For the sake of becoming Hokage, Danzo was willing to watch the entire village be destroyed.
In his eyes, the dead and wounded civilians were nothing more than necessary sacrifices on his path to the Hokage's seat.
Uchiha Itachi's rage boiled over.
Danzo's actions had struck directly at something he could never tolerate.
When it came to his clan, Itachi might have deserved to be called a monster. He had slaughtered everyone, regardless of age or gender.
He had spared only his younger brother.
But when it came to the village, his devotion had always been pure and absolute.
Now, seeing this, he wanted nothing more than to tear Danzo apart with his bare hands.
"How dare he?"
Uchiha Itachi had matured early and possessed extraordinary intelligence, so he rarely lost control of his emotions.
But now, he was furious beyond reason.
For the first time, he truly understood what it meant to be so enraged that it made his blood boil.
He had never imagined Danzo could do something this disgusting.
The man had shown no concern whatsoever for the lives of the villagers.
An unprecedented killing intent surged through Uchiha Itachi.
He had actually trusted someone like this.
A man like Danzo had somehow become an Elder of Konoha.
It was the greatest joke imaginable.
More importantly, for the first time, Uchiha Itachi began to question his decision to wipe out the Uchiha Clan.
Regret crept into his heart.
That would have been impossible in the past.
No matter how much pain he suffered, Itachi had never regretted what he had done. He had believed it was a necessary evil, and that he had merely taken that burden upon himself.
Yet Shimura Danzo was capable of this?
The fury inside Itachi could no longer be contained.
"That situation really was desperate."
Seventh Hokage Naruto sighed inwardly.
If he hadn't convinced Nagato-senpai to use the Samsara of Heavenly Life Technique, defeating Deva Path Pain would have meant nothing.
By then, most of Konoha's population had already died.
Back then, Naruto hadn't known what kind of battle Konoha had endured before his arrival.
It had been utterly hopeless.
"That damned old Danzo!"
Uchiha Sasuke clenched his fists.
He finally understood exactly why Kaede Kitahara hated Danzo so much.
The man truly was unbearable.
At this point, Sasuke still possessed a normal sense of right and wrong. The thought of destroying Konoha had never even crossed his mind.
"The Hokage's position can never be handed to Danzo."
Hatake Kakashi stared fixedly at Danzo in the video and muttered under his breath.
At that moment, the Six Paths of Pain were advancing toward the interrogation department.
The enormous Summoned Beasts were closing in as well.
The Anbu weren't lacking in skilled shinobi. Several Anbu with Jonin-level strength joined forces against them.
However, even Jiraiya's Summoned Beasts had suffered badly against the three-headed hound from hell.
These Anbu were only at Jonin level.
Fighting it was incredibly difficult. Simply holding it back required everything they had.
To their horror, the number of heads on the beast continued to increase.
They had never encountered a Summoned Beast like it before.
Eventually, the Animal Path located the interrogation department and summoned itself inside.
Only then did everyone there realize, to their shock, that another Animal Path capable of summoning beasts had appeared before them.
The people watching outside the video immediately understood.
The Animal Path's abilities probably didn't belong to the body itself.
That meant it didn't matter who had been captured and turned into the Animal Path.
The one who truly possessed those abilities was Uzumaki Nagato, the man controlling them from behind the scenes.
As long as Nagato remained alive, he could continue creating new members of the Six Paths of Pain.
No wonder Uzumaki Naruto had gone straight for Nagato's real body in the previous timeline.
The Summoned Beasts called forth by the Animal Path were far more terrifying than anyone had imagined.
Their massive bodies, each one resembling a small mountain, were walking natural disasters to Konoha.
Before this, everyone had considered the Animal Path's summons troublesome, but only troublesome.
Jiraiya had been strong enough to inflict serious damage on them, so although the battle had been difficult, the beasts hadn't seemed overwhelmingly dangerous.
This time was different.
When their opponents were ordinary shinobi, the true horror of those Summoned Beasts became obvious.
"Where did that kid Nagato even find so many powerful Summoned Beasts?"
Jiraiya stared at Nagato in the diary, unable to understand it.
Even Mount Myoboku, a sacred land with thousands of years of history, didn't possess many Summoned Beasts of this level.
Where had Nagato found them?
Had the Rinnegan somehow strengthened them?
For the moment, even Jiraiya couldn't tell.
In the video, the destruction caused by Nagato's invasion continued.
Two Kage Level shinobi had already died.
The only Kage Level fighter Konoha had left was Tsunade, the Hokage herself.
Unfortunately, Tsunade had to remain at the center of command.
She couldn't enter the battle lightly. If she did, the entire defensive line would lose its leadership.
As a result, the Six Paths of Pain continued slaughtering people throughout the village while searching for Uzumaki Naruto.
Everyone with access to the diary found the sight suffocating.
