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.]
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
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.