"World peace, huh? I know what you're thinking. But you're telling me all this—do you want to entrust your dream to me? What, have you also reached the point where you doubt you're the protagonist?"
After hearing Nagato's thoughts, Furina felt only a small surprise at first, but on second thought it made perfect sense. If she put herself in his shoes, Nagato choosing this path was entirely natural.
Rather than stubbornly fighting an opponent who was almost impossible to defeat, it was better to lay everything out on the table. Who knows, maybe this way it could actually work.
At this moment, although some parts of Nagato's thinking were not entirely reasonable, on the whole his ideals aligned with Furina's. Even without this particular development, once she had some free time she would have taken the initiative to do something similar anyway.
Right now the ninja world appeared relatively peaceful on the surface, but a large part of that was due to the powerful external threat posed by the Akatsuki organization, as well as Furina's own overwhelming strength—similar to Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha in the past—which made it difficult for other ninja villages to even consider starting conflicts.
But if the external threat disappeared and Furina left this place, then once the various ninja villages returned to roughly equal levels of power, they might stay calm for a short while at first, but it would not be long before wars broke out again over various interests.
This much could already be seen from every previous Great Ninja War.
That said, with her strength unifying the ninja world would actually be easy. Conquering is simple; governing is hard. Handling all the various issues after unification would be far more troublesome than the process of unifying itself.
But right now.
Looking at Nagato in front of her, whose body had somehow returned to normal, the smile on Furina's face grew even more obvious. She had seen the original story. In the source material, although Nagato had been deceived, his ideal had never changed.
Bringing peace to the world remained his dream. In that case, was he not the perfect tool? There was no need to worry about him harboring any bad intentions, and he would devote himself wholeheartedly to the ninja world afterward for the sake of that dream.
Nagato, you wouldn't want the ninja world, which has just achieved peace, to run into problems again, right?
"The protagonist, huh? I think I roughly understand what you mean. But compared to you, I'm probably not worthy of being called any kind of protagonist either. And from what you're saying, it seems you have similar thoughts yourself."
"That's right. But forget about deterrence or anything like that. Let's just directly unite all the ninja villages together. Not under Konoha, though. I feel the current ninja village system isn't suitable for the ninja world going forward."
"Unification, huh? That works too. Once the entire ninja world becomes one collective, there won't be any more wars. Even if someone wants to split off, with your strength as a guarantee, it won't be anything to fear."
Seeing that Nagato had taken the bait, Furina stopped acting. She had no spare time to waste on these kinds of things anyway.
"You're right, but there's one point I need to correct. It's not my power, it's yours. In the current ninja world, aside from me, there probably isn't a second person who can match you. So your power alone is more than enough."
"But this…"
Hearing this, obvious hesitation appeared on Nagato's face. He understood what she meant, and there was nothing wrong with what she said. But the problem was that not long ago they had still been enemies. Asking an outsider like him to take on the main responsibility—did that really make sense?
"Hey, it's decided then. I can see your conviction through your eyes. I believe in you, so I'm leaving it to you. I'll head off first. For the specific details later, just come find me in Konoha."