Chapter no.229 Dark Souls
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Chapter 229 Rat, Slime and Sewage... I want to go home?!
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C-R-R-ACK.
That was the sound of skulls shattering beneath his feet.
Despite the darkness Naruto could make out that he was standing on a mezzanine. An intermediate floor suspended between the cannibal restaurant above and whatever waited in the deeper Depths below.
'I need a light source.'
Naruto took out the large ember for that.
Piles of skulls and bones covered the floor until the stone beneath was barely visible. There were so many that it stopped registering as a collection and started registering as terrain.
The stench rising from below was bad enough to numb his nose.
And beneath the mezzanine was a giant hall with wide sewage channels of thick black sludge that moved slowly. Iron bars blocked certain passages. Others were sealed with nothing but low brick walls, which seemed optimistic given what he could already hear.
The sound of claws dragging across wet stone somewhere in the dark below.
It walked into the light.
A rat.
Its body was bloated and lumpy. The fur patchy and falling out in uneven clumps. Its right eye was a dull flat grey and had drifted partially out of its socket. Its left eye had an axe embedded into it up to the handle.
It was comparable in size to one of Jiraiya's giant summons.
[ Name: Giant Undead Rat ]
[ HP: 1,690 / 1,690 ]
"Was this what the butchers were feeding?" Naruto muttered.
He tapped Oscar's head and pointed down at the arena-sized chamber below. The rat was positioned directly beneath them, moving in slow patient circles waiting to be feed.
"We have the high ground."
Oscar nodded.
Naruto signed out the plan with a few quick gestures, then stood up while releasing some killer-intent.
"Hey. You disease-ridden rat."
The rat's head snapped upward. It let out a low, rattling screech and launched itself upward in a single motion.
Ninja Art: Body Flicker Jutsu!
The claws tore through an afterimage and hi the entire ledge, stone crumbling away into the dark below.
In the same instant Oscar fired a magic bolt from the opposite angle. The creature landed disoriented, and in the half second it took to recover Naruto was already above it.
Ninja Art: Rasengan!
He drove it into the rat's back. The force destroyed floor below creating a crater that sent it up a cloud of dust and debris.
Naruto landed and straightened up.
"That was easy."
He might've spoken too soon as the undead rat lunge out of the smoke. A deep bleeding bruise spread across its back where the Rasengan had connected.
That was all the Rasengan did? Naruto thought as he remembered that higher HP meant higher magic resistance. I wonder how my magic resistance would react if I got hit by an A rank jutsu. He filed a secondary thought away for later as the rat was in his personal space.
Wind Style: Blade of Wind.
The invisible slash caught the rat's foreleg and cut it in half to the shoulder.
That still didn't stop the rat. As it's jaw closed around him. The bite force was extraordinary. Chakra reinforced metal dented inward against his chest and back. The rat's salvia was like acid, eating through the armor.
"OSCAR!"
A giant crystal ball dropped onto the rat's spine. The impact shuddered through the creature's entire body and the jaws released. Naruto hit the ground rolling and came up with distance between them, one hand pressed to his side, assessing.
"For a giant blind rat," he said, breathing harder than he would have liked to admit, "you are one tough monster to deal with."
The crystal ball was sent flying as it unrolled mid air.
The Ravenous Crystal Lizard snarled. The two monsters collided with a sound like a rockslide and went down together, limbs locking, each trying to find purchase on the other.
The rat was heavier. The lizard was harder. Neither gave way.
They churned through the sludge. The rat snapping at crystal plating that cracked its teeth, Oscar raked claws across bloated flesh that barely registered the damage. The rat shifted its weight and drove the exposed bone of its severed limb directly into a gap in Oscar's crystal hide, the jagged edge punching through with a grinding crack.
"Restrain him," Naruto said.
Crystals erupted from Oscar's crystal mech body and spread outward like spiky thorns curling around the rat's limbs in sharp overlapping layers, driving spurs into the stone floor as anchors.
Ninja Art: Growing Crystal Thorns Jutsu.
