Chapter 152: The Most Suspicious Man in Recorded History
Kimimaro almost muttered a thank-you out loud.
Almost.
Really, he probably should have thanked Hinata properly.
Awakening those eyes using hers as the foundation had been the single biggest leap of his career so far.
Career felt like the wrong word, but it fit disturbingly well.
Thinking about Hinata now, he found himself… mildly interested.
Which was new.
Back then, he had completely disregarded her. Not out of malice. Out of focus.
He'd been starving for power, and the only thing in his head was awakening the Tenseigan.
She hadn't been a person so much as a conveniently mobile container for his future eyes.
Konoha had also been on fire at the time. Efficiency mattered.
And to be fair, she'd been wearing that haircut. The bowl cut. Truly unforgivable.
On top of that, she hadn't yet developed her most prominent attribute, the one that tended to drag eyes in its direction whether their owners wanted to look or not.
So really, how could he have noticed her?
Now, though…
Kimimaro hummed quietly to himself.
Maybe he'd pay her a visit someday if he happened to pass through Konoha again.
After all, they were pretty "connected" now.
Now that he was thinking straight again, forgetting Hinata felt less like oversight and more like negligence.
A hidden beauty in progress, quietly assembling herself in the background while the world was too busy shouting to notice.
Awkward posture, bad haircut, zero confidence, all disguises. Temporary ones.
Give it time and perspective and suddenly the math changed.
Perhaps the only one who even came close to that Tsunade.
Kimimaro almost laughed at himself for missing it the first time.
Then again, back then he'd been hunting godhood, not aesthetics.
Easy mistake to make.
Still.
Some things were worth a second look.
And then there was another added bonus.
When Kimimaro thought about who his greatest enemy in this world actually was, approaching Hinata like that would irritate it immensely.
And that alone was worth points.
But no, it wasn't Naruto.
Naruto was just the beneficiary.
The real enemy was the thing that had decided Naruto would be the child of prophecy in the first place.
That unseen hand.
That story being written without consent.
And Hinata was clearly one of its key pieces.
Naruto didn't even realize it yet.
And the idea of the greatest "outsider" in existence casually claiming her instead?
Kimimaro smiled to himself.
That would be deeply satisfying.
As for the legendary Tsunade… did a man really need some profound "connection" or narrative excuse to pursue those peaks?
Wasn't basic survival instinct enough?
Any man claiming otherwise was either lying or dead.
Even better, it killed two birds at once.
Business and pleasure.
He'd been curious about Katsuyu for years anyway.
That mysterious forest. That biology. And whatever secrets it hid about Sage Mode.
Kimimaro suddenly discovered today that great power didn't just come with great responsibility.
It also came with a very inconvenient amount of lust.
Apparently, the higher he climbed, the more his usual self-control filed a complaint.
...
But he composed himself soon. Such ambitions were healthy. Getting stuck on them until he couldn't tell whether he wanted power or to bite someone, while losing focus, was sloppy.
He remained where he was, gaze fixed on the settling steam and fractured ground, the aftertaste of the previous pressure still clinging to the air.
His breathing slowed. The Tenseigan was already gone from his eyes, but the awareness it left behind lingered, like an imprint carved into his nerves.
He was touching the Six Paths now.
That much was undeniable.
Low on the spectrum, constrained by flesh and endurance, but undeniably there.
And that realization didn't comfort him.
Because he knew that his true enemy was not someone he could outgrow casually.
It wasn't Orochimaru.
It wasn't Akatsuki.
It wasn't any village, clan, or god playing at divinity.
His true enemy already stood at the summit.
He was the Six Paths.
Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki.
The same presence that had finally dropped the mask during Konoha's invasion, revealing his spectral hand without pretense or restraint.
Not intervention. Not guidance. Ownership.
That single gesture had said more than any doctrine or myth ever could.
This world wasn't drifting.
It was curated.
And Hagoromo wasn't a relic watching from beyond history.
He was still here.
Still acting.
Still reaching.
Kimimaro's fingers curled slightly.
"So that's the scale," he thought calmly.
Not fear. Not anger.
Just clarity.
If that was the height he needed to challenge, then brushing the edges of Six Paths power was only the opening step, not the destination.
Hagoromo had built a system meant to shepherd the world.
Kimimaro would become something that didn't fit inside it.
Not a rebellion.
Not a correction.
An anomaly disciplined enough to survive being noticed.
He exhaled, steam drifting past his face as the morning fully broke.
"One step at a time," he thought.
The staircase was steep.
But it had never scared him.
The reason he had become so certain over the past year was simple.
Kimimaro had stopped taking this world at face value.
He revisited everything he knew, every legend, every fragment of lore, every "truth" he had once accepted because the narrative said it was so.
He stripped away hero worship, mythology, and moral framing and examined it the way he would any other system.
Coldly. Logically. Without sentiment.
And once he did, the pattern stopped hiding.
Who, exactly, would ever tolerate an anomaly like him?
A foreign soul.
A consciousness that did not originate in this world.
A deviation that did not belong to any planned lineage, prophecy, or cycle.
From the system's perspective, he wasn't part of the story.
He was a contamination.
He was never meant to be anything more than Kimimaro Kaguya, the sickly prodigy who bloomed briefly, served Orochimaru, and died quietly as narrative fodder.
A side character that overstepped his role.
The more he followed that thought to its conclusion, the more obvious the answer became.
If one removed idealism and examined history as it actually functioned, then the most suspicious existence in this world's entire recorded past was not Black Zetsu.
It was Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki himself.
The Sage of Six Paths.
The so-called Creator of Shinobi.
The man whose story unraveled the moment you stopped venerating it.
Hagoromo was half human, half Ōtsutsuki, closer to alien than divine, yet history portrayed him as a luminous god. Why?
