Naruto: The Chosen Undead-Chapter 147 - no.146 Dark Souls

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Chapter 146 The Valley of Drakes

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"I'm going to take a walk. Kill some stuff. Focus."

Rickert gave a knowing nod. It was a familiar impulse, doing something physical just to remember you still belonged to the world outside your own head.

Naruto began climbing the stairs, footsteps echoing off the damp stone, the sound swallowed by the ever-present fog hanging in the air. He paused at the top, glancing down one last time at the Hollow lying near the cliff's edge.

The creature was staring up at a single beam of sunlight cutting through the gloom.

"Guess even Hollows can be optimists," Naruto muttered.

Then his gaze shifted.

A new path. A darkened archway cut into the far wall, tucked away from the elevator's trail. He tilted his head slightly. "I wonder where that goes."

He snorted to himself. That pretty much summed up his time in Lordran: find a path, poke it, see if it bites. No map. No logic. Just a hunch and the stubborn belief that whatever lay ahead, he could take it.

And honestly? That was the fun of it.

He followed the archway, the path spiraling upward. The stone beneath his feet was cracked, the moss blooming in the crevices dampening each step. The staircase ended at a cage door, its metal bars thick with rust and time. He didn't even test it.

He already knew.

[This door cannot be opened from this side.]

Naruto rolled his eyes at the mental pop-up. Classic Lordran. But unlike some of the magically sealed gates he'd come across, this one felt... normal. No weird aura. No arcane barrier humming with power.

Just iron.

He cracked his knuckles. He had options. Blunt force, wind chakra, or... his newest toy. He reached for the sorcerer's catalyst. Channeling chakra was second nature—warm, thrumming like the breath of something alive. Soul sorcery, though? That was different. It was cold. Clean. Alien. Like light with no heat.

Naruto focused.

He felt the energy pool at the tip of the staff, a chill pressing against his palm as it gathered. A flicker of light shimmered, blue and whisper-thin, dancing like a flame seen through glass. The spell shaped itself, lines forming from memory and will.

His eyes snapped open.

He raised the staff and fired.

The Soul Arrow screamed through the air—a lance of condensed force. It struck the iron bars dead center.

Boom.

Magic detonated on impact, the cage door shrieking as its hinges buckled. The metal warped, twisted, then tore free, slamming backward and skidding across the stone floor in a shower of sparks and rust.

He lowered the staff, grinning ear to ear.

Naruto emerged onto a ledge overlooking a massive, sunken valley, flanked on all sides by jagged, mist-choked mountains. The air here was colder and thinner.n He crouched beside a weathered corpse lying half-buried in the grass. Its armor had long since been destroyed away, but clutched in its curled fingers was a faintly glowing soul. Naruto's hand closed around it, the light vanishing into his palm with a quiet hum as the warmth seeped into his body and then into his inventory.

"Sorry, buddy. You won't be needing that anymore."

Pocketing the find, he pressed forward, letting the narrow ledge guide him along the cliff's edge. The stone cracked underfoot, weeds curling up from between the broken earth. Eventually, the path brought him to what might generously be called a bridge.

It was just a plank of rotted wood.

"Well... that looks safe," Naruto muttered, already stepping onto the plank. "Dattebayo."

He let chakra flow to his soles, feet light, balance perfect. Even as the bridge swayed and groaned beneath his weight, he crossed without breaking stride.

What greeted him on the other side wasn't any better.

A cave loomed ahead, its mouth wide and dark like the hollowed eye of a skull. Naruto slowed, pulling the binoculars from his pouch and scanning the interior. Just barely, he could make out rough wooden scaffolding clinging to the rock—shacks, walkways, supports. A settlement? Or maybe a mine?

Then it hit him.

The smell.

Decay so thick it clung to his tongue and burned the back of his throat. It was death soaked in bile, mold, and shit.

Naruto gagged. "Yeah. Nope. Not today."

He summoned a clone with a poof of smoke. The clone appeared, immediately wrinkling his nose and covering his face.

"Ugh, seriously?! What is that smell?"

"Do your job." Naruto jerked a thumb toward the darkness.

