"Huff... huff... huff... huff... huff..."
Large beads of sweat slid from Nagato's forehead down his gaunt cheeks. His lungs felt as though they were on fire, and like a suffocating fish, he gasped desperately for air.
"What... is that monster?"
Even someone as knowledgeable as Danzō, even someone as deeply calculating as he had become, even someone who no longer feared death, was shaken by the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path before him—a towering, hundreds-of-meters-tall monstrosity with a jagged body and a savage expression. Even his attack came to a halt as he stood frozen in place, staring blankly up at the statue overhead.
"Old friend, it's been a long time."
Nagato paid no attention to Danzō's reaction. He laboriously turned around to look at the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path behind him. The statue, once grotesque and terrifying, radiating an aura of destruction, now felt strangely familiar. Even the pain caused by his depleted chakra could be ignored.
"So... I was obsessed with the feeling of having power too."
Before this, Nagato had only regarded the Rinnegan and the power it granted as tools—tools for fulfilling his and Yahiko's ideals. Only at this moment did he realize that, without noticing, what he had come to pursue was the transcendent power bestowed by the Rinnegan, and the feeling of controlling others' fates through that power.
"Then come on. Let us embrace each other!"
Having come this far, Nagato had completely opened his heart. Though he knew what he was about to face—the Black Receivers extending from the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path mercilessly piercing his body once more—he no longer feared any of it.
"Pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft!"
A series of piercing sounds rang out as Black Receivers extended from the Demonic Statue of the Outer