Naruto was angry, sad, and so much more.
For the first time in his life, the boy felt this cocktail of emotions and couldn't put a single one of them into words.
Why didn't the old man just tell me the truth? What is he so afraid of? He's the Hokage. He can do anything he wants in this village. So why can't he just tell me?
Naruto reached his apartment in a blur and pulled the homeward bone from his inventory without breaking stride.
Take me back to lordran. At least it doesn't pretend to be something it's not.
The thought brought tears to his eyes before he'd even finished it. He wanted to consider Konoha his home. A place that would accept him one day, even if it never had before. And instead, the man at the very top of it... the one person he'd let himself trust more than he probably should have, had chosen to stay quiet.
[ You must not trust Hiruzen Sarutobi. That man has kept a lot from you. More than you even know. ]
The words from the red letter surfaced in his mind uninvited. He still wasn't sure he believed them. But he was no longer sure he didn't, either. And that uncertainty was its own kind of wound. It made him wonder just how much of his life had been built on things people had decided he didn't need to know.
Maybe the hawk actually has answers. Maybe it doesn't.
Before the thought could go any further, a magical warmth swallowed him whole. He was back in Firelink Shrine. No villagers whispering behind hands. No polite smiles hiding something uglier underneath. Just stone, ash, and the low crackle of a flame that asked nothing of him he hadn't already chosen to give.
The stillness let something in his chest finally lossen. And in that unclenching, one thought rose clear above the noise.
I need to talk to someone I can actually trust.
That was going to be harder than it sounded. In Konoha, the list of people who fit that description could be counted on one hand. And after tonight he wasn't in the mood to spend what little trust he had left on anyone still standing inside those walls.
Maybe Alexander can help.
The man was the single most depressed individual Naruto had ever met. But depressed didn't mean dishonest. If anything Alexander was the closest thing Naruto had to an unbiased opinion.
He looked around the shrine.
Empty.
Where the hell is that edgelord when I actually need him?, Naruto thought, irritation flaring before it burned itself out just as fast. He probably went off on his own thing again. Good for him, dattebayo. Bad for me.
With no other option, the boy laid on his back, and stared at a sky that wasn't really a sky at all. Just an ashen ceiling of a place that existed somewhere outside anywhere.
In that quiet Naruto's frustration tightened in his throat he tried to swallow down out of habit. The same habit that had kept him smiling through years of glares, shouts and shut doors. But there was no one here to perform for, and no village waiting to decide what his tears meant about him.
The first tear slid sideways into his hair. Then another. Suddenly the dam gave out entirely. His breath came out in short, broken pulls. He pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes like he could physically hold it in, and it didn't work. Some small part of him was almost grateful it didn't. He hadn't let himself do this in a long time. He'd forgotten how much weight a person could carry without noticing.
Eventually the boy's hand drifted to his belt, fingers finding the hilt of the broken Astora straight sword resting there. A relic of a man who hadn't lived to see him become anything, and yet somehow still shaped every part of who Naruto was becoming.
He closed his eyes and began to recite the precepts of a Knight of Astora.
His mind wandered to the last thing his master had ever said to him.
"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..."
Naruto smiled.
"That is when... it matters... most."
Silence.
"Now... stand tall... for me."
Naruto took a long breath.
It didn't matter whether Hiruzen had his reasons or had simply chosen convenience over honesty. It didn't matter whether the hawk turned out to be a friend or something wearing a its face. None of that changed what he had to do next.
He was going to stand tall. He was going to keep walking. And he was going to get his answers, one way or another, even if he had to carve the truth out of this village himself.
Because no knight walks out on his own story.
"First order of business."
Naruto made a cross-shaped sign with his fingers.
The Shadow Clone Jutsu was such a simple technique that the boy honestly wondered why it was locked away in the forbidden scroll to begin with. All you had to do was push a big chunk of chakra out of your body, like blowing a bubble. His body was the bubble-wand, the clone was the bubble, and chakra was the soap solution holding it together.
After that, you just had to fill the bubble up.
Maybe everyone else just didn't have enough chakra to fill the bubble in the first place.
Poof!
"You ready for the plan?"
"We're going grave robbing, dattebayo!" the clone declared, throwing a fist into the air.
"Can you not make it sound so… so bad?! It's not grave robbing! We're just… recycling stuff nobody's using anymore!"
The clone gave him a double thumbs-up as Naruto made a hundred more.
