A groan from upstairs.

She was not his by blood. He had found her the night of the Kyuubi attack with nowhere to go and no one left to take her. He had not thought twice about it. That was just the kind of man Teuchi was. The mornings, though, were a different battle entirely for his little girl.

"Can't we open later?"

"The early bird gets the worm."

Thankfully the man had set up shop in his house. The kitchen greeted him with the low creak of floorboards underfoot. The smell of yesterday's broth still hanging faintly in the air. And the quiet that only existed in that hour before the village woke. He worked through the prep without thinking, his hands knowing exactly where to go.

Their shop was small.

Six seats, if you counted generously. Most people ordered to go rather than eating at the shop. Teuchi did not mind either way. There was something right about a place that did not try to be more than it was.

A bowl of good food waiting for you at the end of a long day, or the beginning of one.

Teuchi waited for the first customer of the day.

It was going to be Naruto.

Rain or shine, the boy came in like clockwork for his breakfast, a bowl of tonkotsu ramen before heading off to the academy.

Teuchi always made sure to use the freshest ingredients for him.

He still remembered the first time Naruto had walked in six years ago. A rainy day with no other customers. Just a small blonde boy standing at the entrance, holding a few coins in his hands. Teuchi had hesitated because of the jinchuriki status. But when he looked at the boy's hungry expression, that was not a demon standing in his shop.

That was a hungry kid.

From that day on, Naruto had been his most loyal customer.

The curtains rustled.

Teuchi opened his mouth to call out his usual greeting, but the words stopped. The person who walked in was an armored midget.

"What can I do for you, sir?"

"Oji-san, why are you talking to me like that?"

Teuchi went still, recognizing that voice. "Naruto?"

Ayame came in from the back, still tying her apron, and said the same thing at almost the same moment. Naruto's helmet vanished with a shimmer of some kind of jutsu Teuchi could not begin to comprehend. Ayame, predictably, looked like she had just seen something wonderful.

"Teach me that jutsu," Ayame said. "So I would never have to get dressed myself in the morning again."

"Sorry, Ayame nee chan, I can't."

Ayame looked appropriately devastated. Teuchi smiled and looked at the boy's face covered in sweat, grime, and dirt. "Sorry about this, I was just training with Iruka sensei for the last hour."

"That's fine. Now come to the back and clean up," Ayame said, already steering him by the shoulder before he could argue.

Teuchi caught her eye and gave her a look that said clearly: do not you dare rope him into tasting your experiments again. Ayame had a habit of using Naruto as her personal test subject whenever she was working on a new ramen recipe. Naruto, for his part, never seemed to mind, which only encouraged her.

"How did the graduating exam go?" Teuchi said, setting a bowl down.

"I passed through unconventional ways. But I'm a genin now."

That was all Ayame needed. She wrapped both arms around him, squeezing hard enough that Naruto made a strangled noise against her shoulder.

"One small step to becoming the next Hokage," the older girl said into his hair.

Naruto pulled back, gave a small smile, and turned to the sink.

"Unconventional ways," Teuchi repeated, pouring the broth slowly. "Do I want to know?"

"Probably not."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm here, aren't I?"

Teuchi set the ladle down. "Fair enough."

For a moment there was only the sound of running water. Ayame caught Teuchi's eye from across the counter. He gave the smallest shake of his head.

Something was off.

Naruto always talked about being the Hokage. So what was that quiet response?

"You doing alright, kid?" Ayame asked, keeping her voice easy.

"Fine."

"You don't look fine."

"I just haven't slept."

"Naruto."

The boy splashed his face again. Gripped the edge of the sink. When he finally turned around, the armor was gone, swapped out for his orange shirt, and without the plating he looked younger. He sat down on the stool and looked at the bowl Teuchi set in front of him.

For a long moment he did not touch it.

"I found out about the fox."

Teuchi's ladle hovered over the second bowl, broth threatening to spill over the rim. He set it down carefully and placed it beside the first without a word. "A bowl for Naruto Uzumaki."

"Not for the fox," Naruto said quietly, like he was afraid of what the answer might be.

"No," Teuchi said. "For the champion of last year's ramen eating competition."

The smile that broke across Naruto's face was like a sunrise over a rooftop. He picked up the bowl with both hands and started sliding ramen into his mouth with the focused urgency of someone who had not eaten in days.

Teuchi could barely keep pace.

"What are you two even talking about?" Ayame said, looking between them.

Naruto slowed. Set the bowl down.

Teuchi could see it happening in real time. The pull to tell her. To stop carrying it alone. It was written plainly across his face.

Teuchi quietly set a glass of water in front of him.

"Eat more slowly," he said. "You'll choke."

"Dad. What's going on?"

Teuchi gave her his best unbothered smile. "Don't worry about it. It's a man thing. Now do me a favor and go to my room and bring my journal, would you? I want to give Naruto something."

She looked between them once more, puzzled, then shrugged and disappeared down the hall.

"Some things are better left unsaid, Naruto."

"Wouldn't that be lying?"

"Sometimes lying is a kindness."

Teuchi hated how true that felt even as he said it. "Ayame was four years old during the Kyuubi attack. She doesn't remember it, and that is the only good thing to come out of that night. She doesn't need to be reminded of it, not like this."

Teuchi could hear the weight of it settling on him.

"Would she see me as the fox?"

"No," Teuchi said without hesitation.

Naruto did not look convinced.

Teuchi reached into the prep tray and placed something carefully into the fresh bowl he was building. A fishcake cut and shaped into the rough likeness of a boy with spiky hair and whiskers.

"Ayame made that a month ago, when she heard graduation was coming. She wanted you to have something special, fully believing in you."

Naruto's eyes went a little glassy.

He did not say anything for a long moment, just looked at the small handmade thing sitting in his broth. Teuchi had known about the Kyuubi for most of that time and had never once looked at him differently. Ayame had carved his face into a fishcake a month before he even graduated.

The math was not complicated if Naruto was willing to do it.

Slowly, the tension in his shoulders came down.

Ayame came back with a journal in hand and stopped when she saw Naruto holding up the fishcake with a teary eyed smile.

"Thanks, Ayame nee chan."

She turned to her father with an expression of pure betrayal.

Teuchi scratched the back of his head.

"Sorry."

Ayame stared at him a moment longer, then reached into the journal and pulled out a small folded slip of paper.

"This is a one hundred free bowls of ramen coupon from my father. But since he gave you my gift, I'll give you his," she announced. "Redeemable whenever you want."

Naruto looked at the coupon in one hand and the fishcake in the other. He held them both carefully, like they were something he did not want to drop.

"Thank you."

It was barely above a whisper but it filled the whole shop anyway.

Ayame ruffled his hair and Teuchi set a fresh steaming bowl down in front of him.

"Eat up," Teuchi said. "You've got a whole shinobi world to introduce yourself to."

Naruto set both gifts down gently, picked up his chopsticks, and grinned. "You'd better start on the next fifty bowls right now, dattebayo. I've been flying for days and I have an appetite to match."

Neither of them knew what flying had to do with anything, but they had learned long ago not to ask Naruto follow up questions for the sake of their sanity.

Teuchi looked at Ayame and said, "Get more pork out of the back."

---

After eight years of being surrounded by the weak and the sycophantic, Sasuke Uchiha's ambition was finally beginning to take shape. The thought should have filled him with something. Pride, maybe. Some form of satisfaction.

But it did not.

It only sharpened the reminder of how far he still had to go.

Compared to Itachi, he was nothing.

That monster had been an Anbu captain at his age, while Sasuke was sitting here being a genin. The gap between them was a chasm. And no matter how fast he ran toward the edge of it, the other side never seemed any closer.

He sat at his desk by the window and let his gaze drift over his classmates. Half of them would be dead within a year of real fieldwork, leaving behind grieving parents and younger siblings who would never fully understand why. He did not care about any of them. But the thought of that kind of loss being visited on someone sat uncomfortably in him.

"Sasuke kun!"

Every day was the same performance of waving, giggling, and the need to be noticed by him. Sasuke let it fade into noise and closed his eyes. He had training to plan for.

Ninjutsu today, or taijutsu.

Suddenly the noise stopped, followed by the creak of a floorboard as a heavy thud sounded beside him.

Sasuke looked sideways.

Someone in full battle armor had sat down next to him. The Uchiha's eyes landed on the shield resting against the desk with a lion insignia engraved across its surface.

What clan has that as their symbol? Sasuke thought, looking around the room.

Everyone else was wearing the same expression he imagined was on his own face.

Who was this stranger?

Meanwhile Naruto felt like a bottle about to burst. Fifty five bowls of ramen was a new personal best. He rubbed his stomach while noticing the room was far too quiet for a graduating class.

"Why is everyone so quiet?" the blonde asked, opening his visor to breathe.

"Naruto?"

"Yeah."

The silence lasted a few seconds before someone in the back decided to open his mouth. "You know this is the class for graduating students, right? Not for deadlast who failed three times."

Naruto's hand moved automatically toward his head... armband.

Many questioned how the boy had graduated when Kiba's voice cut across the room. "Hey, leave him alone. He probably thinks the armor is going to make him Hokage."

Laughter rippled through the class.

Sasuke watched the young Uzumaki from the corner of his eye. The expression that crossed Naruto's face was not the loud, defensive bluster he had come to associate with the boy.

It was one of quiet anger.

Something the Uchiha had worn every time someone spoke about the Uchiha clan with disrespect.

While the class laughed, Sasuke caught Naruto murmuring under his breath. "Don't do it. It's not worth it. Oscar wouldn't want you to stoop to his level."

Kiba, seeing that Naruto was not rising to it, decided to push further. He sauntered closer, exaggerating a sniff, then recoiled. "Whoa. Pee yew." He waved a hand in front of his nose. "Where'd you get that armor, deadlast? The sewer?"

A vein pressed against Naruto's temple. He knew the armor did not smell right. He had washed it a dozen times. It did not matter. The smell of the asylum demon still clung to the metal like it had been worked into the grain of it, and no amount of scrubbing was going to change that. But Kiba was not worth the energy it would take to be angry at him.

When Naruto did not react, the Inuzuka's eyes drifted down to the hilt of the Astora straight sword at his belt.

His hand moved toward it.

That got a reaction.

Naruto's backhand caught Kiba across the arm hard enough that the boy felt the numbness travel all the way to his shoulder. Before Kiba could process it, Naruto had him by the collar.

"What is your problem?"

"Let go of my collar, deadlast," Kiba snarled up at him. Akamaru barked twice from the corner.

Naruto shoved him back and returned to his seat.

This is not worth it.

Kiba rolled his shoulder, working the feeling back into his arm, and laughed. "Ha. Deadlast thinks he's tough now. Bit of stolen armor, a busted sword and suddenly he's somebody." He shook his head like it was the funniest thing he had heard all week. "Bet he grabbed both off some scam merchant who saw him coming."

Naruto stopped and knew exactly what Kiba was.

A loudmouth who said whatever came to mind if it meant looking tough in front of an audience. Someone who did not think before he spoke and did not particularly care to start. On any other day, Naruto could let it go. People had been saying worse about him his whole life and he was still standing.

But this was different.

Kiba had not just taken a shot at him. He had taken a shot at the armor. At everything Oscar had left behind. At everything that had been trusted to him. Naruto did not care what people said about him.

But he drew the line at the legacy he had been given.

While he wanted to beat Kiba black and blue, that was not the knight's way.

Precept the Eight: On the matter of honor and insult. A knight does not brawl in anger, nor does he raise his fist to silence mockery. But when his name, his order, or the legacy entrusted to him is brought into question before witnesses, he has not only the right but the obligation to demand satisfaction through honorable contest. Let the outcome speak what words cannot. Let conduct in battle answer what conduct in speech has wronged.

Naruto turned around. "Kiba." His voice was flat and even. "Outside. You and me. You lose, you apologize for what you said."

Kiba blinked, then broke into a wide grin like he had just been handed something. "Oh yeah? Fine by me, dead last. Been looking for an excuse to show off anyway."

He glanced sideways at the front row with the easy confidence of someone who had never once been told his charm was not landing. The girls looked uniformly disgusted.

"Let's go. I've been wanting to put you on the ground since you walked in here smelling like that."

---

The entire class migrated to the windows, pressing against each other to get a better look at the lawn where Naruto and Kiba stood facing each other.

"Kiba's going to destroy him," someone said from the back.

"Obviously. Did you see how slow Naruto was walking? That armor is dead weight."

"Dead last versus a clan shinobi." A boy near the middle shook his head. "Someone should have talked him out of this."

"Would have saved him the embarrassment."

The betting started quietly and spread fast, with the odds stacking up heavily in one direction.

"I'll bet on the other side."

"You're betting on Naruto?" Sakura stared at Ino. "Seriously?"

"Why not?"

"Because Kiba is going to win."

"Maybe." Ino tilted her head slightly. "But think about it for a second. Kiba is out there because his ego got bumped. That's the only reason he took the challenge." She paused. "Naruto is out there fighting because something actually mattered to him."

"So?"

"A shinobi who is fighting for a cause will always be more dangerous than one who is fighting for applause. The one with something real to protect does not have a ceiling on how far they will push themselves. Kiba has a limit. I'm not sure Naruto does right now."

The class was quiet for a moment.

"That's a lot of philosophy for a schoolyard fight," someone muttered.

"You asked," Ino said simply.

Sakura looked at her rival for a moment longer, then back at the window.

Hinata also wanted to bet on Naruto, but she could not find the courage to speak out. Somewhere underneath the silence she prayed for the young Uzumaki.

Please win.

"Sasuke kun." Sakura drifted toward him, tucking a strand of pink hair behind her ear. "Do you want to take a bet?"

Sasuke had not moved from his seat when the rest of the class rushed over. He had simply turned to the side watching. In all his years at this academy he could count on one hand the number of things that had genuinely held his attention.

---

Kiba rolled his neck, grinning.

"You see that?" He jerked his chin toward the academy class without looking away from Naruto. "Not one of them thinks you're walking away from this. Except Ino, but that girl's been crazy since the second grade."

Naruto calmly closed his visor with a soft metallic click. He raised his right hand in the sign of confrontation. Kiba mirrored it, then he moved.

A shuriken curved toward the side of Naruto's neck. Kiba was already charging behind it, his handnails lengthening into dark curved claws.

Ninja Art of Beast Mimicry: Claw Jutsu!

The shuriken struck the pauldron at Naruto's neck and bounced off clean. Kiba's claws found the chest plate a half second later. And the sound they made was not the sound of tearing metal.

It was the sound of breaking.

Kiba yanked his hand back, staring at his claws cracked at the base and bleeding at the cuticle.

In the classroom the noise started immediately.

"Did you see that?"

"The shuriken just bounced off. Kiba's claw jutsu broke."

"That armor is the real deal?"

Kiba shook his hand once and reset his stance. A smoke bomb hit the grass and bloomed outward in a gray white cloud that swallowed the center of the lawn entirely. Two figures burst from either side of it simultaneously. Both Kibas coming from opposite angles.

"He transformed Akamaru to look like him," Sakura noted from the class.

"That's the Inuzuka clan's Beast Mimicry: Man Beast Clone Jutsu."

Kiba taunted Naruto. "You could not even make a clone yesterday, deadlast. How does it feel knowing you're about to lose to an actual genin who can make solid clones?"

Ninja Art: Shadow Clone Jutsu!

Thirty clones popped in a ring around both Kibas before either of them could close the distance. The classroom exploded.

"How many is that? Fifteen? Twenty?"

"Where did he even learn that?"

"Are those physical clones?"

"Yeah, they all have their own shadows. Isn't that supposed to be a jonin level jutsu?"

Sasuke leaned forward, wondering how a fight between him and Naruto would go. The armor was a problem against the Uchiha shurikenjutsu. But armor was still metal, and metal conducted heat. A Great Fireball would just cook whatever was inside.

Sasuke settled back in his chair, watching Naruto below with quiet respect.

Kunai appeared in each clone's hand with a shimmer before the entire ring threw simultaneously.

"Akamaru, dig! Now!"

Ninja Art of Beast Mimicry: Digger Dog Jutsu!

The earth split open and swallowed them both, the kunai punching into empty ground a half second after they disappeared. The ground in front of Naruto buckled.

Ninja Art: Body Flicker Jutsu!

The squire was gone before the earth broke open. Kiba and Akamaru erupted up from the ground in a tight spinning formation, found nothing but air where Naruto had been standing, and twisted mid arc to reorient.

"Akamaru. Let's end this."

They moved into position back to back, chakra beginning to wind around them both in visible currents, pulling loose grass and dirt into slow orbit around their bodies.

Man Beast Ultimate Taijutsu: Fang Over Fang!

The rotation built from nothing into a shriek of compressed air in under two seconds, a double drill of boy and dog tearing across the lawn with enough force to throw a divot of earth behind each of them. Naruto's clones moved into a formation, locking shields together edge to edge.

A wall of overlapping steel planted into the grass.

Fang Over Fang hit it like a battering ram.

The wall formation burst into white smoke with clones dispersing in every direction. But Akamaru and Kiba had lost their spin entirely, leaving them midair with nothing but forward inertia carrying them.

Naruto finished his handsign.

Body Flicker closed the distance in a blink. He came up with a spinning heel kick that caught Kiba directly on the jaw. The steel boot connected with a sound like a hammer hitting a post.

Kiba's jaw did not snap back.

It swung.

Wrenched clean to the side like a door knocked off its lower hinge, hanging at an angle that made it immediately obvious that something had come apart inside it that was not supposed to.

The class went silent.

Kiba hit the grass and did not move.

Arf.

Akamaru launched himself at Naruto's leg, biting down with everything he had. His teeth unable to get through the armor, but not letting go either. He was shaking in fear, yet planting himself between Naruto and Kiba the only way he knew how. Despite his jaw hanging completely off to the side, Kiba was still conscious.

The sight made several students at the window flinch and look away.

"Say you're sorry," Naruto said in a calm voice.

Kiba stared up at him and spat out.

Which, given the state of his jaw, was not a good idea and accomplished very little other than pushing Naruto over the edge.

The young squire reached down and closed his hand around Kiba's throat. "YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY, KIBA? YOU THINK I AM PLAYING WITH YOU RIGHT NOW? SAY YOU ARE SORRY. SAY YOU ARE SORRY FOR WHAT YOU SAID. SAY YOU ARE SORRY FOR TARNISHING MY MASTER'S NAME."

His grip tightened.

"SAY IT. OR I WILL END YOUR WORTHLESS LIFE RIGHT HERE ON THIS LAWN."

The killer intent came off Naruto like a pressure drop before a storm. Every student pressed against that classroom window felt it at the same time. A cold that had nothing to do with temperature. A sensation of being somewhere that something terrible had already happened and would happen again.

For a single moment the academy lawn felt exactly like the Northern Undead Asylum.

Whimper.

Naruto paused at the sound.

Akamaru had released his leg. The dog was sitting in the grass trembling, his eyes fixed on Naruto, crying in a thin helpless way. The sight alone melted Naruto's killer intent.

All the while, the door to the classroom slammed open.

"WHAT IS GOING ON OUT HERE?!"

Iruka took one look at the class, Kiba's jaw, and crossed the lawn in seconds. "Naruto." His voice had shifted into the tone that left no room for discussion. "Step back. Give him to me." He was already kneeling beside Kiba, checking his pulse, assessing the jaw with what he had learned about basic aid. "We are going to the nurse's office right now. Afterward you are going to tell me exactly what happened. Every detail."

---

Naruto sat on the bench outside the nurse's office with his helmet in between his knees, staring at the floor. The hallway was quiet except for the muffled voices coming through the door. Akamaru sat beside him.

"Sorry it went that far."

Akamaru let out a long, low sound, somewhere between a whine and a bark. It was an apology, offered on behalf of someone who had not been willing to offer it himself.

"You don't have to do that," Naruto said. "It wasn't your fault."

Akamaru whined once and looked at the door.

"He had chances," Naruto said. "You know that, right? I gave him chances."

The little dog nodded in agreement.

Naruto reached over and scratched behind his ear. "You know, between the two of you, I think you might be the brains of the operation."

Akamaru sneezed, which Naruto decided to take as agreement.

The door opened and Iruka stepped out, pulling it halfway closed behind him.

"Kiba's jaw has been treated. It was a fresh break, so the medical nin was able to set it cleanly." He looked down at Akamaru. "You can go in and see him. Once the nurse clears you both, head back to class."

Akamaru barked, sharp and grateful, and disappeared through the door.

Iruka turned back to Naruto. "Come on. Let's find somewhere quieter."

The academy rooftop was empty at this hour, the village spread out below them in the late morning light. Iruka sat on the ledge and Naruto stood a few feet away.

