Naruto: The Chosen Undead-Chapter 142 - no.141 Dark Souls

Instead, there was something else. Not insight, but control. Like he had seized the reins of his own mind just a bit tighter. His thoughts didn't race; they flowed—more measured, deliberate, and powerful.

Huh, Naruto muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. So, too much of a good thing, and the brain forgets how to party, huh?

He sat down cross-legged at the cliffside, watching the ruins around him in silence. Normally, he'd flicker out of Lordran the moment a boss was done, but this time... he waited. He had never seen it happen in real time before—the reset.

And now?

He wanted to watch.

It started subtly. A sigh of wind that carried no leaves.

Then the stones began to rise.

They didn't rebuild—rather, they unbroke. As though the battle had never happened. Rubble from the abyss below floated upward, trembling like insects on water before locking back into place. Cracks closed as if reality itself was stitching the fabric back together.

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Moss recoiled. Dust vanished in reverse.

Naruto's hand curled slightly on his knee.

He knew this was how Lordran worked. He understood it now—memory tied to space, causality bent backward by the convoluted time. But seeing it? Watching the world reject history, overwrite pain as if it never mattered?

That was different.

And for a moment, just a second, Naruto asked himself: If the world can just undo pain... does it matter that I fought at all?

The final stone clicked into place.

But then he saw it.

The Moonlight Butterfly was gone.

Everything had been reset. The moss, the guards, the garden. But not the boss. Not the creature. Its soul was still in his inventory. The world, it seemed, remembered what mattered.

Great, Naruto thought as he rose to his feet, brushing moss from his pants.

With a flick of his fingers and a puff of smoke, he summoned a handful of shadow clones, each vanishing into the deeper parts of the grove with silent purpose. The path was clear now with no more Moonlight Butterfly to block his progress—just a quiet, efficient soul farming ground. Five thousand souls with each reset. All it cost was a bit of time and patience.

He'd take that trade. Every soul brought him one step closer to the strength he needed for whatever Gato might have left to throw his way.

That left Naruto to his next objective, as beyond the moss-covered dirt wall, a thick, unmoving fog lay draped over the earth like a curse—dense and unnatural. The side of the Darkroot Garden sealed by magic.

Naruto sent a clone to check it out while he himself went towards the path leading toward the lower Darkroot Garden he'd seen from the divine blacksmith's tower.

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The shadow clone sprinted down the narrow dirt path, its footsteps soft against the moss-lined ground. The only light came from a single glowing flower nestled in a bed of ivy, casting a faint golden glow on the way ahead.

At the very end of the path, something hunched at the base of a gnarled tree. A corpse, its skeletal form partially fused with the roots, sat slumped against the bark. Its bony fingers clutched a long, weathered polearm.

The weapon shimmered faintly beneath the flower's light. It was a spear, tall and lean, with wickedly jagged protrusions along the shaft. The metal was dulled with age, but something about it still radiated threat.

The clone narrowed his eyes. That's a trap, he murmured.

Lordran had taught him that much, at least. If something looked convenient, it usually meant something was about to try and kill you. He shifted slightly, stepping to the side just enough to catch the subtle distortion of light.

Clinging to the tree was a creature, nearly invisible until you were looking right at it. A two-headed reptilian beast, camouflaged so expertly it might as well have been part of the bark.

Then from behind, something moved.

Roots cracked and leaves rustled as an ent barreled through the underbrush with unnatural speed. The clone jumped into the air, twisting midair as he flicked out three kunai. Two struck true, embedding into the skulls of the twin-headed beast. The creature let out a dying hiss before collapsing in a heap at the base of the tree.

The third kunai sailed past the ent—close enough to graze the bark beside its head.

It stopped its charge.

Naruto landed lightly, dust kicking up around his sandals. With a flick of his wrist, he summoned the crossbow from his inventory. Wind chakra surged into the arrowhead, shaping the air into a razor-thin blade.

The ent lunged, vines snapping forward like whips.

The clone rolled to the side, evading the attack by inches. In one smooth motion, he leveled the crossbow and fired. The bolt pierced clean through the ent's skull. It teetered once, then collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. As the souls surged into him, warming his chest with their eerie weight, the clone stepped forward and reached for the polearm. His fingers curled around the shaft. It was heavier than expected, and perfectly balanced. He spun it once to test the grip, then stored it in his inventory.

He turned toward the towering tree at the path's end. Molding chakra to his feet, he scaled the bark with practiced ease. At the top, he leapt onto a nearby ledge of packed earth.

