Naruto: Zombie Release

The rotting flesh of the zombie suddenly burst apart, and the splattering pus, mixed with a dark green substance, coiled around the enemy's arm like a living creature. 

The Sunagakure ninja watched in horror as his skin began to rot away at a visibly alarming speed.

"Poison doesn't work on the dead."

Chakra still lingered on Arata's fingertips, the same chakra he had used to detonate the zombie.

The undead that had taken a kunai to the skull fulfilled its final value on the battlefield: turning into a human bomb and detonating at point-blank range, its remains slamming into its attacker with brutal force.

The moment the Suna ninja heard the sizzling sound, he tried to retreat. But one of his hands had been tightly seized. 

He struggled with all his might, tearing the skin from his own arm in an attempt to break free, but it was too late. 

All he could do was watch in horror as the explosion consumed him, his body charred to the point of looking like a lump of coal or a branch scorched by fire.

Isuke followed up with a kunai, delivering the final blow and ending the man's life.

He stood beside Arata, alert for enemies from other directions. 

Glancing sidelong at the scorched corpse of the Suna shinobi, he then turned to the sealing scroll at Arata's waist. "You infused those corpses with poison?"

"I just stored the venom I extracted from the Fly Bamboo Dragonfly inside their gallbladders," Arata said quietly. 

"I doubt regular Sunagakure ninjas all carry the antidote for that kind of poison. If they can use toxins on us, I think it's only fair to collect some and use it back on them."

He summoned another zombie to stand in front of him.

In chaotic battlefield conditions like these, beyond following the commands of strategists and squad leaders, you also had to deal with random, unpredictable threats, like a corpse on the ground that might just be playing dead, waiting for someone to get close.

If you had no real strength and still tried to hide your cards, you were asking for death. 

That's why Arata kept summoning zombies to act as his shield. 

Two figures drew more attention than one, naturally dispersing incoming attacks and increasing his chances of survival.

Among all ninja ranks, Genin were the least entitled to survival. But if one possessed a unique skill, they could often last just a little longer, unless their luck ran out.

Boom! Boom!

As Sunagakure's poisonous smoke bombs exploded in the sky for the third round, Arata's personal tactics were rapidly overturning many Konoha ninjas' assumptions.

New zombies appeared, forming humanoid mobile shields. Pus and toxic mist flowed between the corpses like a walking biochemical fortress, whoever got close was in for trouble. 

Best-case scenario? You got hit by a suicide detonation and had to flee in fear.

And once fear set in, hesitation followed, creating openings. The moment an enemy flinched or dodged, nearby Konoha shinobi pounced on that weakness and often reaped unexpected kills.

In a battle that had only lasted under an hour, Arata's tactics had created this same situation three separate times. 

Eventually, Konoha's shinobi couldn't help but notice a pattern, amid a battlefield full of chaos and danger, somehow, staying near this particular medic squad always brought surprising advantages?

A thunderous crash. One zombie kicked an enemy shinobi with such force that the zombie's own leg exploded from the strain.

Just that one kick crushed the enemy's chest inward. The blood he vomited was laced with chunks of his organs, and the terrified expression on his face remained frozen in time.

"This one's basically done for too. Shame I didn't tag it with an explosive seal," Arata said, his hand still locked in a seal, ready to summon another corpse at a moment's notice. 

Occasionally, he shifted hand signs, either to prep for detonation or keep his next zombie on standby. This time, he sounded genuinely regretful.

And yet, this wasn't even Arata unleashing the true power of his zombie art, the terrifying part of it wasn't the brute force, but the contagion.

If Arata ever decided to go all out, completely ignoring the consequences, every single detonation would scatter infected flesh and fluids that could start a localized zombie outbreak. 

Infected enemy shinobi would return to their camps, turn into zombies, and infect more comrades…

It would snowball into a runaway disaster, growing exponentially, until the enemy high command figured it out and imposed strict quarantines.

But Arata wasn't going to do that. He was just a Genin, and his body placed a firm cap on his potential. 

Until he found a body he was satisfied with, he wouldn't go all in. The true horror of his Zombie Release wasn't something meant to be flaunted under sunlight.

The Second Great War belonged to legends like the White Fang of the Leaf, the Sannin, and Minato Namikaze. It was not his stage.

His time to shine would come later, if all went well, in the Third Great War a few years from now.

He had to survive this war. Live long enough to showcase his talents in the right place, at the right time.

"You call that thing the Dead Soul Technique? That's… not how I thought it worked."

The more the other medical-nin learned, the more stunned they became.

One medical ninja, stationed behind the front lines, had just finished using the Mystical Palm Technique to treat a retreating wounded ally. 

As the man charged back into battle, the medic turned his head, just in time to see Arata form a hand seal, point forward, and send a zombie Chunin sprinting at the enemy with such ferocity that its legs began to fracture. 

Once it got close, it traded blow for blow with a kunai until it had nothing left to give, and then self-detonated.

The tactic was eerily reminiscent of Shadow Clone suicide strategies. 

But no sane ninja would ever waste chakra creating clones just to send them off to die in agony, the pain of such a death fed directly back to the user's brain. 

Besides, few had enough chakra to pull it off.

When word spread that this was all thanks to the Dead Soul Technique, every medical-nin who knew the technique went numb. 

And those who had only heard about it from medics… were equally dumbfounded.

Taking advantage of a brief gap in the fight, Isuke slit a Suna ninja's throat with his Chakra Scalpel and fell back behind his squadmates to catch his breath. 

"This kid's turning corpses into something I've never even heard of. Bet the guy who invented the Dead Soul Technique never imagined it'd be used like this."

Among all who were shaken, the medical-nin felt it most. They realized this jutsu wasn't as useless as they had assumed. 

If it allowed medics to become less predictable, their survival chances increased significantly, after all, ninja combat was an information war. 

Any practical, unexpected technique was valuable.

Come to think of it, wasn't this the same logic behind Naruto's infamous Harem Jutsu against Kaguya Otsutsuki?

Still, most people only dared to think about it. 

The Dead Soul Technique was far from a "proper" jutsu, just the fact that it involved playing with corpses was enough to repel most ninjas. It would never be widely adopted across Konoha.