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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.
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"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.
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Author's Note: And I leave you all with a nasty cliffhanger. What does the hollow get from swallowing chakra? Does it gain chakra? Does it not? Is the change permanent, or is it something that fades once the cycle resets again? I'll leave you all to theorize.
Now, onto the Q&A.
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Q: How can a piece of Naruto retain chakra?
Honestly, I don't see why it wouldn't. Hashirama cells are a great in-canon example of how a fragment of a being can still carry a huge amount of its original chakra even when separated from the whole. A chunk of Naruto's eye would still be soaked in residual chakra. What that actually means once it's sitting inside Lordran's ecosystem, though? That one I'll leave for you all to find out.
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-/