"Kiba gave me his side of the story," Iruka said. "Now I want yours."

Naruto talked, and by the end he wasn't looking at Iruka anymore.

The silence that followed was long enough that the boy finally turned to see what was on his teacher's face.

"Naruto, I don't want to come across as dismissive, but breaking a classmate's jaw over a piece of armor. Don't you think that was a bit much?"

"It's not about the armor." Naruto turned away. Of all the people to not get it, he hadn't expected it to be Iruka sensei. "You don't understand."

"You're right. I don't understand. So explain it to me."

When he spoke again, his voice was quieter, but the tears were already there, and he was fighting them with everything he had.

"This is my master's legacy. A knight gives their armor to their squire when they are dying. That's what this is. That's what he gave me. All he had at the end was me, and he gave me everything he carried with him his whole life." Naruto looked into Iruka's eyes. "I didn't break Kiba's jaw because of what he said to me. I broke it because he mocked and laughed at the only thing my master left behind. And I gave him chances, Iruka sensei. I gave him every chance to just stop." His voice broke completely on the last word. "So go ahead. Tell me Kiba was in the right. Tell me he didn't deserve it. Tell me I should've just sat there and let that dog keep barking."

Iruka didn't say any of those things. He just put his arms around Naruto and held on.

"Let it out," he said. "Don't you dare stop it."

And Naruto broke into tears, muffled against Iruka's vest. The older man held him and let it run its course. When the worst of it had passed and Naruto was just shaking quietly, he spoke, keeping his voice low.

"My parents died during the Kyuubi attack. You already know that," Iruka said. "What you don't know is that for the first month afterward I didn't cry once. Not once. I thought that meant I was handling it. I thought I was being strong."

He felt Naruto still slightly against him.

"I wasn't handling anything. I was just postponing it. And when it finally came, it came apart all at once and I was completely alone when it happened because I had spent so long convincing everyone around me that I was fine."

Naruto pulled back. His eyes were red and his face was a mess and he made no attempt to hide any of it.

"Does it get better?"

"It gets different," the older man said honestly. "The loss doesn't shrink. You just slowly build a life that's bigger than it. And one day you realize you've gone a whole morning without it being the first thing you thought about. And then a whole afternoon. And eventually it becomes something you carry instead of something that's carrying you."

He looked at the armor again.

"Oscar sounds like he was someone worth grieving."

Naruto wiped his face with the back of his hand. "I never got to tell him what his actions meant to me."

"He knew," Iruka said.

"You don't know that."

"No," Iruka admitted. "But I know that people who give away everything they own at the end of their life don't do it for strangers. He knew exactly what you meant to him. And I think somewhere underneath all of this, you know that too."

Naruto looked out over the village for a long moment. The wind moved through the trees below them. Somewhere in the distance a hawk circled lazily over the rooftops.

"I just miss him."

"You're going to miss him for a long time. And that's just what love costs."

Naruto said nothing. But he stopped fighting the tears that were still coming, and that, Iruka thought, was a start.

---

The classroom felt different when Naruto walked back in.

The way conversations dropped when he walked near them. The way eyes moved toward him and then away. He could read the room well enough to sort them into categories. Respect from some. Caution from others. And from a few, something closer to fear.

A week ago this was all he ever wanted.

Naruto had spent most of his childhood doing increasingly desperate things just to make people look at him like he existed. And now here it was, handed to him, and his mind couldn't hold onto it because Oscar's last words kept moving through it like water finding the low ground.

Live for yourself. Not to prove something to someone else. Not to earn what should have always been yours. The world is yours. Do not spend it looking for permission to exist in it.

"Hey."

Naruto blinked.

Ino was standing in front of him, platinum blonde hair over one shoulder, holding a stack of bills out toward him with her usual confidence. "Thanks for winning me the bet."

"Sure," Naruto said.

She studied him for a moment, her eyes doing something more careful than her tone suggested. "I'm around if you want to talk. We Yamanaka know a thing or two about what goes on inside people's heads. Professionally speaking."

For a moment Naruto almost asked what had prompted that, because as far as he could remember Ino had never gone out of her way to talk to him. But he found he didn't have the energy to be suspicious about kindness today. He gave her a single nod and moved past her toward his seat.

Sakura, who had been talking to the wall that was Sasuke, went completely quiet the moment Naruto sat down. The boy leaned back in his chair, let his head fall against the rest.

"What do you want, Sasuke?"

Naruto could feel the gaze burning into the side of his head.

"You're strong."

It wasn't a compliment exactly. It was more like an observation delivered with a slight forward tilt of the chin.

Naruto thought about how much time he had spent over the years wanting to hear something like that from Sasuke Uchiha specifically. Wanting to stand across from him as an equal. It had been a kind of obsession once. The need to measure himself against the person the village had decided was the top of his generation.

He felt almost nothing about it now.

He had his own path.

"You should see me with a sword," Naruto said with a smirk.

Sasuke's gaze shifted down, studying the broken Astora sword hilt at his belt.

Sakura was looking at Naruto too. The boy had spent two years making it very easy for her to know how he felt about her. And now the thing she had always been able to predict about him was simply gone, and she didn't know what to do with that.

For the first time in a long time, the noise of other people's opinions felt like exactly what it was to Naruto.

Background noise.

---

Ino's eyes hadn't moved from the back of Naruto's head since he sat down.

"Your fickle nature is showing."

Shikamaru didn't look up from the desk. He had his chin resting on his folded arms, eyes half closed, with an expression he wore when he was paying more attention than he appeared to be. "What was that, Shika?"

"I didn't say anything."

"You said something."

"I made an observation. There's a difference."

"He's wondering if you now have a troublesome crush on Naruto," Choji said helpfully, reaching into his chip bag.

"I don't have a crush on Naruto."

"Then why have you been staring at him for the last twenty minutes?" Shikamaru stated.

"Because I'm trying to figure him out. That's completely different."

"Mm. Yeah. Completely different."

"It is." Ino turned back toward Naruto's direction. "Yesterday he was tripping over himself trying to get Sakura to notice him. And today he walks in wearing full battle armor, breaks Kiba's jaw, sits down without caring about what everyone thinks." She shook her head slowly. "That's not the same person. Something happened to him."

"People change," Choji said.

"Not overnight they don't."

Shikamaru opened one eye. "What exactly are you trying to figure out?"

"I don't know yet," Ino admitted, which was not a sentence she said very often.

Choji looked over at Naruto thoughtfully, his hand pausing halfway to his mouth. "The armor is real, you know. I don't think anyone's been taking that seriously enough."

"What do you mean?"

"The Akimichi are one of the only clans in Konoha that actually uses armor plating, not just chainmail." He tilted the bag and studied the remaining chips with the same attention he gave most important subjects. "What Naruto's wearing is better than the Akimichi's. The kind of armor gets made for people who go into situations where everything is trying to kill them all the time."

The three of them sat with that for a moment.

"So where did he get it?" Ino asked. "It looks custom made for his size."

"That's the question, isn't it," Shikamaru said quietly.

"He said it was his master's legacy," Ino said. "That's what started the whole thing with Kiba. He said Kiba disrespected his master's name."

"Naruto had a master?" Choji said.

"Apparently."

Shikamaru was quiet for a long moment. "Did you feel it?"

Ino went still. "The killer intent."

"Yeah."

A beat of silence.

"I felt it from up here," Choji said, and his voice had lost the easy warmth it usually carried. "It only lasted a second but it was killer intent that created a hallucinatory effect."

Shikamaru closed his eyes. "That's as far as I'm taking that thought. Way too troublesome."

Ino looked at Naruto again.

"Troublesome," Shikamaru muttered.

"What is?"

"You. You're not trying to figure out what happened to him. You already know something happened to him. What you're actually trying to figure out is whether the person he is now is worth knowing." Shikamaru groaned. "Which is a very different thing from not having a crush on him."

"Trying to taunt me into dropping this by bringing up some nonexistent crush isn't going to work," Ino said.

"Ino. Think about this honestly for a second. None of us have ever had anything to do with him. Choji and I at least crossed paths with him a few times over the years. You?"

The Nara paused to give his friend a hard look.

"You never gave him the time of day. So what changed in the last two hours that has you this invested, woman?"

Ino said nothing.

"Go back to thinking about Sasuke," Shikamaru said, settling his chin back onto his arms. "I'll watch the clouds. Choji will eat his chips. And Naruto Uzumaki will remain someone else's mystery because I have made a personal decision that he is too troublesome to think about before lunch."

"He has a point."

"Eat your chips, Choji," Ino said.

"I am eating my chips," Choji said.

Shikamaru said nothing, which meant he felt he had made his point sufficiently and was now done with the conversation. He put his head back down on his arms.

Ino turned forward and looked at the back of Naruto's head one more time. Yesterday she had known exactly what Naruto Uzumaki was. Loud, obvious, and harmless.

She had been wrong about that.

She could admit it, at least to herself.

The question was what she had been wrong about exactly. And she found that she genuinely wanted to find out more.

What was the mystery behind Naruto Uzumaki?

---

Kiba sat in the corner of the classroom with an icepack pressed against his jaw, glaring at the back of Naruto's head with focused resentment.

"Don't tell me you're thinking about going again."

Kiba startled and turned to find Shino sitting beside him. A single beetle making its way slowly across his knuckle with the unhurried patience that seemed to characterize everything about the Aburame clan.

"I wasn't thinking about going again," Kiba muttered.

"You had the expression of someone thinking about going again."

"I was just looking at him."

"With the expression of someone thinking about going again."

Akamaru shook his head once. Kiba shot him a look.

"Naruto only won because of the shadow clone jutsu," Kiba said. "That's it. That's the whole fight. Without that jutsu he's nothing."

"So your position is that another shinobi who defeated you did so by effectively using a jutsu."

"It shouldn't even be something a genin can use."

"And yet he used it. And you lost." Shino tilted his head slightly. "I'm not sure that framing helps your argument."

Kiba pressed the icepack harder against his jaw. "What do you want, Shino? I'm not in the mood."

"My kikaichu are behaving unusually."

"What does that mean?"

"It means they are reacting to something. They've been since Naruto walked into the room." Shino raised his finger slightly, watching the beetle on his knuckle. "Chakra is what they react to. But what they are sensing from Naruto is something different."

"Different how?"

Shino considered the word carefully. "Something that makes them want to move toward it and away from it at the same time." He paused. "I have never encountered that particular combination before."

"You're telling me your bugs have feelings about Naruto."

"I'm telling you my bugs are sensing something in Naruto that I cannot currently explain. Which, given what I know about my bugs, I find more concerning than anything that happened in your one sided fight today."

Akamaru whined softly.

"Your ninken felt it too."

Akamaru looked at the floor and said nothing, which was answer enough. Kiba glanced between his dog and the Aburame, then back at the back of Naruto's head. Something shifted in his expression that was not quite his usual bluster.

"Whatever," he muttered. "He still got lucky."

---

Theories spread through the classroom fast and increasingly detached from anything resembling evidence.

"He's been sandbagging. The whole dead last thing was an act."

Hinata ignored the conspiracy theories rippling through the classroom.

A Hyuga's eyes will show them the truth about the world.

She had heard that phrase her entire life, usually from her father. The Byakugan saw what was actually there and reported back without sentiment. If something had changed about Naruto Uzumaki, her eyes would show her what. She activated it quietly, the veins rising beside her eyes without fanfare, and turned her gaze toward him.

Then she went still.

His body was different.

She had observed Naruto before, enough times that she had an accurate baseline of what his body looked like. The muscle density was fundamentally altered. The fibers were thicker and more uniformly developed than anything she had seen produced by physical training alone.

His bones were denser too.

That kind of density took years of sustained conditioning to build.

Naruto had not had years.

Something had done this to him in a very short window and she had no framework for how.

Her eyes moved and found the seal on his back.

She knew about the seal on his stomach. But this one was different. More like a tattoo than a seal, but there was a flow of energy inside its geometric structure. Then her eyes found a flame on his palm.

Before she had activated her dojutsu, she had been willing to believe this was a bad day. Everyone had bad days. Even people you had watched from a careful distance for years and built careful pictures of were allowed to have days that did not fit the picture.

But this was not a bad day.

Something significant had happened to Naruto Uzumaki. Something that had changed the structure of his body and left marks on him that she could not read and a flame in his hand that she could not explain. And whatever it was, it had happened recently enough that Naruto did not have this a few days prior.

She wanted to know.

More than that, she wanted to know that he was alright.

She had spent years watching him from a careful distance and not once had she done anything with what she saw except hold it quietly and hope he was okay.

Not today.

I can do this, she thought. I need to do this.

She pushed her chair back in a show of bravery for the shy girl.

The classroom door opened. Iruka walked in with a stack of papers under his arm. "Alright everyone, settle down."

Hinata sat down.

She wanted to cry. After finally finding the courage to talk to the boy she admired, the world had closed the door in her face.

Maybe next time.

---

"You're shinobi now."

A few of the genin jumped in their seats.

Good. At least they were paying attention.

"The headband you earned is nothing more than a first step. Yesterday you had nothing. Today you have a rank and a standing in this village among people who once stood in the same place you did."

Iruka paused, letting that settle across the room.

"Whether you were first or last yesterday has no bearing on who you are today. You are genin. Nothing but genin. Yesterday you were the oldest and the strongest in this academy. Today you are the youngest and the weakest in Konoha."

He watched the faces in front of him absorb it. They needed to hear this more than they needed to feel good about themselves right now.

"Be proud that you passed. You earned that. But remember that you are stepping out of a school and into a world that does not grade on a curve and does not care how you ranked among twelve year olds. Do not doubt the skills you built here. But do not become arrogant with them either."

He looked across the room one final time.

"Because today, you are nothing but genin." He picked up the team assignment sheet. "The teams assigned to jonin instructors are as follows."

He worked through the list steadily, a mix of civilian and clan shinobi distributed across each team by a selection process that had more thought behind it than most of the students would ever know.

"Team Ten under Asuma Sarutobi: Ino Yamanaka, Choji Akimichi, and Shikamaru Nara."

The Yamanaka, Nara, and Akimichi had been pairing their children together for years. The combination of their clan abilities was something Hashirama Senju himself had reportedly called without equal. It was tradition in the truest sense, and Iruka had never once expected it to change. What he had expected was for Ino to make some noise about not being placed with Sasuke.

Nothing came.

The girl was sitting with her chin resting in her hand, looking at Naruto for some reason.

Iruka moved on.

"Team Eight under Kurenai Yuhi: Kiba Inuzuka, Shino Aburame, and Hinata Hyuga."

On paper it read as a tracker team, which was fine. What puzzled him was that Kurenai was a famous genjutsu specialist. Why she wanted three sensor and tracking types was her business, and Iruka trusted she had a reason.

He took a short breath before the next one.

"Team Seven under Kakashi Hatake: Sasuke Uchiha, Sakura Haruno."

Sakura threw both hands in the air like she had just won something. Iruka did not begrudge her the feeling. Young people were allowed their infatuations. He just quietly hoped that somewhere down the road Sakura Haruno would find something to be that passionate about that could actually be built into a career.

"And Naruto Uzumaki."

Sakura's cheer stopped abruptly.

Meanwhile Naruto was mentally weighing whether he had enough time to travel back to Lordran and accomplish something meaningful before his jonin instructor showed up.

Sasuke muttered under his breath, "At least I got one worthwhile teammate."

Iruka looked at Team Seven and felt something in his chest that was equal parts amusement and genuine concern.

Kakashi had failed every genin team he had ever been handed, without exception. And now the Hokage had seen fit to give him a brooding avenger, the most unpredictable ninja, and Sakura.

He prayed for all four of them.

Kakashi perhaps most of all.

---

Author's Note: Q and A Time

---

Q: What was the Black Knight in the previous chapter?

The Black Knights were once the proud Silver Knights of Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight. Long ago they fought chaos demons and were charred black in the process, which also gave them their high fire resistance. Many traveled with Lord Gwyn to the Kiln of the First Flame and were burned to ashes when he linked it, wandering the world as disembodied spirits ever after. Think of them as ghosts moving a suit of armor around.

As for why one was in the Asylum specifically, you can actually encounter three Black Knights ingame in the Northern Undead Asylum when you return to fight the Stray Demon, so his presence there was lore accurate.

---

Q: Is Naruto still Hollow, fully human, or something in between now that he's back in his world?

He is Undead. As per the title of this fanfic.

---

Q: Does the fox chakra interact with what Naruto brought back from Lordran?

Yes, and in a big way. Chakra and Kyuubi chakra specifically will interact with a lot of Lordran mechanics going forward. Magic, miracles, and pyromancy will all have their moment to shine when they come into contact with chakra. There is a lot of interesting territory to explore there.

---

Q: What did Shino's bugs sense, and what was the flame Hinata saw with her Byakugan?

Both were detecting the same thing: the pyromancy flame living inside Naruto's palm. When it is not being actively used it sits dormant inside him, but its presence is still there and readable if you know how to look.

The Byakugan can see it and the Kikaichu can sense it. The bugs are drawn to it and repelled by it at the same time because it is something completely alien to anything in their world.

---

That's It… For Now.

And if you can't wait for the next update, you can read ahead to Chapter 100 on Patreon.

As always, I want to thank you all for taking the time to read, comment, and follow along with this story. Your feedback means more than you know, and it helps push me to make each chapter bigger, sharper, and more true to the worlds of Naruto and Dark Souls.

Until next time, Praise the Sun.

—Adam

 

[Nitramy]

Already imagining Naruto finding some humanity then this message shows up.

"Dark spirit Giantdad has invaded."

It is at this point that Naruto learns to harness the power of the Bass Cannon.

 

[Morkail]

If one demon has this effect on him what happens after a few bosses? lol.

 

[Bazka]

Thanks for the chap, it looks like the discord link has expired though?

 

[Wardemer]

If one demon has this effect on him what happens after a few bosses? lol.

Click to shrink...

I'm more interested on what the Kyubi's state is. Also, do the souls Naruto gets spend their time in the place the Kyubi is? Does the Kyubi feed on said souls?
Are they scared of each other?

So many questions...

 

[Adamos_Amet]

Thanks for the chap, it looks like the discord link has expired though?

Click to shrink...

Okay; before I give you a new discord link, I do have to warn you that on my discord server, we have a lot of discussions about the story and the future, exchanging ideas and more. So, joining the server will more than likely spoil a lot and I mean a lot of the story. So your choice, join at your risk lol.

Join the the ultimate cultivator chat group Discord Server!

Check out the the ultimate cultivator chat group community on Discord – hang out with 95 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

discord.gg

 

[Adamos_Amet]

Naruto sighed, slumping onto the table. The classroom was empty now except for the three of them. Everyone else had already filed out with their jonin instructors.

He didn't quite know what to make of his teammates.

Sakura Haruno had been his crush for years. He had never been entirely sure he could explain it, even to himself. She wasn't kind, not to him anyways. She hit him every time he asked her out. But there had been something about the way she approached things that a younger Naruto had found genuinely compelling.

The sharpness of her mind and voice. The way she cared about getting things right with a seriousness that most of their classmates couldn't be bothered with. He had liked that about her even when she was wasting that same sharp mind on the emo.

Naruto looked at Sakura.

Waited for the feeling that used to be there.

It didn't come.

The same as Sasuke's acknowledgment of his strength.

The best of their year by the academy's standards. A week ago he would have done almost anything to be taken seriously by either one of them. Now he was just waiting to see if they could give him a reason to take them seriously.

Well well well, how the turntables, Naruto thought, glancing at the clock without any particular satisfaction before standing up.

"Naruto, where are you going? Sensei could arrive any minute."

"Gotta take a massive dump," Naruto said, watching the disgust move across Sakura's face.

"Be quick," Sasuke said, without looking up. "We don't want to keep our jonin instructor waiting."

"Yeah yeah yeah."

If Kakashi was going to show up two hours late, Naruto figured he had time to slip into Lordran and be back before anyone noticed. He made his way to the bathroom, checked under every stall to confirm he was alone, and locked himself inside the last one.

[Do you wish to use item: Darksign?]
[Yes / No]

The stall filled with light.

---

The warmth of the bonfire settled over him like a blanket while his eyes adjusted.

"Welcome back to Firelink Shrine."

Naruto spun around hard enough that his hand went to his sword hilt. The Crestfallen Warrior was standing behind him.

"Don't do that," Naruto said, hand still on the broken hilt. "You scared me."

The warrior simply pointed to a mass of souls near the edge of Firelink Shrine. Suspended in its greenish light was an apparition of Naruto, preserved at the moment of his last death.

"What is that?"

