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Chapter 227 Depths, Mgic and Cannibals
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The Depths were a nightmare.
Below the stair lay narrow corridors carved from rotted wood. The walls ran slick with moisture and mold. The air thick with something pungent, bitter and coppery. Water dripped somewhere in the dark, the sound bouncing endlessly down the twisting halls. Every few feet the wood creaked or bowed underfoot, its groan swallowed by the roars of hollows and the wet sound of meat being cleaved.
The worst part was that they moved through all of it blind, with nothing but distant torchlight bleeding up.
"Let's sneak around like shinobi," Naruto whispered to his lizard. He casted the Hidden Body spell. The world taking on that familiar muted quality as the invisibility took hold.
Naruto channeled chakra to the soles of his feet, pressing it outward in a thin, even layer until the wood stopped groaning under him. Sound dampening was a simple trick he picked up from observing Zabuza.
The hallway opened into a second floor.
A few hollows trudged aimlessly in the hallway, its feet sloshing with each step. Beyond it, rows of archway-like open windows leading into what resembled an underground tavern.
The air was choked with the scent of old grease, spoiled meat, and sewage. Wooden tables and benches were scattered across the space, illuminated by torches held by hollows. A deep, guttural roar echoed through the chamber, shaking dust from the rafters. The hollows froze. Then, one by one, they began to shuffle away toward the edges of the room.
Naruto observed the source of the sound.
[ Name: The Butcher ]
[ HP: 1,639 / 1,639 ]
The Butcher was a behemoth of a man. Pale, blotchy skin was stretched tightly over swollen muscles, dotted with patches of purple bruising and lesions. His head was hidden beneath a rough burlap sack tied around the neck, with only two eyeholes crudely torn open. His apron was soaked in dark stains of blood, shit, and who-knew-what else. His pants were tattered, tucked into heavy, steel-toed boots caked in sewage and boneshards.
Naruto's eyes narrowed as he saw the butcher cutting meat from a human corpse and began to cook it. "Great... Cannibals. Of course there are cannibals in lordran."
The Butcher paused mid-step and sniffed the air.
The cleaver left his hand before Naruto could blink. He flickered to the ceiling, pressing flat against the rotted beams as the blade cut through the space where he had been and clattered to the floor below. A hollow nearby shuffled over and retrieved it, holding it up like an offering.
Naruto watched from above.
They're taking orders from it. Or maybe it's simpler than that. It feeds them and they follow. He had seen stranger hierarchies in Lordran.
A rat screamed somewhere, and the sound did not just cut through the noise, it shook the whole room. Dust rained from the ceiling beams. The hollow nearest to Naruto staggered. Even the dogs whimpered in fear. The Butcher moved before the echo had finished. It snatched the slab of meat from the table and dropped into a trash chute in the floor, gone before the dust had settled.
"Interesting," Naruto murmured.
Oscar chirped.
"What?"
Oscar chirped again, more insistent.
Naruto funneled chakra to his eardrums and immediately regretted it. He pressed through the noise until something thin and faint rose from beneath it all.
S-S-Someone. Please. Help. Me.
The knight exhaled slowly. The invisibility had maybe seconds left. "Oscar," he said quietly. "You're going on a rescue mission."
The lizard looked ready.
Naruto jumped from the ceiling, cocked his arm back, and threw the lizard like a football. Oscar spun in a tight spiral and landed clean on a fourth floor windowsill, drawing every hollow head in the room upward in confusion.
Naruto hit the ground with a thud sending a shadow clone after Oscar.
"Bet you can't catch me!"
He hooked a finger under his lower eyelid, pulled it down, and stuck out his tongue.
The hollows lunged. Their attacks hit nothing but an afterimage, and the real Naruto was already up a pillar, looking down at the growing crowd below. Hollows. Two undead dogs. All of them screaming and scrabbling at the base of the pillar, unable to reach him.
He pressed his fingers to his temples.
"Goddammit," he muttered. "I have too many options." He began counting on his fingers. "Fireball. Wind blade. Classic plunge attack. Rasengan. Clones. I could just sit here until they get bored." He tapped his chin. "Actually."
He reached into his inventory and pulled out his catalyst, turning it over in his hand.
"Betrice would scold me if she knew I had been neglecting my magic, dattebayo."
But since learning what sorcery actually was at its foundations, the ideas had been building up quietly in the back of his mind, waiting.