That was when he saw it.

The forest before him ended in a vast, roiling haze. Not mist. Not smoke. Fog. Dense and unnatural. It didn't roll gently like ocean breeze or cling like early morning dew. It hovered there, motionless. Silent. Still. As if time itself had been caught in its grasp.

The clone froze.

His heartbeat thundered against his chest. Every instinct screamed at him to turn back. But he was a shadow clone. Disposable. Created to take risks. If there was danger, then his purpose was to meet it first. He exhaled, slow and steady, and jumped forward.

The fog took him.

At first, it was like walking through dense wool. But then the air curdled around him, heavy and moist. His breath turned sour. His skin felt wrong, like it wasn't made to exist in this place. Time staggered. Direction lost all meaning. Each step fell into nowhere, every motion met with resistance like walking through syrup spun from madness. The clone couldn't tell whether he was moving forward or falling inward. Then pain bloomed as an arrow struck him out of nowhere. Just sudden, icy agony in his chest as he stumbled forward. But he didn't vanish. The jutsu didn't end.

He didn't dispel.

The clone collapsed to his knees, confusion swirling alongside panic. That shouldn't have been possible. He was a shadow, a sliver of the original's will. Death should have unmade him. But the fog held him in place.

For stagnation rejected change.

With trembling fingers, the clone reached into his pouch and pulled free a single tag. He pressed it against his chest and channeled his chakra.

A heartbeat later, flame exploded.

The forest lit in orange for an instant before vanishing again beneath the gray.

It was not to destroy the enemy.

It was a message.

Don't follow.

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The original Naruto stood in the quieter corner of Darkroot Garden, where light barely pierced the thick canopy above. Mist hovered low, clinging to the moss-covered earth like reluctant memories. Before him loomed a towering green tree, its surface bark-like yet subtly breathing. Faint pulses rippled beneath its surface, as if the roots were alive and reacting to his presence.

"That's not normal," Naruto muttered, narrowing his eyes.

He stepped forward, pressed his palm to the strange tree, and felt a subtle tremor run up his arm—soft, spongy, warm like flesh pretending to be wood. His brow twitched. That wasn't bark. That was skin.

"Yup. Gross," he whispered, and without hesitation, he pulled back his arm and drove a punch into the tree's side. The outer shell cracked like ceramic. The bark flaked away to reveal red-tinged muscle fibers throbbing in the open air. Steam rose from the broken surface. Beneath the illusion of wood, it had always been meat.

Naruto grimaced. "Yeah, that's definitely not how trees are supposed to look."

He placed his hand on the exposed flesh, channeling a sharp wave of wind chakra. The pulse of compressed air carved clean through the trunk, splitting it like a cleaved ribcage. The "tree" shrieked—not in sound, but in the rippling movement escaping from its dying roots. It slumped in on itself, dissolving into the earth as a narrow path behind it slowly revealed itself. Souls rose like fireflies from its corpse and vanished into Naruto's chest.

He took a cautious step forward, his senses tense.

Then the explosion echoed.

A distant boom shattered the unnatural stillness. Naruto paused, eyes flicking in the direction of the fog-covered path his clone had been exploring. He waited, anticipating the usual rush of memories returning. Images. Emotions. Sounds.

Nothing came.

No feedback. No information. No clone.

His lips tightened. "That's not good."

He didn't speak aloud again as he turned back toward the newly opened path. He kept the worry at bay, stuffed it down beneath instinct and discipline. The unknown waited ahead, but he marked the fog with silent caution. That place was off-limits for now.

As he rounded the next bend, he froze.

"Is that... a frog?"

It was an odd thing to find in a place like this.

The creature was sprawled across the forest floor like a melted pancake. Its body was wide and slick, shaped almost like a manta ray, the flesh painted in vivid blotches of red and black. Yellow, bulbous eyes tracked Naruto's movement with disturbing clarity, and from its slack mouth hung a long, flat tongue—wet, glistening, and twitching.

Nestled beside its body was a single green weed shaped like a twisted flower, blooming from the loam like an offering.

The frog snapped suddenly, its tongue cracking through the air like a whip. It passed through Naruto's flickering afterimage, only for the real boy to drop from above like a meteor. His heel came down in an axe kick that smashed the soft creature's body into the ground. The impact burst through the beast like a ruptured bladder. A wet explosion of tissue, slime, and fragmented bone sprayed into the nearby foliage.

The creature twitched once, then stilled.