"Souldrop," Alexander said.

"That's the whole explanation?"

"You die, you drop the souls you haven't used. That's your souldrop from the asylum."

"But I thought the souls just went away when you absorbed them."

"No." Alexander's voice was flat. "You need a firekeeper to use them. The firekeeper shapes them into something your body can actually use. Strength, endurance, whatever you're building toward. Your master didn't teach you that, little squire?"

"Oscar didn't exactly have a lot of time."

A silence passed between them that acknowledged that fact without dwelling on it.

The souldrop dissolved into Naruto on contact, spreading through his chest the way heat spread through cold hands.

[Souls: 10,120]

Naruto wondered how much stronger he could get with these souls before asking, "So where do I find this firekeeper?"

"She is in Firelink Shrine," Alexander said, already turning away. "Find her and let her do the rest."

The Crestfallen Warrior shooed Naruto away before moving toward a nearby well.

Two hollow corpses with small wisps of liquid humanity bleeding from their bodies like steam rising from cooling broth. Alexander collected it with his fingers with a smile. He had protected Naruto's souldrop for the past few days without moving.

He had earned these liquid humanities.

---

Naruto climbed up some stairs to the broken church. Its dome was broken at the center with a massive tree directly growing through it. The tree dwarfed the Hokage Monument in size, with its upper branches dissolving into the clouds in the sky. The giant crow that had taken him from the asylum sat on one of the branches.

Multiple paths branched off as the stairs leveled out, each one leading to a different section of the church.

Naruto took the second.

The hallway inside was long and cold, light falling through gaps in the broken ceiling in pale uneven columns. Giant earthen pots lined the walls toward the back. In the middle of the floor, a man knelt in prayer.

He's fatter than Choji, Naruto thought.

The man was armored neck to toe in layered metallic plating. He held a spiked mace with a shield covered in a colorful design. What nearly made Naruto lose his laugh out loud was the guy's stupid bowl cut.

"Hello there."

The man's eyes opened, deep set and cautious. "I believe we are not acquainted. I am Petrus of Thorolund." He paused. "Forgive me for being cautious, but I must ask that you maintain a respectful distance."

"Uh. Sure," Naruto said, stopping where he was.

"Do you have business with us?"

"I'm looking for the firekeeper. Do you know where she is?"

Petrus seemingly ignored the question. His gaze dropped to Naruto's armor with the focused attention of someone who recognized what they were looking at. "That armor belongs to the elite knights of Astora."

"You know it?"

"Are you from Astora yourself?"

"No. My master was. He passed the armor to me before he died."

Something shifted in Petrus's expression. Not softened exactly, but adjusted. He reached into his robes and produced a small coin, tossing it gently across the space between them. Naruto caught it on reflex.

It was copper, old and worn smooth at the edges. The face of an elderly man had been stamped into one side with faded precision.

"Thanks," Naruto said, turning it over. "But why?"

"You are not familiar with the tradition, my young squire?" Petrus said, assuming the natural authority of a man addressing someone who was clearly in need of instruction. Naruto didn't know how to feel about that.

"Copper coins are placed upon the eyes of the deceased. To pay the ferryman who carries souls to the bonfire."

Naruto looked around the church. "I haven't seen any ferrymen here."

"Oh, no, no. That is a tradition of the people. A superstition of devotion rather than literal practice." Petrus folded his hands. "I was simply paying my respects to a fallen warrior of the Way of White. Your master was of that order if he carried those arms."

Naruto closed his fingers around the coin. "Thank you."

He paused.

"What is the Way of White exactly? Oscar mentioned the Knight's precepts but he never had time to explain much else."

"Is this your way of honoring your fallen master, young squire? Seeking to understand the path your master walked?"

"Yeah," Naruto said, and found that he meant it. "I guess it is."

"The Way of White is a path of devotion. The way of the gods, of faith, of miracles granted to those who prove themselves worthy of divine attention."

"Miracles. Is that anything like pyromancy?"

Petrus's expression soured like milk left in the sun. "My dear young squire," he said, his voice retaining every courtesy while quietly evacuating all of its warmth. "We do not associate the gifts of the gods with the crude practices of barbarians."

"What?"

"Pyromancy is the power of demons. It is a heretical craft, born of the demonic flame and entirely beneath the dignity of any knight."

Naruto kept his face neutral and filed the information away carefully. Oscar actively encouraged his pyromancy. Had treated it as a tool like his sword. And Oscar had walked the same path Petrus was describing with apparent genuine devotion. One of them was wrong about what that path meant.

Naruto had a strong suspicion which one.

Either way, Petrus did not need to know about the flame in his arm.

"Understood," Naruto said simply. "So these miracles. Can I learn them?"

"I had intended to await my companions here in any case," he said. "So perhaps, while I wait, I could teach you some miracles. Would that please you, young squire?"

"Yep."

"Very well then. First, a Covenant with the Gods."

"What do I need to do?"

"You need only accept the light of All Father Lloyd, uncle of the Great Lord Gwyn himself, patron deity of Thorolund." Petrus produced a white talisman from the folds of his pouch. "Through this covenant, the power of miracles becomes available to you. Your faith does the rest."

Naruto understood approximately thirty percent of that but nodded anyway.

"By the grace of All Father Lloyd and in the light of Lord Gwyn, we gather to welcome a new soul into the sacred Way of White."

A warmth gathered around Naruto's shoulders. Not the warmth of the pyromancy flame. This was like standing in sunlight after a long time indoors.

"Do you renounce the Abyss, the servants of darkness, and the curse of the Dark Sign that plagues the Undead?"

"I renounce them," Naruto said, before he had fully decided to say it.

"Do you pledge to uphold the teachings of the Way of White, to serve the gods, and to maintain the bonfires that stave off the darkness?"

"I pledge my soul and my will."

Naruto wasn't entirely sure what that meant. But it felt true when he said it, which he supposed was the point.

The white talisman in Petrus's hand ripped cleanly down the middle and the pieces dissolved, spiraling outward around Naruto in a slow ring of light. It was a genuinely beautiful and magical experience.

"By the will of All Father Lloyd and the light of the Flame," Petrus intoned, "I baptize you into the Way of White. May your soul burn bright and your faith remain unbroken."

The light settled into him and was gone.

Naruto stood there for a moment and decided this was the coolest thing that had ever happened to him and moved on.

"Now," Petrus said, producing a new talisman, "let me share what I can. Their ultimate effectiveness will be determined by your efforts and your faith."

A system window opened in Naruto's vision.

[Wares]
[Miracles]

[Heal - 4,000 souls]
[Great Heal Excerpt - 10,000 souls]
[Seek Guidance - 2,000 souls]
[Force - 4,000 souls]
[Homeward - 8,000 souls]

[Talismans]
[Talisman - 1,000 souls]
[Thorolund Talisman - 5,000 souls]

Naruto stared at it. "Wait, I have to buy them from you?"

Petrus smiled with great serenity. "Knowledge has its costs, young squire. The gods provide the power. I provide the instruction. These things are not, strictly speaking, free."

Naruto stared at the price of Heal for a long moment. "Newcomers get a discount, right, dattebayo!"

"A promise is a promise," Petrus agreed pleasantly. "And commerce is commerce. The two need not conflict."

"What do you recommend I get?"

---

Alexander walked down toward the Firekeeper's cage and stopped.

No sign of Naruto whatsoever.

He looked up toward the church ruins. A faint shimmer of white light was bleeding out from the upper hallway. The specific residue of a covenant's baptism that Alexander recognized immediately because he had seen it before. It never meant anything good for anyone involved.

The crestfallen warrior started running.

He came to find Naruto holding a parchment.

"An excellent choice, young squire," Petrus was saying. "The Force miracle is widely favored among cleric knights and paladins. Reliable, versatile, and demands nothing more than genuine faith."

"That's great," Naruto said, still rotating the parchment. "But how do you actually use it?"

"Ah, well, you simply sit..."

"What are you doing?"

Both of them looked to the crestfallen.

"You are the one who sits by the bonfire," Petrus stated.

"Observant," Alexander said, walking forward.

"You are interrupting a private sermon."

"I am interrupting a clergyman of the Way of White doing business with a boy who doesn't know what he agreed to." Alexander kept walking. "Your order has a reputation in these lands. Not all of it flattering."

"You dare speak of the Way of White in such terms."

"Frequently and without much regret."

The pleasantness in Petrus's face left. His hand settled on his mace with the casual deliberateness of a man making a point he was not ready to fully commit to yet.

"Petrus." Naruto stepped between them. "Alexander is my friend."

The word dropped into the hallway and sat there.

Alexander looked at the boy. Nobody had called him a friend in a very long time. He was not entirely certain anybody ever had. The crestfallen warrior shook his head and reached out. He took Naruto firmly by the arm and steered him toward the stairs at the far end of the hallway. He pointed up and then to the side.

Naruto knew to trust the man who had sat beside his soul drop for three days without taking a single soul from it over the cleric who had charged him for stuff even though he joined their covenant.

Alexander turned back to Petrus.

The hallway settled into silence.

"I could have you reported," Petrus said. "Interrupting a sermon of the Way of White carries consequences."

"You are in Lordran," Alexander said. "Your church's reach in these lands is roughly equivalent to a strongly worded letter delivered to a pile of ash. That particular threat needs more foundation than you currently have."

"I have companions. Members of the order. I am not entirely without recourse, I assure you."

"Bring them," Alexander said, already turning. "I have given up on living and have nothing left to lose. Threatening a man in that condition is a peculiar strategy. I would think about it more carefully before committing."

He had taken a single step when the air shifted behind him.

He turned on instinct, shield coming up hard, and the Force miracle hit it like a wall collapsed outward. The shockwave expanded in a dome from Petrus's talisman and hit Alexander full in the front. He skidded back across the stone floor, boots dragging lines through the grit, absorbing the impact through his legs and his shield arm until he found his footing again.

He looked at Petrus over the rim of his shield.

"A holy man," he said, "attacking while another's back is turned." He reached into his pouch and produced a firebomb. "I cannot say I am surprised. It is almost admirably consistent with your order's broader reputation."

It hit the floor between the two men and bloomed into a low wide wall of fire.

"You will regret this," Petrus said.

"I have a long list of regrets already," Alexander said, a second firebomb loose in his hand. "You would be a minor entry among significant companies. I would consider carefully whether this is the hill you want to die on, cleric. Literally speaking."

The fire between them breathed.

Alexander turned and walked back toward the bonfire. He reached the bottom of the stairs and looked up toward the second floor landing.

No Naruto.

He looked left. Right. Up at the landing where he had delivered what he considered extremely clear instructions involving jumping from the second floor to the bonfire.

Where are you now... Naruto?

---

Naruto found a corpse on the second floor without any warning or ceremony.

It was just there, slumped against the wall at the top of a broken staircase that led up about four steps and then stopped into an open air room.

"Is it normal to find corpses in this place?"

He absorbed the soul and paused to look at where Alexander wanted him to go.

The second floor of the church had no place to go other than a large stone opening in the wall that looked like it had once housed an elevator. The shaft beyond it ran upward a considerable distance. The elevator itself was gone. What remained was a hole shape with a tunnel at the base leading downward into darkness.

The musty smell made his nose wrinkle but he jumped down.

The tunnel deposited him into the back area of the church. A wide open space ringed by moss covered pillars and walls.

Then Naruto spotted the treasure chest.

A greyish brown chest with a rounded top, reinforced with metal bindings and a weathered latch, sitting against the far wall like it had been waiting specifically for him. Naruto had always wanted to open a treasure chest. He crossed the space in a breath and opened it.

Bones.

Fragments of bone, actually, reduced almost entirely to white ash and arranged on ceramic plates, each piece emitting a faint golden glow from somewhere inside the marrow like the memory of warmth that had not fully left yet.

A system window opened.

[Item: Homeward Bone]

[Description: Bone fragment reduced to white ash. Return to last bonfire used for resting. Bonfires are fueled by bones of the Undead. In rare cases, the strong urge of their previous owner to seek bonfires enchants their bones with a homeward instinct.]

Naruto read it twice wondering if he can use these items to go back home without killing himself.

But...

"How do you even use this," he said. "Do I snort it? Eat it?" He made a face. "Gross."

He stored it away to think about later and turned around. Four more chests remained with unknown treasures.

"Lady luck is definitely on my side today."

The first held a new weapon.

A wooden handle with a spiked metal ball at the end.

[Item: Morning Star]

[Description: Hammer with a sharp spike on its pommel. One of the more barbaric cleric weapons. Uniquely, this hammer inflicts thrust damage and causes bleeding.]

Naruto swung it once experimentally. The weight was fine. The balance was manageable. But he would rather use a sword.

The second chest held a talisman, similar to the one Petrus had been using.

[Item: Talisman]

[Description: Medium for casting miracles of the Gods. Standard talisman issued to common believers. Equip talisman to cast miracles. Attune miracles from a scroll at a bonfire.]

Naruto pumped his fist once as he now knew what to do with the miracle.

The third chest made him go still.

He pulled out a handful of small red eyes, cracked across their surfaces like something had broken them from the inside trying to get out. They radiated something that made his hair rise up.

[Item: Cracked Red Eye Orb]

[Description: A fragment of forbidden knowledge. Grants its wielder access to abyssal realms where only the strongest prevail. The bearer becomes sovereign of the arena, binding all within until their opponent is vanquished. A pale echo of the Darkwraiths' true mastery.]

Naruto threw these eyes into his inventory with a visible shudder and moved on without further comment.

The fourth chest was behind a separate pillar. He was reaching for it when something in his peripheral vision made him stop. A cemetery ran along the cliffside. In Konoha graveyards were arranged in neat rows with maintained paths between them. These stone tombs jutted from the earth at irregular angles and sizes.

Naruto looked at it for a moment and opened the fourth chest.

He found a metallic object inside.

A medallion polished to a mirror finish. The edges were worked in an ornate design with a rusty chain wrapped around it tightly.

[Item: Lloyd's Talisman]

[Description: Talisman utilized by Allfather Lloyd's cleric knights to hunt down the Undead. Blocks Estus recovery within a limited area. In the outside world the Undead are accursed creatures and Lloyd's cleric knights are widely praised for their Undead hunts. This blessed talisman blocks Undead recovery allowing the knights to fight with impunity.]

Naruto read a couple of times as his mind focused on the location of these items, the treasure chests and their relation to the Way of White.

"This whole stash is a hunting kit," he said quietly. "These are not treasures. This is a stockpile for hunting Undead like me."

The anger came up slowly and then all at once.

"So that is what this is about. Petrus gets me to join the Way of White, uses me for whatever he needs, and then what. Put me down when I have served my purpose."

His boot connected with the chest before he fully decided to kick it. The wood cracked sharply, the chest tipped backward, rolled down the incline and disappeared over the cliff edge in a series of fading crashes.

Naruto stared at the empty space where it had been.

"Yeah," he said. "That is what I think of your holy coven, Petrus."

He stood there for a moment with the anger still in his chest. Then something quieter moved through him underneath it.

"I have got to thank Alexander for saving me back there from that scammer."

---

After calming down Naruto decided to use the staircase in the cemetery moving up to the Firelink Shrine.

Jumping down to the graveyard it felt like someone was watching him.

Naruto ignored the feeling as he walked past a strange sight. A shield resting against a scatter of bones, its face turned upward like it had been set down carefully by someone who had intended to come back for it.

He reached down.

Clack.

Clack.

The bones moved.

The shield came up on its own and Naruto found himself looking directly into the hollow sockets of an animated skeleton.

Drip.

Something warm hit his cheek.

Naruto touched it. His fingers came away red.

The skeleton was bleeding. Dark wet blood seeping through bone, running down its ribs and off its fingers. The scimitar came around in a wide arc before Naruto had finished processing any of this. He threw himself back, flickered sideways on instinct, and landed between two graves.

More of them were rising.

Not one or two. Every grave in the cemetery was moving. The earth breaking open with skeletal hands reaching upward through the soil. And every single one of them was bleeding, soaking the ground around them until the grass between the markers was dark and wet.

[Bleed Status Effect: 69%]

"What does that mean?"

The ground shook.

He turned to see a ten feet giant skeleton running at him. Its cleaver was roughly the same length as Naruto. Its eye sockets ran with dark rivulets of blood that dripped from its jaw in a continuous stream. It raised the cleaver with both hands and brought it down.

The blade hit the earth where Naruto had been standing and sent a crack running through the stone beneath it.

A dozen more skeletons closed from the left. He hurled a fireball into the group. The explosion tore through them with bones scattering outward in a radius of fire and smoke.

They began pulling themselves back together before the smoke cleared.

He felt lightheaded.

[Bleed Status Effect: 90%]

Naruto looked down at himself. His armor was soaked. The ground was soaked. The blood of the skeletons was everywhere. And apparently the system treated contact as doing something.

He jumped onto the nearest tombstone, then the next, moving across the tops of them in quick succession while wiping his face and hands against the inside of his sleeve as he went. The skeletons below tracked him with their swords reaching upward.

"This place is a goddamn deathtrap, dattebayo."

He pulled a kunai with an explosive tag and threw it into the densest cluster below. The explosion bought him a few seconds to breathe while the skeleton horde reformed.

He needed a weapon.

The Morning Star and axe were in his inventory but neither of them felt like the right answer to a horde of skeletons.

As if the universe was answering to his plight, he caught a glimmer between two grave markers.

A sword.

Stabbed point down into the earth beside a corpse slumped over a gravestone. The blade was catching what pale light filtered through the fog above. It was enormous. Six feet of double edged steel. The blade tapered gradually to a point with a long fuller running its center. Wide simple crossguard. A heavy pommel at the base that could crack stone if applied correctly.

Jackpot.

Naruto landed beside it and grabbed the handle with both hands.

It did not move.

He pulled harder. Nothing. The sword sat in the earth like it had grown there, heavier than his armor and completely indifferent to his effort.

The shadow fell over him before he heard the giant coming.

The Knight's sight made it known that the cleaver was already descending, with death's hands slowly closing around his throat. Naruto's chakra flooded through his arms and body faster than ever.

The sword came free. He swung it with the momentum of the pull. The blade caught the cleaver mid descent and redirected it hard into the earth beside him. The impact traveled up his arms and into his teeth.

Naruto swung the Zweihander up in a diagonal cut that caught the giant across its ribcage. It swung the cleaver horizontally at ankle height. Naruto jumped, landing on the flat of the cleaver, pushing toward the giant's skull with the Zweihander raised overhead.

The giant raised its free hand to block.

The blade broke through it, splitting the top of its skull.

The remaining skeletons were still coming.

Naruto jumped to the sky.

"Ninja Art: Shadow Clone Jutsu!"

The sky above the cemetery filled with white smoke as hundreds of Narutos dropped down from above with greatswords in their hands.

The cemetery became chaos.

The skeleton horde was thinning yet the clones started popping. One swing each, sometimes two, and then they were gone.

[Bleed Status Effect: 100%]

Blood erupted from every pore simultaneously. A full body expulsion that soaked through his underclothes and ran down his skin in hot sheets. A quarter of Naruto's health vanished in the same instant.

Covered in his own blood, the pieces seemingly clicked into place.

The skeleton blood was why the clones had been popping after a single swing each. They were getting damaged by the bleed status effect as the clones had less resistance to it.

Through Knight's sight Naruto looked down at himself standing in the middle of a graveyard soaked black with skeleton blood, his own blood cooling against his skin and hundreds of skeletons clattering toward him from every direction.

This place has a way of humbling you, he thought as a smoke bomb left his hand.

Black smoke rolled outward across the cemetery in a thick wall. Naruto ran out taking the cliffside path down at full speed.

The skeletons came after him.

"Cannot catch me because you are a bunch of stupid skeletons!" he shouted over his shoulder, legs pumping. "You all have ugly bones. Dattebayo!"

That was a clone.

The real Naruto was using the Cloak of Invisibility Technique, pressing himself flat against a remaining gravestone near the upper edge of the cemetery.

The cemetery settled into relative quiet.

Naruto's eyes moved across the ground.

Soul drops. A shield half buried in the earth near the far wall. A spear lying across two grave markers. He looked at the placement of them and at the angles from which the skeletons had risen.

The items were bait while the skeletons were the trap.

Who. What. Why.

The ground beside him shook him out of his thought.

Nope. Naruto used body flicker up the stairs toward the church.

---

"This must be the first path," Naruto muttered, stepping into a hallway that had seen better centuries. Water covered the floor in a shallow sheet, broken pillars that held no roof. The only thing of note was a statue at the far end, a woman seated on a throne of twisted branches. A child held against her chest, her stone expression looking at something that was not there anymore.