Naruto looked down at the mob beneath him.
Good a time as any to test a few of them.
Magic was akin to breathing.
When you attuned a spell, you could cast it without much thought, the same way your lungs expanded and contracted without you telling them to. But a man who learned to control his breathing during hard exertion performed better than one who did not. The principle was the same.
Naruto wanted to consciously control his magic. To understand it well enough to refine it.
'Magic is the manipulation of the soul of the catalyst with your own soul,' he thought, settling into the feeling rather than just the action.
Naruto turned his attention to the first question.
Can I only fire one arrow at a time?
He let his awareness sink inward, past the surface instinct of casting, until he could feel it properly. His soul reaching out. The catalyst's soul answering. The two touching, intertwining, shaping.
He focused on the catalyst.
Catalysts were trees. Ancient trees shrunk down into staves, but trees nonetheless. The soul inside was not a single thing but a sphere divided in layer. Each ring/layer marking age. The outermost rings were young. The innermost were old and dense with something that had no name except weight.
From his experience with the Great Soul Arrow Naruto already understood the principle. The deeper the ring you drew from, the older the soul and the stronger the spell. He stayed on the young side because it was easier to use.
Two soul arrows formed at the catalyst's head. The pale blue light fracturing into a pair. They were harder to hold than one, pulling against each other like two flames on the same wick, but he kept them steady and released.
Both hit the crowd below. A hollow dropped. A dog stumbled back with a wound across its shoulder.
Naruto noted the damage and moved on.
Next question: Could he make them smaller?
He compressed the draw. Thinned it. What emerged was not an arrow in any real sense but a sliver of soul energy no larger than a kunai, and when he released it the thing moved fast. Faster than a proper soul arrow by a considerable margin. It punched through a hollow's knee and the creature went down hard.
Less damage. More speed. Understood.
He kept experimenting, firing in short bursts, adjusting the draw each time, mapping the edges of what the spell could do. Multiple small bolts in a spread. A tighter, denser single shot. Two arrows angled to converge.
Naruto didn't notice but the sigil of the soul arrow on his soul had been quietly changing. Branching and splitting into geometry never seen in Vinheim.
It was said in the Dragon School that magic grew from three things: Curiosity, Understanding and Experimentation.
[ Spell: Soul Arrow → Naruto's Soul Arrow ]
[ Description: Elementary sorcery. Fires a soul arrow. Yet in the hands of a true sorcerer, basic magic is but a seed. From it grows a tree with multiple branches. The spell is the same. The caster is not. ]
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The Clone and Oscar landed in a dark hallway. Ahead, an old storage room sat open, spilling out a smell of fermented corpses.
He crept forward.
The room was massive, poorly lit by a single torch that flickered. It spat unsteady light across row after row of barrels stacked across the floor to ceiling. Every barrel had one a hollow and a deep amber, almost brown brine.
Oscar chirped.
"Yeah," the clone said, surveying the rows of barrels with his hands on his hips. "Butchers are also fermenting hollows. Though I'm kind of curious what fermented human meat tastes like."
Oscar glanced at him.
"Don't give me that look. You're not curious?"
Oscar continued giving him that look.
"It's a legitimate question. It's not like I was going to eat any. I'm just saying, from a culinary standpoint—"
"..."
"Scientifically."
Oscar blinked slowly.
The clone crossed his arms. "You know what, you're a crystal lizard. You literally eat rocks and metal."
Oscar chirped with great dignity.
"…You!"
The duo turned sharply.
"…Here, over here!"
At the back of the room, a man in tattered pyromancer robes was inside a barrel.
[ Name: Laurentius of the Great Swamp ]
[ HP: 120 / 1,380 ]
"Please… You must help me..."
Naruto's eyes widened in recognition. The undead merchant had once spoken of a pyromancer in lordran. This had to be him.
"Hey, hang on, I'll be right there," the clone said when something landed behind him.
Thud.
A new Butcher suddenly came from the back with a swing of its cleaver.
Before the blade could reach the clone, crystals spikes erupted upward. The cleaver slammed into it, but failed to break through.
Naruto finished his handsign. "Wrong move, ugly."
Wind Style: Blade of Wind.
A crimson line appeared across the butcher's thick neck. Blood sprayed from the wound like a ruptured vein, hissing through the air.
[ Name: The Butcher ]
[ HP: 1,520 / 1,639 ]
Yet it barely did much damage.