Grumbling, the clone muttered, "We need to form a union," and jogged off into the stench.

Naruto turned away, opting for another path that snaked further along the cliffside. Wind picked up, howling through the crags like ghosts whispering secrets he didn't want to hear. The narrow stone trail led to a proper bridge this time. The wooden planks were mossy and warped, the support vines frayed like they'd been gnawed on by time itself. But Naruto barely glanced at it.

His attention was locked on the structure across the way.

He crossed the bridge, boots thudding softly on damp wood. Reaching the far side, he stepped carefully along the uneven path until the structure came into full view.

That's when he saw them.

Soul drops. Three, maybe four, glowing faintly near what looked like a massive stone altar.

Only it wasn't an altar.

It was a corpse.

Naruto froze.

Massive. Slumped. Wings curled around itself like it had died shielding something.

A dragon.

Its scales were jagged stone, broken in places, revealing withered sinew beneath. The wing membranes were torn, like old parchment burned and left to rot in the rain. Its tail was half-missing, sheared off at the base. One clawed hand rested on a shattered rib, curled tight in the final moments of death.

Naruto stepped closer, his gaze drifting up toward the beast's bowed head. No eyes remained. Just empty sockets where once a gaze might have burned with ancient light.

It wasn't beautiful.

Not like the everlasting dragon he'd seen in his vision. But this... this thing had presence.

A quiet, decaying majesty.

"Damn. You were something once."

As Naruto reached toward the nearest soul drop, his fingers just brushing the glowing fragment, a deep, guttural groan rumbled through the air.

He froze.

Behind him, the massive corpse shuddered.

Cracks split across the dragon's stone-like scales, and from those fractures, a thick, purple miasma began to ooze—bubbling, hissing as it spilled out like venomous fog. The dragon's head jerked with a sickening creak, vertebrae grinding as it slowly began to rise, hollow sockets glowing faintly with baleful light.

"Shit," Naruto hissed, spinning on his heel.

But it was too late.

With a rasping snarl, the undead dragon opened its ruined jaws, and a wave of toxic breath surged outward—thick and choking, a cloud of death that rolled across the stone like living smog.

Naruto leapt back, chakra bursting beneath his feet in a flare of speed, but not fast enough.

The edge of the miasma caught him mid-air, seeping into his skin before he even landed. A sudden message blinked across his vision.

[ Status Effect Inflicted: TOXIC ]

His eyes widened. Then the pain hit. Not like a wound. Not like broken bones or torn muscle.

This was different.

He choked, staggering as he clutched his stomach. It felt like acid had been poured through his veins—like his organs were being peeled away layer by layer. His skin prickled, cracked, and burned from the inside out. Even breathing became a fight as his lungs filled with a phantom rot.

"What the hell?!" Naruto gasped, his voice hoarse.

His knees buckled.

The soul drops shimmered just a few feet away, still glowing gently beneath the haze of poison—taunting him as his vision began to blur at the edges. And the dragon, what was left of it, kept breathing, its hollow eyes fixed on him like a creature too dead to feel hatred... but too cursed to stop.

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The shadow clone moved cautiously through the unnatural darkness of the cave, its only source of light coming from the flames flickering along its cursed right hand.

And the smell.

It had been bad at the entrance, but the deeper he went, the worse it got. Thick, choking rot clung to the air, a mix of stagnant water, decayed flesh, and something even fouler. Each breath felt like inhaling disease itself.

The ground was slick, coated in a wet, oozing filth that reflected the orange glow of his flame in a sickly sheen. Patches of moss and fungal growths lined the walls, their surfaces glistening unnaturally, pulsing with some unknown secretion.

"What the hell is this place?"

A sound.

A deep, guttural grunt, echoing from the shadows ahead. The Way of Focality flared, and instinct kicked in a fraction too late.

Something shot out from the darkness.

A massive club, tearing through the air with a whooshing force. The clone barely managed to twist away, chakra surging through his legs as he flashed to the side. And from the shadows it emerged.