[You have obtained:]

[80 Souls]

[Green Blossom.]

Naruto turned the strange plant between his fingers. It smelled sharp, almost peppery, with a bitter edge that made his nose twitch.

[Item: Green Blossom]

[Description: Green weed, shaped like a flower. Temporary boost to stamina recovery speed. This uniquely bitter, biting herb is sometimes harvested in large quantities, but normally it is an annual plant found near water.]

Naruto shrugged. "Only one way to find out."

He bit into the herb.

The moment it hit his tongue, his world shifted.

The forest fell away into a tunnel of soundless motion. His breath felt deeper, lighter. His blood raced like a thousand leaves in a storm. His chakra coils tightened, then unfurled, swelling with motion. For a second, the world moved in slow motion, but he did not. His heart beat faster, sharper. Every thread of chakra in his body danced. Where once his flow was like a gentle river, it now surged like a flooded canyon.

His vision cleared.

He felt... infinite.

"Damn," he whispered with a grin. "That's a game-changer."

Even with his ridiculous chakra reserves, the sensation of rapid recovery was unmistakable. And for someone like Sasuke, or even Kakashi—who had immense skill but limited chakra—this could make them unstoppable. Naruto grinned as he stored the remaining blossoms.

"Definitely gonna need to find more of this weed," Naruto muttered under his breath, already sprinting down the narrow moss-lined path. The lingering taste of the Green Blossom still tingled on his tongue, and his chakra coils buzzed with a barely contained excitement. That herbal kick had been wild. He didn't know whether to call it a power-up or a high-five from nature itself.

The sound of water reached his ears—faint at first, then growing clearer, like laughter echoing from a distant stream. That had to be it. More moisture meant more plants. More plants meant more weed.

As he rounded a curve, a massive tree blocked his path. Its bark twisted unnaturally, pulsing as if it were breathing. From the subtle undulation of its roots and the sickly sheen of its trunk, Naruto recognized the signs instantly.

Another flesh tree.

He stopped short and stared up at it. "I mean... you're not attacking me," Naruto said aloud, tilting his head. "And I'm not exactly on a deforestation mission."

The tree didn't react.

"Right. You just chill then," he said, giving the root a little pat as he leapt into the air, flipping over the weird creature.

He landed softly on the other side, and his jaw dropped.

A small grove stretched out before him, peaceful and untouched by rot. Beyond the gentle slope, a wide lake shimmered beneath soft moonlight. The surface sparkled with tiny waves, disturbed only by the ripple of distant water creatures. And along the edges, tucked between rocks and curling tree roots, were bunches of radiant green blossoms.

"Oh-ho-ho! Jackpot," Naruto whispered, eyes gleaming. "Man, if Iruka-sensei could see me now—harvesting premium leaf. Hehehe."

He bolted forward, arms pumping, only to come to a skidding halt as he spotted a Stone Knight lying near the bank. Water splashed violently as shapes emerged behind it. Dozens of frog-rays flopped up from the lake's depths, landing on the shoreline with wide eyes and twitching tongues as the knight rose.

Naruto sighed and pulled the drake sword from his back in one smooth motion.

A crackling blue shockwave screamed forward, carving through the air. It hit the Stone Knight mid-rise, shattering the creature into splinters that flew backward and tumbled into the lake like discarded furniture.

Naruto turned to the frog-rays, chakra flaring as he declared with a wide grin, "Back off, froggies! This stash is mine—I'm the one getting high... stamina today!"

His killer intent rippled through the clearing like a silent scream. The frog-ray things twitched. One of them blinked in panic. Then, all at once, they flipped back into the lake, splashing into the darkness with great urgency. A few even left behind trails of bubbles as they disappeared beneath the surface.

Naruto blinked, genuinely disappointed. "Aw man, no fight? That would've made the weed hit different as a victory prize."

He crouched beside one of the blossoms and began gathering the green weeds carefully into a pouch.

"Man... if I could grow this stuff back home, I'd never run out of chakra again," he muttered, eyes gleaming with innocent wonder. "I could stash a whole patch behind the academy. Just call it... Naruto's weed. Yeah, that sounds classy."

He chuckled to himself and, as he turned to leave, he noticed the shimmer of a knight's soul resting beside a fallen corpse—its armor moss-covered, half-sunken into the muddy shore. Naruto picked up the soul drop, eyes narrowing slightly.

A lot of knights died in this garden, huh?

