Read advance chapters of all my works or want to support me.
https://www.p.a.t.r.e.on.com/Adamo_Amet
....
Join us on discord: https://discord.gg/DXv2nkTB
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
After eight years of being surrounded by the weak and the sycophantic, Sasuke Uchiha's ambition was finally beginning to take shape. The thought should have filled him with something. Pride, maybe. Some form of satisfaction.
But it did not.
It only sharpened the reminder of how far he still had to go.
Compared to Itachi, he was nothing.
That monster had been an Anbu captain at his age, while Sasuke was sitting here being a genin. The gap between them was a chasm. And no matter how fast he ran toward the edge of it, the other side never seemed any closer.
He sat at his desk by the window and let his gaze drift over his classmates. Half of them would be dead within a year of real fieldwork, leaving behind grieving parents and younger siblings who would never fully understand why. He did not care about any of them. But the thought of that kind of loss being visited on someone sat uncomfortably in him.
"Sasuke kun!"
Every day was the same performance of waving, giggling, and the need to be noticed by him. Sasuke let it fade into noise and closed his eyes. He had training to plan for.
Ninjutsu today, or taijutsu.
Suddenly the noise stopped, followed by the creak of a floorboard as a heavy thud sounded beside him.
Sasuke looked sideways.
Someone in full battle armor had sat down next to him. The Uchiha's eyes landed on the shield resting against the desk with a lion insignia engraved across its surface.
What clan has that as their symbol? Sasuke thought, looking around the room.
Everyone else was wearing the same expression he imagined was on his own face.
Who was this stranger?
Meanwhile Naruto felt like a bottle about to burst. Fifty five bowls of ramen was a new personal best. He rubbed his stomach while noticing the room was far too quiet for a graduating class.
"Why is everyone so quiet?" the blonde asked, opening his visor to breathe.
"Naruto?"
"Yeah."
The silence lasted a few seconds before someone in the back decided to open his mouth. "You know this is the class for graduating students, right? Not for deadlast who failed three times."
Naruto's hand moved automatically toward his head... armband.
Many questioned how the boy had graduated when Kiba's voice cut across the room. "Hey, leave him alone. He probably thinks the armor is going to make him Hokage."
Laughter rippled through the class.
Sasuke watched the young Uzumaki from the corner of his eye. The expression that crossed Naruto's face was not the loud, defensive bluster he had come to associate with the boy.
It was one of quiet anger.
Something the Uchiha had worn every time someone spoke about the Uchiha clan with disrespect.
While the class laughed, Sasuke caught Naruto murmuring under his breath. "Don't do it. It's not worth it. Oscar wouldn't want you to stoop to his level."
Kiba, seeing that Naruto was not rising to it, decided to push further. He sauntered closer, exaggerating a sniff, then recoiled. "Whoa. Pee yew." He waved a hand in front of his nose. "Where'd you get that armor, deadlast? The sewer?"
A vein pressed against Naruto's temple. He knew the armor did not smell right. He had washed it a dozen times. It did not matter. The smell of the asylum demon still clung to the metal like it had been worked into the grain of it, and no amount of scrubbing was going to change that. But Kiba was not worth the energy it would take to be angry at him.
When Naruto did not react, the Inuzuka's eyes drifted down to the hilt of the Astora straight sword at his belt.
His hand moved toward it.
That got a reaction.
Naruto's backhand caught Kiba across the arm hard enough that the boy felt the numbness travel all the way to his shoulder. Before Kiba could process it, Naruto had him by the collar.
"What is your problem?"
"Let go of my collar, deadlast," Kiba snarled up at him. Akamaru barked twice from the corner.
Naruto shoved him back and returned to his seat.
This is not worth it.
Kiba rolled his shoulder, working the feeling back into his arm, and laughed. "Ha. Deadlast thinks he's tough now. Bit of stolen armor, a busted sword and suddenly he's somebody." He shook his head like it was the funniest thing he had heard all week. "Bet he grabbed both off some scam merchant who saw him coming."
Naruto stopped and knew exactly what Kiba was.
A loudmouth who said whatever came to mind if it meant looking tough in front of an audience. Someone who did not think before he spoke and did not particularly care to start. On any other day, Naruto could let it go. People had been saying worse about him his whole life and he was still standing.
But this was different.
Kiba had not just taken a shot at him. He had taken a shot at the armor. At everything Oscar had left behind. At everything that had been trusted to him. Naruto did not care what people said about him.
But he drew the line at the legacy he had been given.
While he wanted to beat Kiba black and blue, that was not the knight's way.