A hulking brute of a creature, standing nearly four times Naruto's height. Its grey, leathery skin stretched over thick slabs of muscle, veins bulging beneath its scarred, rough exterior. Its face twisted in a snarl, a mouth full of jagged, yellowed teeth bared in a roar. Small, pig-like eyes glowed with an animalistic fury, set beneath a bald, ridged skull. It wore scraps of fur and tattered leather, held together by makeshift straps. Bits of crude armor—iron bracers, rusted shoulder guards—were haphazardly fastened to its arms. At its waist, belts and pouches dangled, filled with tools, bones, and the occasional severed hand.

And in its massive grip, it held a filthy, splintered club, its surface caked with old blood and jagged patches of bark.

The clone's grip tightened on his kunai.

"Big guy. Fast swing. Looks like a berserker."

No hesitation. He surged forward, kunai swirling with Vacuum Blade, its sharp edge elongating with wind chakra.

A clean strike, aiming straight for the gut.

The kunai sank deep, flesh parting with a wet, sickening tear. Blood burst forth, spraying in a thick, arterial arc, splattering against the cave walls. The stench of iron and rot flooded the air.

The creature staggered—but it didn't fall. Instead, its massive hand shot out, grabbing the clone by the wrist. The grip was like iron, unyielding, vice-like. Naruto immediately tried to wrench free, chakra flaring to enhance his monstrous strength—but the brute didn't budge.

If anything, its grip tightened and then it pulled him in. A sickening crunch as the creature's massive arms crushed the clone into a bone-cracking embrace.

And then... teeth.

The monster's jaws unhinged, its head lunging forward, and in one violent chomp, it ripped the clone's head clean off.

The world vanished in a puff of white smoke.

And this was Naruto's first encounter with the residents of Blighttown.

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Naruto didn't have time to process the memories flooding in from his fallen clone. His head throbbed, but the burning sensation tearing through his body screamed louder.

The toxic status was eating him alive.

It wasn't like poison. This wasn't some slow rot or manageable burn—it was as if acid had been injected into every cell. His flesh bubbled, his organs convulsed. With every heartbeat, it felt like his skin was melting off his bones. He sprinted uphill, each step feeling like dragging a corpse, that corpse being himself. He chugged an Estus Flask mid-run, golden light flooding through him, easing the damage just enough to keep his legs moving. Chakra surged through his body as he forced himself to accelerate, climbing the valley's steep wall like a blur.

Just as the dragon's roar surged behind him and the toxic miasma crept up with suffocating speed, Naruto launched himself into the air with a backflip, wind rushing against his face.

Mid-air, he drew his Drake Sword.

The blade ignited with wind chakra the moment it left its sheath, a spiral of cutting air forming around the weapon like a vortex starved for blood. He twisted in the air, eyes narrowing, and drove the blade straight into the dragon's skull.

BOOM.

The mountain shook with the force of the impact. Rock splintered. The gust tore through the valley, blowing the toxic mist back for just a moment. The shockwave shattered debris off the ledges and sent dust into the sky like a bomb had gone off.

And the dragon... barely moved.

Its eyes, clouded and undead, didn't even blink. The beast merely groaned, the sound low and echoing, like the grinding of stone deep beneath the earth.

Naruto's eyes widened in horror.

The dragon's head jerked, and Naruto was flung into the air like a ragdoll. He twisted mid-flight, but the massive jaws opened wide. He threw out shadow clones mid-air, their forms flickering into existence as he kicked off one after another, rebounding in mid-air just as the dragon's teeth snapped shut inches from his heels.

A swipe of its claw followed, narrowly missing as he landed in a controlled roll and sprinted toward the rope bridge.

Behind him, his clones leapt at the beast—blades drawn, war cries loud and they died.

Instantly.

The moment the toxic breath rolled across the cliff again, their bodies shriveled, melted, and popped. Their deaths surged into Naruto's mind like acid, echoing their final sensations—skin boiling, bones liquefying, nerves disintegrating in a storm of corrosive rot.

His breath hitched. His legs almost failed.

Not from pain. From fear.

He pulled out a Purple Moss Clump and shoved it into his mouth.

