Was he really going to play dead?
At the Sage of Six Paths' words—and the way he closed his eyes afterward, as if saying, It's all up to you—Chiba's lips twitched slightly.
Still, if what he said was true, then playing dead was all they could do now.
The current situation was death either way.
But Chiba could only feel helpless toward the Sage of Six Paths—or rather, toward the World Will and the Sage of Six Paths' decision to simply lie down and give up.
If the two of them were telling the truth, then the only way for this world to escape destruction was to complete the worldline. Although a perfect world was not necessarily immune to devouring a world that had completed its destiny line, completing the destiny line would bring the world to a certain state of perfection. And that perfection meant this world might be able to devour the surrounding worlds in turn. At that point, they would at least stand a fighting chance. With Chiba, an outsider, added to the equation, it was also their most hopeful path forward.
In other words, the World Will and the Sage of Six Paths were faced with a deeply contradictory reality.
To deal with the world outside that was devouring its way toward them, they had to complete the destiny line.
Yet they could not be certain that perfection would allow them to deal with that world, or whether that world would be unable to devour a perfect world. Therefore, they had no choice but to rely on this outsider, who possessed the strongest power in the entire Naruto world—no, "strongest" was not an appropriate description. It should be called power of the highest order. And if perfection could not handle that world, this outsider who possessed