Weird, Naruto thought, and walked back to the bonfire. He practically fell down the last few steps as he almost kissed the bonfire out of happiness.

"Looks like you went through quite a lot out there." Alexander's voice came from his usual spot, carrying its customary absence of sympathy. "Hah."

"You can thank the graveyard skeletons for that." Naruto unequipped his armor piece by piece and sat down heavily beside the fire. He pulled a water bottle and a cloth from his inventory and began the slow process of removing the blood from his skin.

"How did you end up in the graveyard?"

"There's an opening in the elevator shaft. Leads to the back of the church and you can drop down from there." Naruto paused, cloth halfway down his forearm. "Wait. That was not where you were pointing me, was it."

"I wanted you to jump from the second floor landing down to the bonfire," Alexander said. "It is a very short drop."

The two of them sat in awkward silence.

"Anyways," Naruto said, wringing the cloth out. "Thanks for pulling me away from Petrus back there."

"It is never wise to involve yourself with the Way of White." Alexander's voice lost what little lightness it occasionally carried. "I have seen too many people, good people, die at the hands of their Undead hunts. They dress it in the language of devotion and the effect is the same. Hah. Martyrs and victims look very similar from a distance."

"Good thing I helped myself to his stockpile then." Naruto spread the contents of the back room across the stone beside the bonfire alongside tales of the treasure chests.

Alexander looked at the collection for a long moment. Then something moved in his expression that was almost a smile. "Good going, brat. That bastard deserves getting robbed blind. Hah."

Naruto nodded, beginning to clean the gauntlets. "I can't get my head around it. Oscar and Petrus both walk the same path. The Way of White produced both of them somehow."

"Good people exist inside bad institutions." Alexander leaned back against the stone. "That is not a new problem. But did Oscar ever use a miracle in your time with him?"

"No."

"There is your answer." Alexander settled back. "Your master was a knight of Astora. Not a cleric knight or paladin. Based on my hazy memories of Astora, the church and the crown do not share a leash. A knight sworn to his house follows his house first." He paused. "Although I will say this. Many knights across the seven kingdoms hold to the same ideals as the Way of White without belonging to it. The devotion and the institution are not always the same thing. Your master may have believed in everything Petrus claims to believe in and still had nothing to do with the man. That is not a contradiction. That is just how it works out here."

Naruto nodded, letting that new information become part of his world.

"Well." He reached into his inventory and pulled out the Zweihander, setting it upright beside him. The blade caught the firelight along its fuller. "At least I got something useful out of the whole mess."

Alexander looked at Naruto's arms, which were visibly shaking about the process of holding it upright. "You are going to need considerably more strength before that thing becomes anything other than a liability. It will send foes flying when used properly. Right now it would send you flying."

Naruto pulled up the system tabs.

[Item: Zweihander]
[Weapon Type: Ultra Greatsword]
[Strength Requirement: 24]
[Dexterity Requirement: 10]
[Physical Attack: 130]

He flipped to the next tab.

[Miracle: Force]
[Uses: 21]
[Description: Creates a shockwave. Inflicts no damage but propels foes back and defends against arrows. Cleric knights use this miracle when charging into enemy mobs.]
[Faith Required: 12]

Naruto frowned at the no damage line. Great, looks like I wasted a bunch of my souls on a lame spell. He closed the tabs and looked up.

"Where is the Firekeeper? I went through the entire church and the graveyard and half a hallway full of water and I never found her."

Alexander pointed. Beside the great tree was a staircase that led downward.

"I must have missed that," Naruto said, and waited for the warrior to come down with him.

Alexander had not moved.

Why should he? He had made a decision a long time ago about how much of himself he was willing to spend on a world that was rotting at its foundations, and that decision had served him well enough. Other people's problems were other people's problems. That was just how it was. He had only protected the boy's soul drop because a strong hollow wandering through Firelink Shrine would have been an inconvenience. He could have absorbed the souls himself. And he had not because he had not wanted to.

That was all it was.

The words from the church hallway came to his mind.

"Alexander is my friend."

Alexander looked at the boy standing at the top of the staircase, just waiting for a person they assumed was coming. The simple fact of it made him move before he had fully decided to.

They went down into a lower area and Naruto stopped moving.

A cage, built into the stone with the permanence of something that had never been meant to open again.

Inside it, a woman sat with her hands folded together on the surface in front of her. Her hair was a pale yellow green, gathered up and bound at the top of her head. A weathered grey cloak draped over her shoulders, its hem ragged with fringe, a chain across the front catching what little light reached in there, small ornate pendants hanging from it. Beneath the cloak, dark sleeves with intricate embroidered cuffs.

Naruto looked at her mutilated legs and his chest tightened at the sight.

"This is the Firekeeper?"

"Sad, really." Alexander's voice had lost its usual edge. "She's stuck keeping that bonfire lit. Mute and bound to this place. They cut her tongue so she'd never speak a god's name in vain." He paused. "How these souls endure it I genuinely cannot say. I'd peter out in an instant. Hah." The laugh was short and without much in it. "Go on. Approach her. She'll do the rest."

The woman's eyes came up as Naruto reached the bars.

The boy gave her a small smile. "Hey."

She looked at him for a moment, then held out her hand.

What followed was not something that happened in the world so much as within.

Everything external receded.

His body and senses were gone until only the soul remained. The Darksign at his neck burned white. The souls moved into the dark soul like water finding a drain, consumed and converted by the Firekeeper's power.

Naruto decided where he needed to grow.

[Strength: 12 → 16]
[Dexterity: 9 → 10]
[Faith: 8 → 12]

The faith came first.

It was difficult to describe because faith was not supposed to be something you felt in your body. But it felt like the connection between his soul and the flesh had been reinforced from the inside.

The strength followed, and that one was easier to understand. The power that moved through his muscles was almost intoxicating. He could feel the difference in his own strength as the Elite Knight armor now felt lighter.

And then his hands.

He opened and closed his right hand slowly. He pulled a kunai from his pouch without looking and felt exactly where the weight sat. He ran a quick sequence of hand seals and he was faster than Sasuke at hand sign speed.

"Thank you," he said quietly.

The Firekeeper's eyes widened.

"Let's go back to the bonfire." Alexander was already moving toward the stairs.

Naruto did not follow immediately. He reached into his inventory and pulled out the bento box he had packed this morning.

"I know it's not much," he said, and bowed his head slightly. "But thank you for helping me get stronger."

The Firekeeper took it with both hands, slowly, as if afraid it might not be real.

She began to cry without making any sound at the first bite, with her shoulders moving, tears running down her pale face as she took another bite and another. She looked up at him between bites, her expression saying everything her missing tongue could not.

Naruto stood at the bars and let her finish.

"I'll see you soon. Maybe next time I level up I'll bring you something sweet."

The Firekeeper nodded, and something in her expression suggested that the visit itself meant more than anything he might bring.

---

"Alex, how do I attune a miracle?" Naruto held up the parchment, turning it over in his hands. The symbol on it sat above a block of text, dense and small.

"First, do not call me Alex." Alexander did not look up. "Second, I do not know the mechanics of attunement personally. What I know is that you sit at a bonfire, place your hand on the parchment, and if you have the capacity to use it, the miracle attunes. That is the extent of my knowledge."

"That sounds completely made up. How does sitting next to a fire and touching paper give you the power of the gods."

"If you want a theological explanation, Petrus is still upstairs."

"Ugh. Fine. I will try it out." Naruto sat down cross legged in front of the fire and placed his palm flat against the symbol.

And Firelink Shrine disappeared.

The darkness that replaced it was not the darkness of a room with no light. It was the darkness of a space with no edges, extending in every direction without boundary, floor, or ceiling.

Naruto floated in it without falling, which should have been alarming and somehow was not.

In front of him, drawn in red light, the fireball sigil turned slowly.

A tight central spiral uncoiling outward into three asymmetric tendrils, each one curling at the tip like a candle flame caught in wind. The longer he looked at it the more he could see the fireball contained within it.

I guess that the attuned fireball spell. Which meant the Force parchment worked the same way.

Naruto raised his hand toward the dark and tried to will the symbol into existence in front of him the way the fireball one had appeared.

Nothing.

He pushed chakra toward it.

Nothing.

He made a hand seal at it.

Still nothing.

"What am I supposed to do?"

The darkness did not answer.

He thought about it for a moment and then remembered that the symbol had not been the only thing on the parchment. He had almost skipped past the text entirely because the sigil had caught his eye first.

There had been a story.

A nameless cleric knight on a battlefield. The enemy line was too dense to break with steel. Rather than retreat, he had prayed. For the air itself to push back on his behalf. The gods answered with a single divine breath exhaled outward from the knight's chest the moment before impact. The line broke without a single wound dealt. Men flew. Arrows stopped. The knight walked through the space where the enemy had been, blade still clean.

Naruto began to speak it into the dark.

The Force sigil assembled itself ring by ring as he went. Each concentric circle expanding outward from the center point, the short radial lines filling the gaps between them, until the whole symbol held still in front of him, white and complete.

[You have attuned the Force miracle.]

"Kid."

Firelink Shrine came back around him all at once.

"What happened?"

"Naruto. You went completely still. What happened?"

"I did it." Naruto got to his feet and raised the talisman above his head. "Force miracle."

Silence followed by the distant caws of the giant crow.

"That absolute swindler." Naruto turned toward the stairs with genuine forward momentum. "Petrus sold me a broken spell. I am going back up there right now and I am getting every single soul back and then I am going to..."

"The prayer," Alexander said. "The last lines of the parchment. You need to say them."

Naruto stopped and found the words at the bottom of the story in a language he had never learned and somehow already knew.

"Oratio Vis.
Via mihi detur,
Frange quod obstat.
Non ut occidam,
Sed ut transeam."

The shockwave left the talisman in a clean white dome, expanding outward across the stone floor of Firelink Shrine.

"Yatta! I performed a miracle. Dattebayo!"

Naruto ran a full lap around the bonfire with his fist in the air, his cheers bouncing off the stone walls of Firelink Shrine, filling the rot and silence of the place with something it had not had in a long time.

Alexander watched him finish the lap and sat back down.

---

"What are you doing now?" Alexander said, fully expecting the boy to finally pick up his things and leave for the journey of becoming the Chosen Undead.

Nope.

Naruto was doing pushups in full armor.

"One hundred pushups, one hundred sit ups, one hundred squats, and a ten kilometer run," Naruto said without breaking rhythm.

"How are you going to run ten kilometers here?"

"Run circles or back and forth on the stairs until I hit the equivalent distance." The squire finished the last pushup and stood up, picking up the Zweihander. Naruto was holding it across his shoulders for the squats. The added weight made each rep considerably more unpleasant than it had any right to be and he did them anyway.

Across the shrine, a row of shadow clones sat in a line reciting something in low rapid voices, over and over.

"What are they doing," Alexander said.

"Miracle training. My clones pass muscle memory back to me when they dispel. If they can recite the Force prayer fast enough, I learn how fast I can recite it, which means I can use the miracle faster in a real fight." Naruto finished his squats and moved into sit ups. "Efficiency."

"Right."

The noise level in Firelink Shrine had reached a point that Alexander found genuinely difficult to ignore. Pushup counts, clone voices cycling through the Oratio Vis in overlapping waves, and the clank of armor on stone. He could not tell Naruto to take it somewhere else because everywhere else in Lordran would attempt to kill him, which left Alexander with limited options.

He stood up.

"Alright, brat. I want to join in on the fun. Anything I can help you with?"

Naruto looked up mid sit up. "Can you also teach me the sword properly? Oscar did not have time to cover much."

"What do you already know?"

"Basic grips. Footwork. Some cuts."

"How many clones can you make?"

"As many as you need."

Alexander picked up his straight sword and rolled his shoulder once. "Give me a hundred. Send them to the flooded hallway in the church. I will teach them there and you will get the memory when they dispel."

He looked at Naruto directly.

"Grip first. Then stance. Then how to receive a blow without losing your footing. Then how weight distribution changes when your opponent is larger than you or smaller. Then cutting angles, thrust lines, the difference between a committed strike and a probing one, how to read which one is coming before it arrives, how to create openings rather than wait for them, and how to fight when you are tired, hurt, your technique has fallen apart and all you have left is the decision to keep going."

"SIR, YES, SIR!"

The hundred clones formed and moved toward the church hallway in a stream of yellow. Alexander followed them without ceremony.

---

Time moved differently after that.

The physical training ran alongside the sword work without pause. Naruto cycled through the workout, healed at the bonfire, and went again.

His body was getting stronger with each cycle.

Yet not in any way the system was registering. Which he figured out soon enough with Alexander's help. A stat increase was a sudden jump rather than a slow climb. Before his strength had hit sixteen he had needed chakra just to lift the Zweihander off the ground. Now he could swing it clean without any reinforcement, and with chakra the blade moved like it weighed nothing at all.

He could just hunt for souls and level up again.

But stats and physical training were not the same thing. A stat increase gave his body the capacity. The physical training taught his body to use that capacity consistently, efficiently, and without thinking about it. Strength seventeen might let him swing the Zweihander faster. But if his shoulders, core, and footwork had not caught up to what seventeen actually demanded, the number meant less than it should.

Stats built the ceiling. The training built everything underneath it.

Meanwhile the clones were dispelling in steady waves. When Alexander decided the foundation was sufficient he called Naruto over directly.

"We spar," he said. "Straight sword against the Zweihander. Do not try to be impressive. Just apply what came back to you."

Naruto drew the Zweihander with both hands and set his stance. Alexander raised his straight sword in a single hand and came forward without announcement.

The crestfallen's blade went over Naruto's guard with a simple angle change that the Zweihander's width could not track quickly enough. The flat of it tapped Naruto across the shoulder hard enough to stagger him sideways.

"Your guard is too wide," Alexander said, resetting. "The Zweihander gives you reach and power. It does not give you coverage. A narrow blade will always find the gaps if you hold it like a gate."

Naruto adjusted and came forward this time.

Better. He used the Zweihander's length to keep Alexander at distance, making probing cuts that were more about controlling space than landing hits. Alexander tested the guard twice, found it tighter, and stepped inside the fifth cut instead, closing the distance where the greatsword became a liability.

Up close the straight sword was faster than Naruto could manage and he took a cut across the forearm before the boy managed to create space with a shove.

"Inside distance," Alexander said. "Your weapon needs room to work. If I close the gap your strength advantage and reach advantage both disappear. And I am faster than you at close range. Keep me out or get out yourself. There is no third option."

They went again.

This time when Alexander stepped inside Naruto dropped his weight and turned his shoulder into the man's chest to buy space the blade could not.

"Better," Alexander said, and came again immediately before the word had finished landing.

The next few hours looked like that.

Naruto taking hits he had not anticipated, adjusting and taking different hits while adjusting again. Each time Alexander waited without commentary until the young squire picked the sword back up.

Then they continued.

By the end Naruto was breathing hard. His arms were heavy with the accumulated weight of the Zweihander and the armor together. Alexander sat across from him, breathing evenly. A single mark on his shoulder where one of Naruto's better cuts had found something to work with.

"You are still learning," Alexander said. "But you are learning correctly. There is a difference between a student who learns from being hit and one who only learns from hitting. You are the first kind." He paused. "That will matter more than the Zweihander does."

"Same time next visit?"

"Lordran is the best teacher you will ever have," Alexander said, looking at the bonfire. "Every hollow, every trap, and every corner of these rotting lands will teach you something I cannot. I can show you how to hold a sword. Lordran will show you what happens when you hold it wrong at the wrong moment. There is a difference between learning and surviving. Only one of them sticks."

"But if I need training tips or a spar."

The Crestfallen Warrior nodded once.

Naruto reached into his inventory and pulled out his Estus Flask, turning it upside down. Empty. "Last question. How do I refill this."

"Place it in front of a bonfire. It fills on its own."

"That sounds simple but I feel like there is more happening than that."

"Probably, but I do not care enough to investigate."

The crestfallen warrior reached into his belt and produced his Estus Flask, setting it on the stone beside Naruto's without ceremony.

[You have obtained Estus Flask x10.]

Naruto stared at the message. He could sip from an Estus five times per flask. Ten meant two flasks combined which meant... "You're giving this to me?"

"I have no intention of using it. Out there it may save your life, which is a more productive outcome than sitting on my person that will not leave the safety of this shrine."

"But what if you want to go on your own journey someday."

"If that ever happens, which I consider unlikely, I will take one from the numerous hollow wandering Lordran. They have no use for them." Alexander looked at the flask. "It is fine."

Naruto took it slowly, like he was still deciding whether to argue about it. Then he stored it away. "Where do these flasks even come from? Why do random hollows have them?"

"The Firekeeper creates them and gifts them to the Undead." Alexander's voice dropped slightly. "Unfortunately most of those Undead eventually go hollow. The flask remains. The person does not." He was quiet for a moment. "I feel myself moving in that direction. Slowly. But moving."

Naruto looked at Alexander for a long moment as his mind flashed through Oscar's last moments.

"Promise me something."

"What."

"Promise me you will not go hollow." Naruto met his eyes directly. "Do that and I will give you the food of the gods."

The Crestfallen Warrior almost laughed. But the look on Naruto's face stopped him. He found fear underneath the sincerity, the particular desperation of someone who had already lost people and recognized the feeling of being about to lose another.

"I promise," Alexander said.

Naruto produced a noodle cup from his inventory. Sealed on top, compact, with dried noodles visible through the thin paper. This was for Oscar but he did not mind giving it to Alexander instead.

"That is the food of the gods?"

"Try it before you judge."

Naruto boiled water with the bonfire and a pot then poured it carefully into the cup and sealed the top to let it steep.

After two minutes he handed it across.

Alexander lifted the cup and drank. He stopped. He looked at the cup again with the expression of a man recalibrating something fundamental. He drank again, slower this time, letting it sit on his tongue before swallowing.

"This is remarkable," he said quietly. "I have eaten many things in many places and I have never tasted anything like this." He looked at Naruto. "If this is what not going hollow costs then that is a motivation I can work with."

Naruto gave him a grin full of teeth. He reached into his inventory and produced the Homeward Bone. "Anyway. This was fun. But I have to go back. Cannot keep Team Seven waiting forever." He paused. "How do I use this?"

"Break it while holding the place you want to return to in your mind."

Naruto closed his fingers around the bone and thought of Ichiraku ramen.

He snapped the bone.

The light took him all at once and then Firelink Shrine was empty again except for the bonfire and the man sitting beside it, holding a paper cup of ramen that was still warm.

---

The silence settled into Firelink Shrine. Alexander sat beside the bonfire and waited for the noise to come back.

It didn't.

Minutes passed. Then hours. Then what passed for days in a place where the sky never changed and the difference between morning and night was something you had to remember rather than feel. Lordran had broken its own cycle long ago and the consequence was a permanent grey noon that pressed down on everything underneath it without relief. Alexander had learned to sleep by exhaustion rather than darkness. He had learned to eat when he remembered to rather than when hunger told him to, because hunger in this place followed its own schedule and could not be trusted.

He had learned to exist in the particular way that Firelink Shrine demanded, which was quietly and without expectation.

The problem was that the boy had filled the shrine with noise for an entire day. Now the absence of it had a shape and a weight that had not been there before.

He was alone.

He had been alone before Naruto arrived and he had been functional. He would be functional again. That was simply the arithmetic of it. He sat beside the bonfire and watched the flame and did not think about the cup of ramen that had tasted like a world where things were still worth doing.

He did not think about it for quite some time.

The days that followed had the texture of the days before. He sat. He watched the hollow wander the edges of the shrine without enough purpose left to approach the fire. He checked his equipment out of habit rather than necessity. He considered the paths leading upward and downward but remained where he was.

He was not going hollow.

He had made a promise.

But the space between not going hollow and feeling human was considerable. And he was somewhere in the middle of it, closer to one end than he wanted to be. The only thing that had recently moved him in the right direction was a strange boy from another world.

Suddenly the bonfire went out.

The flame collapsed inward as though it had been closed in a fist. A barrier was forming. Alexander could see it at the edges of the shrine.

He was being invaded.

In response he drew his sword and brought his shield up.

White apparitions were rising from the ground at multiple points around him, solidifying into figures, each one armored in the manner of the Way of White. And at the center of them, walking forward with the broad faced composure, was Petrus of Thorolund.

"I did warn you," Petrus said pleasantly.

Alexander said nothing.

"You are a dangerous Undead who has committed blasphemy against the gods and their servants." Petrus gestured at the figures around him with comfortable authority. "An Undead hunt has been sanctioned. This is not personal, I assure you. It is simply work."

