The rotting flesh of the reanimated corpse suddenly exploded—pus and a dark green substance burst forth, clinging like sentient slime to the enemy's arm. The Suna-nin watched in horror as his skin visibly corroded, sloughing off in smoking chunks.
"Poison doesn't work on the dead,"
Tsukasa Kaede murmured. His fingertips still shimmered faintly with the residual chakra from detonating the zombie.
That corpse, previously skewered through the skull, delivered its final value on the battlefield—turning into a close-range human bomb and splattering its toxic payload directly into its attacker.
The Suna shinobi tried to retreat the moment he heard the sizzle, but one of his arms was caught in a death grip. He tore with all his strength, peeling skin off muscle, but he couldn't break free. His last sight was the flash of an explosion consuming him, his body blackening into something between charred meat and a burnt tree branch.
Morino Isuke finished the kill, burying a kunai into the man's throat.
Standing beside Kaede, eyes scanning for more threats, Isuke spared a glance at the curled-up, burned husk of a corpse and muttered, "You laced the corpses with poison?"
Kaede responded quietly, "Only stored some of the venom we extracted from Hotaruzuru Tobimushi's body in their gallbladders. I don't believe every Suna-nin is walking around with an antidote tailored for this. They use poison on us—it's only fair we return the favor."
He summoned another zombie to stand guard in front of him. On a battlefield this chaotic, the threat didn't just come from enemy lines—any corpse lying nearby might be playing possum, waiting to ambush whoever got too close.
With no notable clan or bloodline, and a frail body to boot, Kaede didn't have the luxury of pride. Instead, he relied on Corpse Release tactics to survive, using zombies not only as weapons but also as bait and shields. Two figures moving together drew more enemy attention, splitting attack focus and increasing his own odds of survival.
In Konoha, genin were the most disposable class of shinobi. But if you had a hidden card, a specialty jutsu... you could last a little longer—assuming luck didn't abandon you.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
As Suna's poison smoke bombs erupted in their third wave across the skies, Tsukasa Kaede's personal battle tactics began to shake the very perception of how Dead Soul Jutsu could be used.
New zombies appeared constantly, forming a grotesque wall of meat, leaking pus and moving through poison fog. They resembled a walking biological fortress—anyone who got too close suffered for it. At best, they'd eat an explosion to the face and be lucky to crawl away.
And every shinobi forced to dodge or flinch revealed a split-second opening—an opening Konoha's front-liners didn't waste. They lunged, struck, and scored kills they otherwise wouldn't have.
It only took three such incidents for the other Konoha shinobi to notice: wherever Tsukasa's med-nin unit operated, the odds seemed to turn—just a bit—in their favor.
Then came the sound of shattered bone. A zombie stomped an enemy with such force that its own leg burst open at the joint, spraying blood and meat. The Suna-nin's chest caved in on impact; blood and organ fragments spurted from his mouth. His final expression was frozen in sheer disbelief.
"This one's basically spent... shame I didn't slap a paper bomb on it," Kaede said with a small frown.
One hand maintained a seal, always ready to summon another corpse. Occasionally he cycled his fingers, switching to a detonation sequence—just in case. Every zombie could be triggered if needed. But he wasn't using them at full potential yet.
Because the true horror of Corpse Release wasn't brute force—it was infection.
If he really let loose, every explosion would spray tainted flesh and blood, seeding the enemy ranks with viral chakra. Wounded foes would limp back to camp, only to rise as zombies hours later—and spread the plague again.
A snowball of undeath.
Before enemy command realized what was happening and established quarantine protocols, the rot would be irreparable.
But Kaede wouldn't go that far. Not yet.
He was just a genin. His body was weak. Until he found a more viable vessel, he had no intention of unleashing his full capabilities. Corpse Release wasn't meant to be paraded under sunlight—it thrived in the shadows.
This war was the stage of White Fang, the Legendary Sannin, and Namikaze Minato. Not Tsukasa Kaede.
His time to shine would come—in the next war.
He just had to stay alive long enough.
"You call that Dead Soul Jutsu? That's Dead Soul Jutsu?"
Even the other medical-nin began to lose their composure. One of them had just finished treating a wounded ally with Mystical Palm Technique, watching him return to battle, when he turned and saw Kaede directing a reanimated chūnin to charge the enemy.
The zombie sprinted until its legs shattered, then grabbed its target and stabbed furiously with a kunai—finally exploding in a suicidal burst when its limbs gave out.
It was like a suicidal clone tactic—but no sane shinobi would waste shadow clones this way. The agony of death fed back into the original's nervous system, and chakra costs made it unsustainable.
Rumors spread—people whispered that this was some twisted version of Dead Soul Jutsu.
And the more they learned, the more their skin crawled.
Isuke, covered in blood, cleaved through a Suna shinobi's throat with a chakra scalpel. Falling back behind friendly lines, he took a moment to breathe and muttered, "That kid's twisted. Whoever invented Dead Soul Jutsu never imagined someone would use it like this."
The medical-nin were the most shaken. They'd always seen the jutsu as a morbid, impractical trick. But now... it gave medics unpredictability. An edge. A higher survival rate.
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300 Stones in this story = 1 Bonus chapter in every fanfic currently translated