"…Even though I failed at the most fundamental point, I am still a successful person in your eyes, Fourth Mizukage?"
Hearing Rei Kaguya's evaluation of him, Hashirama Senju, who had come back to himself, could not help showing a somewhat flattered expression.
"Even when I was lying in bed, looking back over my life like a passing lantern, I only considered myself an ordinary person with both merits and faults…"
"Because success occupied the main melody of your life, you instead left an especially deep impression of the matters that failed due to various external realities."
Rei Kaguya shrugged and said calmly,
"Even if you went against your initial heart and did not do everything you could have done as a living god as well as possible, you at least pacified the ceaseless chaos of the Warring States Period and established a hidden village system that was widely accepted by the entire shinobi world and is still used to this day… Even if Konoha declines one day in the future and is conquered by another hidden village, the people of that hidden village will still remember your identity as the founder of the hidden village era."
"The founder of an era that was neither complete nor sound?"
Hashirama Senju shook his head with a bitter smile.
"That truly is… an evaluation that would be awkward whether I accept it or not."
"It is already very good… At least you only realized the immaturity and imperfection of the hidden village system after your death. No matter how regretful or remorseful you are, you no longer need to rack your brains over how to solve those problems after they surfaced."
Rei Kaguya sighed and complained in a tone that was both melancholy and somewhat envious.
"Unlike me. While I am alive, not only do I have to find ways to clean up the mess you and Madara Uchiha left behind, but I also have to push forward my own reforms step by step… Damn it. Why could I not choose a path like Madara Uchiha's, one that does not require so much mental strain and only needs me to be strong enough in battle to reach the end?"
"You seem very impatient, Fourth Mizukage…"
Hashirama Senju narrowed his eyes and looked thoughtfully at Rei Kaguya after his complaint ended.
"Although that last sentence of yours leaned more toward a joke, when combined with what you said earlier, I can vaguely sense that you are urgently trying to settle every matter in the shinobi world during your own era, relying solely on your own strength… Why?"
Hashirama Senju's tone was not sharp. Instead, it carried concern, as if he were caring for an outstanding successor within his own clan.
Rei Kaguya was slightly stunned. Then his eyes fluctuated a little, and he answered with a trace of hesitation.
"Responsibility, and pride… Is that answer enough?"
"That is not your true thought."
Hashirama Senju shook his head and said seriously,
"Pride similar to Madara's, the belief that if not you, then who? I can naturally see that. A strong sense of responsibility? I could also feel that from our conversation just now… But the determination to solve every problem you can see by yourself during your lifetime is not something born from those two qualities."
"Strange. Very strange… Are you truly that worried that your thoughts may become distorted, alienated, or even twisted in the process of being passed down to successors? But you are so young. If you begin cultivating your successors early, then the probability of such a thing happening should be suppressed to the point that it almost will not occur, should it not?"
Rei Kaguya did not answer.
He merely looked deeply at Hashirama Senju, who was very sincerely offering him advice, then slowly shook his head.
Could his thoughts gradually become distorted, alienated, or even twisted during the process of continuous inheritance?
Inevitable.
As long as they were carefully selected, could the successors raised by his side from childhood fully accept his ideological system?
Dream on.
The core of his thoughts came from another world.
That world possessed a history, culture, and biological evolutionary process utterly different from the shinobi world. The development direction of civilization had also completely diverged because of whether an extraordinary power system like chakra existed.
Even after coming to the shinobi world, Rei Kaguya had modified and adjusted his thoughts to a certain extent in order to adapt to this world's historical process, but its true core could not possibly be reproduced in this world.
Even if he brought selected successors to his side from childhood and taught them personally through both words and deeds, he could not create the same social and cultural atmosphere as the one in which he had learned those ideas in his previous life.
Without that necessary atmosphere and history as a foundation, his successors could only ever learn from him the things that had been forcibly adapted into a shinobi-world version.
And learning only half of something was often far more dangerous than learning nothing at all.
Therefore, from the very beginning, when he decided to completely change the social structure of the shinobi world, Rei Kaguya had already mentally prepared himself to personally dominate all major reforms of the shinobi world and become an absolute dictator.
Moreover, apart from the internal problems that might appear, the shinobi world still faced the threat of one Otsutsuki alien after another descending upon it.
When facing enemies with basically no room for communication, Rei Kaguya was still more willing to trust himself rather than the protagonists whose fate lines had already been drastically altered by him, making it impossible to know whether they could still grow to their proper strength.
However, these words clearly could not be spoken openly.
So Rei Kaguya naturally thought of a reason that could be used to explain this topic and was sufficiently persuasive.
His gaze shifted slightly toward Jiraiya, who was standing nearby and thinking about something. Then he said in a deep voice,
"A person's growth is achieved by constantly surpassing their immature past self. But not every instance of growth brings positive improvement… Even I cannot be certain whether, ten or twenty years from now, I will become like you, First Hokage, degenerating from an idealist into a narrow-minded person who places Kirigakure above all else. In that case, how could I possibly think of completely entrusting things as prone to deterioration during advancement as ideology and reform to later successors?"
"But is humanity not precisely able to stumble its way to the present because people pass their wills and ideals to the next generation?"
Hashirama Senju held an opposing view toward this opinion.
"If you do not believe that successors can do better, that is equivalent to denying the meaning of human existence and continuity, alienating yourself into a god detached from humanity… Such arrogance and conceit will inevitably lead to corruption."
"But we are already the people closest to gods."
Rei Kaguya shook his head and said calmly,
"After reaching our position, no matter how tiny a mistake we make, it will be infinitely magnified by the power of time. This is especially true when it comes to selecting and cultivating successors. Someone suitable for one moment may not necessarily be suitable for an entire era. And once our choice is wrong and the wrong successor grasps the power of a god, no one will be able to overthrow them or the force they represent ever again."
"How do you speak as though you have personally seen a future like that?"
Hashirama Senju carefully examined Rei Kaguya's young face, which did not look older than twenty no matter how he looked at it, and asked in incomprehension,
"With your age and background, you should not have that kind of experience…"
"I have indeed seen such a future."
Rei Kaguya took a deep breath. He narrowed his eyes and looked at Jiraiya, who became uncomfortable under his stare, then slowly said,
"Together with that man over there, I saw the future of another world line—one without me."
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