Precept the Eight: On the matter of honor and insult. A knight does not brawl in anger, nor does he raise his fist to silence mockery. But when his name, his order, or the legacy entrusted to him is brought into question before witnesses, he has not only the right but the obligation to demand satisfaction through honorable contest. Let the outcome speak what words cannot. Let conduct in battle answer what conduct in speech has wronged.
Naruto turned around. "Kiba." His voice was flat and even. "Outside. You and me. You lose, you apologize for what you said."
Kiba blinked, then broke into a wide grin like he had just been handed something. "Oh yeah? Fine by me, dead last. Been looking for an excuse to show off anyway."
He glanced sideways at the front row with the easy confidence of someone who had never once been told his charm was not landing. The girls looked uniformly disgusted.
"Let's go. I've been wanting to put you on the ground since you walked in here smelling like that."
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
The entire class migrated to the windows, pressing against each other to get a better look at the lawn where Naruto and Kiba stood facing each other.
"Kiba's going to destroy him," someone said from the back.
"Obviously. Did you see how slow Naruto was walking? That armor is dead weight."
"Dead last versus a clan shinobi." A boy near the middle shook his head. "Someone should have talked him out of this."
"Would have saved him the embarrassment."
The betting started quietly and spread fast, with the odds stacking up heavily in one direction.
"I'll bet on the other side."
"You're betting on Naruto?" Sakura stared at Ino. "Seriously?"
"Why not?"
"Because Kiba is going to win."
"Maybe." Ino tilted her head slightly. "But think about it for a second. Kiba is out there because his ego got bumped. That's the only reason he took the challenge." She paused. "Naruto is out there fighting because something actually mattered to him."
"So?"
"A shinobi who is fighting for a cause will always be more dangerous than one who is fighting for applause. The one with something real to protect does not have a ceiling on how far they will push themselves. Kiba has a limit. I'm not sure Naruto does right now."
The class was quiet for a moment.
"That's a lot of philosophy for a schoolyard fight," someone muttered.
"You asked," Ino said simply.
Sakura looked at her rival for a moment longer, then back at the window.
Hinata also wanted to bet on Naruto, but she could not find the courage to speak out. Somewhere underneath the silence she prayed for the young Uzumaki.
Please win.
"Sasuke kun." Sakura drifted toward him, tucking a strand of pink hair behind her ear. "Do you want to take a bet?"
Sasuke had not moved from his seat when the rest of the class rushed over. He had simply turned to the side watching. In all his years at this academy he could count on one hand the number of things that had genuinely held his attention.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Kiba rolled his neck, grinning.
"You see that?" He jerked his chin toward the academy class without looking away from Naruto. "Not one of them thinks you're walking away from this. Except Ino, but that girl's been crazy since the second grade."
Naruto calmly closed his visor with a soft metallic click. He raised his right hand in the sign of confrontation. Kiba mirrored it, then he moved.
A shuriken curved toward the side of Naruto's neck. Kiba was already charging behind it, his handnails lengthening into dark curved claws.
Ninja Art of Beast Mimicry: Claw Jutsu!
The shuriken struck the pauldron at Naruto's neck and bounced off clean. Kiba's claws found the chest plate a half second later. And the sound they made was not the sound of tearing metal.
It was the sound of breaking.
Kiba yanked his hand back, staring at his claws cracked at the base and bleeding at the cuticle.
In the classroom the noise started immediately.
"Did you see that?"
"The shuriken just bounced off. Kiba's claw jutsu broke."
"That armor is the real deal?"
Kiba shook his hand once and reset his stance. A smoke bomb hit the grass and bloomed outward in a gray white cloud that swallowed the center of the lawn entirely. Two figures burst from either side of it simultaneously. Both Kibas coming from opposite angles.
"He transformed Akamaru to look like him," Sakura noted from the class.
"That's the Inuzuka clan's Beast Mimicry: Man Beast Clone Jutsu."
Kiba taunted Naruto. "You could not even make a clone yesterday, deadlast. How does it feel knowing you're about to lose to an actual genin who can make solid clones?"
Ninja Art: Shadow Clone Jutsu!
Thirty clones popped in a ring around both Kibas before either of them could close the distance. The classroom exploded.
"How many is that? Fifteen? Twenty?"
"Where did he even learn that?"
"Are those physical clones?"
"Yeah, they all have their own shadows. Isn't that supposed to be a jonin level jutsu?"
Sasuke leaned forward, wondering how a fight between him and Naruto would go. The armor was a problem against the Uchiha shurikenjutsu. But armor was still metal, and metal conducted heat. A Great Fireball would just cook whatever was inside.
Sasuke settled back in his chair, watching Naruto below with quiet respect.
Kunai appeared in each clone's hand with a shimmer before the entire ring threw simultaneously.