Naruto flickered into the air while creating a rasengan.
"Let's see how you like this."
He drove the Rasengan straight into the rat's remaining eye. The blind organ offered no resistance at all. The technique punched through and detonated inside the skull.
Bone, brain matter, and a considerable amount of blood went in every direction at once.
[ Victory Achieved! ]
[ Souls Gained: 5,000 ]
[ Soul of Nameless Soldier ]
[ Sewer Chamber Key ]
Naruto landed in a slide and came to a stop on one knee. He was covered head to toe in gore.
"Oh mein Gott," he muttered as something had gone into his mouth. Naruto turned to the side and vomited.
He stayed crouched for a moment afterward, one hand braced on his knee.
"I hate the Depths," he said quietly. "I just want to go home, take a hot shower, and feel clean."
Oscar padded over from across the chamber and sat beside him. Clean as a cut diamond.
"Show off."
Oscar chirped with great serenity.
The rat's corpse occupied roughly half the available floor space. Naruto straightened up, and looked around.
Multiple exits. A narrow tunnel leading off to one side. A sewer waterfall dropping away into darkness below. A hole in the far corner that led somewhere deeper and probably worse.
Oscar made a sharp noise that translated almost too clearly.
Why aren't you using the Homeward Miracle already?!
"I can hear a bonfire nearby."
Oscar groaned.
The Depths had a particular quality to them that had nothing to do with the dark or the smell or the monsters. It was something in the about this place. This vague feeling that way the walls never quite felt far enough apart. A low, persistent wrongness, like being inside something that was aware of you and indifferent to whether you got out.
Oscar didn't even want to sit at the bonfire of this place because of it.
Naruto ignored the silent protest and moved deeper into the arena, ember held up against the dark.
A ladder. Rusted red iron, old and half-hidden behind a set of cage bars that had been shoved against the far wall. Easy to miss if you weren't looking. He almost had.
"Help me with this," he said, already gripping the nearest bar and pushing to the side.
Oscar gave the bars a few swift tail slaps for good measure.
Naruto climbed first. The ladder groaned under his weight but held. At the top, he found a handful of broken wooden crates shoved over the exit hatch. He stepped up into what looked like a rusted maintenance platform.
There were two doors: One leading up and One leading down.
The sound of fire crackling was above.
He approached the upper door and used the Sewer Chamber Key.
Just as the door swung open a flash of flame exploded toward his face. The torch hollow had drove its torch forward without hesitation.
"Buddy, I don't know what you are grinning about."
Naruto had dodged with a crouch.
The undead wanted to swing downward. But an invisible blade took its arms off at the elbow. A second pass took its head. The body stood for a half second on pure hollow stubbornness before crumpling into the doorway.
Naruto stepped over it and straightened up, brushing a fleck of ash off his shoulder.
"I don't want to give Danzo any credit, but he did give me a very useful jutsu."
Oscar made a noise.
"Is it my favourite?" Naruto considered this with genuine thought. "Probably not. Shadow clones are my bread and butter. And the Rasengan is my pop's legacy so it's different." He paused. "I don't actually know what my favourite jutsu is."
Oscar stared.
"Don't look at me like that, it's a hard question."
Naruto could hear the bonfire behind the door to his left.
Lordran, however, wasn't interested in giving them a moment.
Something dropped from the ceiling. They dodged on instinct and looked up.
Pale and translucent, streaked through with red, yellow and black suspended in jelly-like flesh. Some had half-dissolved bones poking out at odd angles. Others were already dripping, melting slowly like wax left too close to a flame.
[ Name: Slimes ]
[ HP: 400 / 400 ]
And then the entire ceiling came down.
Dozens of them rained into the sewage water. Maybe it 2as Naruto's dragonic presence or maybe some other reason, made them move toward each other. They merged together and grew. The individual shapes disappeared into a single heaving mass that filled most of the hallway and kept expanding until it became a... cube.
Gelatinous, enormous and somehow perfectly geometric about it.
