The blood had not dried.
David stood where the last body fell, surrounded by the aftermath of still-warm corpses, the basin soaked in crimson and memory. But his eyes weren't on the dead---they were on the sword.
Soul Tiller hummed softly in his hand, not glowing, not gleaming, but pulsing with something deeper than power. It wasn't hunger. It was response. A kind of recognition that only came when the blade had been fed properly.
The energy from the dead didn't just fill David's body--it filtered into his sword. But this time, something shifted.
The essence wasn't just absorbed. It was translated.
Names.
Techniques.
Memories.
Whispers began to echo in his ears-- not voices, but fragments of identity: muscle memory of weapons mastered, silent breath patterns from stealth operatives, even the instinctual pulse earth chakra techniques.
They weren't loud. THey didn't beg to be known.
But they lingered. As if they were being filled into a library somewhere within him.
The sword had changed.
Or maybe--it had awakened.
David raised it and stared into the black-forged metal. It did not shine. It swallowed light. And somewhere deep inside its weight, a thought bloomed:
("Harvest them all.")
His lips did not move, but the intention filled the air.
---
David walked.
He crossed the borders of territories without regard for their names. He no longer cared which land belonged to which nation. None of them had claimed him. None of them could.
He walked into a bandit camp first--- thirty men.
Thieves. Killers. Traitors.
He did not offer a warning. he did not introduce himself.
They died in pieces, their weapons shattering against Dirge, their formation dissolving as Graviton bent space between their steps.
The sword drank.
And David felt their strength curl into his limbs like steam returning to a mountain,
Next, he tore through a border outpost--Rain affiliated. Shinobi-level. Semi-organized. Resistant.
Not enough.
Iron Pulse refined their attacks into data.
Vita Forge recycled exhaustion into greater output.
Each life taken expanded the field of his knowledge.
Not just how to kill.
But how to understand through death.
----
Reports began to circulate across the continent:
An unknown figure without village affiliation was wiping out threats at a terrifying rate. Bandit clans that had survived for decades were erased in nights. Rogue ninja vanished without sound. A string of battlefield-like massacres marked with only one trace left behind---no trace at all.
Hollowed out.
Some thought it was a bijuu.
Others whispered: a god of war had taken form.
One man, a wandering monk from the Fire Temple, found a scene days after David had passed through: an entire stronghold emptied, not just of bodies, but of intent. The ground held no echoes. No pain. Just.....finality.
He knelt, touched the earth, and whispered, "He doesn't walk to fight. He walks to change pressure itself."
---
David stood at the edge of a cliff, his sword now permanently at his back, not strapped---but head in place by gravity tailored to his will.
He looked over a distant valley, a minor battlefield between two small nations.
He smiled---small. Cold.
"Too many pieces," he said. "Let's reduce the board."
And so he walked. And the world bled.
Because David no longer killed to survive.
He killed to harvest understanding.
And Soul tiller had yet to be filled.
It began with fire. Not his.
The hidden Mist Village was the first to respond with force that matched name. Not scouts. Not spies.
A battalion.
Fifty shinobi. Ten of them elite. Three known to survive war zones others hadn't.
They were sent not to contain him.
But to erase him.
David stood in a clearing beneath ash-streaked skies, the stench of smoke thick in the air. His expression didn't change. His heartbeat didn't rise. He watched them descend through tree lines and formation tiers.
He felt their fear before they saw him.
Not fear of pain.
Fear of not understanding what they faced.
He stepped forward.
The first move came from a Mist swordsman. Quick. Experienced. Blood-thirsty.
David didn't draw his blade. He let his will move first.
Dirge pulsed-not outward, but inward. The man's momentum died mid-air, his rib cage cracking without contact. He collapsed. Unconscious before his blade finished falling.
David caught the blade.
Held it.
Studied it.
Then let it drop.
It didn't matter.
"You brought tools to measure me," David said calmly. "But you've misunderstood the scale."
They attacked in full formation. Water-style erupted. Mist filled the air. Chakra constructs screamed.
David vanished into the storm-not with speed. But with density.
Each clash because a slaughter.
Each technique was absorbed, converted, broken down by Iron Pulse, returned by Axis Fold.
He moved through them like understanding sharpening in real time.
Where his blade landed Soul Tiller Tiller drank.
But not just blood.
Memories.
He saw their past. Their villages. Their families. The orders they hated, and the orders they followed anyway.
And for a brief moment, David felt them.
It did not slow him. It refined him.
By the time Jiraiya had arrived, the battlefield was silent.
The forest had not burned.
It simply...bent away.
David stood at the center, bare-armed, blood -soaked, his breathing calm.
Jiraiya did not call out.
He watched.
This was no demon.
This was a man.
And he was shaping the world one soul at a time.
David turned his head slightly.
Their eyes met.
"You're not here to fight," David said. "You're here to understand."
Jiraiya nodded once.
And David walked on.
--
But the echoes did not fade.
Not from the battlefield. Not from the blood. Not from the minds of those who watched and survived.
Across the elemental nations, the wind began to carry something new---not a tale, but a reality too heavy to deny. A presence that cut through the boundaries of villages and ranks alike.
The Hidden Cloud was next.
Where the Mist had sent warriors to test his edge, the Cloud sent tacticians and bloodline specialists. They came not to surround him, but to fracture him---divide his force, split his form, analyze and counter.
They failed.
David met them near a waterfall valley layered in seals meant to suppress chakra and isolate targets.
It didn't matter.
He stood alone on stone slick with rain, and when their first assault came----a barrage of lightning-charged spears--- he didn't raise a barrier.
He raised a thought.
And the Dirge answered.
The air buckled. The water refused to fall. The Lightning sparked in place and died without impact.
David moved.
Not as a shinobi. Not as a jutsu master. But as pressure refined into action. They fought bravely.
But he grew during battle.
He learned their patterns as they ought, applied their own momentum against them, and by the time their commander---a jonin with eyes sharp as Raikage steel---landed a true hit, David had already absorbed the principles behind their coordination.
And shattered them.
The battle did not end in death.
It ended in surrender.
The Cloud shinobi left their own dead behind---not because they didn't honor them.
But because they feared what he might still be learning from their corpses.
---
In the hidden Leaf, intelligence reports reached the Hokage's table like warnings from gods.
Minato held them in one hadn, his jaw set. Across from him , Jiraiya stood silent.
"This isn't war," Minato said. "It's a refinement ritual."
"He's building himself through opposition," Jiraiya replied.
Pressure sharpens. Blood calibrates."
"Can he be stopped?"
Jiraiya didn't answer. Instead, looked out the window.
"He doesn't seem to want the world. But the world keeps stepping in his way."
And behind them, unseen, Orochimaru read the same report. His smile spread.
Because he didn't fear the war god.
He wanted to unravel him.
----
David stood beneath a withered tree, hands stained, eyes closed.
He didn't pray.
He listened.
To the world.
TO the whispers of chakra that tried to refom itself around his existence.
And to the growing silence in his heart---a silence shaped not by lack, but by focus sharpened through pain.
The sword pulsed at his back. Not hungry.
But Ready.
Because the slaughter wasn't over.
It was refining him--to something even the gods would one day recognize.