Second Pillar walked through the main entrance of the Imperial Palace's front hall, but the scene before him abruptly shifted. Instead of a pavilion's interior, he found himself in a pitch-black void.
He could see nothing around him. Even activating his Rinnegan was useless.
Uzumaki Naruto and the others had not followed him in either, so he could only proceed slowly and cautiously.
"Why? Why are you trying to stop me?!"
Suddenly, a voice filled with resentment came from every direction.
Second Pillar stopped, his mind taut with vigilance. He was facing something he had never encountered before; he could not afford to be careless.
"What exactly am I stopping you from doing?" Second Pillar asked calmly.
"I am going to become the one true god! An omniscient, omnipotent, supreme true god!"
The voice still echoed from all around him, brimming with unwillingness and fury.
Second Pillar narrowed his eyes and sneered. "The more someone talks like that, the weaker they are inside. Orochimaru, your incomplete self is truly boring."
He had realized that the person speaking with him was Byakuryu, who had previously resided within Nagato's body. The other man's personality was extremely extreme, filled with endless greed.
"What do you know?!" Byakuryu roared.
"No one in this world understands me. They all see me as evil. Even Hyuga Shin regarded me as a madman and a tool!"
Second Pillar replied unhurriedly, "Orochimaru, did you do all this merely to prove something to others?"
Byakuryu laughed in rage. "They are unworthy! None of them are worthy!"
An extreme and foolish lunatic. This man was no longer the Orochimaru Second Pillar knew.
Looking at the darkness around him, Second Pillar slowly closed his eyes. He deactivated his Rinnegan, and when he opened them again, the empty void had become a