"Let's do some strategic grave robbing. Dattebayo."
"Just go do your job, will you?"
"Aye-aye, boss!"
And with that, the sea of clones took off toward the skeleton graveyard. Naruto wanted to pick up a few of the items he'd spotted last time, and if he was being honest with himself, he also wanted a little revenge on those blasted skeletons.
Meanwhile, Naruto sat back with a different thought churning in his head.
How does the Estus Flask actually affect my chakra?
The thing had already saved his life more than a few times, healing injuries that would've taken weeks to heal on their own.
He winced, remembering the state he'd been in after the Asylum Demon fight. According to Iruka, injuries were one of the things that lowered a shinobi's overall fighting capacity. Chakra wasn't just spiritual energy, it was physical energy and mental energy working together. An injured body couldn't produce as much of either. Which meant if the Estus healed the body, and maybe even settled the mind a little, there was a real chance it was doing something to his reserves too.
Normally, shinobi replenished chakra the boring way: Eating, Drinking, Resting an injury, Sleeping, Meditating etc.
Did the Estus Flash make the process faster or not?
"Only one way to find out," Naruto muttered before taking a swig.
With no injuries and enemies to distract him, the boy focused on his chakra.
And there it was.
He felt his reserves fill up. It took three full swigs before he was back at full chakra reserves. Which meant, in theory, he maintain full strength three times in a fight.
Naruto grinned.
I wonder if it only works like this on an Undead, or if it'd do the same thing for someone like Sasuke or Sakura.
Before he could chase that thought any further, a distant BOOM cut through the graveyard air.
"Stupid skeletons," he muttered with a satisfied."That's what you get for messing with the great Naruto Uzumaki."
A rush of borrowed memory hit him a second later. The clones dumped everything they'd found straight into his inventory before they went.
Naruto rubbed his hands together like a kid tearing into a birthday present.
[ Item: Winged Spear ]
[ Weapon type: Spears ]
[ Description: A long-hilted spear with a barbed point. Long reach, and can be used with shield up. Effective against hard exteriors, and hits for high damage at the right moment of an enemy's swing. But the hit radius is small, and it is easily blocked by shields. ]
Naruto hefted the spear in his hands. It had a long shaft, with a sharp tip despite some rusting. Just below the blade were these small, wing-like protrusions.
"Looks pretty badass," Naruto muttered, turning it over. He gave the tip an experimental jab at the air. "But… am I gonna use this?"
The boy wasn't beyond diversifying his skillset. Lordran was really opening up his love for weapons. But it's not like he had a teacher. He himself wasn't sure about his skill with a sword, let alone trying to learn something else. He'd have to figure that out later. For now, though, it was just one more thing taking up space in his inventory.
[ Item: Caduceus Round Shield ]
[ Weapon type: Small Shield ]
[ Description: Round wooden shield crafted in Lordran. Decorated by an ancient blue Caduceus. The giant trees in Lordran are distant offspring of the great stone archtrees. This shield inherits their properties, and the wood greatly reduces magic damage. ]
It was a small and round shield. Made of wood with a faded green background. The design on its face was a pair of curved lines resembling snakes meeting at a "U" shap. The edges of the shield were reinforced with a thin rim of metal, though it had seen better days.
Naruto wanted to incorporate more shield use into his fighting. Problem was, he already had Oscar's Crest Shield, and there was only one of him to swing a shield around.
Well... technically.
Naruto picked up the shield, made a clone. Thanks to how the jutsu worked, the clone came out holding a perfect copy of it. He made two more clones after that and tossed the Caduceus Shield toward one of them.
"We're ready, boss," the shieldless clone said, right before Naruto punched it in the face.
"Let's see how much a shield actually matters," the original muttered, delivering the exact same punch to each of the shield-carrying clones.
Both of them stayed standing.
That told him plenty on its own. A shielded clone was a lot harder to pop than a regular one. He pulled the zweihander out next and swung it at the clone with the clone shield.
Poof.
Then he swung the same blade, at the clone holding the real shield.
CLANG.
The clone flew backward, skidded across the dirt, and groaned. But it didn't disappear.
"Yatta. I lived," it wheezed from the ground.
Naruto grinned down at it.
The idea worked. If he armored his clones properly, actual weapons, shields, and gear instead of cloned items. Naruto would've an actual squadron of clones that could take alot of punishment. But if a clone did go down, the gear itself wouldn't vanish with it. That meant people could steal or damage it.
