What a mess...
Black Zetsu couldn't help the melancholy creeping into its heart.
It was one thing for Emiya Shihara to have trusted Asura in the ancient era—but why, in this era, would he also acknowledge Hashirama Senju?
Yes, Hashirama did bring an end to the Warring States Period.
But after Hashirama's death, new wars were inevitable!
"Lord Shihara…"
"You were the most brilliant mind in the history of the shinobi world…"
"Even after I spent a thousand long years chasing the trail you left behind, I still couldn't find anyone who resembled you…"
Black Zetsu's voice rasped with a hoarse, sorrowful edge. It gave a ghostly sigh.
"You should know better than anyone… the peace Hashirama brought is only temporary…"
"As long as shinobi exist in this world…"
"As long as greed still lurks in their hearts…"
"As long as there is no power—no absolute authority—that can suppress and restrain that greed…"
"The struggle between shinobi will never end!"
"No matter how many times Asura's chakra reincarnates, it changes nothing!"
"When Hashirama dies, the shinobi of this world will once again ignite new wars for the sake of profit, falling into the same endless cycle, condemning each generation to pain and tragedy from the moment they're born…"
"Lord Shihara…"
"Have you… forgotten your ideals?"
"To endure the pain that others cannot, to save those trapped in agony…"
"Are you really going to stand by and watch humanity spiral endlessly through lives of suffering?"
Black Zetsu felt like a devout disciple, heart bleeding as it confronted the one it had once revered. It recalled all the effort it had poured into spreading the tales of Emiya Shihara throughout the shinobi world, and now, almost in desperation, demanded:
"Have you forgotten the will you once hoped all future medical ninja would uphold?"
But then—
Shihara furrowed his brow. Faced with Black Zetsu's persistent questioning, he found himself struggling for a rebuttal. Subconsciously, he searched for someone to throw under the bus.
"…Asura once told me…"
"Asura is a pompous fool!"
Black Zetsu instantly cut him off, pushing harder:
"If only, back then, you hadn't believed him—if you had just killed Asura and destroyed the Ninja Sect outright, reclaiming all of the chakra the Sage of Six Paths scattered into the world… then we wouldn't have had a thousand years of war!"
"Everyone who brought war to this world…"
"…they're all descendants of the Sage of Six Paths and those vile founders of the Ninja Sect!"
"..."
Shihara fell silent.
Black Zetsu… had grown a lot in the past thousand years.
With the way it now spoke, so full of impassioned righteousness, Shihara almost found himself wavering—almost convinced that Black Zetsu was the one in the right here…
What a joke.
How did things even end up like this?
"…Hehehe…"
"Why aren't you answering me?"
Black Zetsu grinned ominously at Shihara's silence, thinking it had struck a nerve—thinking it was breaking down the hesitation in him, reawakening his former self:
"Is it because you've realized the path you chose was a mistake?"
"..."
Shihara still said nothing.
"..."
A flicker of unease crept into Black Zetsu's heart.
Had it gone too far?
Had it pushed him too hard?
"…Black Zetsu."
Shihara slowly lowered his head, as though all the conviction had drained from his life. His voice was laced with a heavy, hopeless sorrow.
"We…"
"We were never going to succeed."
"..."
Black Zetsu immediately tried to object.
"Let me finish."
Shihara cut it off, his voice calm and deliberate as he began laying out the truth of his past:
"When I first inherited the power of the Sage of Six Paths, I wanted to reclaim all the chakra he had scattered…"
"But—"
"I studied his corpse…"
"But I couldn't find a way to truly retrieve the chakra."
Shihara's voice remained unnervingly calm—too calm, as though it carried the resignation of a man who had seen every dream crumble:
"Whether it was the Wood Release gifted to me by the remains of the God Tree, or the powers of the Rinnegan passed down from the Sage—none of it could retrieve the chakra already embedded in the followers of the Ninja Sect."
"So when I destroyed the sect, I couldn't afford to distinguish good from evil—I had no choice but to kill them all."
"..."
Black Zetsu's expression twisted strangely.
Because—
This was its fault.
This was entirely because it had failed to give Shihara the right guidance back then!
It had never expected Shihara to even get this far… reclaiming the Sage's chakra was supposed to be part of reviving Kaguya Ōtsutsuki. And yet Shihara, alone, had made it nearly to that point.
"I…"
Black Zetsu hurried to explain.
"Just listen."
Shihara cut him off again, his voice still calm—yet heavy with quiet despair:
"Do you remember our goddess of the rabbit—Ōtsutsuki Kaguya?"
"..."
Black Zetsu nodded instinctively.
Of course it did. That was its mother—its very reason for existing was to bring her back, after she was sealed by her treacherous sons.
"I believed the rabbit goddess could reclaim all the chakra."
Shihara's voice held no inflection, as he wove a tale that sounded so real it was indistinguishable from truth:
"I once heard a forbidden whisper from one of the Ninja Sect's disciples, though I couldn't tell if it was myth or fact… that Kaguya was the mother of the Sage of Six Paths—making her Asura and Indra's grandmother."
"To be honest…"
"I was uneasy."
"But I had no other choice but to place my hopes in her."
"I could only hope that the goddess we worshipped would distribute and reclaim chakra with justice and wisdom… turn it into a force that saved people, not something the sect's followers used to torment the weak."
"So when I received the Sage's power and went to the Ninja Sect…"
"My other purpose was to pry the secret of Kaguya's revival from Asura's mouth."
"But during our battle…"
"He swayed me."
"I gave up asking about reviving the rabbit goddess…"
"The rest, as you know… is history."
"..."
Black Zetsu stood frozen.
It hadn't expected Shihara to have gone that far.
Truth be told…
Shihara had done more than enough.
Black Zetsu felt something stir deep in its heart.
Never—not once—had it imagined that Shihara had been working so hard for Kaguya's revival, that he had truly wanted to let her rule over the world, and that he had even intended to get the method of her return from Asura.
Shihara…
He was truly remarkable.
If he had just known the right steps… they might've revived Kaguya in the ancient era.
"Actually—"
Black Zetsu's voice began to tremble with a faint trace of excitement.
"Black Zetsu. Let me finish."
Shihara interrupted a third time, shifting his tale into the present—quietly fabricating his thoughts after his resurrection.
"Now…"
"I've been reborn in this era."
"I've seen with my own eyes the pain of a world that suffered through a thousand years of war."
"I realize now how rash I was to believe Asura's promises, to let the Ninja Sect go free… to abandon what might've been our only hope to change the world."
"But…"
"What's the point of thinking about that now?"
His voice faded into something like ash, completely devoid of hope.
"The Sage is long dead. Asura and Indra have been dead for over a thousand years. They were the only ones who knew how to revive Kaguya…"
"There aren't even any historical records left from that time…"
"The shinobi of this era revere the Sage of Six Paths as a god of creation, and treat the stories of the ancient world as nothing more than myth…"
"Black Zetsu."
"Our path has ended."
"There's no way to reclaim the chakra from this generation of shinobi. No way to find the key to reviving the rabbit goddess. I can't slaughter every last shinobi alive today…"
"So aside from continuing to believe in Asura's promise…"
"I honestly don't know what else I can do."
When he finished, Shihara gave a bitter, dazed laugh.
"Black Zetsu, I was just a boy once blessed by the divine tree… not some omnipotent being who could rewrite the fate of the world…"
"…I'm sorry."
"I couldn't live up to your expectations."