Alexander looked around the circle. Six clerics with Petrus at the center. The barrier trapped him in the shrine with no Estus Flask. He brought his shield up and banged the flat of his sword against it once, hard, the sound ringing out across the dead shrine.

The situation brought something back into his eyes, sharp, present, and dangerous.

Petrus noticed.

"My," the cleric said, tilting his head. "I was beginning to think you were already halfway hollow. That boy must have done something to you." He raised his mace. "Don't worry. I'll find him eventually. Clean up what you started."

Alexander let the anger carry him forward. Petrus swung the mace in a wide arc.

The parry caught the mace on the inside of its arc. A short sharp redirect that sent the head of it wide into empty air and left Petrus momentarily open.

Alexander's sword came across in a tight horizontal snap, the edge catching the side of Petrus's skull just above the ear. Suddenly the Force miracle hit Alexander from the left, stopping him from splitting Petrus's skull open.

The shockwave broke the crestfallen warrior's poise, his limbs locking in the brief terrible stun.

The clerics read the opening and moved.

Suddenly the ground stopped them.

An eye opened in the stone beneath their feet. Every figure in the shrine went still as a blue apparition rose slowly from the earth at the center of the space. It resolved into a bald man in black leather armor. A long spear in one hand and a greatshield with an eagle crest in the other hand.

Petrus took one step backward.

"Patches the Hyena. What business do you have here."

Patches looked around the circle of clerics with the easy expression of a man taking inventory.

"Oi, well." He tilted his head. "Six holy people of the cloth surrounding one warrior. I'll be honest with you, my friends, that's not a very good look. Believe me on this one. Greed is a sin. Your own texts will tell you the same, and I would know, I've sat through enough sermons." He looked at Petrus directly. "Did I not tell you, last time we spoke, to be less greedy in this life? Heh heh heh."

"This man is an enemy of the gods," Petrus said, recovering his authority. "Patches the Hyena, are you prepared to be judged under the light of Allfather Lloyd alongside him."

Patches scratched his chin thoughtfully, as though genuinely considering the offer.

"The gods are selfish bastards hanging on to whatever power they've got left in this dying age. If they want to judge me they're welcome to come down here personally and have a go. I'll be right here. Nyah hah hah." He planted his spear. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Friend or foe," Alexander asked.

"Neither, strictly speaking, mate." Patches settled his greatshield. "But an enemy of my enemy is a fine place to start, isn't it. And I do hate watching clerics be greedy. It offends me on a personal level." He glanced sideways at Alexander with a cheerful expression. "Try not to die. I'd hate to have to loot your corpse. You seem decent enough. Heh heh heh."

Alexander said nothing and rushed the Way of White together with Patches coming from the side.

---

Author's Note: Yes, yes, I know. Boo me for the cliffhanger. Now let's get to the Q and A.

---

Q: Why are the skeletons bleeding?

Consider: Bone marrow is where blood is produced. If you reanimate a skeleton, you are by extension reactivating the bones themselves, which means the marrow becomes functional again. A living skeleton should not only be capable of bleeding but should be doing so continuously, because the marrow is producing blood that has nowhere to go.

The bleed status effect in the actual Dark Souls game can be inflicted by skeletons, so this was my way of incorporating that mechanic into the prose in a way that makes sense.

---

Q: Are Estus Flasks made by the Firekeeper?

Yes.

In Game Description of Estus Flasks: The Undead treasure these dull green flasks. Fill with Estus at bonfire. Fills HP. The Estus Flasks are linked to the Fire Keepers.

The Dark Tales also make reference:
An emerald flask, from the Keeper's soul.
She lives to protect the flame,
And dies to protect it further.

My headcanon is that the flasks are made of Waldglas, which is a real historical type of forest glass produced in heavily wooded regions. The process worked because abundant wood ash acted as a flux, and iron impurities in the sand naturally tinted the glass those characteristic shades of green.

The Firekeeper uses the wood ash and sand already present near the bonfire, with the heat of the flame itself as the kiln, to produce the glass flasks.

---

Q: Are Firekeepers the reason the player character can level up?

This is a question some of you might already know the answer to, or at least think you do, but I wanted to take the time to break it down. It is one of those little details in Dark Souls that is both ambiguous in canon and fascinating in lore.

In Dark Souls II and Dark Souls III, the games make it very clear that the Firekeeper, like the Emerald Herald or the Firekeeper in DS3, is the reason the player can level up. Likewise, in Demon's Souls, the Maiden in Black serves this purpose as the "level up lady."

But in Dark Souls I, things are a little different. Anastacia of Astora does not act as the level up NPC. The player can level up at any bonfire. Honestly, I always found this a little disappointing, because it feels like a missed opportunity. Imagine how horrifying and impactful it would have been if Lautrec killed Anastacia and suddenly you could not level up until you reached Anor Londo. That would have made her death not only emotionally devastating, but mechanically crippling in a way that reinforces the story.

So, how does Anastacia, or any Firekeeper, actually tie into leveling up in lore?

The truth is... we do not know for sure. The game never directly tells us. But, like always, I have my own speculation backed with some evidence, so let's get into it.

The Lords and the Dark Soul

Consider the four Lords of Dark Souls: Gwyn, the Witch of Izalith, Nito, and the Furtive Pygmy.

Gwyn took the Light Soul, granting him dominion over lightning and holy flame.

Izalith took the Life Soul, which gave her power over life and creation.

Nito claimed the Death Soul, ruling over decay and the domain of the dead.

The Furtive Pygmy took the Dark Soul, which split into fragments known as humanity.

So what did the Dark Soul actually give the Pygmy?

The answer: the power to absorb souls and grow stronger. That is what separates humanity and Undead from the gods.

And here is the evidence: only humans, and those tied to the Dark, like the primordial serpents, are shown to be able to truly use souls for growth and power.

Now, let's bring in this item description:

Soul of a long lost Fire Keeper
Description: Each Fire Keeper is a corporeal manifestation of her bonfire, and a draw for the humanity which is offered to her. Her soul is gnawed by infinite humanity, and can boost the power of the precious Estus Flasks. It can be used to gain Humanity and restore HP at the cost of losing the Fire Keeper soul to reinforce the Estus Flasks.

Focus on this line: Her soul is gnawed by infinite humanity.

Humanity is literally fragments of the Dark Soul. An "infinite humanity" is essentially as close to the original Dark Soul as anything could get.

So yes, the reason Firekeepers can help people level up is because their souls are constantly being gnawed at by the Dark Soul. That connection lets them channel that power and basically turn regular souls into stat boosts.

Which means, in this story, all of Naruto's current strength is thanks to Anastacia. Every time he sits at a bonfire, he is unknowingly linking himself to her soul, and that is what actually lets him grow stronger.

---

Q: Can you explain the magic system as written in this fic?

Before I get into this I want to be upfront that most of what appears in this chapter is my own fanfic expansion of Dark Souls' magic system. The game itself gives us mechanics but very little explanation for how any of it actually works in lore.

In the game the system borrows heavily from the Dungeons and Dragons framework, where magic operates through spell slots. You have a limited number of attunement slots determined by your stats. Each slot holds one spell, and using the spell consumes one of your available casts for that rest period.

So here is how I built it out.

The core rule stays the same as in game. You need the stats, you attune the spell, and then you can use it.

That foundation from the game does not change.

But the how of the magic system works is mine.

Sitting at a bonfire connects you to your own soul in a way that normal waking consciousness does not. The bonfire is essentially a threshold between the physical and the soul, which is why it is also where you level up and where your Darksign draws you when you die.

I used that existing lore to justify the idea that attunement happens at the level of the soul itself. You are not memorizing a spell. You are inscribing its symbol into your own soul, making it part of you, so that when you reach for it the connection is already there.

For miracles specifically, the symbol alone is not enough.

Miracles in Dark Souls lore operate on the principle that they are stories. And that the power of belief is what makes a story capable of affecting reality. The miracle does not come from a god handing you something. It comes from you genuinely believing in the tale hard enough that your soul bends the world to match it.

The symbol is the shape of the miracle.

The story is the belief that makes the shape mean something.

And the prayer is the act of reaching toward the divine, the moment of genuine faith that closes the circuit.

The prayer Naruto recites is in Latin, in case anyone missed that.

Oratio Vis
Via mihi detur,
Frange quod obstat.
Non ut occidam,
Sed ut transeam.

Which translates as:

A prayer of force.
Let a way be given to me.
Break what stands in the way.
Not to kill,
But to pass through.

I chose Latin deliberately because it carries the weight of a liturgical tradition without belonging to any specific religion in the fic, and because the grammar of it forces a certain slowness and intentionality that felt right for the act of prayer.

---

That's It… For Now.

I want to thank you all for taking the time to read, comment, and follow along with this story. Your feedback means more than you know, and it helps push me to make each chapter bigger, sharper, and more true to the worlds of Naruto and Dark Souls. And if you can't wait for the next update, you can read ahead to Chapter 100 on Patreon.

Until next time,

Praise the Sun.

\-Adam-/

 

[Nitramy]

Naruto finally has the Bass Cannon.

IT'S GIANTDAD TIME.

 

[Spelloyal]

Damn this fic is amazing!

Thanks for the chapters!!!

 

[Adamos_Amet]

Spoiler: Author Note: Update

Author Note:

Hey guys! I just wanted to share the results from yesterday's poll.

Option 1—short but quick chapters—was the clear winner!

First off, a big thank you for all the amazing comments and feedback. You've given me so much to think about, and now I've got a solid plan for moving forward.

Here's how it's going to work: at the end of every chapter, I'll include an author note letting you know when the next chapter will be uploaded. That way, if I decide to write a larger chapter—like The Traitor of Gods chapter (no spoilers, but trust me, this one's going to be massive and super important)—you'll have a heads-up and know what to expect.

I hope you all enjoy this new setup. Thanks again for your support, and as always, enjoy the chapter!

---

Chapter no.7 The Genius Hidden Beneath

---

The Copy Ninja

The man with a thousand jutsu. The prodigal son of the White Fang. Genin at age five, chunin at six, jonin at twelve, and ANBU captain at thirteen. The one who cut through lightning itself. The last living student of the Fourth Hokage.

That's the person they saw.

When people looked at him, they saw fame and power. They saw something larger than life—mythical, even. A legend. But when Kakashi looked at his reflection, all he saw was a man defined by his failures. And no matter how hard he tried to look away, that reflection never changed.

"Cursed Kakashi." He sometimes called himself that, half-joking. A joke that stung every time it whispered through his mind. Everyone he cared about seemed to die. His father, Rin, Obito, Minato-sensei… a parade of ghosts haunting him at every step, lingering in the corners of his vision, never far away. That's why, for years, he convinced himself that keeping his distance was the safest option—for him, and for everyone around him.

But distance came with a price.

It left him empty. Detached. Untethered from anything real.

Then there was Guy. His loud, obnoxious, overenthusiastic "eternal rival." The man who could somehow see straight through Kakashi's carefully crafted walls. Despite all his absurdity, Guy persisted, refusing to let Kakashi shut himself off completely. And, strangely enough, it was Guy's insistence that pushed Kakashi to even consider becoming a jonin instructor.

It wasn't like Kakashi thought he'd be any good at it. If anything, he expected to fail spectacularly—just like he had at everything else that mattered. But in a rare moment of weak optimism, Guy's ridiculous persistence wore him down, and Kakashi agreed to give it a shot.

Since then, he'd never passed a single genin team. Not one.

Every year, he waited. He observed, evaluated. But none of the groups ever had it—that intangible something he couldn't quite describe but always recognized when it was missing. Maybe it was conviction. Or an unspoken willingness to carry the kind of weight most people couldn't handle. Whatever it was, they never had it.

But this year was different.

This year, his focus was on Team 7. He'd spent time poring over their academy reports, dissecting each name.

Sakura Haruno. A civilian prodigy. Rare enough in its own right, but Kakashi wasn't expecting much from her. Still, if she worked hard enough, maybe she'd surprise him.

Sasuke Uchiha. A traumatized child—just what Kakashi needed. The boy carried a burden heavier than most, and Kakashi knew he'd be expected to help shoulder some of it. Whether he wanted to or not. Sasuke reminded him too much of himself. Maybe taking Sasuke on would be his way of honoring Obito, fulfilling a promise he'd made far too late.

And then there was Naruto Uzumaki.

Minato-sensei's son. A topic Kakashi had spent years avoiding, mostly because it terrified him. Not because of the Kyuubi. No, that wasn't it. What truly scared Kakashi was the thought of getting him killed. Minato and Kushina had entrusted Naruto to the village—to him. Failing that trust would break something inside him that couldn't be fixed.

So he'd stayed away. Kept his distance. Watched from the shadows. And yet, even as he distanced himself, Kakashi never truly let Naruto out of his sight.

When Naruto's status as the Kyuubi's host was revealed in those early days, Kakashi was there, unseen, making sure no harm came to him. If anyone tried anything, he handled it before it got out of hand. As Naruto grew, Kakashi kept track of him through rumors, watching from afar, convincing himself that staying hidden was enough.

It wasn't healthy. But then again, what in Kakashi's life ever was?

If he was honest with himself, Kakashi wasn't particularly excited about this team.

It felt too familiar—too much like history trying to repeat itself. Team 7. The same name as his old squad. And coincidentally, a trio that mirrored his past too closely for comfort.

Kakashi snorted. He wasn't exactly a religious man, but at this point, it felt like divine intervention trying to warn him. A sign from the gods that he was about to screw this team over, just like he had before.

Still… he was willing to give it a chance. If they could prove themselves, maybe this wouldn't end in disaster.

Kakashi turned the page of his novel, his focus drifting as he tried to distract himself from the nagging doubts. The new Icha Icha novel was a masterpiece, as expected. At least Jiraiya-sensei hadn't lost his touch.

"Enjoying the new Icha Icha, I see."

Kakashi blinked, snapped out of his thoughts by the voice of the Third Hokage. He glanced up to see the older man standing before him, looking as tired as ever.

"10/10. Would recommend," Kakashi replied, holding up the book without looking away from the page.

Hiruzen sighed, his expression softening despite the exhaustion in his eyes. It was the look of a man who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. And Kakashi, for a brief moment, wondered how long it would be before the same look found its way into his own reflection.

"Do you think this will be the year you finally pass a team?"

Kakashi turned the page of his book, keeping his single visible eye fixed on the words. "Time will tell," he replied with practiced indifference, though his mind wasn't nearly as relaxed as his tone suggested.

Hiruzen studied him for a moment. "Hmm. I sometimes wonder if you even want a team."

"Wanting and needing are different things, Lord Third. You know that better than anyone."

Hiruzen didn't respond immediately, and Kakashi turned back to his book. He giggled—an overly dramatic sound—just loud enough to draw a disapproving look from the Hokage's secretary. The glare of pure disdain on her face was almost amusing.

Kakashi could practically hear her thoughts: Reading that trash in front of the Hokage? Really?

Not that I blame her, Kakashi thought. No respectable woman would approve of a guy openly reading Jiraiya-sensei's… cultural masterpieces. Well, maybe Anko, but she was an outlier in every possible way.

Most people assumed reading these books in public was some kind of eccentric act, a carefully crafted persona to make him seem carefree or quirky. It wasn't. Kakashi genuinely enjoyed the books. They were a distraction, a way to fill the void. A better addiction than alcohol, at least. Most shinobi turned to the bottle to numb themselves from the horrors of the world. Kakashi chose words on a page. Everyone had their coping mechanisms.

"Kakashi," Hiruzen said, his tone shifting, growing heavier. "Have you ever thought about the balance between what's right… and what's necessary?"

"All the time, Lord Third. But it's a line that gets harder to see the more you walk it."

Hiruzen nodded slowly, his face unreadable for a long moment. "Today, I intend to find that balance."

"Is there something you need from me?"

Hiruzen motioned toward his office. "Come inside. We'll talk there."

The moment they stepped into the office, the atmosphere changed. The air felt heavier, and Kakashi's instincts immediately went on high alert. He glanced at Hiruzen, who didn't speak. Instead, the Hokage snapped his fingers, and four ANBU agents materialized around them, surrounding the room in a square formation.

Ninja Arts: Four Barrier Nightfall!

Kakashi's visible eye widened slightly as a shimmering barrier sprang up around the room. An A-rank technique. Here? In the heart of Konoha? This was reserved for warzones or high-stakes covert missions—not the Hokage's office.

"Hokage-sama," Kakashi said slowly, his voice carefully measured. "Has the village been compromised?"

Hiruzen shook his head and handed the white-haired jonin a scroll.

Kakashi unrolled the scroll, his eye darting across the words. At first, the contents seemed mundane—reports on Naruto's academy instructors, his assignments, his training regimen. But as Kakashi's sharp mind pieced the details together, a darker picture began to form.

The cracks in Naruto's training weren't accidental. They were deliberate. Small enough to be dismissed as oversight, but deadly enough to sabotage him in the field.

Kakashi's grip on the scroll tightened. "This…" he began. "This wasn't incompetence. This was…"

"Sabotage," Hiruzen finished for him.

"Who?"

"Inoichi investigated thoroughly. These are the names of the instructors involved. Their minds were read, and their motives were… petty."

Kakashi scanned the list, his expression darkening.

Honestly, it would've been easier if it had been some shadowy scheme—a mastermind plotting from the shadows, a conspiracy led by a rival village. But no, the culprits were Konoha's own shinobi. They didn't see Naruto; they saw the Kyuubi. Their revenge wasn't against the boy, but the beast sealed within him.

Inoichi's report had been thorough, marking the culprits with transferred rage syndrome—a condition where grief and anger twisted into irrational hatred, latching onto a convenient target. For them, that target was Naruto.

"Konoha Strict Correctional Facility?!"

"Life imprisonment for treason," Hiruzen confirmed.

"They deserved worse," Kakashi muttered, the anger in his voice barely concealed.

"Death would be a mercy, and I'm not in the mood to be merciful."

Kakashi said nothing, but something still didn't add up. This was a serious matter, yes, but not one that warranted the use of an A-rank barrier.

The Third Hokage suddenly seemed to have read Kakashi's mind as he began weaving a series of hand seals with incredible speed, his movements precise and fluid. Kakashi recognized elements of Yamanaka techniques but quickly realized this was something else entirely.

"Ninja Art: Theatre of Memories," Hiruzen said.

There was a reason the Third was said to have mastered every jutsu in Konoha. It wasn't because he knew them all—that was impossible given the sheer number of secret clan techniques. It was because he could break down any jutsu to its fundamentals with a single glance and create his own version.

A blend of Yamanaka mind techniques and his unparalleled understanding of chakra, Theatre of Memories projected the caster's recollections like a film, allowing others to experience them directly.

Thin threads of chakra extended from Hiruzen's fingertips, glowing with a faint blue hue as they drifted toward Kakashi. The strands moved like living tendrils, weaving through the air before gently connecting to Kakashi's temple. His vision blurred, and then, suddenly, he wasn't in the Hokage's office anymore. He was there, inside Hiruzen's memories.

Everything that had happened since last night ran through Kakashi's mind like a vivid nightmare. He'd experienced the memories firsthand through Hiruzen's jutsu, felt the weight of every moment. And honestly, if he hadn't seen it for himself, he doubted he would have believed it.

"This… can't be real!"

"I wish that were the case, Kakashi. But reality," Hiruzen's voice dipped, "is often stranger than fiction."

Kakashi gave a slow nod. The proof was in the pudding.

"I consulted Inoichi about all of this," Hiruzen began. "He offered an interesting diagnosis. Two possibilities."

"I'm listening."

Hiruzen held up a hand. "The first—and least likely—is that these changes in Naruto happened recently. That he only began developing these abilities in the past few months."

"Highly unlikely."

Hiruzen nodded in agreement. "Indeed. Considering what we've seen, Naruto's chakra—the foreign Yin energy present within him—isn't something one acquires overnight. Then there's his fully fitted armor, his advanced fire jutsu…"

"Not to mention the space-time ninjutsu," Kakashi added, his tone sharpening. "And that fire jutsu… that's not something you just stumble into. Learning elemental chakra conversion takes at least six months of focused, intensive training—and that's just the basics. For him to not only develop a handheld fire jutsu but to wield it with that level of precision? Naruto would have to be an exceptional genius even by Konoha standards to pull that off. And somehow, he kept it hidden under the facade of being an airheaded, book-dumb prankster. That doesn't just happen."

"Which leaves us with the second possibility—one far more concerning."

Kakashi waited, his body tense. He already had an idea where this was going, and the thought alone made his stomach turn.

"This may have been happening for years," Hiruzen said gravely. "And someone has been facilitating Naruto's development in secret."

The words hung in the air like a curse. Kakashi's hands balled into fists at his sides.

