Malphegor
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HSU: Ch. 65
🕑 Added 2024-12-12 14:36:47 +0000 UTCLooking at the coffins before him, Masashi felt deeply emotional.
In his past life, he hadn't left much behind, and now it was all here.
Many of the deeds of his past self would be condemned, not only on Earth but even in the current shinobi world.
But there was no other choice.
Without experiencing that era, one couldn't truly understand how fortunate the current shinobi of the great nations were. The peace they took for granted was built on mountains of corpses and oceans of blood.
Did anyone think he liked grave robbing?
Each body here represented hours spent hunting, digging, and preserving.
The Edo Tensei became a forbidden jutsu because it violated human ethics and was opposed by all the living. Even allies found it difficult to view it with a calm heart.
People who died to protect their villages and families were brought back, forced to harm the very things and people they once cherished. It was an act of extreme cruelty.
The psychological torture was always more effective than the physical damage.
And the First Great Ninja War marked the first use of Edo Tensei by Konoha. However, it hadn't been used since.
Not because they couldn't—Hiruzen certainly could.
But that level of restraint was something only shinobi of this new era could afford.
Masashi, however, could not empathize with the pain of people like Obito, Yahiko, Nagato, or Konan.
The world of adults was inherently painful.
In the Warring States Period, experiencing the pain of adulthood was a privilege for the strong. Children who slept too deeply never woke up. The blade didn't distinguish between warrior and infant.
He had watched a younger sibling, barely a few years old, be hacked to death before his very eyes. To their enemies, there was no mercy for children.
In the new era, shinobi's pain was still human pain. But in a time of chaos, people weren't even human—they were hollows.
Their humanity existed only in front of their families. Beyond that, they were weapons, monsters, demons wearing human skin.
Growing up in such an environment, he became the very kind of person he had once loathed as a child. Each act of cruelty was justified by the cruelties he had witnessed, each death avenging a hundred others.
His revenge was to torment his enemies with their own humanity, making them hate themselves more than they hated him. He perfected the art of breaking spirits rather than bodies.
Knowing that Edo Tensei would eventually be invented, he spent a long time waiting and preparing.
The founding of Konoha soothed the hatred in many hearts, but the deepest part of him remained icy cold. People were vessels of hatred. Only in death was hatred extinguished.
Masashi, now free of hatred, had buried both love and enmity with the old era.
Now, as he looked at those he once tormented, he felt calm, without the anger or satisfaction of the past.
After completing this mission, the souls sealed in the Edo Tensei for decades would finally find peace.
Footsteps sounded behind him as Pakura entered.
The moment she stepped in and saw the rows of coffins, she froze in place. Then her eyes fell on the sealing formulas etched onto the coffins.
"This isn't a graveyard, is it?"
"Doesn't look like it. But aren't we lucky?" Masashi said. "This must be a private collection left by some of the village's elders."
Pakura glanced around.
Private collection? This was insane.
So many dead bodies—and former Konoha elites, no less. There was only one possibility she could think of.
"Edo Tensei?"
Pakura didn't fully understand the mechanics of Edo Tensei, but as Suna's former ace, she knew about the notorious forbidden technique that had angered so many in the past.
Of course, at the start of the First Great Ninja War, it was Konoha versus everyone else. Nobody played fair, and Konoha wasn't bound by moral constraints.
The Second Kazekage was the only Kage to survive that war.
The war was so devastating that the nations needed nearly two decades to recover. After that, everyone started to adhere to rules.
"Yeah, Edo Tensei," Masashi said, brushing his hand against a coffin. "These are all fully prepared. With the seals on them, they can be summoned directly."
"That's… terrifying," Pakura shuddered at the thought. So many corpses!
"Yeah, it's pretty scary. The elders of the village really didn't make things easy for us."
The jutsu he had developed allowed him to use the Edo Tensei bodies as his shadow clones. Unlike clones, though, the Edo Tensei bodies could use their own techniques.
