"A shared ideal?"
Nagato looked at the arm Araki held out to him and raised his head. "You want world peace too?"
"That's right. And the kind of peace that can last much longer."
Araki smiled. "After so many years of practice, the one-country, one-village model has already proven itself wrong. It can't achieve true peace, so it's about time the current state of things was broken. Well? Want to help me?"
"You want Kirigakure to become the force that unifies the Shinobi World?"
Nagato asked with a frown.
"What else? Don't tell me you think Konoha, Sunagakure, Iwagakure, or the Cloud Village would be better?"
With every name Araki uttered, Nagato's expression darkened a little more. By the end, his face was as gloomy as still water.
There was no helping it. Without comparison, there was no pain.
As someone born in Amegakure, Nagato truly had no fondness for any of the Five Great Nations. But compared to Sunagakure and Iwagakure, which had nearly destroyed the Land of Rain during the Second War; Konoha, which had ambushed and killed Amegakure's leader, Hanzo of the Salamander; and the most hateful of all, the Cloud Village, which had caused Yahiko's death, Kirigakure of the Land of Water was, after all, the one he could most accept.
Araki clearly knew this very well too, which was why he had deliberately said those names to provoke him.
The facts proved that this move had indeed been correct.
Although Kirigakure was not exactly good either, against the backdrop of its peers, it became Nagato's best choice.
Nagato, who had originally still felt somewhat cold toward Kirigakure, immediately changed his mind. "It seems Kirigakure really is the only choice. In that case, hand the Three-Tails and Six-Tails over to me, then we'll go to the