"If that's the case," Hiruzen continued, his voice dropping lower, "then Uzumaki Naruto has been intentionally downplaying his skills and abilities this entire time. For what purpose, we don't know. But it's possible—no, likely—that he knows far more than he lets on. About his father. About what's sealed inside him. Perhaps even more than we do."

Kakashi felt his jaw clench.

"When children are out of their depth," Hiruzen said softly, leaning forward slightly, "or when they seek answers, they naturally look to the adults around them for guidance. But if Naruto already knows the truth—his heritage, the Kyuubi, why the village has treated him the way it has—and he's chosen to keep quiet about it?" Hiruzen's voice grew colder. "Then we have a problem."

"A big problem," Kakashi muttered.

"From a psychological standpoint, it's…" Hiruzen hesitated, searching for the right word. "Terrifying."

Kakashi gave a single, tense nod.

It meant Naruto was more dangerous than anyone realized. And not because of the Kyuubi, but because of his ability to keep all of that bottled up. If he'd been acting like everything was normal, while secretly carrying all of this knowledge—alone—it marked him as a greater flight risk than Sasuke ever could be.

Kakashi exhaled sharply through his nose, the tension in his body reaching its peak. There was only one question he could think to ask. "Do you think Naruto is against Konoha?"

The question hung in the room like an unspoken threat.

"I don't know," Hiruzen admitted. "I hope that's not the case. But…" He sighed deeply. "We can't rule out the possibility."

Kakashi closed his eye, taking a moment to process. His mind was running through countless scenarios, none of them comforting.

"What are your orders?"

Hiruzen locked eyes with him, his gaze piercing. "This is an S-rank reconnaissance mission," he began. "Your objective is to gather as much information on Naruto as possible—his true abilities, his armor, and any clues about his connection to this 'Oscar.'"

"And Naruto himself?"

"Under no circumstances," Hiruzen said sharply, "must Naruto learn that Konoha is suspicious of him. He must not know we're watching him, or that we're aware of his true skills. Maintain his trust. Observe him closely. But do not compromise yourself—or the mission."

Kakashi frowned, his unease clear. "If he's been hiding this much for this long, he's not going to make it easy."

"I know," Hiruzen said, his voice softening slightly. "But you're the only one I trust with this, Kakashi. If anyone can handle it, it's you."

Kakashi hesitated for a moment before nodding.

"This mission would mean I have to pass Team 7."

Kakashi wasn't sure how he felt about that yet.

Hiruzen nodded, his sharp gaze fixed on the masked jonin. "Being their sensei will make the mission easier."

Kakashi's mind immediately turned to that armor. It wasn't like anything he'd seen before. The metal was bulkier than standard shinobi gear and far heavier than anything samurai wore. Shinobi armor prioritized stealth and flexibility, and samurai plate armor favored brute defense. But Naruto's armor seemed to be in a category of its own: a seamless blend of elegance, durability, and raw functionality.

"They'll notice the armor," Hiruzen explained. "It's too unique not to stand out. Either Sasuke or Sakura could ask about it, and if you're attentive, their curiosity could give you valuable openings to gather information."

Kakashi hesitated. "Do you want me to favor Naruto?"

"No," Hiruzen said firmly. "Treat him as you would any other student. But…" His voice softened slightly, a rare crack in his leadership mask. "Create an environment where he feels safe enough to open up. Make him trust Konoha."

There was more to that sentence—Kakashi could feel it. Hiruzen's lips pressed together, and his eyes flickered briefly, betraying a hidden regret. And me, Kakashi realized. The Third wanted Naruto to trust him too. But Hiruzen didn't say it. Maybe he felt he didn't have the right—not after all the ways he'd failed the boy.

"Yes, Hokage-sama," Kakashi said, his voice steady, though his mind was already racing. He turned to leave, but Hiruzen stopped him.

"Kakashi," the Hokage called out.

Kakashi paused, glancing over his shoulder.

"I'm curious… What do you plan to teach Team 7?"

"I've led teams before, Lord Third. You don't have anything to worry about."

Hiruzen's expression remained neutral, but he motioned for Kakashi to continue.

"Team 7 has the Academy's top two students and a dead-last who graduated by killing a chunin. I'm sure this will be easy. A couple of team-building exercises, some basic—"

"Kakashi," Hiruzen interrupted, frowning. "This isn't an ANBU team. These aren't trained operatives who just need to learn to work together. They're genin. Talented, yes, but still genin. You're not building a strike force. You're shaping them into shinobi."

Kakashi's words died in his throat.

The weight of Hiruzen's statement pressed against him, heavy and suffocating. Kakashi could almost see the future failures of Team 7 playing out in his mind—all because of him, all because he wasn't ready.

His shoulders sagged under the invisible burden, and his hand instinctively reached for his book. He flipped it open, letting the familiar words blur together on the page, trying to ground himself. It didn't work.

The Third Hokage had trusted him with this team. With Minato-sensei's son. With the last Uchiha. With a civilian prodigy who had beaten the odds to stand alongside them. And here he was, half-assing his way through the assignment before it even began.

What was he doing? What the hell was he doing?

The spiral began. Every failure, every mission gone wrong, every person he couldn't save—it all hit him at once, playing on an endless loop in his mind. Obito, Rin, Minato-sensei, even his father… They were all there, whispering, reminding him.

What if I fail them too? What if I let them down like I've let everyone else down?

"Kakashi?"

Hiruzen's voice snapped him out of it, like a hand pulling him from the deep end of a pool.

In the old leader's eyes, Kakashi saw something he wasn't used to seeing in himself: faith. The old man still believed in him, despite everything. Despite all the reasons he shouldn't.

"Your doubts are normal," Hiruzen said. "But they don't define you. Not unless you let them."

Kakashi took a slow, deep breath, steadying himself. The storm in his head wasn't gone, but it had quieted enough for him to think clearly.

"I have the next hour free," Hiruzen said, offering a faint smile. "I can help you plan for Team 7, if you'd like."

Kakashi sighed, feeling a bit like a scolded Academy student.

"I suppose I could use the help."

"I am sure I can be of great help. I have written books on leading shinobi teams, you know."

"Yes," Kakashi replied. "I have one."

"Oh? What did you think of it?"

"I haven't opened it," Kakashi admitted bluntly.

The room fell into awkward silence for a moment before Hiruzen sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I'm glad you're grateful for my help, Kakashi," he said dryly.

"First time being a sensei. What can I say? I'm learning on the job."

The truth of that statement lingered.

This wasn't the battlefield, where Kakashi knew the enemy, knew the stakes, and didn't have to worry about anyone depending on him. This was different. Here, he wasn't the Copy Ninja, the prodigal son of the White Fang, or the ANBU captain feared across nations. He was a first-time teacher, trying to figure out how to lead a team of kids who had no idea what lay ahead of them.

But he needed to try.

For Naruto. For Sasuke. For Sakura.

And maybe, just maybe, for himself. Because if he could make this work—if he could guide them, protect them, and teach them—then perhaps he wouldn't always be defined by the ghosts of his failures.

Perhaps this was his chance to make something right.

No more hiding in the shadows. No more running away. He owed Naruto that much. He owed Minato and Kushina that much.

He owed Team 7 that much.

---

Three hours late. That was a new record, even for Kakashi. The academy was practically a ghost town by the time he finally arrived. The only people left were the janitors and, apparently, Team 7. The bell test wasn't exactly urgent in Kakashi's eyes. They had the rest of their lives to fight and die, after all. So he took his time, taking the scenic route to clear his thoughts.

He knew every other jonin instructor had already conducted their tests, sticking to their schedules. Punctuality, professionalism—those traits were praised highly. But then again, those people weren't visiting the memorial stone every other day.

When he opened the door, the first thing Kakashi noticed was Sakura staring intently at Sasuke, who was flicking the tip of his pencil with sharp precision. In one quick movement, he sniped a fly midair.

Sakura cheered like he'd just achieved something grand, while Sasuke responded with a detached, "Hn." Typical Uchiha. It would've been slightly impressive, too, if not for the other detail that caught Kakashi's eye.

His Sharingan. It was activated.

When did he awaken it? Kakashi's mind raced to connect the dots. Sasuke wasn't this far along when he last checked the report. A knot of unease tightened in his chest.

Something had happened, and he had a feeling it was due to Naruto.

"Team 7," Kakashi called out, interrupting their moment. Both turned toward him, a mix of relief and annoyance visible on their faces, but they didn't speak up. Sasuke's eyes held a guarded suspicion, while Sakura's carried a hesitant confusion. He should've started with something motivational, maybe even encouraging, but…

"At least you guys didn't run away like last year's genin team."

Sakura's jaw dropped.

Sasuke's expression, on the other hand, shifted into something resembling irritation—a clear sign that he was mentally categorizing Kakashi somewhere between an idiot and a clown.

Now that's just mean.

But something was missing.

"Where's Naruto?"

"He went to the bathroom… an hour ago," Sakura answered, uncertainty lacing her voice.

Kakashi sat down and pulled out his book, a familiar ritual in an unfamiliar situation. If Naruto wasn't in trouble, he'd show up. And if he was… well, they'd probably know soon enough.

"Sensei, what are you reading?" Sakura asked, trying to fill the silence, trying to pretend that things were normal. Kakashi gave her his usual eye-smile.

"Something for adults," he replied.

"But we're genin now. Adults in the eyes of the village," Sakura countered, attempting to assert herself.

Kakashi shrugged. If she wanted to be treated like an adult, he'd oblige. He handed her the book.

A second later, she turned bright red and tossed it back at his face, shouting, "Pervert!"

Sasuke coughed awkwardly, and Kakashi didn't miss his subtle glance toward the book. It wasn't hard to figure out that Sasuke had taken a peek, too.

That's when Naruto burst through the door with such force that it nearly came off its hinges.

Sakura paled, clearly thinking—Why couldn't my team be normal? Sasuke, meanwhile, looked genuinely shocked.

And Kakashi couldn't blame him. Naruto's physical presence was different—strong, almost unnaturally so. And there wasn't any chakra at play, at least none Kakashi could sense. How did a genin have that kind of strength?

But it wasn't just that. Naruto's armor… seeing it up close was something else entirely. The craftsmanship, the quality—it wasn't built to fight humans. It was meant for something far worse. But why?

"Arr… I didn't do it," Naruto muttered, looking down at the broken door.

"Where were you, Naruto?" Sakura's voice came out almost gentle, as if she were afraid of setting him off.

Kakashi noted the change in her tone.

"Oh, I got scammed by some asshole into joining his cult," Naruto said flatly.

Kakashi blinked, feeling a strange sense of karmic justice wash over him. So this is what it feels like to be on the receiving end of my own bullshit excuses.

Clearing his throat, Kakashi straightened slightly, catching the trio's attention.

"How shall I put this?" he said, his tone casual, as if he were contemplating the weather.

Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke stared at him expectantly.

"Based on my first impression," Kakashi continued, putting a hand under his chin in mock thought, "… I'd have to say…"

The pause hung in the air like a blade.

"… I hate you."

Naruto didn't miss a beat. "Well, fuck you too then."

---

Author Note:

Hey guys! So, first off—what did you think of this chapter? I had a lot of fun diving into Kakashi's perspective and his "lovely" first impression of Team 7. Also, yes—Naruto being able to rip the classroom door off its hinges is because he leveled up his strength stat. Let's just say all that training (and maybe a little "grinding") is starting to show in ways even he doesn't realize yet!

Here's a little heads-up: Kakashi's going to be a much better teacher this time around since Hiruzen gave him a push in the right direction. Expect some major growth for Sakura, Sasuke, and Naruto. They're all going to get stronger, smarter, and deadlier. I'm curious, though—what kind of power-ups do you think Team 7 should get as the story progresses? Let me know in the comments!

Also, how did you like my explanation of why Hiruzen is said to have "mastered all jutsu in Konoha"? I personally love the idea that he doesn't know every jutsu (because, let's be real, that would be impossible), but his ability to break them down, analyze them, and create new versions is just chef's kiss. I think it adds a lot of depth to his "Professor" title.

Next chapter will be uploaded on December 8.

If you appreciate my work and want to support me, you can do so here:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Adamo_Amet

Thank you again for all the support, feedback, and love. You guys make this so much fun to write, and your theories and comments really inspire me! Let me know what you're thinking, and I'll see you soon!

 

[Morkail]

As he's time in dark souls progresses I expect naurto is going to become increasing unhinged. Which I'm looking forward too.

 

[Adamos_Amet]

Chapter no.8 Bell Test

---

The afternoon sun blazed down over Konoha, its golden rays scattering across the village rooftops. Naruto Uzumaki perched on one such rooftop, fiddling with the straps of his gauntlet and glancing at the unfamiliar surroundings. They were sitting in what looked like a public garden, though it was oddly styled—trees lined in perfect symmetry, with stone arches connecting them like an artist's attempt at balance. It stuck out from the rest of the village, as if someone had plopped it there without consulting the surrounding design. Naruto's gaze wandered.

"If it were me," he muttered to himself, "this place would have a lot more orange. Like, a lot more."

Naruto shifted uncomfortably. Oscar's armor felt like it was baking him alive in Konoha's relentless sun, the sweat trickling down his back pooling under the metal plates. He grumbled, adjusting the straps of his chest piece as he eyed the others. Sasuke sat a few feet away, his usual brooding silence painting him as untouchable as ever, while Sakura stole subtle glances at the Uchiha, her cheeks pink like the petals of her namesake.

Their jonin instructor, Kakashi Hatake, stood off to the side, casually leaning against a railing as if he hadn't a care in the world. With his spiky silver hair and ever-present mask, he looked more like a lazy wanderer than a seasoned ninja. His single visible eye scanned the trio, though his expression—what little of it they could see—remained unreadable.

Naruto found himself wondering what to even call the guy. Sensei didn't feel right. That title belonged to Oscar, the one who had truly taught him what it meant to fight, survive, and endure. Nobody else had earned it. But "Cyclops" was starting to feel like a good second option.

Kakashi's voice cut through Naruto's thoughts. "Alright, let's get started. Why don't you all introduce yourselves?"

Silence.

"You know," Kakashi continued, undeterred. "Your likes, dislikes, dreams, ambitions, hobbies. The usual stuff."

Naruto looked between Sasuke and Sakura. Sasuke didn't even blink, his eyes focused somewhere far beyond the here and now. Sakura, on the other hand, was busy twirling her hair, stealing more glances at Sasuke as if she couldn't hear a word Kakashi had said.

Naruto rolled his eyes and raised a hand. "Why don't you start, Cyclops-sensei?"

Sakura chimed in, her voice softer. "That's a good idea. After all… we don't really know you. You're, um, mysterious."

Kakashi's lone eye curved upward in what Naruto guessed was a smile. "Oh, me? Sure. My name is Hatake Kakashi. My likes and dislikes… don't feel like sharing. My dreams for the future? None of your business. But I do have plenty of hobbies."

Naruto blinked. "…That's it? Seriously?"

Sakura sighed, glaring at the bright orange book Kakashi had casually flipped open during his introduction. "What kind of 'hobbies' are those, exactly?"

Kakashi ignored her completely, his attention now absorbed in the tiny text of Icha Icha Paradise.

"Alright," Kakashi continued without looking up. "Let's start with you." He pointed at Naruto.

Naruto leaned back, a grin forming on his face. Alright, time to show them who they're dealing with. He pulled out his shield and set it in front of him, the light glinting off its battered surface.

"I'm Naruto Uzumaki, squire of Oscar of Astora. I like ramen, pranks, and training. My dream is to ring the Bells of Awakening."

The silence that followed could've swallowed a kunai. A crow cawed faintly in the distance.

"…Right," Kakashi said at last, his eye narrowing slightly as though he were attempting to decipher a puzzle. "Bells of… Awakening?"

Sakura tilted her head. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Naruto smirked, clearly enjoying the confusion on their faces. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

Sasuke spared him a single glance before looking away again, his indifference as cutting as ever.

Kakashi sighed, gesturing lazily. "Next."

Sasuke straightened, his expression cold and sharp. "My name is Uchiha Sasuke. There are plenty of things I hate. Not much I like. As for dreams… dreams are useless. What I do have is a goal." His dark eyes flickered dangerously. "To restore my clan and kill a certain someone."

His tone was as icy as his glare, and as the words left his mouth, the faint flicker of his Sharingan appeared for just a moment.

Naruto raised an eyebrow. "You gonna tell us who, or should we just guess?"

Sasuke ignored him completely.

Sakura, however, perked up, her expression torn between admiration and nervousness. "I think your eyes are… um, cool," she offered, though her voice faltered. "But maybe don't, you know… activate them randomly? Like… light bulbs or something?"

Sasuke shot her a glare, making her flinch and mentally kick herself. Why did I say that?! So cringe!

"Last one," Kakashi said, turning to Sakura. "Let's hear it, pinky."

Sakura flinched. Don't call me pinky, she thought but kept her mouth shut. Composing herself, she smiled sweetly. "I'm Haruno Sakura. My favorite thing is…" She glanced at Sasuke, her face reddening. "Well, um… it's not a thing, it's a person. A boy, actually…"

Naruto made a gagging sound, earning him a glare from Sakura.

"I hate Ino-pig," she continued, her tone sharpening. "My hobbies are… well, personal."

Kakashi raised an eyebrow at her. A crush and a rivalry, he noted silently. Not much else. She's going to need some serious reality checks.

"Alright," Kakashi said, straightening. "Now that we're done with introductions, let's move on to the next step."

Sakura looked confused. "Next step? What do you mean? We're already genin."

Kakashi chuckled lightly. "Oh, that's what you think," he said, flipping a page in his book. "Becoming a true genin means passing my test."

"A test?" Sasuke asked, his interest piqued.

Kakashi smirked under his mask. "A survival test. Out of the twenty-seven students who graduated, only nine will actually be assigned to teams. The rest will be sent back to the reserves. So, if you fail…"

Sakura paled, while Sasuke narrowed his eyes.

Naruto crossed his arms and grinned. "Bring it on, Cyclops-instructor. I've had harder tests than this."

Kakashi's eye curved again in amusement. "We'll see about that. Meet me at Training Ground 7." He glanced at the fading light. "And bring a lunch… but don't eat it. Or else."

With that, Kakashi vanished in a blur, leaving the three genin to process what he'd just said.

Naruto leaned back, stretching his arms. "This'll be fun."

Sasuke, as usual, said nothing, though his intense expression hinted at the challenge he was already preparing himself for.

Sakura groaned. "What does he mean, 'don't eat it'?"

"Guess we'll find out."

---

The late-afternoon sun hung low over Training Ground 7, painting the clearing in warm tones of amber and gold. Tall trees bordered the wide-open field, their shadows stretching long across the uneven dirt. Scattered patches of grass clung stubbornly to the dry ground, and a giant lake in the distance reflected the sky like a perfect mirror, its surface rippling faintly in the breeze.

Naruto Uzumaki sat on one of the three training logs, legs dangling, a strange object resting in his hand. It was a small, rough urn, wrapped in a fragile-looking net of twine, with faint scratches and grooves marking its dark surface. He turned it over slowly, his blue eyes narrowing in curiosity as he studied it. The thing felt old, ancient, as though it had seen countless battles before somehow ending up in his possession.

[ Item: Firebomb ]

[ Description: Bisque urn filled with black powder. Explodes, inflicting fire damage. Relatively powerful ranged weapon, especially in situations called for fire damage. A very precious item at low levels. Many warriors use these to augment their strategic repertoire ]

The fact that his clones could access his inventory still amazed him. One of them had picked this thing up somewhere on the third path of Firelink Shrine, and he hadn't even noticed it until after the clone dispelled. Thinking back, there was probably a ton of loot he hadn't gotten around to grabbing because he'd been too busy running for his life.

"Guess I'll have to go back. This time with a plan."

The sound of someone clearing their throat pulled him back to reality. Naruto glanced over at Sasuke and Sakura, who were sitting on the ground nearby. Sasuke leaned back against one of the logs, his arms crossed as he stared into the distance with his usual brooding expression. Sakura, meanwhile, sat with her legs tucked beneath her, fidgeting slightly. She kept sneaking glances at Sasuke, her cheeks tinted pink.

Naruto sighed, tossing the firebomb into the air and catching it again absentmindedly. "Where is this guy? He said to meet here, didn't he?"

"Just be patient, dobe," Sasuke said without even looking at him, his tone as disinterested as ever.

"I have been patient! We've been sitting here forever, and he's still not here!"

Sakura huffed. "He's probably off reading his dumb book or something. Ugh, it's so unprofessional. Who shows up late to their own team meeting?"