He stood and looked across the wide stretch of water, toward where the stream curved out of the garden and disappeared into the forest below. He followed the flow with his eyes, realizing it might lead down to the basin with the Hydra. Strange how this entire world felt stitched together like a looping dream—one path always feeding into the next.

As he turned, something caught his attention: a crumbling archway built into the cliffside. The structure was half-devoured by earth, blue clay bricks jutting out at awkward angles. He stepped carefully up the half-submerged stairwell, fingers brushing against the strange clay.

Lordran never stopped offering questions. It just refused to give answers.

At the top of the stairs, a familiar form began to rise. A stone knight stood tall, its blade dragging across the stone as it shook off the stillness of ages. Naruto didn't draw his sword. Instead, he adjusted his stance and let chakra flood into his muscles. This time, he wanted to test something.

With pinpoint control, he funneled power into his fist and stepped in, slamming a one-inch punch directly into the knight's chest. The force cracked stone, forming a neat hole through the armor before the knight crumbled in on itself, falling apart like shattered pottery.

Naruto stood over the remains, flexing his hand. "Heh. Guess Kakashi-sensei was right—sometimes, it's all about precision."

He stepped past the wreckage, weaving through the narrow path that led upward. The air thinned slightly as he reached the edge of a vast cliff, overlooking the gorge that once held the Moonlight Butterfly.

"Guess I've pretty much explored all there is to see in the Darkroot Garden."

His eyes caught a faint glint in the moonlight, barely noticeable between the twisted roots and moss-covered stones. Curiosity piqued, Naruto stepped closer and knelt, brushing aside a layer of leaves and crumbling dirt.

A silver ring, its band engraved with the unmistakable symbol of a howling wolf. It pulsed faintly with latent energy, a quiet, sleeping power. Naruto held it up against the moonlight, letting the silver catch the glow. The metal was cool against his skin, but there was a sense of presence to it, like it remembered the hand of its former owner.

"A magic ring, huh?" he whispered, eyes already scanning its description as he activated the system interface.

[Item: Wolf Ring]

[Description: One of the special rings granted to the Four Knights of Gwyn. The Wolf Ring belongs to Artorias the Abysswalker. Artorias had an unbendable will of steel, and was unmatched with a greatsword.]

[Effect: Increases Poise by 40.]

Naruto raised an eyebrow. His first thought was immediate and practical: no wonder he kept finding knight corpses scattered around the garden. Maybe they were after Artorias's ring.

His second thought was more personal.

"Artorias, huh? Uses a greatsword too... sounds like my kinda guy."

But then came the third thought, a bit slower and far more frustrating.

"What the hell is poise?"

Naruto frowned and scratched his cheek. He slipped the ring onto his finger anyway, already wearing the Blue Tearstone Ring and the Iron Rusted Ring.

[Warning: The effect of a magic ring uses the body as a medium to project its effect onto the soul. Multiple effects cannot be channeled through one body simultaneously. Remove one ring.]

Naruto frowned slightly at the fact that two rings at once was the limit. No matter how many incredible relics he came across, the world itself just didn't allow more. But that didn't mean he didn't have a loophole.

His eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

It wasn't really about wearing the ring, was it? It was about connection. About resonance.

When he sent a shadow clone out with a ring he wasn't wearing himself, he still felt the effect. Not directly, like a glove on his hand, but deeper—woven into the hum of his chakra, as though the clone was tethered to his soul and feeding the magic back through the link.

It wasn't chakra alone that did it. It was what the clone was: a fragment of himself with just enough will, just enough life, to serve as a vessel. The ring didn't care that it wasn't on his hand. It just needed to be on a hand that was him.

"Shadow clones might just be the most broken jutsu in existence."

He decided to swap out the Iron Rusted Ring for now, replacing it with the Wolf Ring. The moment it slid onto his finger, he felt a change. Not a physical weight but a pressure across his limbs, like invisible armor layering itself over his skin. It didn't slow him. If anything, it gave him the sensation that no matter what hit him, he could keep moving forward. Even if the term poise was still fuzzy in his mind, he understood the feeling in his bones.

Naruto took one last look across the forest, satisfied.

"Alright. Time to head back to Andre and drop off this divine ember. Once the garden resets, I'll swing back around to farm souls... and grab more of that weird weed."

He bent his knees and launched himself across the gap, cloak trailing behind him like shadow and smoke. The Wolf Ring pulsed once on his hand, steady and resolute, as he vanished into the forest's edge.

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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 5k-word Chapters. But heads up, if you're jumping to P@treon, you'll need to start from Chapter 67, 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!