"The battle is over..."
"Yeah. Thanks to our preparations, Nagato might well have failed otherwise."
"Nagato was still too careless. The Rinnegan wasn't invincible, either. Otherwise, why would we need to spend all this time building up our strength? These eyes are merely the key to opening the door. They don't represent the true treasure behind it."
"No. It would be more accurate to say that the Rinnegan wasn't invincible in Nagato's hands. But if it were that person..."
"That person... True. After all, these were his original eyes."
"We borrowed the Gedo Statue's power this time. Setting aside the statue's losses, could this arouse Nagato's suspicions?"
"Nagato? Heh, he didn't notice my existence at all. The stronger a person was, the more they tended to believe in themselves. They firmly believed that, at a crucial moment, they could unleash power beyond anything they had shown before. If they couldn't surpass themselves, they couldn't be called strong, could they? Nagato was like that, and so was Madara Uchiha."
There was nothing wrong with that statement. Confidence and arrogance were often separated by only a fine line. Take Madara Uchiha, for example. Until Black Zetsu stabbed him in the back, he still firmly believed that Black Zetsu was his creation, a part of his spiritual self, and that it would obey his every command.
Madara Uchiha thought Black Zetsu was nothing more than a tool. In reality, the proud Madara Uchiha, who believed he controlled everything, was merely a tool in the hands of the insignificant Black Zetsu.
Madara Uchiha had only seen how orderly the inheritance of his clan's ancestral stone tablet was. He had never imagined that it had been altered by White Zetsu from the very beginning.
"The Rinnegan?"
Konan picked up a scalpel and began working on