Naruto rolled his eyes, hopping off the log and brushing the dirt off his pants. "Well, if he's gonna keep us waiting, I might as well do something useful." Reaching into his inventory, he summoned the Zweihander.

With a soft shimmer of light, the massive blade materialized in his hands, its sheer size making both Sasuke and Sakura turn to look. The sword was enormous—nearly two feet taller than Naruto himself, with a wide, rough-edged blade that looked more like a slab of iron than a weapon.

"What the hell is that?" Sasuke asked, his dark eyes narrowing as he took in the sheer size of the weapon.

Naruto grinned, gripping the hilt with both hands. "This? This is the Zweihander. I picked it up in a graveyard while dodging skeletons."

Sakura blinked. "Skeletons? What are you even talking about?"

"Not here," Naruto said casually, planting the blade tip into the ground. "Somewhere else. You wouldn't get it."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow but didn't push the subject.

Ignoring them, Naruto adjusted his stance, spreading his feet apart and gripping the Zweihander firmly. The leather wrapping on the hilt bit into his palms, and the weight of the blade made his shoulders strain almost immediately. This thing wasn't like the Astora straight sword he'd been practicing with. It was a beast—a weapon that demanded respect.

"Let's see what this thing can do."

He swung the blade in a wide arc, testing a basic horizontal attack. The air whistled as the blade moved, but the swing was slow and heavy, as though he were trying to cut through molasses. His arms trembled under the strain, the weight of the sword making his movements feel sluggish and clumsy.

"Alright," Naruto said, pausing to catch his breath. "That wasn't too bad." He shook out his arms before adjusting his grip. "Let's try a strong attack."

Lifting the Zweihander above his head, Naruto summoned all his strength, his muscles burning as he held the sword aloft. With a shout, he brought the blade crashing down in a powerful overhand swing.

The impact was deafening. The sword smashed into the ground with a thunderous THUD, sending dirt and small rocks flying in every direction. A deep gash split the earth where the blade had landed, the raw power of the strike leaving a visible mark on the clearing.

Naruto stood there, panting heavily, his arms trembling from the effort. His hands felt numb, and his shoulders ached from the strain. The Zweihander was still embedded in the ground, too heavy to lift again just yet.

"This thing…" Naruto grinned through his exhaustion. "It's on a whole other level. I just need to get stronger."

"Where did you actually get that thing?" Sakura asked, her tone skeptical.

"I told you," Naruto said, turning to look at her. "Graveyard. Skeletons. It's not that hard to understand."

Sakura frowned. "Skeletons don't move, Naruto."

"They do where I'm from," Naruto replied, shrugging. He wasn't about to explain the mechanics of Firelink Shrine to them. They wouldn't believe him anyway.

Before anyone could say more, Naruto froze. He felt it—a sudden shift in the air, subtle but distinct. It was the unmistakable ripple of chakra, like the air had briefly shifted temperatures.

"Kakashi," Naruto muttered, his brow furrowing. He could sense it now, clear as day. Was this a perk of his new stats? Some hidden ability he hadn't unlocked yet?

His thoughts were interrupted by Sakura's sharp voice. "You're late!"

Standing in the clearing was Kakashi Hatake, as relaxed and unconcerned as ever. His hands were in his pockets, his silver hair catching the last rays of sunlight, and his visible eye curved into a lazy smile.

"Sorry about that," Kakashi said. "Got lost on the road of life."

"Lost on the—what kind of excuse is that?!"

Kakashi ignored her entirely, pulling out a small alarm clock and setting it on the log. Two small bells dangled from his belt, their faint jingle catching Naruto's attention.

"You three have six hours to get these two bells from me."

"Six hours?" Naruto muttered, his brow furrowing. He glanced at Sasuke and Sakura, who both exchanged equally confused looks. What kind of survival test was this? Six hours felt excessive for something so straightforward.

"And those who don't have a bell by the end…" His voice took on a teasing lilt. "Get no dinner."

Naruto's stomach betrayed him instantly, growling so loudly that Sasuke and Sakura both turned to glare at him. From their expressions, it was obvious they were trying not to groan—they were hungry too.

But Kakashi wasn't finished. "Also, whoever doesn't have a bell…" He turned slightly to point at the three training logs behind him. "Will be tied to one of those stumps. And I'll eat my dinner right in front of you."

"That's just cruel! What kind of evil are you?!"

"Oh, I'm not done yet." His voice dropped into something far more serious, and the air around them suddenly grew heavier. "The one who doesn't get a bell…" He paused for effect, his gaze sweeping over the three of them. "Won't be on this team."

That caught them all off guard. Naruto's indignation melted into something resembling shock, and Sakura froze mid-thought. Even Sasuke's casual posture stiffened, his jaw tightening ever so slightly.

"You mean," Sakura began hesitantly, "we could actually fail this?"

"Exactly," Kakashi said simply, his tone light again, as if the consequences were no big deal. "But don't worry. You'll have plenty of time. Let's begin."

Sasuke and Sakura immediately leapt into the tree. Naruto, however, remained where he was, brushing dirt off the plates of his armor and adjusting his helmet with a satisfying clink.

"You know, the most important thing for a shinobi is the ability to hide."

Naruto tightened the straps of his gauntlet before looking up at him. "This is a survival test, right?"

Kakashi gave a small nod, watching the boy with mild curiosity.

"Then you're the monster."

"I have been called worse."

Naruto lifted the Zweihander from his inventory, the massive sword appearing in his hands. He shifted his stance, his grin widening as he rested the enormous blade on his shoulder. "So, the best way to survive…" He stepped forward, planting his feet firmly in the ground. "…is to kill the monster."

Kakashi's eyebrow rose slightly higher, his interest now fully piqued. "That's… one way to look at it."

"It's the only way to look at it!"

Without wasting another second, Naruto surged forward, activating Shunshin no Jutsu to close the distance between them in a blur. The Zweihander swung in a massive, horizontal arc, cutting through the air with the force of a hurricane. The sheer weight of the blade made the ground shake as it came crashing down.

But Kakashi? He was already gone. In fact, he hadn't just dodged—he had casually sat down in the exact spot where the swing had just missed, his nose buried in his ever-present orange book.

"ARE YOU SERIOUS RIGHT NOW?!"

Kakashi didn't even glance up. "You swing too wide. Too slow. Not bad power, though," he remarked, casually flipping a page.

Naruto gritted his teeth, chakra surging into his arms as he stopped the swing mid-motion. His muscles screamed in protest, but he pushed through the strain, reversing the blade's momentum and bringing it down in a powerful diagonal slash.

This time, Kakashi leapt into the air, easily avoiding the strike as the Zweihander crashed into the ground with a deafening BOOM. Dirt and debris exploded outward, creating a gash in the earth where the blade had landed.

Before Naruto could even catch his breath, he spotted Kakashi perched on the broad guard of the Zweihander, still reading his book. He didn't look remotely fazed. If anything, he looked… bored.

Naruto's jaw dropped.

Kakashi finally glanced down at him, the faintest smirk visible beneath his mask. "Your fighting style isn't exactly subtle."

Naruto's frustration boiled over. "Subtlety's overrated!" He grinned beneath the helmet, the adrenaline now fully pumping through his veins. "It still counts as stealth if there's no one left to tell the story."

"That's… an interesting take."

Without warning, Naruto dismissed the Zweihander into his inventory, leaving Kakashi momentarily off-balance as the sword disappeared from beneath his feet. In an instant, Naruto pulled out an axe, his left hand gripping the weapon as he swung it in a sharp, horizontal arc toward Kakashi's midsection.

The jonin reacted instantly. Sparks flew as the axe collided with the plate of Kakashi's glove, the force of the block reverberating through the air. Kakashi's visible eye narrowed slightly. He's unpredictable. I'll give him that.

Naruto immediately jumped back, thrusting his palm forward as flames flickered to life in his hand. A small fireball formed, its heat radiating outward, distorting the air around it. "Let's see how you like this!"

Kakashi's thoughts remained calm, though his expression was serious. This isn't a test anymore. This is a fight. And he's treating it like it's life or death.

The bells jingled faintly at Kakashi's waist, their sound almost drowned out by the roar of the flames in Naruto's hand.

The fireball exploded with a deafening roar, a shockwave ripping through the air as flames erupted in every direction. The ground beneath Naruto's feet trembled, and a hot rush of air blasted past him, forcing him to dig in his heels to keep steady. The clearing was lit in fiery orange, flickering shadows dancing across the surrounding trees. Smoke curled skyward, a plume of chaos marking the aftermath of Naruto's attack.

"Whoa…" Naruto breathed, his chest heaving as he took in the destruction. The ground where the fireball had struck was scorched black, embers glowing faintly in the dirt. Small tongues of fire licked at the edges of the crater he'd created.

"Did I… did I get him?"

But then—his stomach dropped. A sharp, instinctual chill ran up his spine. Danger.

The Way of Focality—that strange sixth sense he had gained since his time in the other world—screamed at him. He spun around just in time to see the faint blur of movement behind him. Kakashi! His instructor was already there, mere inches away, his hands forming the tiger seal.

Naruto's blood ran cold. A jutsu! There's no time!

Without thinking, he swapped the axe in his hand for a talisman from his inventory. The small, glowing charm flickered to life in his grasp, a swirl of white energy building rapidly around it. Naruto didn't even know if this would work—he'd never successfully used it before. But there wasn't any other option.

"COME ON!" Naruto roared, pouring everything he had into the talisman.

The divine white energy burst outward in a sudden shockwave, the force rippling through the air like a silent explosion. Kakashi froze mid-motion, his hands halting just before completing the infamous Thousand Years of Death. For a fraction of a second, the jonin was stunned, his body held in place by the talisman's force.

"It worked!" Naruto yelled, his voice filled with equal parts disbelief and triumph. His hand shot forward—not to strike Kakashi, but to grab the bells dangling from his sensei's waist. His fingers closed around them, and for a brief moment, a grin split his face.

Then—Puff!

The bells vanished in a cloud of smoke, replaced by empty air. A shadow clone?! Naruto's grin faltered as his fist clenched uselessly around nothing. He cursed under his breath, frustration bubbling up. Kakashi had been playing him the entire time.

Naruto staggered back, his eyes darting around the clearing. His hand instinctively reached for the Zweihander, summoning it from his inventory in one fluid motion. The massive blade materialized in his grip, its weight grounding him. He planted his feet firmly, his gaze scanning the area for any sign of Kakashi.

He didn't have to wait long.

A faint chuckle echoed across the clearing. Naruto's head snapped toward the sound, and his eyes widened. There, standing calmly on the surface of the lake, was Kakashi. The jonin was impossibly casual, his posture relaxed as he gazed back at Naruto. The book was gone now, tucked away somewhere, and Kakashi's single visible eye was locked on him.

The moonlight reflected off the rippling water, casting an eerie glow on Kakashi's figure. He didn't say a word, but the air around him seemed heavier, more oppressive. Naruto could feel it—the shift in Kakashi's demeanor. This wasn't the playful, aloof instructor who had spent half the test reading. This was a jonin—one of Konoha's elite—and he was done playing around.

"So, you're finally taking me seriously," he said, his voice steady despite the tension coiling in his chest. "About time."

Kakashi didn't respond. Instead, his hands blurred into motion, forming a series of hand seals so fast Naruto could barely keep up. The water beneath Kakashi's feet began to ripple and churn, the surface breaking apart as something began to rise from its depths.

Naruto's jaw tightened as the water twisted upward, forming into a humanoid figure. The shape solidified, taking the form of a woman made entirely of shimmering liquid. Her flowing hair cascaded around her like living tendrils, and her face, though eerily beautiful, was blank and emotionless. The moonlight reflected off her body, making her appear otherworldly.

"What the hell is that?!" Naruto shouted, his instincts screaming at him to move.

Kakashi's voice was calm, almost detached. "Water Style: Call of the Siren."

As the words left Kakashi's mouth, the siren opened hers. And then it hit.

The sound wasn't just a noise—it was a force. A wave of sound slammed into Naruto like a physical wall, stealing the air from his lungs. It wasn't loud in the traditional sense; it was deeper, resonating in his bones, vibrating through his entire body. His knees buckled, and he staggered, gasping for breath.

I… I'm drowning!

The sensation was overwhelming. It was as if he'd been pulled underwater, his lungs burning for oxygen that wouldn't come. His chest tightened, panic setting in as his body screamed for air. Logic told him it was a genjutsu—it had to be. But logic didn't matter when his body believed he was suffocating.

Naruto's vision blurred at the edges, the world spinning around him. His limbs felt heavy, unresponsive. He tried to move, to break the illusion, but it was like his body wasn't his own anymore. He clawed at his throat, desperate for air, but his hands passed through nothing.

This isn't real. This isn't real! He repeated the mantra in his head, trying to ground himself, but the drowning sensation was too overwhelming. His thoughts grew hazy, and his strength began to fade. Darkness crept in, his vision narrowing.

Through the haze, one image flashed in his mind: the Stray Demon. That hulking, nightmarish beast from the other world. He had faced monsters before—things that defied logic, things that shouldn't exist. But this… this was different. This wasn't a beast. This was a human. And somehow, that made it even worse.

As his consciousness slipped away, the last thing Naruto saw was Kakashi, standing motionless on the water, his posture calm and unshaken. The siren loomed behind him, her liquid form glimmering in the moonlight, her haunting presence sealing Naruto's fate.

And then—nothing. Darkness swallowed him whole.

---

Kakashi crouched on the surface of the lake, his visible eye narrowing as he stared at Naruto's unconscious form sprawled on the dirt. The moonlight cast a pale glow over the clearing, glinting faintly off the massive Zweihander embedded in the ground nearby. Kakashi wasn't looking at the sword, though. His focus was entirely on Naruto, as if trying to piece together a puzzle that didn't quite make sense.

The fireball. The Zweihander. That short-range space-time ninjutsu. The boy's erratic fighting style.

One by one, Kakashi replayed the battle in his mind, scrutinizing every detail, every movement. His hand absently toyed with the small orange book he wasn't reading, his mind far too preoccupied with unraveling what he had just witnessed. The way Naruto fought—it wasn't like any Academy-taught shinobi Kakashi had ever seen. His movements lacked polish, his footwork was unrefined, and his attacks were overcommitted. Yet somehow, there was a kind of brutal effectiveness to it, like a beginner who had been thrown into the deep end of a battlefield and had clawed his way to survival.

Kakashi's brows furrowed beneath his forehead protector. Raw, aggressive… improvised. Naruto fought like someone who had recently acquired new tools and was still figuring out how to use them. But there was something else, something that gnawed at Kakashi as he replayed the fight.

The power Naruto displayed wasn't natural.

The fire technique alone told Kakashi that much. And then there was the Zweihander. That sword wasn't just a weapon—it was a statement. The sheer size and weight of it made it unsuitable for anyone who wasn't monstrously strong, yet Naruto wielded it with startling ease, albeit clumsily. And that space-time ninjutsu…

Kakashi frowned, his visible eye narrowing further. Space-time ninjutsu. It was the rarest and most dangerous branch of jutsu, the kind of technique that could shift the tide of wars. His Sharingan had confirmed it—it wasn't a substitution jutsu Naruto had used earlier. It was a short-range space-time displacement. And while it didn't appear as refined or versatile as the Flying Thunder God, the fact that Naruto could use it at all was deeply troubling.

Kakashi's sharp mind, honed through years of ANBU missions and political intrigue, began piecing together possibilities. Had Naruto stumbled upon some ancient artifact or forbidden scroll? That might explain the fire technique and the sword. Or was it something else? Something… darker? Kakashi's mind flickered briefly to the Kyuubi, the demon sealed within Naruto. Could its chakra be bleeding into him more than before? Was this power a manifestation of its influence?

No. That didn't feel right. The Kyuubi's chakra would've been wild, destructive, but it wouldn't have taught Naruto how to use a space-time jutsu—or that strange shockwave technique. Someone, or something, had given Naruto access to power and knowledge far beyond what he should have.

Kakashi's eye softened slightly as he glanced at Naruto's unconscious form. The boy's body was slack, his face hidden by the helmet he'd insisted on wearing. Despite everything, Kakashi couldn't help but feel a pang of sympathy. Whatever had happened to Naruto, he was clearly struggling to control it. His movements were too raw, his techniques too experimental. This wasn't the work of a boy growing into his strength; this was a boy thrown into the deep end, desperately trying to stay afloat.

Before Kakashi could follow that train of thought further, the sharp whistle of a shuriken cut through the air. His body moved on instinct, his hand shooting up to intercept the spinning metal. The shuriken landed neatly in his fingers, its cool surface biting into his skin.

"Hmm?"

Standing at the edge of the lake was Sasuke, his crimson Sharingan glowing faintly in the moonlight. The boy's face was calm, but his eyes were anything but. They were sharp, focused, dissecting every detail of Kakashi's posture, his stance, the way he held the shuriken. Kakashi recognized it instantly—the Eye of Insight. Sasuke wasn't just looking at him; he was analyzing him.

"Oh? What's this, Sasuke? Feeling inspired after watching Naruto?"

Sasuke didn't respond. His hands moved in a blur, forming a rapid series of seals. Kakashi's eyebrow rose slightly in interest. He recognized the sequence immediately.

"Water Style: Call of the Siren!" Sasuke's voice rang out as the water near the shore began to ripple and rise. The liquid twisted upward, attempting to take the form of a humanoid figure. A woman, just like Kakashi's earlier technique. But something was off.

The construct was sloppy. Its form wavered, unsteady, like a candle flame in the wind. The shimmering figure barely held together, its edges flickering and shifting as if it might collapse at any moment.

Kakashi sighed softly. He doesn't have the control.

Before the elemental genjutsu could even activate, Kakashi flicked his wrist, sending the shuriken spinning through the air. It sliced cleanly through the watery construct, dispersing it instantly. The siren dissolved back into the lake with a faint splash, leaving nothing behind.

Sasuke's eyes widened briefly, the surprise clear on his face. He quickly schooled his expression, but Kakashi had already seen the crack in his composure.

"You almost had it," Kakashi said, his tone casual but with a teasing edge. "Almost."

"What did I do wrong?"

"Do you even know how my jutsu works?"

Sasuke's scowl deepened, but he didn't answer. Kakashi continued, his voice calm but pointed. "The Sharingan gives you the blueprint—the hand seals, the chakra flow, the elemental manipulation—but copying a jutsu isn't as simple as watching it. You need mastery over chakra control and elemental nature. You can't just mimic it. You have to understand it."

He paused. "And you, Sasuke… you haven't trained in Water Style, have you?"

Sasuke's silence was answer enough.

Kakashi sighed, slipping his hands into his pockets. "Raw talent can only take you so far. You've got the Sharingan, sure. But without proper training and discipline, it's just a tool. And tools can't win battles on their own."

"I'll get it eventually."

"I'm sure you will. But remember, Sasuke—raw power and skill mean nothing without balance. And balance starts with humility."

Kakashi thought back to the conversation he'd had with the Third Hokage not long ago. Sasuke's psychological profile wasn't hard to read—he was a boy consumed by a singular goal, a goal that had become his identity. He wasn't just Sasuke Uchiha; he was the last scion of the Uchiha, the avenger of his clan. That pride gave him strength, but it also made him brittle. Pride without humility, without balance—it was a weakness as much as it was a strength.

And Kakashi had seen where that path led.

If he doesn't learn humility, he'll self-destruct long before he reaches his goal. Kakashi's visible eye softened for a brief moment, but then he snapped back to focus as Sasuke's glare deepened.

"You think this is a joke?"

"Oh no, not at all. I think you're taking it very seriously. It's adorable."

Before Kakashi could sink fully into his faux-relaxed demeanor, the faint whistling of shuriken sliced through the air. Without missing a beat, Kakashi tilted his head slightly, the shuriken spinning harmlessly past him. But then—he felt it. A second wave. This time, kunai. From the corner of his eye, he caught a glint of metal and moved instinctively, leaping backward onto solid ground.

The moment his feet touched the dirt, Sasuke was on him. The boy moved with speed and precision, his body spinning as he launched a roundhouse kick aimed directly at Kakashi's head. The kick was fast, well-executed, and had a surprising amount of force behind it. Kakashi ducked under it easily, squatting low as Sasuke's leg whipped through the air above him.

"Hm, nice form," Kakashi said, straightening up as Sasuke landed a few feet away. "A little predictable, though."

Sasuke didn't reply, his eyes narrowing as he settled into a new stance. That's… interesting. It was the same stance Naruto had used earlier when he'd conjured that chaotic fire jutsu. Sasuke's body tensed, and for a moment, Kakashi felt the subtle ripple of chakra gathering in the boy's hands.

But nothing happened.

