What Makes a Villain?

What Makes a Villain?

Some valley in the Land of Frost.

Hyuga Yuto wore a conical hat as he walked through the wind and snow.

The slaughter three hours ago had barely disturbed his state of mind. It had been too complete a crushing victory, and the people he had killed were bandits who treated human lives like grass. He had felt no pressure whatsoever killing them.

Hyuga Yuto was neither some deranged freak who enjoyed killing people and gouging out eyeballs, nor a righteous hero punishing evil and upholding justice. He had only one purpose in killing those bandits—obtaining an enormous sum of money!

The Naruto world had a long history and well-developed, self-consistent systems. Although supernatural powers like chakra existed, and the strongest could move mountains and fill seas, everyone, including those powerhouses, still lived in the same world and the same society.

And since they lived in society, they naturally formed bonds with others—personal ties, favors, gratitude, morality, dreams...

In the shinobi world, money was still important. One could even say it was especially important!

Many years later, even an organization as powerful as Akatsuki could not completely withdraw from society and focus solely on causing trouble. They still needed a hardworking sucker like Kakuzu to make money. To say nothing else, if Akatsuki lacked funds, they could not even afford those flashy red-cloud robes.

Hyuga Yuto needed money too.

Bandits were exceptionally skilled at looting wealth. If all the spoils from this extermination, including jewelry and silver ornaments, were converted into cash, he had earned the equivalent of the reward for ten A-rank missions!

It was a huge sum, enough to serve as Hyuga Yuto's starting capital.

There were less than six months left until the Third Shinobi World War. He had to be prepared.

Through the wind and snow, Hyuga Yuto ran toward his destination. His feet left only shallow dents in the snow, which were covered by fresh snowfall in an instant, leaving no trace behind.

Along the way, although he had not deliberately looked around, the Byakugan he activated at intervals for safety still allowed him to see countless corpses buried beneath the snow.

Many of them were adults clutching children.

If heaven existed, then children who died in that position would surely find their parents quickly... if heaven existed.

Hyuga Yuto sighed inwardly, unable to describe what he felt. A few days ago, when Tsunade had seen him off, his mood had been much the same.

Hyuga Yuto knew very well that this probably proved his conscience had not completely died. He still understood compassion and gratitude. He was not a beast. In another setting, he might even be called a "good person."

Yet even though Hyuga Yuto still possessed human emotions and principles, he knew what role he played in this world.

—A villain!

An indisputable villain!

Perhaps he would be a minor villain who died halfway through, or perhaps the final big boss who survived until the end. Either way, Hyuga Yuto was a villain.

What made a villain?

Temperament, moral standards, strength, the things one had done... none of those were enough to determine whether someone was a villain.

There had always been only one criterion for becoming a villain—whether one opposed the protagonist!

Anyone standing against the protagonist was a villain.

Would Hyuga Yuto stand against Uzumaki Naruto?

Ever since he had been branded with the Bird in a Cage at the age of three, Hyuga Yuto could answer with certainty:

Yes. The future me would definitely be Naruto's enemy. There was absolutely no room for compromise.

The Hyuga were enemies, so the Hidden Leaf Village was an enemy, and therefore Naruto was an enemy as well. It was a very simple chain of logic.

In fact, during those first few years, Hyuga Yuto had been somewhat resistant to becoming a villain.

The pressure of standing against the protagonist was simply too great. Hyuga Yuto dared bet that if the villainous characters in those literary works had known from the beginning that their opponents were protagonists beloved by the world, most of them would have lost the will to fight.

Besides, Hyuga Yuto faced even greater psychological pressure. As a transmigrator, he still had some moral bottom line deep down. He might be able to steel himself to do truly monstrous things, but he would not feel very good doing them.

To be fair, the protagonist of this world, Uzumaki Naruto, was a good person from every possible angle.

No matter how much he talked people into changing their ways, he was still a good person.

Opposing a good person was, in truth, quite painful.

Yet today, after killing all the bandits, Hyuga Yuto walked through the snow and looked at the countless corpses buried underground. His feelings gradually calmed.

He suddenly felt that even if the great good man Uzumaki Naruto became Hokage and a savior, this world had not changed... at least, it had not obviously become better.

Hyuga Neji had died, and the Bird in a Cage was still branded on the heads of branch family members. The Five Great Shinobi Villages still existed, and the survival of those small countries had never been guaranteed. The nine tailed beasts remained scattered across the land; it was hard to say they had gained freedom.

During the years when Six Paths-level Uzumaki Naruto was invincible in the world, he and the equally invincible Uchiha Sasuke had preserved the old world's order.

The five great nations coexisted peacefully, shinobi put aside their hatred, and civilians lived and worked in peace... beneath Uzumaki Naruto's golden chakra, there were naturally no conflicts, and none dared exist.

Had the world changed? It had.

Had the world not changed? It had never changed at all.

If one stretched the timeline across all of history, then in a sense, Uzumaki Naruto had accomplished almost nothing.

As Hyuga Yuto hurried onward, he suddenly recalled something said by a writer he had greatly admired in his previous life:

"Nearly all the evil villains in fantasy novels are charismatic, radical revolutionaries. They dare to imagine an entirely different world order and cannot wait to ignite the seeds of change before conditions are ripe."

"Conversely, all great, righteous, and enlightened heroes are defenders of mainstream ideology. Their values are conservative, they lack creativity, and apart from fighting monsters and going home to hug pretty girls, they have almost no other ambitions."

As he ran, Hyuga Yuto let go of the burden in his heart.

A villain, then. Fighting against the Child of Prophecy sounds pretty cool too...

The boy suddenly laughed softly.

Hyuga Yuto's thoughts churned, and before he knew it, he had reached his destination—an abandoned temple.

He was already very familiar with such places. He used the Transformation Technique to alter his appearance into that of an adult, put on his conical hat again, changed into a loose robe, and slowly walked inside.

With practiced ease, he stopped beside the third stone pillar to the right of the entrance, formed several hand seals, and pressed his chakra-coated hand against it.

A secret passage appeared. Hyuga Yuto descended the bluestone-carved steps and, under the light of oil lamps set into the rock walls, entered a spacious underground stone chamber.

"Welcome to the Land of Frost branch of the Bounty Station, sir," a woman wearing a rat-faced mask said softly from within the chamber.

"Please state your name."

The corners of Hyuga Yuto's mouth curled faintly beneath his conical hat. He spoke the memorable false name he had chosen to make it easier to operate in the underworld:

"Kudo Shinichi."

(End of chapter.)