The Butcher powered through the pain and shattered the crystal wall Oscar. The cleaver came down in a brutal arc toward Naruto.
Naruto moved to meet it.
In one smooth motion, he equipped his Zweihander and raised it into a half-swording grip. Rather than block the blow directly, he used leverage to redirect the cleaver's momentum away from his body.
Naruto slipped to the side and struck the Butcher in the face with a precise Mordhau. The crossguard slammed into the creature's jaw with a meaty crack, stunning it. He then hooked his foot behind the Butcher's ankle and turned with a twist of his torso, throwing the hulking figure over his shoulder.
The Butcher crashed into a cluster of barrels behind them. The wood splintered on impact, and a wave of limp hollows spilled across the floor like discarded meat.
Dust choked the air, and the room filled with groaning.
The hollows began to rise.
They didn't think. Panic drove them, and he was the only moving thing they could see.
"Mindless undead can't even tell who they should be more afraid of," Naruto muttered.
Oscar's gem on his back pulsed, and a cloud of shimmering frost poured out of the lizard's mouth.
One by one, the undead began to cough and choke violently. Crystals began to grow from their throats and lungs, forcing their way out through flesh and bone. Blood mixed with shattered crystal coated the ground.
"You can't get away with committing war crimes just by being cute."
Oscar chirped again with smug satisfaction.
The clone raised an eyebrow. "Agree to disagree?"
A heatwave swept across the room. Naruto turned his head to see Laurentius's pyromancy flame extended towards the butcher.
"Combustion," Laurentius said quietly.
Flame exploded from his hand and engulfed the butcher's sack-covered head. The cannibal grabbed the pyromancer and threw him towards Naruto.
Naruto caught Laurentius as he said, "He's all yours, Oscar."
The lizard chirped, taking a stand between them.
The butcher ignored the lizard and rushed towards the duo.
Now the lizard was pissed.
Ninja Art: Crystal Hexagonal Shuriken Jutsu.
Oscar created blue crystal shuriken in the shape of snowflakes along his tail and launched them at the target. Using chakra to make them spin and increase their lethal power, the shuriken burst into multiple shards with enough force to launch the butcher back.
The crystals seemed to shatter, leaving behind holes in the cannibal.
"Huh, so Oscar wants to win this in his regular form," Naruto said.
"Friend, we should help your partner," Laurentius said.
"Nah, he's got this," Naruto said, giving the anxious pyromancer an Estus to heal.
The butcher, now seeing Oscar as a threat, grabbed the nearest barrel and threw it. Oscar ran to dodge only for the butcher to slam down onto him with a flying body slam. The sound of crystal cracking echoed in the room with Laurentius rushing forward to avenge Oscar, only for Naruto to hold out his hand to stop him.
Before the older man could question it, crystal jutted out of the butcher's belly trapping him.
"That was a crystal clone the butcher had hit."
"Then where is the real lizard friend?" Laurentius questioned as a sparkle hit his eye.
Ninja Art: Crystal Wheel.
Oscar created a ring-shaped blue crystal wheel and had it rotate vertically around himself, allowing him to move at high speed as he zoomed through the area and leapt towards the butcher.
Ninja Art: Crystal Lance.
Oscar created a large sharp blue spear-like crystal surrounding himself and considering the momentum he was carrying, his lance went through the skull of the butcher.
Laurentius's jaw hit the floor while the clone nodded and smirked. "I wonder what Guren's reaction would be if she knew Oscar had basically recreated all of her jutsu."
Oscar absorbed the soul drop of the butcher.
"Thank you… I would have been her supper without you. Being eaten alive! I shudder to think… Thank you, thank you dearly. I am Laurentius, of the Great Swamp."
"Naruto Uzumaki... Wait, her supper?" Naruto pointed at the corpse. "That's a woman?"
"No, no, no… By the Witch of Izalith. these butchers… they feed a gluttonous monster in the depths, you see."
"Why?"
"I… I do not know, friend. I truly do not."
Before Naruto could press for more information, they heard a roar.
"Guess the original is now fighting the other butcher."
"Original…?" Laurentius questioned, trailing off uncertainly.
"Get ready to be surprised, my friend."
Laurentius nodded weakly as they jumped back to the third floor and saw Naruto fighting against the butcher in the restaurant below. "Is that… your twin?"
Naruto gave him a mischievous grin. "Yes."
Oscar shook his head at his partner's prank.