"Akamaru, dig! Now!"
Ninja Art of Beast Mimicry: Digger Dog Jutsu!
The earth split open and swallowed them both, the kunai punching into empty ground a half second after they disappeared. The ground in front of Naruto buckled.
Ninja Art: Body Flicker Jutsu!
The squire was gone before the earth broke open. Kiba and Akamaru erupted up from the ground in a tight spinning formation, found nothing but air where Naruto had been standing, and twisted mid arc to reorient.
"Akamaru. Let's end this."
They moved into position back to back, chakra beginning to wind around them both in visible currents, pulling loose grass and dirt into slow orbit around their bodies.
Man Beast Ultimate Taijutsu: Fang Over Fang!
The rotation built from nothing into a shriek of compressed air in under two seconds, a double drill of boy and dog tearing across the lawn with enough force to throw a divot of earth behind each of them. Naruto's clones moved into a formation, locking shields together edge to edge.
A wall of overlapping steel planted into the grass.
Fang Over Fang hit it like a battering ram.
The wall formation burst into white smoke with clones dispersing in every direction. But Akamaru and Kiba had lost their spin entirely, leaving them midair with nothing but forward inertia carrying them.
Naruto finished his handsign.
Body Flicker closed the distance in a blink. He came up with a spinning heel kick that caught Kiba directly on the jaw. The steel boot connected with a sound like a hammer hitting a post.
Kiba's jaw did not snap back.
It swung.
Wrenched clean to the side like a door knocked off its lower hinge, hanging at an angle that made it immediately obvious that something had come apart inside it that was not supposed to.
The class went silent.
Kiba hit the grass and did not move.
Arf.
Akamaru launched himself at Naruto's leg, biting down with everything he had. His teeth unable to get through the armor, but not letting go either. He was shaking in fear, yet planting himself between Naruto and Kiba the only way he knew how. Despite his jaw hanging completely off to the side, Kiba was still conscious.
The sight made several students at the window flinch and look away.
"Say you're sorry," Naruto said in a calm voice.
Kiba stared up at him and spat out.
Which, given the state of his jaw, was not a good idea and accomplished very little other than pushing Naruto over the edge.
The young squire reached down and closed his hand around Kiba's throat. "YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY, KIBA? YOU THINK I AM PLAYING WITH YOU RIGHT NOW? SAY YOU ARE SORRY. SAY YOU ARE SORRY FOR WHAT YOU SAID. SAY YOU ARE SORRY FOR TARNISHING MY MASTER'S NAME."
His grip tightened.
"SAY IT. OR I WILL END YOUR WORTHLESS LIFE RIGHT HERE ON THIS LAWN."
The killer intent came off Naruto like a pressure drop before a storm. Every student pressed against that classroom window felt it at the same time. A cold that had nothing to do with temperature. A sensation of being somewhere that something terrible had already happened and would happen again.
For a single moment the academy lawn felt exactly like the Northern Undead Asylum.
Whimper.
Naruto paused at the sound.
Akamaru had released his leg. The dog was sitting in the grass trembling, his eyes fixed on Naruto, crying in a thin helpless way. The sight alone melted Naruto's killer intent.
All the while, the door to the classroom slammed open.
"WHAT IS GOING ON OUT HERE?!"
Iruka took one look at the class, Kiba's jaw, and crossed the lawn in seconds. "Naruto." His voice had shifted into the tone that left no room for discussion. "Step back. Give him to me." He was already kneeling beside Kiba, checking his pulse, assessing the jaw with what he had learned about basic aid. "We are going to the nurse's office right now. Afterward you are going to tell me exactly what happened. Every detail."
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Author's Note: Q and A Time
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Q: What was the Black Knight in the previous chapter?
The Black Knights were once the proud Silver Knights of Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight. Long ago they fought chaos demons and were charred black in the process, which also gave them their high fire resistance. Many traveled with Lord Gwyn to the Kiln of the First Flame and were burned to ashes when he linked it, wandering the world as disembodied spirits ever after. Think of them as ghosts moving a suit of armor around.
As for why one was in the Asylum specifically, you can actually encounter three Black Knights ingame in the Northern Undead Asylum when you return to fight the Stray Demon, so his presence there was lore accurate.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Q: Is Naruto still Hollow, fully human, or something in between now that he's back in his world?
He is Undead. As per the title of this fanfic.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Q: Does the fox chakra interact with what Naruto brought back from Lordran?
Yes, and in a big way. Chakra and Kyuubi chakra specifically will interact with a lot of Lordran mechanics going forward. Magic, miracles, and pyromancy will all have their moment to shine when they come into contact with chakra. There is a lot of interesting territory to explore there.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
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-/