"Wororororororo!!!"
"Now that's hot, Navy!!!"
After all, he was still the World's Strongest Creature in his prime. Faced with that smoking magma giant fist, Kaido could actually endure it head-on with nothing but his raw body and Haki.
"Marine Headquarters is not a place for you to run wild, Kaido!!!"
"Great Eruption!!!"
Ssszzzzzz!!!!
The smell of scorching flesh mixed with the distortion of superheated air. The blow came like a volcanic blast,
carrying terrifying heat and impact.
And behind the smoke, a pair of glowing red vertical pupils snapped open.
"This is exactly how a fight should feel!!!"
A furious, unrestrained roar exploded in front of Sakazuki, mixed with lightning born of Conqueror's Haki.
It made even his eyelids twitch.
Then,
the dragon-man, his body knotted with muscle, seemed to ignore the magma fist that had slammed directly into his chest. Both hands moved in a blur,
and in the clouds above, purple thunder began to flash before wrapping itself around the kanabo whipping through the air in afterimages.
Infused with terrifying Conqueror's Haki, driven by his overwhelmingly powerful dragon body,
he laughed like a demon and swung out of the magma in savage fury.
"Great Majestic Thunder Bagua!!!"
That monstrously heavy strike crashed straight into Akainu's head. His body visibly warped and twisted from the impact.
An ear-splitting blast tore through the air, then ripped open the earth and sent him hurtling into the distance, smashing through one building after another in a trail of smoke and debris.
He finally came to a stop in the ruins of Marine Headquarters,
and for a moment, all was quiet.
"Worororororo!!!"
"What a blazing-hot war this is!!!"
Kaido threw back his head and roared. With his sharp claws, he tore away the charred layer of dragon scales on his chest,
and thanks to the monstrous recovery of his Zoan Devil Fruit, new scales quickly grew back over the wound.
"Hm? Even with powerful Armament Haki and the boost of the Azure Dragon Fruit,
he still shouldn't be able to tank Sakazuki's volcano-like punch that easily."
Ozz Dotor tilted his head, sidestepping another flying ice thorn spear with ease, curiosity flickering in his eyes.
He knew Sakazuki's strength very well.
Among the Emperor-Admiral tier, Sakazuki stood at the absolute top, not far below the level of a true King.
And Kaido in his drunken dragon state was only just brushing the edge of that King tier.
Even if there was a gap, it should not have been this wide.
"Hah?!"
Hearing that, Kaido turned and looked toward Ozz Dotor, then threw back his head and laughed.
"Well, of course it's because I've taken too many powerful attacks to the chest over the years!
With an Oni's body and the adaptation of the Azure Dragon Fruit, one of the highest-grade Mythical Zoans, of course my defense would get even stronger!!!"
Ozz Dotor raised a brow.
Then, with Observation Haki refined down to microscopic precision, he quickly examined the scarred scales and skin across Kaido's chest.
This...
Maybe there really was something there, some adaptation born from being the Strongest Creature.
But put simply,
wasn't it just that he'd been beaten into becoming even tougher and thicker-skinned?
Compared to Mihawk's ultimate cutting power and Ozz Dotor's own Hakai imbued with spatial force,
magma fists simply lacked that level of penetration.
But Sakazuki was no fragile fighter either.
Back in the day, he had eaten several Divine Departures and still managed to get back up and throw fists with Ozz Dotor.
Now, from the shattered rubble of Marine Headquarters, cracked bricks slowly melted into glowing pools of liquid. From within them, a magma-coated figure stepped out.
"Kaido of the Beasts, and you still have time to chat?"
"The fight isn't over yet!!!"
Faced with another colossal magma punch, Ozz Dotor blurred away to the side,
then looked at the two monsters, both like tanks with endless HP bars, colliding all over again. He merely shrugged.
Kuzan quickly caught up to him.
But he seemed to realize that simple attacks were not enough to restrict the man before him.
So despite the cold mist pouring off his body, Kuzan did not attack. Instead, he shouted at Ozz Dotor with a cold face:
"So this is what you meant when you said the war wouldn't end easily, Ozz?!"
"One of the three legendary pirates, and now one of the Four Emperors too?
Are you trying to throw the whole battlefield into even greater chaos?!"
Hearing that,
Ozz Dotor, who had just been waving at Seagull King, turned back with a warm smile on his face.
He looked directly at Kuzan.
Then...
perhaps it was just an illusion, but that warm smile slowly turned a little more wicked.
"No, no... we're nowhere near that point yet. Never underestimate how far I'll go for amusement.
We've known each other too long for this, and yet you still don't understand me well enough, Kuzan."
...
Elsewhere,
working together in perfect sync, Mr. 3 and Luffy finally succeeded.
Clang.
The Seastone handcuffs fell to the ground.
"You've always been this reckless, Luffy."
Flames burned fiercely around them as every member of the Whitebeard Pirates watched with hope blazing in their eyes.
Luffy grinned from ear to ear.
"Ace!!!!"
"Don't let your guard down, Luffy. We still have to break through!!!"
Ace grabbed Luffy's sleeve, and Luffy grabbed Mr. 3 by the collar.
The three of them faced a storm of bullets and pursuit from all directions.
"My, my... kids really are noisy."
Ozz Dotor was about to say something when a stray spreading magma blast and a drifting wind-scythe breath attack suddenly swallowed him up.
He casually dispersed both with one hand and frowned.
"You two..."
Those two lunatics had absurdly destructive fighting styles, both capable of creating natural disasters on a whim.
It was seriously ruining Ozz Dotor's viewing experience.
"How much longer are they going to take..."
He was already prepared to use teleportation to speed things up if necessary.
And just as he was getting impatient enough to do it,
a disturbance suddenly erupted near the distant harbor.
"Honestly..."
Ozz Dotor shook his head helplessly. His figure blurred, and in the next instant he appeared in the center of Sakazuki and Kaido's battlefield.
At this point there was no room left there for ordinary pirates or Marines to even stand. Boiling magma and black-red lightning filled the area. Even Ozz Dotor frowned slightly.
"That's enough. Go play with the newcomers instead."
"What?!" x2
The two who had just been smashing into each other in a frenzy both froze for a moment. But before either could react,
they were greeted by a zero-startup teleportation kick.
Whoosh.
Whoosh.
A few grunts noticed what had happened.
"What's going on?! Admiral Akainu and Emperor Kaido were just fighting, and now they vanished in an instant!!!"
"Kaido's over at the harbor!!!"
Following the shout, countless people turned toward the distant port and spotted several familiar figures there.
"That's... the Blackbeard Pirates???"
"The Warlord who never showed up earlier? But..."
"Why do they look like they're being chased?!"
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The tides are shifting, and secrets linger in the dark... Step into the shadows early on P@treon, where the next chapter awaits before the world sees it.
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