Chapter 570: Double-Edged Sword
But Naruto had used it anyway.
He had not chosen to seal it away out of fear, to renounce it, to lock it in the deepest corner of himself and never touch it again.
He knew exactly how sharp this blade was. Knew what it could cut, what it could erase from the world without leaving a single trace behind. And still he kept it in his hand.
Not because he wanted that kind of power. Because there were things that only this blade could do.
The first was this: he had quietly changed the Earth's resources to regenerate infinitely.
True infinity. Fundamental alteration of the rules themselves.
Ore deposits would not run dry. Oil would not be exhausted. Forests cut to bare earth would regrow at many times their natural rate. Fish pulled from the sea in their entirety would return the following season in numbers just as thick and uncountable as before.
He had done all of this without a word. No announcement, no taking credit for it, no trace of himself left anywhere in it.
He had simply made every resource on this planet something that could never be used up.
Remove the possibility of resource depletion, and humanity loses one of its oldest, most fundamental, most irresolvable reasons to go to war. One fewer reason meant one fewer war. One fewer war meant tens of thousands -- hundreds of thousands -- of lives that would not end. Naruto had done the arithmetic clearly.
The second thing he had done was establish order in the Pure Land.
The place the dead go. A realm that had always existed somewhere in the shinobi world's cosmology, and that no one had ever thought to govern. He had thought to.
He had made it so that departed souls could go on living in that world as themselves -- with their own memories, their own identities -- and could, if they chose, reincarnate instead.
But the more important thing was that the world he built would outlast him.
He had not stamped his own will across it. Had not set himself up as its god. Had not tied its continued existence to his continued existence.
He had established the dinosaur guardians to maintain its order. He had asked the Kages of past eras to help manage it, continuing in death the work they had done in life. He had asked the Sage of Six Paths to serve as the realm's highest guardian. Even if Naruto himself were gone one day, that world would carry on.
It would not depend on anyone. Would not be moved by anyone's death or disappearance. Would not collapse because any particular person was no longer there. This was the gift Naruto had left for the dead -- a letter that required no response, addressed to people who would never know he had written it.
Both of those things had required the Star Eye to accomplish.
He had set out wanting power sufficient to stand against the Otsutsuki. What he had received was something that surpassed his capacity to fully understand it.
Naruto had sometimes wondered whether that was a kind of irony. When he had gone looking for strength, he had wanted a sword capable of meeting the Otsutsuki clan face to face. What he had been given was not a sword but an entire armory -- one he had no way to fully inventory, whose weapons he could not fully assess, whose size he could not even determine.
And the other edge of that blade -- he would never expose it.
He had put it away, somewhere even he could not see, somewhere no one could reach, somewhere nothing that might happen would ever bring it to light.
He would use this blade only for things that harmed no one, only for things that were genuinely good for the world, only for things that even if someone found out about them, no one could reasonably condemn.
The other edge would never be shown.
...He had gotten somewhat off track.
In any case: as established, Naruto could give others extraordinary power.
He could do it the way he had infused new ocular strength into Shisui's Mangekyo Sharingan. The way he had given young Sasuke a brand-new pair of eyes. And then there was the one he had wanted to give, but had never realized he had already given -- Uchiha Satsuki, whose divine eyes had awakened not through any deliberate act of his, but through the quiet accumulation of what existed between them.
He had been wanting to properly strengthen Kurama for a long time now.
Nine-Tails had been with him for years. From the first wary awareness of each other, through gradual acceptance, from imprisonment to something closer to coexistence -- he wanted to give Nine-Tails the best that was available to him.
"Come on, Kurama."
Naruto kept at it in the inner world, his voice carrying something close to coaxing.
"I know you're already strong. But you can't honestly say you'd turn down more, can you? Don't tell me you're going to stand on ceremony with me of all people."
Nine-Tails looked down. Said nothing.
"That's what I thought, Kurama."
Naruto's voice softened slightly, though he kept trying to hold the atmosphere light, not wanting it to grow heavy.
"If you agree, then maybe someday -- even without me around -- you won't have to worry about being controlled by someone like Uchiha Madara anymore. That's all it takes. Just agree."
A pause.
"What's the matter? Still dragging your feet?"
"I thought given our history you'd be asking me for this yourself. All you have to do is say 'I agree.' That's it."
He reached out a hand. He wanted to rest it on the great fox's head where it lay propped on its front paws -- wanted to feel through his palm the warmth of that orange-red fur. But before his fingertips could make contact, Nine-Tails spoke.
"...If I were to say -- that I agree. That I'm willing to accept the power of that eye."
"Would I truly never be controlled again? Not by Uchiha Madara? Not by Senju Hashirama?"
The words finally came out. When it reached the word "controlled," its voice trembled very slightly -- a sound like something doubting itself.
"...Heh. Of course not. Because we're friends."
"So just agree. Stop being stubborn about it."
Nine-Tails raised its head.
Every trace of the uncertainty it had been wearing vanished from that great animal face. What replaced it was something that rose from deep within -- a pride that was entirely genuine.
"However."
It looked at Naruto with complete composure.
"I refuse."