Ambition

Jiraiya looked like he thought Yota was pulling his leg as he listened to him recount everything.

As he listened, Jiraiya’s expression gradually turned serious. In the end, Yota spoke faster and faster, all the way up to Madara Uchiha using Obito Uchiha as a pawn and transplanting the Rinnegan into Nagato.

"And then?" Jiraiya asked urgently, his face tense.

"Do you believe me now?" Yota asked Jiraiya with a calm, knowing smile.

"Do… do you also have the ability to foresee the future?" Jiraiya said, his expression complicated. "But there’s no information about you in it. Did you deliberately remove it, or were you simply not part of the original future?"

"I wasn’t part of it to begin with. Without some lucky encounter, I might have died on the battlefield during the Third Great Ninja War," Yota answered directly.

Jiraiya’s eyes trembled slightly at those words.

Yota was not wearing a mask at the moment. Jiraiya could clearly see that Yota was definitely not very old, likely having just reached adulthood.

Thinking back to that remark about sending eight- or nine-year-old children onto the battlefield, Jiraiya was already certain that Yota was a ninja from one of the major ninja villages, most likely Konoha.

Yota ignored Jiraiya and continued, "Of your three disciples, Yahiko, the one who had the strongest opinions, has already died due to Black Zetsu’s schemes. He even willingly sacrificed himself at Nagato’s hands. Because of that, Nagato’s personality has long since changed completely."

"Oh, and Konoha’s Root had a hand in it too."

Jiraiya clenched his fists, his face turning livid.

"But don’t be too discouraged, because you’ll soon have a new disciple. A true Child of Prophecy."

Yota then went on to describe Uzumaki Naruto and roughly what happened in the manga, continuing all the way until Kaguya was sealed.

"And that was that. The world returned to peace once more. So? Isn’t it an inspiring story?" Yota said with a smile at the corner of his mouth, his tone neither warm nor cold.

Jiraiya stood there blankly, looking neither happy nor disappointed. Yota tilted his head and asked again, "So? This is the child of destiny you’ve been pursuing all along. How do you feel after hearing it?"

"How do I feel…" Jiraiya murmured. "Nothing changed. It was all just a cycle."

"They talked about changing the ninja world… but did that really count as changing it?"

The information Yota provided did not need to consider readers or anything of the sort. Thus, he presented it in a flat, straightforward manner, without much emotion or personal coloring. Naturally, it did not bring out any sense of heroism.

As a result, some of the issues concealed in the original story were laid bare in his account. No wonder Jiraiya was beginning to doubt his life after hearing it.

Yota smiled silently. "At least while he was alive, the ninja world should have remained peaceful. If he lived a little longer, perhaps into his eighties or nineties, maybe the ninja world’s system would have stabilized."

Of course, that was excluding the possibility of Ōtsutsuki clan aliens arriving later.

"You just asked why I would take advantage of Konoha’s misfortune. My information already gave you the answer."

"Look, violence may not solve many problems. But the problems concerning ninja villages can all be resolved through violence."

"As long as your fist is big and hard enough, everyone will respect you."

"In the end, the savior you speak of still did not change the ninja world. He did not change its most fundamental rule, where the strong prey on the weak. He merely became the strongest one, and everyone else followed his rules."

"If that’s the case, why can’t the strongest one be me!? As long as I become stronger than everyone else, I can naturally rewrite the rules and bring peace to the ninja world!"

A person’s ambition grew along with their strength and circumstances. At first, Yota had merely gone with the flow and wanted to preserve his own little life. But now that he possessed combat power that could be called the strongest in the entire Naruto World, he naturally wanted to try changing the Naruto World.

Jiraiya looked up at Yota, his expression extremely strange.

"You mean you think you can become stronger than Madara Uchiha, even Ōtsutsuki Kaguya?"

To be honest, after hearing about those monsters that appeared later on, Jiraiya was deeply uneasy. He had even begun considering how to strengthen Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke.

As for anyone else, it was not that he was belittling them. He simply knew very well that ordinary people, even ordinary geniuses, could never become that terrifyingly strong no matter how hard they trained. So he would never place his hopes on anyone else.

Yet Yota’s reaction was to believe that he could become even stronger, stronger than monsters like them? Where did that confidence come from?

Yota smiled. "Words alone prove nothing. How about this? I’ll be going to the Land of Rain to find Nagato soon. When the time comes, you can see whether my information is true, and you can also see my actual strength."

"What exactly are you trying to do?" Jiraiya was no longer thinking about his disciples. In his eyes, Yota might be an even greater problem.

With the ability to foresee the future and immense strength, Yota’s threat, in Jiraiya’s view, was likely not much weaker than Ōtsutsuki Kaguya’s. He wanted to know whether Yota was a crazed madman or someone who could truly change this world.

"If I told you, would you believe me?" Yota asked faintly, leaving Jiraiya unable to respond.

The people of the Naruto World and the Pirate World were practically two extremes. Basically, no mature ninja in the Naruto World would ever trust others easily—after all, there were far too many people in this world who would set traps for you. Just look at those bosses and you would know what it meant to have schemes within schemes!

The Pirate World, on the other hand, did not have so many elaborate plots and calculations. Kurozumi Orochi deceiving Kozuki Oden was already an exceptional performance. That kind of lie, almost casually blurted out, would never be believed in the Naruto World, not even by someone as single-minded as Uzumaki Naruto.

Yota had been influenced somewhat by the Pirate World, and his personality had become much more straightforward. That was why he directly laid out all the information from Naruto. In any case, his current strength made him the strongest in the Naruto World, so he did not need to worry too much.

He was about to head to the Land of Rain to seize the Rinnegan. By revealing this information, he could also prevent Jiraiya from risking his life against him over the Rinnegan.

Besides, Yota understood Jiraiya somewhat. Even if Jiraiya learned much about the future, what could he do?

Nagato Uzumaki and Obito Uchiha had both sunk too deeply into their obsessions to pull themselves free. Jiraiya was not Uzumaki Naruto; he could not talk them back with words alone.

And even Uzumaki Naruto had to win the fight before he could truly use his talk-no-jutsu. The one standing spoke, while the one lying down listened. Behind talk-no-jutsu was strength.

Not to mention anything else, if Yota had not been powerful, Jiraiya would never have believed his information as much as he did now.

As long as he maintained his current rate of growth, even when the Ōtsutsuki clan arrived, he could turn them into nourishment for his own strength!