Why was he uniquely tethered to the Pure Land?
Why could he casually summon the souls of dead Kage, exert power across dimensions and planes of existence, linger for millennia after death, while Indra, Ashura, and even his own twin Hamura faded into true absence?
Why did reincarnations cycle endlessly, but he remained?
What exactly was Gamamaru's prophecy?
Who verified it?
And who, or what, was Gamamaru to begin with?
Why did a toad possess foresight spanning centuries?
The deeper Kimimaro dug, the darker the picture became.
Perhaps they weren't "evil" in the crude sense.
But they certainly weren't transparent.
They acted as custodians while concealing everything from humanity, and Kimimaro knew well that secrecy was never neutral.
Secrecy was control.
If Hagoromo was truly omniscient and benevolent, how did he fail so catastrophically with his own sons?
How could someone who understood human nature deeply enough to preach Ninshū still believe that giving humanity chakra would lead to peace?
He wasn't a naïve idealist.
He wasn't some sheltered philosopher.
He was the man who witnessed and sealed Kaguya, living in one of the most chaotic times.
Kimimaro didn't need elaborate theory to answer that contradiction.
Humanity butchered itself long before chakra ever existed.
War, cruelty, domination all of it flourished just fine without supernatural power since the beginning of time.
Giving people chakra wouldn't civilize them in any world.
It would only accelerate what was already there.
This was literally the singular possible outcome.
Which left only one reasonable conclusion.
Hagoromo didn't misunderstand this.
He knew.
And if someone that accomplished acted in direct opposition to such an obvious truth, then it wasn't ignorance.
It was intent.
Occam's razor made it simple.
And then there was Kaguya.
How did the world erase her so completely, while Hagoromo became myth eternal?
They lived in the same era.
Mother and son.
That kind of historical asymmetry didn't happen by accident.
Kimimaro's thoughts turned colder.
What if Hagoromo himself erased her?
Not to prevent her return.
But to enable it.
A forgotten god was easier to resurrect than a remembered one.
A world without her name left no warnings behind.
Erasing Kaguya gave Hagoromo absolute narrative control.
And then came the Gedo Mazō.
If Hagoromo truly wished to prevent his mother's resurrection, why literally create the single object that made it possible?
Not hypothetically.
Perfectly.
Why somehow connect it to the Rinnegan of his lineage?
That was no longer a mistake.
That was another intent.
Kimimaro never believed Hagoromo wanted Kaguya to rule again.
But using her?
Manipulating her resurrection as part of something larger?
That fit far too well.
Black Zetsu, the supposed mastermind, was little more than a tool, a visible hand so the real one remained unseen.
A plan so vast that even by the time Kimimaro had transmigrated, Boruto's era had likely not revealed its endpoint.
Black Zetsu was a joke in comparison.
Madara only 'created' him at the end of his life.
Nagato and Obito never trusted him at all.
The stone tablet?
An inanimate object no one had even seen firsthand.
So why did no one ever doubt the Gedo Mazō?
Because it was connected to and summoned by the Rinnegan.
And the Rinnegan belonged to the Sage of Six Paths.
That was the real deception.
Not trickery.
Authority.
If the Sage was righteous, then anything derived from his power must also be righteous.
If the Sage had been the Ten-Tails' jinchūriki, then repeating that act must be valid.
If Infinite Tsukuyomi was cast through his legacy, then how could it be wrong?
This was the logic that drove Akatsuki.
Why Jiraiya believed Nagato was the child of prophecy.
Why rogue shinobi with no loyalty to nations died smiling for the cause.
They weren't following Black Zetsu.
They were following the Sage.
And that was the most terrifying part.
If someone had told Madara beforehand that he was being deceived, he would have laughed. Loudly.
Uchiha arrogance wouldn't allow otherwise.
Kimimaro almost laughed himself, imagining Madara proclaiming salvation one second before Black Zetsu's blade pierced his heart.
The irony was exquisite.
The Uchiha truly were born to be deceived.
The Sage of Six Paths' entire motive remained the only unanswered variable.
Why orchestrate Kaguya's return, only to seal her again?
Why use Naruto and Sasuke as instruments?
If Hagoromo wanted Kaguya back, he could have done so himself long ago.
That contradiction meant one thing.
There was only one way to uncover it.
Power.
Only those who stood on the Six Paths level were qualified to decipher Six Paths-level schemes.
Kimimaro's gaze hardened.
With enough power, truth stopped hiding.
And once he reached that height, the Sage of Six Paths would no longer be a god watching from above.
He would be a variable.
And variables could be solved.
Perhaps Gamamaru's prophecies weren't warnings at all.
Perhaps they were instructions.
The more Kimimaro examined it, the more the pieces locked together.
Hagoromo didn't need to act directly.
He only needed the world to trust him.
And it did.
That was why Kimimaro was thankful for one thing.
Hagoromo's inability to fully manifest.
If the Sage could still walk the world freely, Kimimaro would already be gone.
Erased before ever understanding the board he was standing on.
But truly powerful, truly confident beings did not skulk in shadows.
They did not rely on proxies, myths, or beliefs to act.
They took what they wanted openly.
The Sage of Six Paths had already died once.
That alone was proof enough.
If Hagoromo truly possessed absolute authority, he would not need indirection, prophecy, or manipulation.
He would not need to move through intermediaries, to whisper through history, to hide his hand behind symbols and faith.
Those were not the actions of an omnipotent god.
They were the actions of someone constrained.
Someone afraid to be challenged directly.
This world did not belong to ghosts.
It belonged to the living.
And Kimimaro had no intention of yielding it.
He would not slow.
He would not bend.
He would not be discouraged.
Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki was not an endpoint.
Just another man, another obstacle standing somewhere along the road to his summit.