Eh, I'll grab it after the fight, dattebayo.
[ Item: Binoculars ][ Description: Binoculars made of Brass. Use to peer at distant scenery. This advanced device was built by a famous craftsman of Astora. Its utility is singular, but its applications many. The value of these specs depends greatly on the imagination of their owner. ]
The binoculars were made of brass, with two cylindrical eyepieces connected by a small hinge in the middle.
Naruto smiled as he remembered stealing something like this off Hiruzen's desk years ago. He hadn't even known what they were for at the time, or why the old man kept them around. Mostly he'd just paraded them through the academy for a few glorious minutes of fame. Every kid in class suddenly wanting a turn.
Some idiot ended up snapping the hinge because nobody could agree on whose turn it actually was. Naruto had been furious in the moment, and then crushed the second the anger wore off, because he'd broken Jiji's stuff. Hiruzen hadn't yelled at him for it. He'd sat him down, talked him through it, and teaching him something that stuck a lot longer than the anger ever had. A Hokage takes responsibility for what happens under his watch, no matter how small.
Will you take responsibility for yours, old man? Naruto thought, raising the binoculars to his eyes.
Maybe he could put them to better use than showing off. Long range scouting using a clone was his first thought.
The second thought was some half-formed idea about peeking on girls from a safe distance. He didn't even get seconds into the fantasy before Oscar's voice cracked through his skull like a physical blow.
Precept the Sixth. A knight does not measure his honor by what he can take, but by what he chooses not to. Courtesy is owed to every woman he meets, highborn or common, stranger or friend, not because she demands it, but because he does. A knight defends the honor of those who cannot defend their own, and never mistakes a woman's kindness for permission, or her silence for consent. True chivalry needs no audience. A knight who behaves honorably only when watched has not learned honor. He has only learned to perform it.
"Okay, okay, geez," Naruto muttered out loud, rubbing the back of his head like Oscar had actually cuffed him one. "I wasn't gonna do anything, I was just thinking about it!"
Naruto could imagine Oscar shaking his head.
Through the lenses, he could make out winding paths carved into the massive stone walls surrounding the area. The paths twisted and turned, disappearing into the distance. Trails leading toward the unknown.
Naruto lowered the binoculars, a grin spreading across his face. "Well, looks like I know where I'm going next," he said, standing up and stretching. "Let's go see what this world's got for me next!"
The world ahead was a sloped cliffside. Beyond the chasm loomed a massive castle wall that reminded Naruto of the walls surrounding Konoha. The stone was weathered and scarred, ancient in a way that felt less like age and more like punishment. It stretched so high it vanished into the thick, cloudy sky above.
"Man, this place always knows how to make you feel tiny."
As Naruto stepped closer, he caught sight of a staircase carved directly into the cliffside. It was winding upward toward an entrance built atop a series of archways.
His knight crest locked onto the hollows stationed around the area. Something about them set him on edge before he could even name why. They moved with sharper, more alert eyes than the ones back at the Asylum. Scraps of armor still clung to their rotted bodies. They carried proper weapons like short swords and spears, positioned as if they were in a battle formation.
One beneath the stairs. One on the steps themselves. One badly hidden in the shadows off to the side. One stationed high above the rest.
Despite the strange little squadron laid out in front of him, Naruto didn't take it seriously. They were hollows.
Who was supposed to be scared of hollows?
He was confident enough that he decided to skip the chakra reinforcement entirely, moving at a normal pace under the full weight of his elite knight armor instead.
Good weight training, the young squire thought, breaking into a jog toward the nearest one. But before his swing could land, the two hollows waiting in the back surged forward. The sword-wielder covered a dozen meters in a single leap and slammed into him from above. The one he'd been about to attack went into wild, frenzied swings. And the spear hollow came in low, aimed straight for his face.
That was what he got for underestimating things that lurked in a land of ruin and death.
Clang.
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The impact flung his visor open, and in that instant his eyes caught something perched just above them.
An urn.
BOOM.
Fire and heat erupted outward, slamming into his face like a physical hammer, driving the air out of his lungs as flames burned his hair along the edges of his armor. Through the chaos, the hollows closed in ready to kill Naruto
These were hollows. Mindless. Weak. And they had still nearly killed him without even trying. It seemed like confidence and safety weren't the same thing.
