Earth Grudge Fear could replace shattered hearts.
It could not replace a missing head.
This was the shinobi world, not some high-fantasy realm where you could regrow from a drop of blood.
Kakuzu's eyes bulged.
A thin, red line blossomed across his throat.
His head toppled with a dull thump, rolling across the ground. For a heartbeat or two, his body refused to accept reality. Then blood erupted from the severed stump in a high, rhythmic arc.
Maybe because of Earth Grudge Fear's modifications, he didn't die immediately.
One of the hearts kept beating just long enough for him to cling to the edge of consciousness—barely alive.
"W–why…?"
His head rolled to a stop by Sogetsu's boots.
Kakuzu's eyes were still wide open, full of disbelief.
He truly didn't understand.
He'd surrendered. He'd offered to serve. With his long life, he'd gathered a trove of secrets—banned jutsu, black-market networks, intel on half the shinobi world.
By any reasonable measure, his value alive far outweighed his corpse.
Yet Sogetsu had still taken his head without a flicker of hesitation.
"I… I still have value," Kakuzu croaked.
If someone reattached his head in time, there was still a chance.
"I can be your subordinate. I can gather intel for you. With Earth Grudge Fear, I'm practically immortal—I can infiltrate anywhere, any front line—"
He forced the words out as fast as he could. Silence was death.
"Those threads can do more than you've seen!"
His voice shook.
"Earth Grudge Fear can steal hearts—steal their elemental chakra. As long as my head isn't destroyed, even if this body is, I can come back. I can extend your life. I'll teach you the jutsu, I swear—just don't kill me, Lord Sogetsu!"
"Finished?"
Sogetsu didn't look especially moved.
He was busy fishing something out from inside his cloak—a thin, skin-colored glove made from something that was definitely not ordinary leather.
Kakuzu's pupils shrank.
The glove was semi-transparent, almost like a layer of peeled human skin, faintly wet and faintly moving. It pulsed with a low, ugly hunger.
A chill drilled down his spine.
"W–what are you going to do?"
"Relax," Sogetsu said kindly. "Deep breaths. No need to be nervous."
He slid the glove onto his hand.
The skin-like material clung to his fingers, wriggling as if excited.
"It's everyone's first time," Sogetsu added. "Your first time dying, my first time using this. Let's cooperate and make it quick, yeah?"
Is that supposed to be comforting?!
If Kakuzu still had lungs, he would've choked.
First time dying? As if anyone got to practice this more than once.
"Wait, wait, we can talk about—"
"Don't move."
Sogetsu reached down, one gloved hand closing around Kakuzu's head.
The touch was ice.
Cold seeped straight into bone. A head that technically shouldn't be feeling anything anymore broke out in phantom goosebumps.
"Devour," Sogetsu commanded inwardly.
The Crawling Hunger answered.
Fierce, twisted suction surged from the glove.
Kakuzu's vision blurred.
He felt it—his soul, slippery and terrified, being dragged out of his skull inch by inch. A half-transparent echo of himself was being pulled free, stretched between head and glove.
"NO! STOP!"
Realizing what was happening, Kakuzu completely lost it.
"You— you're ripping out my soul—! Please, I'm begging you, don't—!"
His screams rang through the trees.
Sogetsu didn't so much as blink.
The translucent phantom of Kakuzu's spirit finally tore loose, fully yanked from the severed head. The glove rippled like a starving beast; threads of living skin tightened around the soul and swallowed it.
Bit by bit, the Crawling Hunger chewed him up.
This was not just pain.
This was sentencing him to something worse afterward.
Souls trapped in the Crawling Hunger would not rest.
They would be driven. Pastured. Harvested.
Again and again.
Sogetsu's conscience didn't twitch.
Kakuzu was hardly some innocent farmer. On any moral ledger that mattered, he'd been "valid sacrifice material" for a very long time.
As the first soul vanished inside, Sogetsu clearly felt the feedback.
One more slot had been filled.
The Crawling Hunger could hold only so many spiritual bodies at once. Kakuzu's addition pushed the counter down—a quiet, intuitive signal that there were now only four places left.
Along with the change in capacity, knowledge flowed into Sogetsu's mind.
Instinctive understanding of how to "pasture" the trapped souls slid into place, like a new limb he'd always had but never used.
"…Right. Now for the annoying part."
He frowned slightly.
"How am I supposed to 'level this thing up' without a Shepherd?"
The Crawling Hunger's true evolution required something he didn't have yet: a Sequence 5 Shepherd.
He thought for a while, then shelved the question.
No point obsessing over what he couldn't change.
"Let's see what the first harvest looks like."
He focused.
"Graze."
The glove stirred.
A cold, oily sensation flowed through his mind—and a breath later, four familiar black shapes oozed into being around him.
Four Earth Grudge Fear beasts.
"Tch. Only one variety, huh?"
Sogetsu clicked his tongue.
"As expected of a first feeding. Stingy."
He paused, then rubbed his forehead.
"…Actually, did Kakuzu ever have anything besides Earth Grudge Fear?"
He thought back.
Hearts. Threads. Stealing chakra natures. Longevity.
Right.
That was basically his whole build.
While he was still judging the results, a sharp, drilling pain spiked behind Sogetsu's eyes. His previously steady spirituality rippled violently, as if something inside was trying to swell past its container.
In the depths of his mind, broken whispers rose—hysterical hymns to the "True Creator," growing clearer, louder.
His expression cooled.
He yanked the Crawling Hunger off and stuffed it straight back into the system's inventory.
"Yeah, no," he muttered, massaging his temples. "Side effects are not mild."
He layered "Calm" on himself several times, smoothing out the agitation until his spirit fell quiet again.
"Without a gray fog to eat this sort of backlash," he said dryly, "this thing goes on the 'use sparingly' shelf."
For the first time, he felt a flicker of sincere envy for Klein.
A metaphysical firewall that casually auto-absorbed everything nasty?
That was cheating.
Kakuzu's little ambush had completely killed any mood Sogetsu had for resting.
He cleaned up the battlefield efficiently—burning what needed to be burned, burying what needed to be buried. Once the scene was neat enough to satisfy even the pickiest ANBU captain, he turned back toward the road.
"Time to go back to Konoha."
Who knew what sort of "fun" had piled up in the village while he'd been gone?
Speaking of Konoha—
There was one person who'd been living in her own private hell recently.
Shimura Danzo.
Over the past few days, she'd been tortured by Sarutobi Hiruzen.
The old monkey had suddenly rediscovered their "deep bond" from their youth and started summoning her to the Hokage's office every other hour to "discuss important state matters."
Except whenever she arrived, the "matters of state" were skimmed in a few sentences.
Then the real torture began.
"So many years as comrades, Danzo. We haven't talked properly in so long."
"Let's go to the hot springs together."
"Or have a drink. Just the two of us. For old time's sake."
Day after day.
At first, she'd thought he was simply lonely.
But as time went by, the look in Hiruzen's eyes whenever he glanced at her started to make even the founder of Root—who had stared down death and conspiracies for decades—feel a very unfamiliar emotion:
Fear.
Is my charm… really that overpowering? she thought weakly.
She genuinely wasn't sure.
◇ BONUS & SUPPORT ◇
◇ 1 bonus chapter for every 10 reviews — drop a comment!
◇ 1 bonus chapter for every 100 Power Stones.
◇ Read 60 chapters ahead on P@treon → patreon.com/StrawHatStudios