Nothing.

The toxic effect barely slowed.

Then his eyes darted through his inventory.

[Item: Blooming Purple Moss Clump]

[Description: Potently medicinal moss clump with a flower. Reduces poison and toxin. Restores status. Toxin is a more vicious form of poison which quickly leads to death. Moss clumps without a flower are useless against toxin, and a lack of these moss clumps could lead to an early demise.]

Without hesitation, Naruto crushed the flowering moss between his teeth and swallowed.

The effect was immediate.

A rush of bitter energy surged through his bloodstream like a cleansing fire. He could feel the miasma within him—the acidic rot that had wrapped around his lungs, stomach, kidneys—start to unravel. The toxic sludge was dragged away, ripped apart by the moss's potent chemical counter. His skin stopped burning. The hallucinations faded. His vision cleared.

He could breathe again. "Gods..." he gasped. "I am never touching toxic status again."

One problem gone.

But the other was the dragon. He wasn't stupid. His strikes barely registered. That thing was beyond him right now. But if he couldn't kill it by force... He'd outthink it.

The wooden bridge groaned as Naruto summoned thirty shadow clones along its length, each one spacing themselves with tactical precision. Five of them immediately raised their catalysts, blue light gathering at their tips.

"Now!" one of them barked.

A barrage of Soul Arrows ripped through the air, streaking like blue comets toward the Undead Dragon's grotesque, half-mummified face. The blasts struck true—bone cracked, teeth shattered, and the creature's toxic breath faltered, buying precious seconds.

The remaining clones didn't waste the opening.

All twenty-four turned toward the mountain slope above the dragon.

Hands flashed through synchronized seals.

A collective roar of "Fire!" echoed as dozens of Soul Arrows surged upward—not to hit the dragon, but to break the mountain.

The sky thundered.

Rock cracked.

The entire cliffside shuddered as the combined force of magic smashed into the crag. Tremors pulsed through the ledge as the overhead stone groaned, then broke.

An avalanche roared to life.

Chunks of jagged mountain broke free, cascading down like the wrath of the gods. The ground vanished beneath dust and boulders as the massive stones slammed into the Undead Dragon's body. One boulder obliterated its wing. Another crashed down on its neck. The rest battered its back, breaking what bones remained.

Naruto, panting, allowed himself a grin. "That should do it."

But then the dust began to shift.

The rubble lifted.

His eyes widened. "No... way..."

The Undead Dragon was rising—slowly, agonizingly, but rising. Its clawed limbs trembled, barely able to hold the shattered weight of the landslide... and yet it did. Its ruined body creaked under the pressure, bones grinding, tendons tearing, but it stood.

And then... that sound.

A low, wet gurgle, like bile bubbling from an open wound.

Naruto's stomach turned.

From its maw, the mist began to gather—purple, vile, living. The dragon exhaled. A wave of toxic miasma surged out like a tsunami of rot, swallowing the bridge in seconds. The wood hissed and melted, eaten away as though dipped in acid. Chains snapped. Boards curled and blackened.

SNAP.

Naruto's instincts screamed.

"RUN!"

He didn't hesitate. Feet pounding on dissolving planks, he raced back, each step a gamble.

Half the bridge gave out beneath him. But Naruto was already moving—leaping from one clone to the next as they threw him forward with bursts of chakra. One launched him like a cannonball, another caught him mid-air and flung him again.

Below, the valley swallowed the bridge whole.

He was falling, then the last clone gave one final shove, hurling him across the broken gap.

Naruto hit the cliff edge, rolled across the dirt, coughing violently as the sharp sting of poison lingered in his lungs. He lay there, winded, staring at the sky.

Then slowly... he sat up.

Across the shattered divide, the Undead Dragon stood—wounded, broken, and glaring. It could not fly, and it could not reach him.

Naruto exhaled, shoulders sagging.

"Safe," he whispered.

Naruto knew he could just walk away. Turn his back on this rotting monstrosity, head down the slope, and return to Rickert's cage with his sanity and maybe his lungs intact. That would've been the logical choice. The safe choice. But Naruto didn't move because this wasn't about logic. It wasn't about survival.