[ Name: Slime Cube ]
[ HP: 2,000 / 2,000 ]
Naruto's eyes caught something suspended near the center of the mass. Small dark shapes, pieces of rock held inside the creature like flies in amber. His leather gauntlet shimmered back into inventory and the Eye of Calamity hummed to life in the dark hallway, its glow casting everything in a red light. He reached out with telekinesis and pulled.
The rocks tore free through the gelatinous body and landed in his palm.
[ You have obtained: Green Titanite Shard x5 ]
Naruto stared at the notification.
[ Item: Green titanire Shard ]
[ Description: Titanite shard for weapon reinforcement. Green titanite imbued with a special power. Reinforces magic, divine, fire weapons to +5.
Titanite shards are fragments of the Legendary Slabs. Titanite is etched into weapons to reinforce. ]
"Yatta," he breathed. "I finally got that stupid ore for weapon ascension, dattebayo!"
Oscar chirped to say not the time to celebrate.
The tendrils were already coming. Naruto drew the Zweihander in the same motion.
Wind Style: Vacuum Blade.
Wind wrapped the blade and he swung through the nearest cluster, cutting the tendrils clean before driving forward in a thrust that punched through the membrane.
[ Name: Slime Cube ]
[ HP: 1,940 / 2,000 ]
What the hell?!
The sizzling sound reached him a half second later. The acidic interior of the creature was already working at the metal. A faint shimmer of corrosion spreading from the point of entry.
The Zweihander went back into inventory. He formed a Rasengan and drove it in instead. The membrane ruptured outward with a wet boom, acidic water spraying in a wide arc. Naruto flickered back and Oscar threw up a crystal wall. The acid hissing against the surface and running down in smoking rivulets.
[ Name: Slime Cube ]
[ HP: 1,800 / 2,000 ]
"No way." Naruto covered his mouth. "Why am I doing so little damage?"
Oscar chirped.
Naruto hummed at the suggestion. The cube's entire body was gelatinous, which meant physical force had nothing to push against.
"Let's try magic damage then."
The pyromancy flame lit up the hallway. An orb of fire floated above his palm, and he waited for Oscar to drop the crystal wall before throwing it into the reforming mass.
The Fire Orb hit the center of the cube and detonated A horrible wet sizzling sound filled the tunnel as the gelatinous body boiled from the inside.
[ Name: Slime Cube ]
[ HP: 1,500 / 2,000 ]
Good news was that Magic worked.
Bad news was that the hallway now smelled like boiling sewage.
Oscar chirped. The lizard was done with this place.
"So am I, bud," Naruto said. "So am I."
He jumped, formed ten shadow clones in the air with a single hand seal, and held up the talisman with his free hand.
Each clone caught a Lightning Spear as it formed, branching arcs of yellow electricity jumping between the copies in the confined space of the hallway. The cube launched its tendrils upward to meet them.
They threw.
Ten Lightning Spears hit the Slime Cube simultaneously. The gelatinous body conducted it perfectly, the charge racing through every inch of the mass at once, lighting up the suspended bones from the inside, the boiling internal fluids carrying the current to every corner of the cube in a fraction of a second.
[ Name: Slime Cube ]
[ HP: 0 / 2,000 ]
Naruto landed with a satisfied look on his face.
The cube exploded.
Sewage. Everywhere. On the walls, on the ceiling, running down the back of his neck, soaking through every gap in the armor that the rat's saliva had not already found.
A long silence followed.
Oscar opened his mouth.
"Not a word."
Oscar closed his mouth.
Naruto wrung out his sleeve and stared at the ceiling.
"Let's sit at bonfire, and go home."
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[ Uchiha Compound - Sasuke's House ]
Sasuke was drinking his morning coffee in peace when the smell hit him. It was the most genuinely offensive thing his nose had ever processed. An assault that seemed to get worse the longer he breathed it in.
It was coming from Naruto's room.
He walked over and stopped outside the door.
"What the hell came up and died in your room, dobe."
It was not a question. It was a statement of personal suffering.
He opened the door.