Even then their weapons hit nothing.
Confusion rippled through the hollow squad until they caught the familiar warmth of Estus in the air. They turned to find Naruto standing safely at the cliff's edge... healing.
He'd body flickered at the last possible second to avoid damage.
"Alright, that's enough of that," Naruto muttered, breath ragged. His cocky grin gone. He activayed the pyromancy flame in his palm and hurled a fireball straight at the staircase. The explosion tore through the stone steps, swallowing two hollows in fire.
BOOM.
Another firebomb detonated, and for a moment Naruto looked like he knocked out by the blast. The spear hollow lunged to finish him off, only for a short sword to punch straight through its chest from behind by the original. The burning Naruto turned into white smoke.
Naruto'd used the armored clone's extra durability, letting it eat the hit and hold the hollow's attention while the real threat came from behind.
From above, the most persistently annoying hollow of the bunch wound up to throw yet another firebomb.
A kunai intercepted the urn mid air, detonating it early.
Using the resulting smoke as cover, Naruto sent out another clone.
"Oh, I'm gonna enjoy this," he muttered, already picturing the satisfying arc of a hollow sailing off the ledge. "You really wanna keep throwing stuff, huh? Get another hobby like growing a garden."
The hollow raised its arm to hurl another bomb just as a massive war axe came out from behind the staircase. The clone caught it on the flat of the zweihander. In the same instant a shuriken came in from the back, striking the bomb before it ever left the hollow's hand.
Caught in its own fire, the hollow screamed and tried to smother the flames. It lost its footing entirely, tipping backward off the ledge into the chasm below.
The clone, meanwhile, put Alexander's lesson to use.
Winding the bind.
A bind was any moment where two blades made contact and locked together. In this case this one had the clone's sword pinned against the haft of the war axe. Rather than pulling free, the clone rotated along the contact point, letting the lock guide his blade around the hollow's guard and slipped the point through for a clean thrust.
The last hollow dropped.
The original sat down on the stairs afterward, running the fight back through his head. It had been closer than he wanted to admit. If he hadn't gotten the hand sign out in time, hollows he'd walked in dismissing as nothing would have been the thing that killed him.
But he was grateful for it anyway.
It had knocked some sense into him. He couldn't keep walking into fights assuming the outcome before it happened. Cockiness had nearly cost him more than a few scraped knees this time. The other lesson was just as important. It wasn't the individual hollows that had almost ended him. It was the fact that they'd boxed him in from multiple directions at once and hadn't given him a clean angle to work with.
He already used squads due to Oscar; shield clones up front soaking hits, bomb clones etc. But this fight made it clear he'd only been scratching the surface. If half-coordinated hollows could nearly box him in, then a properly built formation of his own clones, could be a scary private army.
That could be so awesome, dattebayo!
Naruto motioned the clone forward to collect what was left. "Alright, you know the drill," he said, waving it toward the edge. "You go grab the shiny stuff, and I stay up here looking heroic."
"You mean lazy," the clone quipped before hopping down without waiting for a response.
Souls. A few pieces of armor. A couple of usable weapons.
"Boss, I see a corpse on the archway."
"Does it have anything good?" Naruto called down, and the clone pulled out the binoculars to check.
"It's got a magic ring."
"Then go get it. I don't pay you to stand around being useless."
"You don't pay anything."
"Dattebayo."
The clone sighed and leapt off toward the corpse.
Naruto sat on the ledge, legs dangling, gazing out at the valley and the faint outlines of what looked like distant towns.
"I wonder if people actually live there, or if it's just more undead."
He was pulled out of the thought by the sound of something moving through water. His head snapped toward a doorway leading into a sewer tunnel. Something was hiding in the dark.
"What the?"
A massive rat, easily the size of a dog.
"What are you, the Akimichi clan's secret mascot?"
The thing had wild, beady eyes bulging half out of its skull. With patches of fur crusted over with rot and pus, and matted grey hair soaked through with sewage water. As it lunged, Naruto jumped and threw a kunai on reflex. The blade catching it back of the skull. It didn't kill the thing outright, but the momentum knocked it clean off the ledge and down into the dark below.
"Boss, I'm done," a voice called out, right before the clone leapt off the archway.
Naruto watched in stunned silence as the rat's body slammed into the clone mid-fall, popping it on impact. The original hit the ground and immediately doubled over laughing as the memory filtered back into him.