It was about pride.

He'd seen that thing, stood face to face with it, and walked away breathing. That wasn't something you just let go. This wasn't just another Hollow, or beast, or corrupted knight. This was a kill, and it was his.

The question was... how?

None of his attacks had done real damage. The avalanche had staggered it. The Soul Arrows irritated it. But the Undead Dragon still stood. Shambling. Breathing. Existing.

Even though it shouldn't have.

Its body was held together by rot and instinct. Its wings were ribbons of bone and shredded flesh. Its chest caved with every movement, ribs visible beneath the sagging remains of its hide.

Something was keeping it together. Something unnatural.

Naruto exhaled slowly, grounding himself. "Time to find out what you really are."

He retrieved the spell scroll for Heavy Soul Arrow, unfolding it as he settled onto the grass. The runes glowed faintly in the wan light, the structured sorcery carefully etched into the parchment.

[Item: Heavy Soul Arrow]

[Description: Soul sorcery emphasizing power. Fires a Heavy Soul Arrow. A more powerful but slower sorcery. Difficult to use due to long cooldowns and limited castings.]

As he committed the scroll's knowledge to memory, he reached for his catalyst, resting the worn wood against his palm.

And then he let go.

The world peeled away.

Just like before, Naruto slipped beneath the surface of the world—into that thin, fragile membrane of reality where everything was laid bare. A soul's perspective.

The ruins disappeared. The cliffside melted. Even the air seemed to vanish, replaced by a lattice of light and shadow, geometry and memory. The ground was a grid of luminous threads. Time had no meaning here. Movement was just thought shaped into form.

There, across the broken divide... the dragon.

Its soul didn't pulse. It leaked.

Rot pooled around it like vapor—miasma leaking from every crack in its withered form. Where its body was whole, the soul clung to flesh like dying embers. Where the rot had claimed it, the soul was peeling away, unable to hold on.

But there on its chest, something burned bright.

A single scale. Stone-like. Out of place. Embedded just above the creature's mangled heart.

And it was alive.

From this soul-sight, Naruto could see the scale wasn't just a chunk of armor—it was a well. A gravitational center for the dragon's soul, pulling threads of it inward, keeping it from dispersing.

The miasma was killing the dragon. But that scale... it was cursing it to keep standing.

The moment Naruto recognized it, the silhouette of the dragon twitched. Like it had felt him see it.

He clenched his catalyst.

No time to waste.

The soul scroll burned away in his inventory as the system message pinged in the void:

[Heavy Soul Arrow has been attuned. Heal Miracle removed.]

Power surged through the catalyst. Different than before. Thicker. Slower. Denser. He focused, pressing his will into the weapon, shaping the spell with his soul. The weight grew. It pulsed like a dying star. Then, when he couldn't contain it anymore, he fired. The Heavy Soul Arrow tore across the soul-grid like a hammer wrapped in light. Its core swirled, a corkscrew of compressed essence spinning wildly as it slammed into the dragon's side.

BOOM.

The shockwave rippled through the fog.

The dragon jerked.

Its shoulders reeled back, soul-shell shuddering, breath catching in its massive chest.

"Finally got a reaction out of you."

But it wasn't enough. The beast still hunched protectively, its chest curled forward, hiding the scale.

Hiding its weak point.

Naruto spun the catalyst lazily and tapped it against his shoulder. "Alright," he muttered, eyes fixed on the monster. "Guess I'm gonna have to get creative."

And he smiled.

With a hand seal, a shadow clone popped into existence beside him, arms folded and expression already unimpressed.

"You can't be serious," the clone deadpanned.

"I am," Naruto said. "Chakra and soul energy can work together. Beatrice proved that already. If we can stabilize the fusion, this might be enough to take down that thing."

The clone rolled his eyes. "Yeah, great. And when I blow up, what'll you do? Cry over the smoldering crater where my face used to be?"

"You're a clone," Naruto said, shrugging. "If you die, I'll eat a bowl of miso ramen in your honor."

"Wow. Touched."