Naruto stood in the middle of the room covered head to toe in what appeared to be blood, sewage, piss with something dark and unidentifiable, and at least a few other substances Sasuke made the immediate decision not to investigate.
"I can explain," Naruto said.
"Hn."
"So I was fighting cannibals in a sewer..."
Sasuke slammed the door shut in response.
"Rude," Naruto said to the closed door.
He stood there for a moment, dripping quietly onto the floor.
"You ready for a bath?"
Oscar bobbed his head with great enthusiasm.
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Author Note: Since I think this chapter was fairly simple, I will try to answer some questions I got in the previous chapter.
Let's get into it.
Q & A time.
A) Naruto made a comment about war crimes are there ninja war crimes in this fic? because biological warfare was used in the second great ninja war witch is supposed to be a big no no. is there a ninja Geneva convention? do the 5 kage have to obey to a set rules to war? Did granny chio get put on trial for war crimes after the sand lost the second great war? I'm going down a rabbit hole here PLEASE ANSWER MY QUESTIONS
Answer: Fun fact, the concept of war crimes actually existed long before the Geneva Convention.
The earliest formal attempts to regulate warfare go back to ancient civilizations. The Hindu text Manusmriti explicitly laid down that anyone who surrenders, is without arms, is sleeping, is unprepared or is a non-combatant must never be killed regardless of whether the opponent was a believer or an outsider or whether they were fighting a just or unjust war.
Similar frameworks existed in ancient Greek city states and medieval European chivalric codes, all of which prohibited certain conduct against certain classes of people even if those codes were selectively applied in practice.
The modern Geneva Convention didn't appear until 1864 and even then it took multiple revisions and two World Wars before it became what it is today. But the underlying idea that warfare should have rules is genuinely ancient.
So applying this to the Naruto verse, it is completely reasonable to assume that after three Great Ninja Wars and centuries of organized conflict, the major villages developed their own equivalent frameworks. The Five Kage summits we see in canon are literally international diplomatic meetings. You don't build that kind of diplomatic infrastructure without also developing rules around how wars are conducted and what constitutes a violation.
Which means yes, there is probably a ninja equivalent of the Geneva Convention somewhere. Which means Chiyo absolutely should have been on trial for biological warfare. Which means Orochimaru should have been on trial. Which means a significant number of people in that verse should have been dragged before some kind of international tribunal and weren't.
And nobody was ever held accountable. Which is honestly one of the most accidentally realistic things Kishimoto ever wrote lol.
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B) I have a question, will you make Naruto develop or learn spells from the other games of the saga, such as the Soul Sword of DS2 or the dark pyromancies of DS3?
Answer: Maybe.
I am still on the fence about including stuff from the other games because Naruto already has a ridiculous amount of abilities. Technically I have already given him some stuff from the other games without explicitly saying so. Naruto combining pyromancy and soul sorcery means he can already use Flame Weapon from DS2 or Carthus Flame Arc from DS3.
How?
All Naruto needs is to use Magic Weapon and then burn it via pyromancy to create a flaming weapon. Simple as that.
I don't know if combinations like these will result in some future spells being explicitly named or acknowledged. For now I am going to work with the DS1 spells and whatever else naturally emerges from the interaction between the power systems.
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That's It… For Now.
I want to thank you all for taking the time to read, comment, and follow along with this story. Your feedback means more than you know, and it helps push me to make each chapter bigger, sharper, and more true to the worlds of Naruto and Dark Souls.
Until next time,
Praise the Sun.
\-Adam-/
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[ Personal Note: First off, thanks a ton to all of you for sticking with this story. Seriously, you guys are awesome. Now, if you're interested in supporting me on P@treon, let me just say that over there, I post these massive 15k-word chapters. But heads up, if you're jumping to P@treon, you'll need to start from Chapter 99, since that's where this chapter lines up with the content there.
To everyone here just reading along, please don't forget to leave a comment! Honestly, your comments make my day, and they let me know you're as invested in this story as I am. So yeah, thanks again, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day!