When had the mighty Konoha ever been reduced to such a miserable state?
They had already known about Deva Path Pain's invasion.
They had even seen the video of him destroying the entire village with a single attack.
But that hadn't affected them nearly as deeply.
The reason was simple.
That Shinra Tensei had been so overwhelmingly powerful that there was almost nothing to say about it.
Watching Konoha's shinobi fall one after another to the Six Paths of Pain, however, was different.
They were being defeated and slaughtered right before their eyes.
Of the seven people watching, four were Hokage.
The remaining three might not have held the title, but each of them had close ties to it.
With so much Hokage presence among them, the sight left them all deeply frustrated.
They wanted nothing more than to leap into the video and fight in Konoha's place.
But they couldn't.
Hatake Kakashi felt it most of all.
He had been present in the video, yet he had still been killed.
Even if his current self were somehow dropped onto the battlefield, he probably couldn't completely save Konoha from collapsing beneath the Six Paths of Pain's assault.
One Konoha shinobi after another chose death rather than betray Uzumaki Naruto, the comrade they had accepted as one of their own.
Even Seventh Hokage Naruto had never known about that.
By the time he arrived, Konoha had already been reduced to ruins.
He had never imagined how helplessly the village's shinobi had fought against the Six Paths of Pain before then.
"Naruto is a comrade of Konoha. I have nothing to tell you people from Akatsuki!"
When Seventh Hokage Naruto saw Ebisu-sensei, who had once disliked him, willing to die rather than reveal his whereabouts, the middle-aged Naruto's eyes reddened.
Then Konohamaru stepped forward to honor his promise to Naruto and save Ebisu.
The sight moved him even more.
The difference in strength was overwhelming.
Konohamaru was no match for his opponent.
Even so, he gave everything he had.
At the last possible moment, he used Rasengan and took down the Naraka Path in a single strike.
"I am a Genin of the Sarutobi Clan, a clan that carries the village's name! My surname is Sarutobi, and my name is Konohamaru!"
Everyone outside the video stared in astonishment.
None of them had expected one of the powerful Six Paths of Pain to fall at the hands of Sarutobi Konohamaru.
"The Old Man has a fine successor. He's better than that guy Asuma."
Tsunade wiped the moisture from the corners of her eyes.
She had never expected the Old Man's grandson to grow into someone so capable.
"Sarutobi Konohamaru… Old Man, you would've been proud if you could see this. Unfortunately, you never will."
Jiraiya sighed.
"Konohamaru, you little brat! Hahaha! Not bad at all. He really takes after me."
Seventh Hokage Naruto burst into laughter.
He and Konohamaru had always been close.
In the future, Naruto even intended to entrust his son, Uzumaki Boruto, to Konohamaru as his Jonin Leader.
At that moment, Deva Path Pain reached the roof of the Hokage Building and stared at Tsunade from a distance.
Only then did Tsunade finally notice him.
She remembered him.
Wasn't he one of the three children from Amegakure she had once met?
"You really are that child from back then."
Tsunade stared at him in shock.
"You remember."
Deva Path Pain's voice remained calm.
The fact that the two of them knew each other left the Anbu protecting Tsunade visibly surprised.
When the Anbu demanded his identity, Deva Path Pain answered with cold arrogance.
"I am the god who brings order."
He ignored the Anbu's challenge and looked directly at Tsunade.
"Uzumaki Naruto. Where is the Nine-Tails?"
"Who knows?"
Tsunade refused to answer.
Then Pain revealed something that shocked everyone.
"The capture of the Tailed Beasts is nearly complete. The Tailed Beasts maintained the balance of power between the shinobi villages, but that balance can no longer be preserved. There is no longer any meaning in protecting the Nine-Tails."
Deva Path Pain's words stunned everyone watching the diary.
According to the previous videos, the Akatsuki Organization had only just begun moving to capture the Tailed Beasts.
Yet only three years later, they had already captured nearly all of them.
The Nine-Tails was clearly the last one remaining.
"Only three years, and they already accomplished this much?"
Namikaze Minato's expression grew grave.
His junior disciple Nagato was almost absurdly powerful.
The Tailed Beasts were the core military assets of their respective villages.
Their existence and locations were among the most closely guarded secrets in the Shinobi World.
In most villages, ninety-nine point nine percent of the population knew nothing about their Tailed Beast.
Some Jinchuriki even lived in isolation to prevent other villages from gathering intelligence about them.
Powerful guards remained at their sides year-round.
There was no way the Akatsuki Organization had captured the Tailed Beasts through stealth alone.
They must have taken them by force.
To put it more extremely, capturing eight Tailed Beasts might have required the Akatsuki Organization to tear through nearly every shinobi village in the entire Shinobi World.
If the devastation inflicted on Konoha was any indication, then the Akatsuki Organization might have beaten all Five Great Shinobi Villages into submission.
That organization was terrifying.