But the clone grumbled and got to work, muttering curses under his breath. A second clone appeared beside him, both of them moving into position. One raised the sorcerer's catalyst and began focusing soul energy into it. The other positioned behind, channeling chakra through the clone's hands into the base of the staff, keeping the balance, adjusting for flux.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then...

CRACK.

The air itself warped. The catalyst pulsed with jagged light, tendrils of raw power snapping out like lightning, spiraling with unstable momentum.

A scream of energy tore through the air. And the clones exploded.

Naruto winced as smoke burst outward, the feedback slamming into his chest like a wave. The memory hit him a second later.

Chakra and magic amplified one another's power in a way that made sense—at least, once you understood how each worked. Soul sorcery was born from the soul imposing its will upon reality, using the catalyst as a conduit to shape that intent. Chakra, on the other hand, was reality. Formed from the union of spiritual and physical energy, it was woven into the very fabric of the world. The soul found a faster route to impose itself, and the result was a raw, volatile amplification.

One that Beatrice had managed to use.

And while Naruto was nowhere near the level of that Witch—not by a long shot—he had something else she didn't: shadow clones, stubbornness, and all the time in the world to trial-and-error his way through it.

The Vinheim way.

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Hours passed. Thousands more clones shattered from magical backlash, their deaths leaving behind fragments of experience—angles of failure he could analyze and fix. By the time dusk began bleeding across the mountainside, Naruto stood alone on the ledge, breathing slowly, his boots firm in the soil.

He was ready.

Two clones stepped beside him once more.

No hesitation.

One took the catalyst and began casting Heavy Soul Arrow, letting the dense energy churn slowly, like thick thunderclouds coiling within the staff. The other clone placed both hands on the first's back, shaping the chakra that Naruto fed him in bursts—slow at first, then rising, like a tide swelling beneath the surface.

Naruto focused everything he had into this one attempt.

He fed his chakra directly into the spell, through the stabilizing link of the second clone, while simultaneously syncing with the pulse of the soul energy being formed. The staff rattled in their hands, but held firm. At first, the energies fought again—opposing frequencies grinding against one another like tectonic plates. Light fractured along the catalyst's runes. Steam hissed from its seams.

But this time... Naruto forced it.

He adjusted the flow, not trying to mix the two directly, but to let one ride the other.

The result? The catalyst didn't crack this time.

It hummed.

Power gathered at the tip, spiraling into a deep cerulean sphere, orbited by fine rings of white light and shimmering threads of chakra that glowed like burning wire.

The spell wasn't a Soul Arrow anymore.

It was something else.

Naruto's grin returned—feral and proud.

At that exact moment, the dozen clones surrounding Naruto loosed their Heavy Soul Arrows. The sky lit up with streaks of blue energy, the barrage hammering into the Undead Dragon's skull like thunderous hail. The decayed beast reared back with a guttural groan, its massive head twisting away from the barrage—exposing its chest. And more importantly... the scale.

Naruto didn't hesitate as he unleashed the spell.

But what erupted from his cracking, overburdened catalyst was not a Heavy Soul Arrow.

It wasn't even magic anymore.

It was fury—refined, focused, and sharpened into a beam of spiraling annihilation.

The spell erupted forward in a deafening roar, a piercing lance of compressed blue energy surrounded by a spiraling shell of chakra. The two forces fed off each other, forming a spiral drill of death that raced toward the exposed scale.

The moment it struck, everything changed.

The world went quiet.

BOOM.

The beam carved through the Undead Dragon like it was made of paper. Bone shattered, flesh liquefied, stone cracked from the backlash. A twelve-foot hole was torn through the dragon's torso in an instant. The catalyst exploded in Naruto's hands. Shards of metal and wood burst out as he was sent flying backwards like a broken ragdoll, his body slamming into the moss-covered stone. His vision swam. His ears rang with a message.

[Victory Achieved!]

[You Have Gained:]

[Dragon Scale]

[Dragon Crest Shield]

[Astora's Straight Sword]

[Soul of a Proud Knight]

[3,000 Souls]

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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 70, 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!