Edo Tensei Forest System Dus

White Zetsu's harassment suddenly escalated late on the seventh night.

It was not an increase in numbers, but a qualitative change in method. The scattered hit-and-run ambushes from before vanished, replaced by organized frontal assaults. From the dense woods east of the camp, at least two thousand White Zetsu erupted from the ground at once. They formed loose ranks, wielding kunai and kama, and bore down on the Allied Forces' defensive line in a near-suicidal charge. This was not an ambush. This was a declaration of war.

The outpost sounded the alarm immediately. The Raikage's order for reinforcements was issued within thirty seconds, and five companies of shinobi rushed toward the breach from different parts of the camp. The battle erupted during the darkest hour before dawn. White Zetsu's pale figures swayed like phantoms amid the flare of ninjutsu. Individually, they were weaker than shinobi, but their numerical advantage and tireless nature kept the front line seesawing through the first two hours.

A Cloud Village jonin split three White Zetsu apart with Lightning Style and was just about to catch his breath when the ground suddenly cracked open. A pale hand thrust out from the earth and seized his ankle. He looked down to see a featureless face poking out of the dirt. That face was mimicking his expression—terror. He slashed off the hand, but more White Zetsu surged from underground and covered him like a swarm of ants. Three seconds later, he was gone, leaving behind only a bloodstained forehead protector.

The instant a Konoha chunin was surrounded by White Zetsu, he detonated an Explosive Tag. The blast tore both him and the surrounding White Zetsu to pieces. Yet after the fragments of White Zetsu hit the ground, they began to writhe and slowly reassemble, while that chunin's corpse