'My humor is so broken,' Naruto thought, shaking his head. His nose wrinkled the second he stepped further into the tunnel. A sour, damp smell clinging to the inside of his nose
The passage was dark and slick. With algae coating the walls and a thin stream of water running down the center of the floor. Further ahead was a rusted cage sat as the end of the tunnel, and slumped against the bars inside it was a corpse. Or what used to be one.
"So the rat ate the corpse," Naruto muttered, lifting his pyromancy flame to throw some light over the scene. A soul orb sat glowing faintly near the remains.
"Yeah. Nope. Not touching that." He made another clone without hesitation. "Hey, you. Go grab that for me."
"Sure thing, boss. Glad I'm disposable, huh."
"Yeah, that's why you're a clone," Naruto said with a grin, watching it step into the muck to fish the orb out. While it worked, the original scanned ahead and caught a sliver of light spilling in through a doorway off to the left.
"I think I can make that jump."
He fed chakra into his legs and cleared the gap in one motion, careful not to so much as graze the water below, and landed in front of a staircase leading upward.
Naruto crouched low and crept up the steps, spotting some hollows in the top. This time he wasn't going to make the same mistake twice. But he still wanted to try something. He swapped the zweihander out for the winged spear. It felt strange in his hands, not bad exactly, just unfamiliar. He summoned a clone beside him.
"Guess I'm not pulling off anything fancy with this thing. But hey. Pointy end goes into the bad guys, dattebayo."
The clone got to work immediately, flailing its arms like a lunatic and shouting insults across the room. "Oi, you ugly sacks of bones! Come get me! What, scared of a little tree-hugger?"
Naruto smirked as both hollows turned toward the noise. The first dragged an axe along the stone floor as it advanced. The second hung back in the shadows, waiting.
"Huh. Guess hollows are smarter than they look."
He made the hand sign the instant his clone dissolved into smoke.
Ninja Art: Body Flicker Jutsu.
The spear's tip drove straight into the hollow's skull with a sound that made his stomach turn. He felt the resistance of bone and flesh giving way through the shaft as blood ran down its length. The second hollow came in swinging wildly the moment it registered what happened. Naruto banished the spear back into his inventory and threw the crest shield up, catching the blow on the boss.
The second the distance opened back up between them, his free hand ignited.
A fireball caught the hollow point blank. Flame swallowed it whole, skin bubbling and splitting as it screeched. Yet it kept coming anyway.
"Seriously? What does it take to put you things down?"
He threw a punch straight into its burning chest, gauntlet connecting with a satisfying crunch that sent it stumbling backward onto a wooden bridge, right as a firebomb detonated against its back and finished the job.
"Who's handing out firebombs to these guys?!" Naruto shouted at no one in particular.
Another hollow at the far end of the platform raised its arm.
His eyes narrowed.
It came down to a quick draw. His kunai against its swing.
Naruto won.
The kunai caught the urn dead center before it could even leave the hollow's hand. The armoured boy closed the distance and flying-kicked the thing straight off the platform. Over a drop that went down the entire mountainside.
"Who designed this place?" Naruto yelled. "This is a death trap."
A hollow lunging out from the room beside the open area, aiming for his back. Naruto was aware thanks to his Knight's crest. He brought the zweihander up into a hanging guard on instinct, hands raised high and the tip angled down toward the floor, the exact position built to catch a wraparound strike aimed at his rear.
He caught the blow, felt the edges lock, and immediately wound the bind. By twisting his blade against the hollow's weapon to strip its angle away. He stepped offline as he did it, let the point of the zweihander drop, and drove it straight down through the hollow's throat and into its chest, putting his full weight behind the follow-through until the creature stopped moving entirely.
Naruto exhaled slowly and absorbed the souls in.
"Definitely need to work on my sword skills," he muttered, breathing hard. "And my body."
Ahead of him, a wall of mist filled the doorway to the next room.
"How is that even holding together?" Naruto wondered, staring at it. It didn't drift or thin the way mist was supposed to. It just sat there, motionless, like it was waiting for something.
He patted his chest once for luck and stepped through anyway.
It felt wrong the second he crossed it. Not painful, not even really uncomfortable, just deeply, fundamentally wrong. Like the air on the other side had been paused mid breath and only just now remembered how to move again. For half a heartbeat everything around him felt too still, too quiet, too... He didn't have a word for it. He just knew that walking through that mist had broken something.