The souls sealed within the bodies were forced to watch themselves use their best techniques to harm their loved ones.
Looking back now, his first-life self really had been twisted…
"Are you planning to use these… dead bodies?" Pakura asked, visibly uncomfortable.
"Think of it as doing something good. Otherwise, these souls will remain trapped in the Edo Tensei forever," Masashi said. "Death should be the end. When the predecessors are gone, so should their hatred be."
Pakura nodded.
Even she, who had killed countless, felt sympathy seeing the dead toyed with in such a way.
Death was supposed to be everyone's final resting place—until Edo Tensei came along.
"What will you do next?" Pakura asked.
"I'll try to break the seal on this jutsu," Masashi said, inspecting the coffin seals. "It'll take some time. Keep watch outside for me. The noise just now might have attracted the Kumo ninjas. If they find this place, we'll have to destroy it."
"Understood. Hurry up."
Without hesitation, Pakura left to stand guard.
Masashi watched her leave completely, then stopped pretending.
Break the seal? As if. He had invented this jutsu himself; all he needed to do was use it.
Unlike the entry seals on the door, this technique didn't require the chakra of his past self. All he needed to do was master and modify it.
He walked to the deepest part of the room, where there was an altar. Brushing off the dust, he revealed a crest identical to that of the Senju clan.
Placing his hand on it, he activated the technique.
He needed time—but not for the seals.
Runes spread from the altar like dark veins, connecting with the sealing scripts on hundreds of coffins.
Crack… crack…
The coffins opened one by one.
Figures clad in the armor of the old era sat up.
Their skin was dark and cracked, their faces marked by fissures. Their eye sockets were empty of white—pitch black.
They were elite shinobi of various clans, united only by their shared enmity against the Senju.
"It's time to wake up."
Masashi formed a hand seal, restoring their intelligence.
One by one, the reanimated dead regained their awareness. They noticed the young ninja standing on the altar.
Despite his changed appearance, they recognized his soul unmistakably.
"You actually succeeded?" one of them growled.
In the dimly lit space, hundreds of coffins were all wide open. A group of dead men, each with distinct appearances, stared blankly at the young man standing on the high platform.
These dead men had once been enemies, even mortal foes, and now they were all puppets—the handiwork of the young man before them.
No, not a young man. They had all lived in the same era as him.
When they were alive, each of them had crossed paths with his clansman. They thought little of him during their lifetimes but only realized his cruelty after death.
The person they knew in life was different for each of them, but the one they saw in death was an abyss of darkness, a demon cloaked in human skin.
Under his control, they had slaughtered countless living people, some of whom had then become "comrades." Over time, their anger turned to numbness, and they came to hate themselves more than they hated him.
They despised the part of themselves that still retained humanity—the very thing they once cherished now became the weapon used to torment them.
Masashi gazed at these once-familiar faces. His eyes finally settled on the dead man who had spoken.
It was an Uchiha.
The deep crimson armor he wore was covered in scratches.
In the empty black eye sockets gleamed a pair of Sharingan with three tomoe.
"Kai, long time no see," Masashi said, neither denying the other man's words nor making excuses, openly acknowledging his identity.
After all, they knew each other too well. Even with a different body, recognition was inevitable.
There was no need to lie to the dead.
Every reanimated body here had a complicated backstory and had been difficult to create.
Tobirama's Edo Tensei was not the overpowered, modified version created by Orochimaru and Kabuto in the original timeline.
Apart from needing the DNA of the deceased, the jutsu also demanded a highly specific sacrifice—a body with chakra similar to that of the reanimated individual.
Typically, reanimating one shinobi from a clan required killing two others, with closer blood ties yielding better synchronization and stronger results.
To reanimate Kai, his past self had used the eldest son of Kai as the sacrifice.
It had been a cursed era—an age that drove people to become monsters.
"Muzo, who are you going to kill this time?" Kai asked coldly, staring at Masashi. "Are you your true self now? Or are you, like me, just a puppet?"