"What in the—?" Laurentius muttered, staring at his hand. The flame surged, drawn unnaturally toward the original Naruto. "This... why are my flames reacting like this? I have never… this is most unusual…"
"Maybe because I used to be a pyromancer before I, uh lost my flame."
"You mean… your twin brother."
"Sure."
Laurentius gasped. "To think… to think I would meet a fellow pyromancer! Did you two come from the Great Swamp as well, friend?"
"No. Just kinda woke up in the Northern Undead Asylum with a pyromancy flame. That's all."
"I see…" Laurentius said slowly, his eyes drifting somewhere distant. "I see, yes… how curious."
"Let's just watch this fight and talk later."
"…Yes. Yes, of course. Though I must say… hah… this is quite a lot to take in."
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The butcher charged.
Naruto grabbed the closest thing he could... a thick, grease-slicked wooden table. As the Butcher raised the cleaver overhead, Naruto rammed the table forward like a battering ram, the edge connecting squarely with the Butcher's groin.
There was a sickening squishing sound.
Naruto winced harder than his opponent.
The Butcher let out a low, guttural groan and staggered, eyes twitching behind the burlap sack.
Before it could recover, Naruto slid his hands along the table's edge and yanked it upward with a grunt. The other end of the table cracked the Butcher in the jaw with a loud crack, snapping his head back.
"Tables really are versatile weapons," Naruto said, twisting and shoving the table sideways as the Butcher slashed wildly, the cleaver cutting into one of the legs. The whole table spun like a shield, deflecting another blow, and Naruto kicked it into the Butcher's chest to buy a second of space.
He rolled to the side and snatched a skillet hanging from a rusted hook. Without a second thought, he flung it like a discus. It smacked the Butcher on the face, denting but not stopping him.
The cleaver came in a diagonal swing.
Naruto ducked, feeling the blade cut air just above his head. He threw a rapid combo of boxing strikes; left jab, right hook to the ribs, and an uppercut under the armpit that sent the Butcher stumbling back into a hanging rack of meat hooks.
Thinking fast, Naruto jumped, caught a ceiling pipe, and swung forward feet-first. His boots crashed into the Butcher's chest, sandwiching him between Naruto and the meat rack.
As the redhead landed in a crouch, the Butcher roared, tearing free of the hooks with reckless strength. He brought the cleaver down in a brutal chop.
Naruto shoved a stool into the Butcher's shin. The cleaver buried into the butcher block behind him.
Naruto snatched a butcher's rolling cart nearby and shoved it with a grunt. It rammed into the Butcher's knees, forcing him backward.
Not letting up, Naruto vaulted onto the cart, kicking off with both feet and flipping over the Butcher's head. As he spun mid-air, he snatched a hanging chain and used it to swing into the opposite side of the kitchen.
The Butcher turned too late.
Naruto had grabbed a meat tenderizer mallet from the wall. He caught the Butcher's wrist mid-swing and slammed the mallet into the back of his elbow. The cleaver dropped with a heavy clang.
The Butcher swung a wild punch.
Naruto ducked, grabbed a pot lid from the counter, and pinged it off the Butcher's face like a frisbee. Then he slid under a prep table, grabbed its underside, and kicked upward with both legs. The whole thing flipped, trapping the Butcher beneath it.
Without missing a beat, Naruto ran, leapt onto the upside-down table, and stomped it with all his weight.
Wood cracked. The Butcher underneath let out a muffled growl of pain.
Naruto flipped off the table, landing in stance, breathing slightly heavier but grinning. "You really should've stayed behind the butcher block. Dattebayo."
The table shook once, twice then the Butcher exploded upward, roaring as he threw the wreckage aside.
Naruto channeled chakra through the catalyst to reinforce it. The first strike caught the cannibal across the face with the flat of the catalyst. Before it could recover the redhead was already pivoting, driving a diagonal strike down across its collarbone.
Naruto launchex both feet into its ribs in a volley kick that staggered it back two steps. He closed the distance instantly, jabbing a straight punch into its stomach to double it forward, and the moment its head came down he pressed the catalyst against its face and fired.
The soul arrow took it point blank.
The Butcher stumbled.
"Wow, you are a durable bastard."
The Dragonscale Ring shimmered in the torchlight on his finger as Naruto held out his hand.
"Let's see you get a tast of a Rasengan then?"
As Naruto formed the Rasengan the ring made it stronger with magic.
