-We can use this thing.- Toji said, interested. -Mukade only used civilians and hardly any ninja, with me and Afro, the dead could simply be taken to become 'tree spirits'.
Jugo shrugged, this tree was indeed interesting, but for him, it wasn't very useful. It could indeed increase the strength of a ninja village with sufficient accumulation, but that would take a considerable amount of time or extreme sacrifices.
Sure, if he replaced those with those Zetsus from 'Madara' it would be much better, the efficiency could be even greater.
Even without the Zetsus, solving the Yang chakra problem wouldn't be difficult for Jugo, he could easily find solutions. Using his curse mark could even make them all compatible and give them much more 'juice' to extract.
Although this wouldn't be very useful for Jugo, who became an Angel and would later transform into a god and even go beyond that, it would be very useful for his subordinates, including his women.
He didn't have any Excessive Beyonder characteristics, so he couldn't create other Beyonders, which was a shame.
Regarding Mukade's Living Puppets, after asking around a bit, Jugo understood these things a little better, they retained their memories from life, whether it was jutsus or combat skills, the biggest problem was their lack of self-awareness.
Mukade basically created a basic AI program for these guys with the Seals, they could obey orders, but it was like a controlled Edo Tensei. The power exerted and the lack of analytical thought greatly diminished the puppets' combat power.
Besides, without souls, these puppets needed frequent recharging. It was basically a Pay to Win type of system.
Honestly, if Mukade had truly been willing to operate in the shadows, he could slowly acquire increasingly powerful living puppets, perhaps in a few decades, he could have an extremely powerful army.
Probably not enough to subvert the world, but enough to practically deal with any ninja village that wasn't Konoha, well, Otogakure hadn't been counted, and if it had been, it wouldn't have mattered even if he'd accumulated it for a thousand years.
Theoretically, he could even do that with the Seimei no Ro, those puppets didn't age, a thousand years of accumulation... besides, according to Mukade, that tree was constantly growing, when he picked it, it was just a 'dry corpse,' and after 10 years of nourishment, it was already over 10 meters tall.
If Mukade could obtain better nutrients... perhaps a version of the Divine Tree could actually be cultivated.
Furthermore, Mukade 'forced' the tree to expel Seimei no Ro, which greatly slowed the tree's growth.
Jugo approached the tree and touched it. He felt directly that although this thing could not be considered a living being in the sense of having a soul, it was still alive, possessing vitality and even emotions, although its spiritual energy was weak now. Perhaps after accumulating enough, it could actually give rise to a soul.
That would be very interesting to see.
Jugo directly replaced Mukade's connection with his own, and with Mukade's help and his power over the connection, he quickly completed the task.
At Toji's request, he also freed all those civilians that Mukade had imprisoned in the tree. He could clearly feel the tree's rejection of the request, before, it had basically had a cooperative mentality with Mukade, as a form of mutualism.
Mukade provided 'food' and the tree provided Seimei no Ro.
However, realizing that this 'child' was a bit disobedient, Jugo let the energy of the Tenebrous World leak out, making it clear that his request wasn't really a request, but an order.
The tree trembled fiercely and quickly freed them all.
Some of them were alive only because the tree was keeping them alive, it possessed the ability to extract nutrients from the soil for the bodies of civilians, as well as diverting a minuscule amount of Seimei no Ro to them, thus a cycle could be maintained. As soon as they were freed, the intense weakness caused them to die immediately.
The others looked like dried-up husks, barely holding onto life.
Jugo shook his head, separating some wooden clones to help keep these guys alive. He even helped those who had died to revive, even finding Yukina's brother, Toji, thankfully Mukade only buried the bodies instead of throwing them to the beasts to eat.
Jugo revived him, but looked at Toji strangely.
He didn't interfere with Toji most of the time, but Toji's behavior... was he a Devil? Because he seemed like a saint?
Toji also didn't quite know why he did it, he felt nothing for those people, not even for Yukina and her brother. At most, he felt anger towards Mukade, but while his thoughts were to kill him and ignore those civilians, he thought about his earlier promise.
He would not accept power at the cost of his ego.
So he decided to help, not because he wanted to, not because he should, simply because he didn't want to become someone he wasn't.
For a moment, Toji remembered someone who actually seemed to be in a similar situation, to be more specific, a dragon.
Paarthurnax, from Skyrim.
A dragon with a mind of domination and destruction, but through meditation on the Thu'um, he managed to control that side of himself. He told the Dovahkiin that even at that moment he felt the urge to return to his former nature, but he chose free will instead of instinct.
Toji didn't know if he could follow the same path, but he would accept the challenge. Even so, knowing that making further progress along this pathway would likely demand even more of him, he came up with an idea, if it worked, he could act with far less worry.