"Am I really wrong?"
"Did Konoha Village's prosperity truly not have my contributions?"
Hiruzen Sarutobi's gaze was dazed, experiencing the first doubt he had ever held regarding his entire life.
"No!"
"This is Setsuna's trick, it's just nonsense."
"Teacher Tobirama died in battle, and if I had immediately become Hokage, it inevitably would have caused the major ninja clans within the village to plunge into internal strife for the position of Hokage, pointlessly consuming the village's strength. It was I who stabilized the situation." Hiruzen Sarutobi fell into a rambling, soliloquizing murmur, forgetting everything in the outside world as the Senju brothers, Wang Ming, Hiashi Hyuga, Madara Uchiha... everything was cast entirely from his mind.
By this point, he had plunged into a chaos where his convictions were on the verge of collapsing, and even the very meaning of his existence was being denied.
Hiashi Hyuga looked at Hiruzen Sarutobi with a gaze of utter disdain. As the head of the Hyuga Clan, the Hyuga Clan had indeed possessed the qualifications to participate in that year's power struggle; after Hiruzen Sarutobi succeeded the position of Hokage, the major ninja clans truly had not engaged in internal infighting for the Hokage seat that would have worn down their clan's strength.
Yet, that preserved portion of personnel hadn't held much significance either, because all of those people later died at the hands of Danzo's covert maneuvers.
Moreover, even if the Konoha ninja clans had engaged in internal strife, Konoha would never have been breached by the four great ninja villages. The village possessed the First Jinchuriki of the Nine-Tails, Mito Uzumaki, standing guard. Back then, if Madara Uchiha hadn't possessed the Rinnegan, he wouldn't have been able to do anything to Mito Uzumaki.
At the same time, the four great ninja villages