MAGIC ENHANCED NINJA ART: SOUL RASENGAN!
Magic made the Rasengan like a whirlpool, pulling at everything within its spiral.
The air of the Depths was soaked through with souls, the magic found plenty to work with.
Motes of green rose from the floor, the walls, and the dark. Every last drifting remnant of the dead converging on the spiral in his hand and folding into it one by one until the orb was full of them.
The Rasengan was... green.
A glowing green orb, with wisps of white threading slowly through the shell like smoke caught inside still water.
"Let's see what this puppy can do."
He hit the Butcher square in the chest and the impact sent the creature flying across the room. It crashed into the far wall hard enough to crack the stone and slid down to the floor.
Thud.
The Butcher had no visible damage from the rasengan.
"Ehh?"
Oscar chirped from above.
Naruto nodded in understanding.
The Soul Rasengan hadn't touched the body at all. It had gone straight through to the soul and torn it apart from the inside.
"Oh," Naruto said quietly. "That's actually scary."
He stood there for a moment looking at the Butcher's emptied husk. Powerful. Probably the most destructive thing he had thrown at a single target. But the soul was gone, shredded into nothing, nothing left to collect or read or use. The ring had done that. Or rather, the ring and the Depths together. Lordran's air was saturated with death and decay. The endless cycle of souls unraveling and reforming, soaked into the stone over ages. The magic rasengan had been a whirlpool that pulled in what was already there.
The Elemental Nations were different story. Nature energy was the current running through that world.
Naruto turned the ring over on his finger, watching the faint light move across it.
"I wonder what a magic enhanced Rasengan would look like after absorbing nature energy."
He held the thought there for a long moment.
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Author Note: And with that, the chapter comes to a close.
Now let's get into the Q&A.
1. What is the Magic Enhanced Rasengan?
So it is exactly what it sounds like. A Rasengan made stronger through the Bellowing Dragoncrest Ring. But what does that actually look like in practice?
Think of a whirlpool. A swirling vortex created when opposing currents collide, pulling surface water downward, dragging everything within reach into itself and making itself stronger in the process. That is the Magic Rasengan. It pulls what is around it and adds that to itself.
The inspiration for this actually comes from the Naruto movies. You know how Naruto gets all these one-off unique Rasengans throughout the films? The Rainbow Rasengan, the Moonlight Rasengan, the Tornado Rasengan, the Ultra Supreme Rasengan and so on. Each one is the same base technique made distinct by whatever energy is being channeled into it at the time. That idea stuck with me. So I built the Magic Rasengan around the same principle, where Naruto can pull different ambient energies into the spiral and produce something different each time depending on where he is and what is in the air around him.
In the Depths, the air is thick with soul energy. So the Rasengan pulled that in and became something that bypasses the body entirely and hits the soul directly.
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2. Why is it green?
Regular Show.
I am not joking. The moment I was writing that scene my brain went straight to the soul ball from Season 3, Episode 3, Skips Strikes. That green glowing bowling ball.
I had originally planned for the Soul Rasengan to look like the soul orbs scattered across Lordran, a white ball with a wisp tail trailing off it. But honestly the Regular Show reference felt more fun so I went with green and white wisps inside the shell instead. No regrets.
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3. What would the Magic Rasengan look like in other locations?
Because the Magic Rasengan pulls from whatever energy saturates the surrounding environment, the variants are essentially limitless depending on where Naruto is standing.
Nito's domain is thick with the miasma of death, so the Rasengan would pull that in. Seath's domain is saturated with crystallized soul energy, so you would get a crsytalized soul forming inside the spiral. The Abyss is pure darkness, so that variant would pull darkness itself into the vortex that effects space.
And the shinobi world has nature energy, which brings me to my question for all of you.
What do you think a Rasengan enhanced by raw nature energy would look like?
And I want to be clear, this is not the Sage Art: Rasengan. Senjutsu requires nature energy and chakra to be in perfect balance with each other. This would be raw, unbalanced nature energy being pulled into the spiral the same way soul energy was pulled in the Depths. It would not be controlled the way sage mode is controlled. It would be something rougher than that.
So what would it look like? And more importantly, what would you call it?
Drop your ideas in the comments. I'm genuinely curious what you all come up with.
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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-/
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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 15k-word chapters. But heads up, if you're jumping to P@treon, you'll need to start from Chapter 99, 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!