Pieces and Players

Even without Minamoto Takuya spelling it out, the weakness that seeped into his bones had long clung to him like a shadow.

Even Konan vaguely agreed with Minamoto Takuya's words. She did not need to experience Nagato's condition herself; merely seeing how emaciated he had become was enough to understand the toll those Rinnegan took on him.

After all, she had remained by Nagato's side all this time. Aside from Nagato himself, no one knew the changes in his body better than she did!

The decay of his body clung to him like a parasite gnawing at his bones. Nagato understood this cruel reality better than anyone.

Every time he drew upon the power of the Rinnegan, it was like burning away the candle of his life.

These eyes, treasures hailed as the "Sage's Eye," had long become his most lethal shackles, dragging him bit by bit, irreversibly, toward the abyss of death.

He knew perfectly well that if this endless drain continued, he would not need any powerful enemy to strike. Sooner or later, his oil would run dry, and he would become the final sacrifice of these eyes.

Even if he ruthlessly dug them out now, it would merely be drinking poison to quench thirst.

The Rinnegan's erosion of his life force had long penetrated to the marrow.

Removing them might barely buy him another decade or so of miserable survival, but it could never restore the immense vitality that had slipped away like sand through his fingers.

Yet the word "abandon" weighed more than a thousand pounds.

The Rinnegan had long surpassed the boundaries of a mere organ. They were the only bridge connecting him to the dream he and Yahiko had woven together!

It was the existence of these eyes that had allowed that distant vision