The mist thinned and pulled apart, revealing a stone staircase spiraling upward to his left. Sections of it crumbled and broken. Beneath it, a heap of shattered barrels sat piled over something.
Naruto crouched and nudged the barrels aside, uncovering the crumpled body. His limbs were bent at angles no living joint should manage, hollow eyes staring at nothing. A soul orb glowed faintly beside its hand.
He reached out and took it, the familiar pulse running up through his fingers the moment his skin made contact.
"What even are these corpses?," he murmured. "Doesn't everything come back in this place eventually? Or does it just take time? Or can you actually just... die here, for good?"
Did that mean he only had so many lives to spend before this place decided it was done bringing him back? Had Oscar reached his limit before the end, or had it just been the wound itself that finished him?
The thought left something bitter taste in the back of his throat. Naruto lowered himself onto the cold stone floor. He normally hated silence, doing nothing and yet there was something about Lordran that made sitting in it feel almost natural. He didn't last long in it regardless. Restlessness won out fast, and he pulled out the ring his clone had found earlier, turning it over in his fingers.
"Please be something awesome."
[ Item: Ring of Sacrifice ][ Description: This mystical ring was created in a sacrificial rite of Velka, the Goddess of Sin. Its wearer will lose nothing upon death, but the ring itself breaks. ]
Naruto facepalmed and tossed it back into his inventory.
"A one time use item. That's so lame. Can't I just get one cool, actually useful magic ring for once?"
He scrolled further through his inventory when something else caught his eye.
[ Item: Humanity ][ Description: Rare tiny black sprite found on corpses. Use to gain 1 humanity and restore a large amount of HP. This black sprite is called humanity, but little is known about its true nature. If the soul is the source of all life, then what distinguishes the humanity we hold within ourselves? ]
Naruto scratched the back of his head, rereading the description twice like it might make more sense the second time.
"I dunno, maybe ramen is the source of all life."
He chuckled to himself. He liked lordran better than Konoha at the current moment. But it was quiet lonely. If Oscar were still around, they probably would've turned half of this walk into a lecture by now.
Roar.
A deep, cracking bellow rattled straight through his chestplate and into his ribs. His ears kept ringing afterwards.
Naruto rushed up the path without thinking twice. "What the hell was that?"
The stairs opened onto a cold, empty walkway shadowed by a towering castle. With gray mist clinging to everything in sight. The whole place felt forgotten. With crumbling towers and rotted wooden scaffolding barely visible through the haze. A cluster of hollows crouched behind makeshift barricades further ahead.
And then he heard it again. A bone-deep roar tearing in from the left that shook the entire walkway under his feet.
Naruto's stomach dropped as something enormous touched down on the bridge in front of him.
The thing was bigger his house.
Its body was a nightmare of red scales and crimson growths, like molten flesh had torn straight through a charred hide. Long, ragged wings stretched wide, tattered membranes glowing a smoldering orange along the edges. A crown of jagged horns swept back from its narrow skull, framing rows of needle teeth and eyes that burned the same crimson as its scales. Blood red spines ran the length of a serpentine neck, jutting outward like shards of broken crystal. While coarse black bristles covered its shoulders and back. Its clawed limbs ended in curved talons that tore through stone like it was nothing sturdier than tofu. Behind it trailed a tail long enough to whip the length of the entire bridge.
[ Name: Hellkite Wyvern ][ HP: 5,520/5,520 ]
Is that... a dragon? His mind stumbled over the thought, unable to fully close the gap between it. Oscar had told him about dragons. Hearing about one and standing in front of one weren't the same experience at all.
It didn't feel real. It felt like something out of a dream or nightmare.
The wyvern either didn't notice him or didn't care enough to bother. It pushed off the stone and lifted back into the gray sky, vanishing into the mist as quickly as it had appeared.
Naruto stood frozen, heart hammering, staring at the empty space where it had just been.
"Did that... actually just happen?"
He barely had time to process it before an arrow bounced off his metal kneecap.
"Thank god I didn't take an arrow to the knee," he muttered, throwing himself sideways to dodge a second shot. "That would've been the end of my adventures, dattebayo."
A group of hollows began to rise ahead. A few already breaking into a run toward him. One was perched on a ruined tower working a crossbow.
Clang.
He dodged another bolt from the tower.
