"Today, because I refused to satisfy their unreasonable coveting of divine power, they dare to openly clamor for separation—even threaten me with force."
"Tomorrow, if I show even the slightest weakness or concession, they will push further and demand more—my knowledge, my authority, perhaps even… my life."
"What you call 'merely expressing their needs' is, in the game of power and strength, nothing less than a declaration of war."
"They are not ignorant. They are testing me. Provoking me."
Kaguya was furious.
But what angered her even more was that the son in whom she had placed the highest hopes did not stand with her.
"They wouldn't! Mother, they wouldn't go that far!" Hagoromo insisted.
He could not accept her assumption that all humans were doomed to endless greed and inevitable betrayal.
"They simply don't understand your position! They don't understand the nature and limits of power! If only you would be patient—if you let them understand—"
"Why do I need their understanding?"
Kaguya cut him off sharply. Her voice rose, carrying absolute authority—unyielding and unquestionable.
It was not a question.
It was a declaration.
A cold truth grounded in the gulf between race, power, and perception.
Hagoromo felt as though struck by invisible lightning.
He opened his mouth—but no sound came.
That single sentence shattered the foundation of everything he had worked toward. It crushed his hopes of communication, understanding, and mutual empathy.
Why do I need their understanding?
The words echoed in his mind.
In Kaguya's value system, she was the giver, the sovereign, the source of power, the author of order.
Her will was law.
Her existence was grace.
The created.
The beneficiaries.
The ants beneath the hierarchy of power.
Whether they understood or not—was irrelevant.
Even entertaining the thought bordered on presumption.
It was never the "god" who required understanding.
It was humanity.
Hagoromo's face went pale. His body trembled faintly.
He looked into his mother's eyes—no longer warm, only cold authority and disappointment. At the same time, he imagined the restless rebels shouting for power, and the stirred-up civilians with conflicted expressions.
On one side stood absolute power and merciless "truth."
On the other, boiling desire and resentment born of incomprehension.
The "bridge of communication" he had always believed in seemed fragile—painfully naïve—before the brutal collision of reality.
The chasm between ideal and reality, and his mother's total rejection of his philosophy, plunged him into profound confusion.
He did not know how to respond.
Nor did he know where the road ahead lay.
Reactions Across the Shinobi World
Within the Heavenly Curtain, Kaguya's declaration—"Why do I need their understanding?"—pierced not only Hagoromo's ideals, but the hearts of countless viewers.
"Isn't that… too arrogant? Too inhuman?" a young civilian shinobi in Konohagakure muttered, brow furrowed.
He instinctively empathized with the soldiers and civilians who had begged for power and were now labeled traitors.
Beside him, an older jōnin with scars from the Second Shinobi World War let out a dry chuckle.
"Arrogant?" he countered. "Then tell me—if you possessed Kaguya's power. If you descended upon a primitive world, ended endless warfare single-handedly, established absolute order across the planet, and were worshiped as a god by billions—"
"What would you do?"
"Would you sit in rice fields every day explaining to farmers why you can't make crops grow overnight?"
"Would you sit in barracks explaining to soldiers why you can't hand out mountain-splitting power?"
The younger shinobi fell silent.
The veteran exhaled smoke slowly, eyes heavy with experience.
"First of all, they aren't even beings on the same level."
"To Kaguya, chakra is her origin, her weapon—her everything."
"To those native humans, it's something beyond comprehension."
"It's like a human explaining to ants why building a road destroys their nest."
"It's not unwillingness. It's that the cognitive gap is too vast. Any explanation would feel absurd."
Another voice joined in—a sharp-minded chūnin from a minor clan.
"Then there's status. What is Kaguya? She's the de facto ruler of the world—the maker of rules."
"In our reality, does a daimyō personally explain to every civilian why he levies taxes? Why he drafts soldiers? Why he passes laws?"
"No. He issues commands and maintains rule."
"By comparison, Kaguya's power and status surpass a daimyō by countless dimensions. Why should she feel obligated to explain her power system or her reservations to lives she sees as dust?"
The cold but rational analogy gave pause to many who had reacted purely on emotion.
At that moment, a middle-aged administrative shinobi who had been silently listening spoke up. His tone was calm and analytical.
"I think… the root of the problem may not be Kaguya's arrogance."
"It may be that she was too benevolent."
The crowd turned, puzzled.
Benevolent?
He continued, unfazed by their looks.
"Look carefully at the Heavenly Curtain."
"Though called a 'god' and ruling the world in practice, Kaguya never established a strict administrative system to directly manage all her subjects."
"She ended the wars through absolute force, divided territories, appointed agents to govern."
"And she herself? She remained beneath the God Tree, distant from worldly affairs."
"What does that mean?"
"It means most civilians never felt direct oppression from 'god.'"
"They were oppressed by daimyō, lords, tax collectors."
"Meanwhile, Kaguya's image—through rare displays of divine power, through ending warfare, through mystery—became that of a distant, powerful, seemingly 'benevolent' symbol."
"She did not directly commit atrocities."
"In fact, she 'allowed' peace to exist."
And it was precisely that distance—
That absence of direct tyranny—
That may have created a fatal illusion.
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