"Could that be false?"
At this outsider Chiba's suspicion, the obvious incongruity on the Sage of Six Paths' face immediately turned cold, and he snapped,
"We've reached this point already. Why would I need to fool you? Do you really think I could casually make something like this up? Even if I were lying, I wouldn't use such a clumsy excuse, would I?"
The next moment, however, the incongruity vanished from his face. The cold expression that had looked ready to erupt into rage shifted into a smile as he calmly said,
Tch! These two are playing good cop, bad cop...
I got played, didn't I?
At this moment, rather than being shocked by the revelation of troubles from within and without, Chiba narrowed his eyes slightly, a subtle thought crossing his mind.
To be honest, the goals of the two of them—or rather, the three consciousnesses—were strangely aligned.
They all wanted to save this world and prevent its destruction. The Sage of Six Paths and the World Will went without saying. They were natives here, beings who had to safeguard this world. If the world perished, they would cease to exist completely. Saving the world was essentially saving themselves.
Although Chiba was an outsider—and a mature one at that—and possessed a fragment of the Nightmare Universe, which had originally existed on a higher level than this world, even though only a small portion of its power remained, as long as that remaining power could accomplish something, it could accomplish it completely. It was practically an absurd cheat. The destruction of this world posed virtually no direct threat to him.
But while he himself might be safe, Kushina, Hirohiko, Yukina, Kakashi, and even Snow Eagle and the three idiots who had already died would not be able to escape it.