I could just clear this with shadow clones, Naruto thought, hand halfway into a seal before the memory of that thing stopped him cold. The wyvern's presence made the Asylum Demon look like a joke. If he was going to keep running into monsters like that, and probably worse, leaning on chakra and clones for every fight wasn't going to cut it forever. He needed to actually get stronger on his own first. So that chakra and clones made him more dangerous, not the entire reason he was dangerous at all.
He let the hand seal drop and walked forward instead. Naruto rmembered the way Alexander had drilled his guard into him over and over.
The first hollow came in swinging a rusted longsword. Naruto brought the zweihander up and caught it in a basic parry, shoved the blade wide, and answered with a straight thrust that dropped it clean.
He didn't get to enjoy a second of it.
The second hollow was already closing from his flank. Behind it a third broke from cover at a dead sprint. A jagged axe raised overhead. Naruto's stance was still mid reset from the first exchange.
He pivoted to meet the second, blade coming around in a wide horizontal arc that connected more from momentum than any real technique, staggering it back a step. But the third was already inside his guard by the time he finished the swing. The axe caught him across the shoulder plate with a shriek of metal on metal.
Clang.
He stumbled sideways into a stack of splintered barrels, one of them cracking apart under his weight.
"Okay, that's new," Naruto grunted, shoving himself upright and bringing the greatsword up just in time to catch the axe. "Aren't you guys wait your turn?!"
Thock.
An arrow deflected off his pauldron.
"Oh, come ON," he snapped, half a glance toward the tower where the crossbow hollow was already nocking another bolt. "Can I get literally one problem at a time?!"
He didn't get the chance to answer his own question. The barricade to his right splintered outward as two more hollows came through it. They were fully armored this time, spears moving with a coordination that felt distinctly less like mindless shambling and a lot more like an actual formation closing a pincer.
Five against one.
Naruto caught the axe hollow's next swing on the flat of his blade, shoved it back, and immediately had to twist away from a spear thrust aimed at his ribs. The tip scraping a bright line across his side plate. Another spear came in from the opposite angle a half second later.
He barely got the crest shield up in time. The impact still drove him back a full step, boots skidding through wet stone and loose gravel. Behind that impact the axe hollow was already resetting for another swing while the longsword hollow circled wide.
"Okay. Okay. Think," Naruto muttered, breath coming faster, sweat starting to sting at the edge of his eyes despite the cold air. He caught a spear thrust on his gauntlet, redirected it wide, and felt the second spear hook around the back of his other arm before he could pull it clear. The barbed head catching in the joint of his armor and yanking him half off balance.
He wrenched free, but the movement cost him. The axe came down while his guard was still open from the pull. Pain exploded across his forearm as the blade found a gap between plates, biting into muscle before he managed to throw himself backward out of range.
Blood welled up hot beneath the torn armor.
He didn't have time to look at it. Another arrow bounced off his breastplate hard enough to actually rock him this time.
This isn't working, Naruto thought, thinking outside the box.
The zweihander wasn't built for dueling one enemy cleanly. It was a crowd control weapon. Wide arcs built to punish anyone stupid enough to bunch up around him.
Four hollows currently bunched up around him.
Naruto planted his back foot and swung low. The arc caught two hollowz across the legs in the same motion, knocking both off balance before either could bring a weapon to bear. He didn't stop to admire it. He rotated straight into a rising diagonal cut that came up through the gap he'd just opened.
It wasn't the kind of swordsmanship Oscar would have called elegant. But it was working, and right now that was the only metric that mattered.
He let the zweihander go on the next swing. By releasing the grip mid arc, the momentum alone carried it into the jaw of the nearest hollow. The hollow beside it flinched back and fumbled for its own Estus.
Naruto didn't give it the chance. He closed the distance in a burst and kicked the flask clean out of its hand, sending it spinning up into the air.
Clang.
His crest helped him read the crossbow hollow's next shot before it even loosed. He shifted his angle just enough that the arrow's path crossed straight through the airborne flask instead. The arrow punched through glass. A shower of gold burst outward. With warm light spilling over everyone caught in the blast radius, Naruto included, healing everyone in one indiscriminate wave.
Naruto didn't care. He was already moving, scooping the zweihander back up off the ground and swinging through the recovering hollows.
The two spear hollows finally broke through his guard on the next exchange. Both aiming for his skull at once. They got the visor up rather than the skull, but the force of it still snapped his head back hard enough to rattle his teeth.
Cling.
