After a long while, Naruto looked at the mangled corpse. His taut shoulders slowly relaxed, and he finally broke the silence.
"At the very last moment... it looked like he deliberately reined in the destruction energy left inside him."
Shikamaru let out a quiet breath as well, raising a hand to wipe the cold sweat from his brow. His tone was level, but carried the unmistakable relief of someone who had narrowly escaped death.
"If he'd fully detonated the Gelel Destruction Cannon and hit everyone indiscriminately, the consequences would've been unimaginable."
"With an energy rampage on that scale, none of us would've come out unscathed. Everyone here would've been seriously injured at the very least. We might even have been wiped out."
Everyone present knew that perfectly well.
Temujin might have been obsessive, crazed, and willing to vent his anger on innocent people, turning the entire ruin upside down. But that instinctive restraint in the instant before his death had kept the destructive energy from running completely wild. It really had saved everyone there.
Elder He Yan gazed at the corpse at the bottom of the crater. Tears slowly welled in his clouded old eyes and slid down his deeply lined cheeks.
His voice was hoarse and weary, steeped in an indescribable desolation.
"In the end... this boy wasn't bad at heart."
"He was simply too young, too stubborn to tell good intentions from bad. Haido controlled, deceived, and exploited him his entire life. He lived in a cage woven from lies."
"The fact that he instinctively held back at the end instead of taking everyone down with him proves that his true nature hadn't been extinguished."
"As the last heir of the Ancient Royal Family, he... proved himself worthy enough."
A faint sadness silently settled over the ruined battlefield.