This was a living body. Even in death, he could tell the difference.
"My current name is Masashi. I've been called that since the day I was born." He activated his Sharingan. "You wouldn't believe me even if I told you, but all I think about now is how to protect the Uchiha clan."
"Sharingan…" Kai's expression shifted from cold indifference to disbelief.
After a long silence, he bowed his head, the armor on his body creaking.
Suddenly, he raised his head sharply. "Do you even remember how many Uchiha you killed?"
"In times of chaos, survival often requires killing to stop further killing," Masashi replied evenly.
"My daughter was only three years old."
"My brother was three as well," Masashi said calmly. "You and the others hacked him into pieces. He was crying at the time."
Kai said nothing, his gaze icy as he looked at Masashi. To him, the man standing there, Sharingan or not, was Muzo.
"Does anyone else have questions?" Masashi asked, looking at the rest of the group.
No one spoke. Not everyone had the same long-standing grudge as Kai or knew him so well.
"What do you want us to do?" a white-haired man asked, breaking the tense silence.
"I'm giving you a chance for release," Masashi said, looking at the dead men. "Fight one last battle for me, and I will end this jutsu. You will never see me again."
The dead were stunned.
When had they ever been summoned without being used to death's edge? And now this? Was he turning over a new leaf?
"Who do you want killed?"
"Kumo shinobi," Masashi replied. "This is the world decades after your deaths. None of your loved ones are on the other side."
"Kumo shinobi?" another voice asked. "Our clan... what became of them?"
Masashi turned toward the speaker.
It was a member of the Hagoromo clan. After the founding of Konoha, Masashi hadn't summoned this person again.
"This is no longer the era of shinobi clans but the era of hidden villages," Masashi explained. "The Kumo shinobi have nothing to do with your Hagoromo clan. Ask the others for details. Much has changed since your time."
The dead men began whispering among themselves, sharing fragments of knowledge gleaned from their various summonings.
Masashi waited patiently.
Although these reanimated shinobi weren't as powerful as they had been in life, they were still capable of jonin-level combat. Higher levels of power were beyond reach; the original purpose of Edo Tensei was to create reusable suicide soldiers, so he hadn't bothered trying to reanimate kage-level shinobi—it was too resource-intensive to be worth it.
After a while, the whispering ceased.
Kai, as the representative, looked at Masashi.
"Why tell us all this?" he asked, his face still skeptical. "You've never needed our consent before."
As the caster of the jutsu, Masashi held absolute control over them. There was no need for this negotiation-like approach.
"Don't you want to rest in peace?" he asked in return.
The dead fell silent.
Who wouldn't want eternal rest?
"Just make sure you keep your word," Kai said. "Where is the enemy?"
"Let's head out first. We'll talk outside."
With that, Masashi began walking toward the exit.
The dead men stepped aside to let him pass, then followed behind.
Just like before.
But this time, they were not numb.
Outside in the sunlight, Pakura still stood at the entrance, staring into the dark tunnel. Questions swirled in her mind.
The next moment, her thoughts were overtaken by shock.
Masashi emerged first, leading a procession of the dead. They moved with the fluidity of the living, but their appearances screamed the obvious: We are not alive!
One by one, they marched out, the sound of armor scraping filling the air.
Though it was broad daylight, Pakura felt a chill.
In the end, over 300 reanimated shinobi stood under the sun, arranged in precise formation as if they had never stopped being soldiers.
Even though they were back in the mortal world, their reanimated forms felt nothing. They could not feel the warmth of the sun or the sting of its glare.
They were weapons, stripped of all human weakness.
"Is everyone here?" Masashi asked. "Anyone still inside?"
The dead swiftly began counting.
"All accounted for," one of them reported. "Three hundred and twelve, ready for battle."
Pakura looked on, feeling the absurdity of it all.
"Alright, now let's discuss the battle plan," Masashi nodded in satisfaction and began making arrangements.