The crossbow hollow aimed and fired.
The arrow pierced his eye.
Pain detonate. So much so that it blotted out every other sensation for one endless, silent second. Before the world came rushing back all at once. He felt the socket give in a way no part of a person was ever supposed to give. A wet heat flooding down the side of his face. When his hand flew up on instinct his fingers came away with dark, warm blood running freely down his jaw and dripping off his chin in a way that felt obscene in how ordinary it looked hitting the stone.
He couldn't see out of that side anymore. There was only red, and then nothing. The pain was so much that Naruto felt his mind blank in and out of conciousness.
Fuck this.
Chakra surged out of him in a visible wave. The pressurized cracked the stone floor. It rolling off his body like an aura. The whole squad began to move back as they felt his killing intent.
Ninja Art: Shadow clone jutsu!
A hundred clones exploded into existence around him and tore into the hollows. Blades and fists with so pure overwhelming numbers doing in seconds what he'd spent the last several minutes bleeding for.
Naruto ripped the arrow free himself, chunks of his own eye coming with it. Before he passed out, Naruto forced down his Estus. Warmth spread fast, and beneath the pain he felt something in the ruined socket knit itself back together. The pressure and wrongness fading until his vision blurred back into focus on that side. The eye was whole again like it had never happened at all.
Cling.
His hand shot up on pure reflex and caught the arrow out of the air.
He didn't think after that. He just moved, body flickering up above the tower in a single burst and bringing the zweihander down with everything he had left.
BOOM.
The crossbow hollow went down in two clean pieces. Naruto tore the weapon out of its ruined grip before it even finished falling.
"This is mine," he said, low and flat, nothing playful left in his voice at all. "For everything you just put me through."
The anger drained out of him slowly once there was nothing left standing to aim it at. He stood in the wreckage of the barricade, chest heaving, and looked around. A narrow bridge stretching out over a sea of mist toward another section of the ruins, and on the far side of it, sitting in a dark room was an unlit bonfire.
"Yeah," he muttered, wiping the last of the blood off his jaw with the back of his glove. "I think that's enough of Lordran for me tonight."
He was disappointed in himself for losing control, even if it had probably saved his life. It just meant he had that much further left to go. Next time, he decided, he wasn't going to need his chakra to bail him out of a fight like that. He needed to get stronger to protect himself in this world and in Konoha.
"Do I need to go see Anastacia to level up" Naruto wondered. Firelink Shrine wasn't far, honestly, but what about later, when he was deep into somewhere he couldn't just walk back from?
He thought about it while enjoying the warmth of the fire. As the familiar menu flickered up in front of his eyes.
[ Name: Naruto Uzumaki ][ Level: 10 ][ Souls: 687 ][ Required Souls: 900 ]
Naruto stared at the numbers, brow furrowing slightly. Just short of what he needed. "When I get the rest, I'll try sending a clone to Anastacia instead of going myself," he muttered. "Wonder if that'll actually work."
Satisfied with the plan for now, he pulled a homeward bone from his inventory and let it carry him back to Konoha.
Behind him, Lordran did what Lordran always did.
Time folded back on itself. In a place built on the endless churn of death becoming life and life becoming death all over again. Every hollow Naruto had cut down; stirred and rose up from the bonfire. Every trace of the fight slowly smoothed itself back into place. The world resetting to whatever passed for its baseline here.
Only one thing didn't reverse.
The chunks of Naruto's eye.
One of the newly risen hollows found them first. Driven by whatever dim, gnawing hunger still lived somewhere inside its rotted instincts. It swallowed the fragments whole without any understanding of what it had just taken into itself.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the hollow convulsed.
A wet, rattling cough tearing out of its throat as the residue of chakra still clinging to the meat came into contact with something that had never been meant to touch it.
The Darksign carved into its chest flared. The light bleeding out from the edges of the mark like it was straining to hold something back.
The Darksoul was reacting to the chakra.
Its spine arched. Its shoulders began to swell, flesh shifting and bunching unnaturally beneath what was left of its skin. An abnormal hump rising slowly across its back like something underneath was pushing its way up toward the surface.
It didn't stop.
Whatever quiet, unchanging balance this land had settled into over centuries of the same fire dimming and the same undead rising. It hadn't accounted for something like Naruto walking through it. Lordran was not built to metabolize a foreign presence like his.
Change, it seemed, had a way of finding its way in regardless.