"This idea… actually worked."
Amemiya Kenichi scratched his head as he stared at the ring of undead around him.
He really hadn't expected this jutsu to succeed on the first try.
It looked… off, though.
Proper Edo Tensei reincarnations were like people pulled up from the grave with a layer of cracked earth over them—faces, bodies, everything restored, just with soil patterns and coffins as garnish.
These?
These were straight-up skeletons.
A few had scraps of rotten flesh still clinging to their bones—clearly the more recently buried—but aside from that, they all stood there in front of him like a line of bony mannequins.
And because he'd faked it off the framework of Edo Tensei, chunks of soil and shattered gravestones had congealed into armor-like clumps on their bodies, but even Kenichi wasn't sure what exactly he'd made.
"A new jutsu?" Sasori walked up and circled one of the undead, poking at it curiously. The bones were cold, dead, no chakra of their own. And yet… they moved. "You developed this yourself?"
"Kind of. I just had a flash of inspiration and tried it." Kenichi rubbed his chin.
He'd only meant it as a test. A simple "let's see what happens if I do this."
He hadn't expected a full ring of graveyard rejects kneeling in front of him.
The problem was… usefulness.
If this were a medieval world—no chakra, no ninjutsu, just swords and shields—this kind of graveyard uprising would be terrifying.
Dead bodies clawing out of their graves?
Bones in stone armor swarming your village?
That would be nightmare fuel for generations.
But this was the ninja world.
Here, people punched out fire dragons and spat lightning lasers on a Tuesday.
Kenichi cupped his hands and formed a quick string of seals.
"Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique."
The fireball roared out and slammed into a cluster of skeletons.
Boom.
Bones shattered. Skulls flew. Stone armor burst apart.
When the smoke cleared, that section of his undead army had been blown into bone dust scattered all over the ground.
None of them regenerated.
"…Yeah. Their combat power sucks," Sasori said bluntly.
Cool entrance, spooky visuals, but the moment an actual ninjutsu hit them, they exploded like cheap props. Put one genin here with a handful of explosive tags and they could probably bulldoze the whole cemetery.
Kenichi sighed.
"With that dirt and stone shell, I thought they'd at least be able to tank shuriken," he muttered. "Looks like they're only good for scaring civilians."
Even that might be optimistic.
Normal people could still buy explosive tags if they scraped together enough money.
And even without them, a bucket of oil plus fire would do the trick.
Unless…
Kenichi's mind turned a little darker.
What if I put a plague on them?
Let the bones walk around carrying some nasty pathogen, infect everything they touched, then turn the dead into more carriers… a real undead plague.
Now that would be a weapon.
And also the fastest way to get every major country to jointly issue a kill-on-sight order with his face printed on every wall.
After all, the only reason ninja enjoyed their privileged status was because normal people existed to support them. If the common folk started dying in droves and the population crashed, ninja would have to go farm their own rice.
No more waving mission pay slips around and acting superior.
"Do they have any independent thought?" Sasori asked. "If they could retain their memories from life, there would definitely be… buyers."
Kenichi snorted.
"Let's see."
He tried commanding the skeletons to write, gesture, answer simple questions.
Result?
They shuffled where he pointed, swung weapons when he told them to, knelt when ordered.
But no matter what command he gave, they could only perform extremely basic actions—walk, swing, kneel, stand. Anything requiring actual thought just… didn't happen.
If Kenichi didn't tell them to move, they would literally kneel there forever.
"Yeah, no. They're empty," he concluded. "No souls. Just animated shells."
That was the real issue.
Edo Tensei proper brought back the soul and anchored it to a new vessel. But in his version, even though he'd followed most of the structure, the souls hadn't come down at all.
"Why?" he muttered. "Same framework… different result. Is it because I didn't use living sacrifices?"
Normal Edo Tensei required bodies that had been prepared as sacrifices. The technique simply refused to work without them.
Even if he had used them… who would he be reviving? Without target DNA or remains, what would the jutsu even lock on to?
Revive random strangers on the spot using the sacrifices' own bodies?
Kenichi paused.
"…Wait. That might actually be possible."
If he could really use Edo Tensei to forcibly mark a person as "dead" in the Pure Land's system, then drag their soul out, kill them instantly, and re-summon them…
That would basically be an instant-death jutsu tied into the reincarnation mechanism.
Of course, the odds of it working were low.
If it were that simple, Tobirama would have already invented it. The man had created the original jutsu, and he wasn't exactly lacking in creativity.
Still…
"It's worth testing," Kenichi decided.
A short time later, in the shadows of a nearby forest, a terrified man was bound to a tree, trembling as Kenichi walked up to him with a mask on and Sage Mode still active.
"Don't be scared," Kenichi said kindly. "It doesn't hurt."
Sasori watched from the side, curious.
He'd never seen this particular jutsu before. The hand seals were strange—completely different from standard ninjutsu patterns.
Kenichi pressed his hand against the man's chest and poured sage chakra into his body, overlaying the full structure of Edo Tensei—
—without any offerings, without any external remains.
A moment later, the man convulsed violently.
Then went limp.
No glow. No dust. No reconstruction.
No Edo Tensei body.
Just a corpse.
"…Yeah, that's a bust." Kenichi let out a breath. "Even with sage chakra, it doesn't bypass the requirements."
Looked like the original steps weren't optional.
The jutsu simply wouldn't trigger if they weren't followed.
Behind him, Sasori spoke again, tone thoughtful:
"Kenichi, do you think it's possible to extract a ninja's soul… and use it as that 'artificial intelligence' you mentioned?"
Kenichi froze for a second, then slowly turned to look at him.
"…It's not impossible," he admitted. "That would be… very 'artificial', yeah."
Then he shrugged.
"But how do you make sure that kind of soul actually obeys you? Even modern AI can glitch. Imagine putting a human mind, full of grudges and personality, into a metal body and hoping it just follows orders."
That was the difference.
A program could be debugged.
A human soul?
Good luck patching that when it decides it doesn't like you anymore.
Note: If you're interested, you can read up to Chapter 105+ at patreon.com/nakai01.