Sasuke frowned, glancing down at his hands like they'd betrayed him. The frustration on his face was obvious, and Kakashi couldn't help the soft laugh that escaped him.

"What's so funny?"

Kakashi let out a long sigh, lowering the book to meet Sasuke's glare. "Fire jutsu isn't as simple as mimicking hand signs, Sasuke. There's a reason most fire techniques are created using breath. It's about the mechanics—chakra as fuel, elemental nature providing the heat, and the air from your lungs acting as the medium. Naruto's… unique approach doesn't use air at all. So, naturally, copying it wouldn't work."

"Naruto's not special," he spat, his voice low, clipped. "He's just—" He stopped short, the words dying on his tongue. His lips pressed into a thin line as if admitting anything more would hurt his pride.

Kakashi watched him carefully, his visible eye narrowing slightly. He was reading not just Sasuke's words, but his body language—the tension in his shoulders, the defiant tilt of his head, the sharp, almost panicked way his Sharingan glowed. Pride was fueling Sasuke, but something darker simmered underneath. Kakashi could almost see it—a gnawing desperation that Sasuke himself probably didn't fully understand.

"I'm not the same as them!"

The statement hung in the air, heavy with meaning.

"Say that after you've actually done something."

The challenge landed, and Sasuke's eyes narrowed. Without another word, he blurred through a rapid sequence of hand signs and disappeared in a burst of speed with a Shunshin. Kakashi barely had a second to register the boy's movement before Sasuke reappeared, launching himself forward like a missile. His knee was aimed straight at Kakashi's head, the force behind the attack impressive for someone his age.

Huh, Kakashi thought, sidestepping effortlessly. Guess he picked that one up from Naruto.

Sasuke's momentum carried him past Kakashi, but the boy adjusted mid-air, twisting his body to land gracefully several meters away. His Sharingan spun furiously, scanning Kakashi for any hint of an opening.

Kakashi moved his fingers casually, almost lazily, forming the seals for a Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu. But before he could release it, a trio of kunai flew toward his arms. He paused, catching the kunai mid-flight with practiced ease. He glanced up, spotting Sakura landing lightly between him and Sasuke.

"Do you really think you can stop me?"

Sakura straightened, determination flickering across her face despite the obvious fatigue from hunger. Her eyes darted to Sasuke, who was now standing in the shallow waters of the lake, his expression unreadable. Kakashi saw the moment in her eyes—she wasn't moving out of strategy; she was moving because Sasuke needed her to.

Sakura raised her hands in a familiar seal, creating two identical clones beside her. The three of them charged forward together, their movements fast but uncoordinated. Kakashi flicked the kunai he was holding with a snap of his wrist, aiming for the clones. They popped immediately, disappearing into puffs of white smoke.

"Too obvious," Kakashi muttered under his breath.

But then, he felt it—the faintest shift in the air above him. He glanced up just in time to see the real Sakura, descending with a kunai poised to strike. Clever, Kakashi admitted silently. She's learning.

Before Sakura's attack could connect, Sasuke burst forward with another Shunshin, combining his speed with a flying kick aimed directly at Kakashi's chest.

With one hand, Kakashi blocked Sasuke's kick, feeling the force ripple through his arm. Using Sasuke's momentum, Kakashi twisted, throwing him aside like a ragdoll. Sakura landed a moment later, trying to follow up with a stab from her kunai. Kakashi sidestepped her easily, letting her overcommit to the strike. She stumbled forward, but quickly recovered, flinging a set of kunai in his direction.

Good follow-up, Kakashi noted, but not good enough.

He deflected the kunai with a casual swipe of his ever-present book, his eye glancing over at the duo. Both Sasuke and Sakura looked increasingly frustrated, their breathing heavy from the effort.

"Below you."

Their eyes widened in realization, but it was too late.

Arms burst from the ground, grabbing both Sasuke and Sakura by the legs. With a firm tug, he dragged them both into the earth using the Earth Style: Head Hunter Jutsu. The ground swallowed them up until only their heads remained visible above the dirt.

Kakashi dusted his hands off and looked down at the two of them, his tone light and almost amused. "Well, that was fun," he said, as though he hadn't just neutralized two of his students with minimal effort. "You know, for a couple of rookies."

Sasuke glared up at him, his Sharingan burning with frustration. Sakura, on the other hand, looked too stunned to respond. She blinked, trying to process what had just happened, the cool, damp dirt pressing in around her making her itch. The indignity of it all stung worse than the failure itself.

Kakashi turned and started walking away as if they weren't even worth his time anymore. "Now, don't go anywhere."

Sakura clenched her jaw, struggling to maintain some semblance of composure. "Why did I get caught up in this?!" she muttered under her breath, her voice tight with frustration. She wiggled her fingers uselessly, trying to pull herself free, but the dirt held firm. Her inner voice wasn't much help either, screaming indignantly about how unfair this whole situation was. This isn't how it's supposed to go!

She took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down. "Kakashi-sensei is really strong."

Sasuke, still breathing heavily from exertion, didn't bother responding. His face was set in a rigid scowl, his eyes fixed on the horizon like he was mentally replaying every mistake he'd made. He refused to meet her gaze, his silence somehow making her feel even worse.

Sakura turned her attention to him anyway, hoping for some reassurance. Instead, she caught sight of his Sharingan fading away, the light in his eyes dimming into something darker. He clawed his way out of the dirt first, his movements sharp and angry. When he was free, he didn't pause to help her, instead standing stiffly with his back to her, his jaw tight with unspoken frustration.

Sakura sighed and scrambled out after him, far less gracefully. She brushed at the dirt clinging to her arms and legs, trying to maintain some shred of dignity. "Ugh, this is so gross," she muttered. Her inner voice was in full meltdown mode, ranting about how her hair was probably ruined, how her clothes were filthy, how— shut up, just focus.

"Well, it looks like we failed, huh?" she said, forcing a small laugh. She hoped it might break the tension.

Sasuke's head snapped toward her, his frown deepening. His eyes were sharp, almost accusatory, as though he couldn't believe she'd even said that.

"What are you talking about?"

"What do you mean?"

"I've been keeping track," Sasuke replied. "We've got maybe a minute left before the test ends."

"Wait… there's still time?"

Without answering, Sasuke's Sharingan flared to life again, his crimson eyes scanning the area with laser focus. His body tensed like a coiled spring, ready to move at the slightest provocation.

"Sasuke-kun, you're really going after the bell?"

He ignored her completely, his gaze fixed on the horizon. Inside, her inner voice screamed louder: It's useless, Sasuke-kun! There's always next time, right?

Sakura bit her lip, brushing off the dirt clinging to her uniform and hair. "Sasuke-kun," she said tentatively. "How do I look?" She attempted a small, playful smile, hoping it might pull him out of his funk.

Sasuke turned to her, and for the first time, she caught a glimpse of what lay beneath the surface. His eyes weren't just angry—they were haunted. There was a weight to them, a heaviness that made her stomach twist.

"Shut up," he muttered. "I just have to find that man."

The words sent a shiver down her spine. He wasn't talking about Kakashi anymore. She could feel it in the way his voice trembled, in the way his fists clenched. This wasn't about the test—it was about something much bigger. Something she didn't understand.

"Sasuke-kun…" she whispered, but the words stuck in her throat. She didn't know what to say. What could she say?

And then, the alarm went off.

The shrill sound cut through the clearing, signaling the end of the test. Sasuke froze, his body stiff, his gaze locked on the horizon. For a moment, Sakura thought he might explode, the tension radiating off him like a storm.

But then, he laughed.

It was a short, bitter sound—more of a scoff than anything else. He let out the faintest, humorless chuckle, his lips curling into a smirk that didn't reach his eyes.

Sakura flinched at the sound. It wasn't like him. Sasuke-kun…

Without another word, Sasuke shoved his hands into his pockets and started walking away. His movements were slow, deliberate, like he was trying to contain something threatening to spill over.

Sakura stood frozen, watching him leave. She wanted to say something, to call out to him, but the words wouldn't come. Maybe it was the look in his eyes. Maybe it was her own lingering sense of failure. Maybe it was because, for the first time, she realized she wasn't enough—not compared to Sasuke, not compared to Naruto.

"I'm disappointed."

The words came out of nowhere, and Sakura spun around to see Kakashi standing behind her.

"W-What do you mean?"

Kakashi's visible eye curved into a smile, but it wasn't warm. It was the kind of smile that made her feel like she'd missed something important. "Why don't you take some time to reflect," he said evenly.

"Reflect on what?"

"Think about it while being tied to the log," Kakashi finished, turning away.

I don't deserve this. I saved Sasuke-kun's life, I—

Even her inner voice went quiet. Something about the way Kakashi had said it made her pause. For the first time, she began to wonder if maybe she did have something to reflect on. Maybe… this test wasn't just about the bells.

---

Naruto groaned as he blinked himself awake, his head pounding and his vision blurry. The world around him slowly came into focus, and the first thing he saw was Kakashi standing over him with his usual laid-back demeanor, holding his little orange book.

"Ah, Sleeping Beauty's awake."

"Ugh, what happened?" Naruto muttered, sitting up and rubbing the back of his head. He felt groggy, like he'd been hit by a bull—or maybe by Kakashi. He glanced around, taking in the scene. Sakura was tied to a wooden training log, her face flushed with embarrassment and frustration. Sasuke sat a few feet away, his arms crossed and his jaw tight, glaring down at a bento box like it had personally wronged him.

"You failed," Kakashi said flatly, snapping his book shut.

"What?"

"You three failed the test," Kakashi repeated, his tone as casual as if he were discussing the weather.

"Wait, what do you mean, 'failed'?! You knocked me out! I didn't even get a chance to—"

"You had plenty of chances," Kakashi interrupted smoothly. "And you all wasted them. Instead of working together, you were too busy showing off. So yes, you failed."

Naruto felt a rush of frustration bubble up, but before he could retort, Kakashi continued, his tone calm but firm. "In fact… I don't think you three should go back to the Academy."

Sakura perked up immediately. "R-Really? So we don't have to—"

"I think," Kakashi said, cutting her off, "that you should quit being shinobi altogether."

The words landed like a kunai to the gut. Naruto's breath caught in his throat. Sakura's eyes went wide with shock, and even Sasuke looked up, his usual stoic expression cracking for just a moment.

Kakashi didn't flinch at their reactions. If anything, his tone grew firmer. "None of you understand what it truly means to be a ninja. You were selfish, disorganized, and completely disconnected from each other. You're not ready for this."

"We weren't selfish!" he argued, his voice sharp. "We fought! We—"

Before he could finish, Sasuke moved. Fast. Faster than Naruto had seen him move during the academy. Sasuke's knee shot forward, aimed straight for Kakashi's head.

But Kakashi was faster.

With a flicker of motion that Naruto's Way of Focality couldn't even track, Kakashi sidestepped effortlessly. In the same motion, his hand shot out, gripping Sasuke's arm and twisting it behind his back. With a swift push, Kakashi forced Sasuke down, pinning him face-first to the dirt.

"Really?" Kakashi said, his tone almost disappointed. "This is your answer? Attacking your instructor?"

Sasuke growled, his voice muffled by the ground. "Get off me," he hissed, struggling against Kakashi's iron grip.

Kakashi didn't let up. Instead, he looked up, his voice carrying a sharper edge. "Why do you think you were divided into teams for this test?"

Sakura blinked. "What… what do you mean?"

Naruto narrowed his eyes, Kakashi's words stirring something in the back of his mind. Divided into teams. Two bells. Three of them. It didn't add up. His brain worked furiously, piecing the puzzle together. The bells weren't just about survival. The whole test wasn't about survival. It was about something else.

And then it hit him.

"It's teamwork," Naruto blurted out, his voice cutting through the tense silence.

All eyes turned to him, but he didn't care. He looked straight at Kakashi, conviction growing in his voice. "That's what this was about, wasn't it? It wasn't about the bells. It was about seeing if we could work together."

Kakashi's grip on Sasuke loosened. "Correct."

Sakura blinked in confusion. "What? But… there were only two bells."

Naruto turned to her, the pieces of the puzzle clicking into place. "Exactly! They set it up so we'd fight against each other. So we'd focus on beating each other instead of working together as a team."

"And that's exactly what happened. You were so focused on yourselves that you missed the point entirely. Even when Sasuke and Sakura worked together, it was out of convenience, not trust."

Kakashi sighed, his voice softening just slightly. "I'll give you three one last chance. Two of you can pass. One of you must leave. Decide amongst yourselves." His tone turned sharp again. "And don't share the food. If you do, all three of you will fail."

With that, he vanished, leaving the three of them to grapple with his words.

Naruto stared down at his unopened ramen cup, his stomach growling, but the hunger felt distant compared to the storm raging in his chest. Sasuke sat in brooding silence, poking at the onigiri in his bento box, while Sakura remained tied to the stump, her head bowed.

The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating.

"Maybe… maybe I should be the one to leave." Sakura looked up, forcing a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "I wasn't much help in the test anyway."

Naruto felt something twist in his gut. He couldn't stand seeing her like this—so defeated, so small. "No way," he said firmly. "You're not leaving."

"But—"

"I said no." Naruto's tone left no room for argument. He glanced between them, then smirked faintly. "If anyone's leaving, it'll be me."

Sasuke's head shot up, his glare sharp. "Don't be stupid, dobe."

Naruto shrugged. "I'm serious. You two can work as a team. I'll be fine." The words came easier than he expected. Konoha wasn't the source of his power. Lordran was. The Bells of Awakening are my real goal anyway.

But Sasuke's jaw tightened. He glanced at Sakura, whose stomach growled audibly. Without a word, he picked up an onigiri from his bento and held it out to her.

"Eat," he said gruffly, avoiding her gaze.

Sakura blinked, startled. "But Kakashi-sensei said—"

"You can't think straight if you're hungry," Sasuke muttered.

Naruto watched, a grin tugging at his lips. Guess the bastard has a heart after all.

Before anyone could say more, a puff of smoke appeared nearby.

"You three…" Kakashi's voice cut through the night like a blade, sharp and commanding. Naruto instinctively reached for his talisman, preparing to defend himself if needed. But Kakashi's next word made him freeze.

"Pass."

Naruto blinked, his brain halting mid-thought.

"Pass? We passed?" Sakura's voice broke the silence, trembling with disbelief. Her wide eyes darted to Kakashi, then to Naruto and Sasuke, as if looking for confirmation that she hadn't misheard.

"Of course," Kakashi replieds. "Many before you selfishly sacrificed each other to try to get on a team, but they didn't pass my test. Remember, a shinobi must see beneath the underneath."

Naruto froze mid-chew, his mind slowly connecting the dots. See beneath the underneath. He rolled the phrase over in his head, feeling the weight of the words.

Kakashi's tone grew firmer, more serious. "Those who break the rules of the ninja world are considered scum. But those who abandon their comrades are worse than scum."

The weight of their first lesson sank deeply into their hearts.

"Congratulations," Kakashi said. "You three are now officially Team 7."

He casually cut the ropes binding Sakura to the training post, and she landed with a soft "oof" before standing up, brushing dirt off her skirt.

"Now," Kakashi continued, "eat your dinner and get ready. We've got a team photo to take. Don't be late." With that, he wandered off, his orange book once again occupying his attention.

Sakura wasted no time. She snatched one of Sasuke's onigiri, holding it like she had just pilfered treasure. Sasuke's eyes narrowed into a glare, but he didn't say anything, simply resuming his meal as if nothing had happened.

"I-I was hungry…" Sakura mumbled, her face burning red, steam practically rising from her ears.

Naruto snickered but quickly became distracted by another thought. I wonder if I could boil water with my pyromancy flame… His eyes drifted to his cup of instant ramen. Maybe I could melt the lid right off. Hmm…

"Naruto." Sakura's voice broke through his daydream. He turned to see her looking at him with a rare, earnest expression. It wasn't her usual annoyance or frustration. There was something softer in her eyes, almost… gratitude.

"Thanks," she said simply.

"For what?"

"For offering to leave," Sakura said, her voice quieter now. "You didn't have to do that. You could've been a great ninja, but you were willing to give that up for us."

Naruto blinked, unsure how to respond. Leave? Lordran was harder than this. I'd have been fine. But seeing the sincerity in her expression made him realize it wasn't about what he thought—it was about what it meant to her.

Sakura extended her hand toward him. Naruto stared at it for a second, confused. "I know we had a lot of differences back in the academy," she continued, hesitating slightly. "But I think… we should put that behind us. Let's start fresh. As teammates."

Naruto's grin split across his face, wide and toothy. "You mean you're finally gonna stop calling me an idiot?" he teased, shaking her hand firmly.

Sakura smiled back. "Don't push your luck, Naruto."

Then Naruto turned to Sasuke, his smirk still firmly in place. "What about you? Got anything to add?"

Sasuke paused mid-bite, his dark eyes glancing between them. "You two are better teammates than most of the class," he muttered.

Naruto and Sakura exchanged a look, both sweatdropping at his half-hearted "compliment."

Sasuke ignored them, going back to his food. After a few seconds, he added, almost as an afterthought, "You're… alright."

Naruto burst out laughing. "Wow, such high praise from the almighty Sasuke! I'm honored!"

Sasuke scowled. "Shut up, dobe."

A few minutes later, Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke stood side by side, ready for their team photo. The moon hung high above them, its pale light spilling over the quiet training ground like a soft blanket, bathing everything in silvery hues. In the middle stood Sakura, a girl who had started as a civilian but was now stepping cautiously into the demanding world of shinobi. Her resolve flickered like a candle, but it was there, burning steadily as she searched for her purpose beyond what she once thought defined her.

To her right stood Sasuke, his posture rigid, his dark eyes sharp and unyielding. The weight of his clan's destruction pressed heavily on his shoulders, but it was his fuel—the fire that drove him forward. His quest for vengeance burned within him, isolating yet propelling him, as though every step he took in the shinobi world was a step closer to avenging his family.

On her left stood Naruto, clad in his knight's armor that shimmered faintly under the moonlight. He stood tall, carrying not just the dreams of a mischievous ninja in training but also the burdens of a far darker world—the weight of Lordran, its monsters, and its endless battles. That world had shaped him, forged him in fire and shadow, and yet here he was, bridging the gap between two realms: one of shinobi and one of legends.

Behind them stood Kakashi, their enigmatic leader, leaning casually with his ever-present slouch. His white hair caught the moonlight like a faint halo, but there was no mistaking the shadows that lingered behind his lone, visible eye. A man shaped by fame, heartbreak, and duty, Kakashi carried the scars of a lifetime of battle and loss. And now, as he looked at his mismatched team, he couldn't help but feel the flicker of cautious hope, though his face betrayed none of it.

Together, they stood as Team 7. Different in every way imaginable—night and day, fire and water, iron and air. Yet, beneath the surface, they were connected by something deeper: a shared path, a shared potential, and the promise of what they could become. For better or worse, they were bound now—not just as teammates but as something more. Something that had yet to take shape.

---

Author's Notes:

Alright, how did I do with the bell test? Be honest. Did I manage to capture the vibe of Kakashi's unorthodox teaching methods and the dynamic between Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura? Let me know in the comments! I wanted to emphasize how this test wasn't just about physical skills but about the emotional and psychological growth of the team.

Oh, and yeah, Call of the Siren is something I created for Kakashi. I mean, the dude is supposed to have mastered over 1,000 jutsu, right? It's criminal that the series didn't show more of that versatility. Expect to see more unique jutsu from Kakashi (and maybe other characters) as the story progresses. I really want to explore what a ninja with that kind of repertoire would bring to the table in a real fight. Let me know what you think of the siren technique—it was fun to write, and I feel like it fits Kakashi's blend of tactical creativity and menace.

Also, how are you guys enjoying Naruto's blend of shinobi life and his Lordran baggage? Writing about how those two worlds overlap is honestly one of my favorite parts of this story.

Next chapter drops on December 12!

If you're hyped and want early access, Chapter 41 is already available on Patreon! For those of you who don't know, I'm a few chapters ahead over there, so if you want to binge the upcoming twists before everyone else for as little as a dollar, that's the place to be. (Plus, it really helps me keep writing consistently, so thank you in advance if you decide to support!)

Thank you again for all the love, support, and feedback. Seriously, you guys are the best. Reading your theories and comments keeps me motivated and often gives me new ideas to play with in future chapters. Let me know what you thought about this one—what worked, what didn't, and what you're hoping to see next.

Until next time!

 

[Bazka]

Thanks for the chap. I really like the inclusion of new jutsu, I feel like it was underutilised in the show. I also hope to see more quality of life jutsu, because I always struggled to believe that the shinobi world hadn't adapted any jutsu for daily convenience.