BANG!
Two colossal fists collided in mid-air. In terms of pure, raw strength, Bardock once again found himself at a disadvantage, the sheer kinetic force pushing his massive frame back quite a distance. However, his defense was absolute. Coated in dense Armament Haki, Bardock didn't suffer a scratch, while Moria's fist split open, bleeding profusely from the impact.
Ignoring his bleeding knuckles, Moria charged forward, dragging Bardock into brutal, close-quarters combat. The Warlord knew he couldn't maintain Shadows Asgard for long; he had to utterly crush this brat before his stamina gave out.
"Ah! They're so huge!" "Yeah... they both turned into giants!"
Mansherry and Leo stared in absolute shock as the two behemoths clashed, tearing up the landscape with every movement.
"Hurry, we need to fall back. We're too close!" Robin ordered, waving for everyone to retreat. As the battle escalated, the destructive shockwaves threatened to sweep them up, and the deafening booms of the physical collisions were making their ears ring painfully.
"Is this... Bardock's full power?" Perona stared blankly, like an ordinary civilian watching Ultraman fight a Kaiju. She hadn't expected that an all-out Bardock would be this overwhelmingly powerful and devastating.
"That's the Boss for you," Daz Bonez said, effortlessly swatting away a massive chunk of flying rubble. Seeing Perona frozen in place, he nudged her. "Stop spacing out and move!"
From a safer distance, the crew watched the intensity of the fight skyrocket.
Perhaps some of the 250 shadows Moria had absorbed belonged to martial arts masters. During their sword clash earlier, Bardock had been virtually unscathed. Now, locked in a brutal melee, they were fighting to a bloody standstill. Even with his Indestructible Vajra body and Dual-Color Haki, Bardock suffered significant injuries—by far the heaviest damage he had taken since arriving in this world.
Truthfully, maximizing his size was a tactical error on Bardock's part. To counter Shadows Asgard, Bardock was relying entirely on his own raw power, whereas Moria had the combined strength of 250 shadows backing him up. Furthermore, while enlarging his body increased his mass and output, it severely crippled his agility. Many attacks that Bardock could have effortlessly dodged in his normal form now had to be blocked head-on.
But then again, he was the one who stubbornly wanted to defeat Moria in a head-on clash of titans.
Spitting out a mouthful of bloody saliva, Bardock made a quick calculation. Both he and Moria were using explosive, heavily draining forms. They were both on a strict time limit—like Ultraman's blinking chest timer. But Moria had one massive, fatal weakness: his shadows could be physically beaten out of him.
"Steel Fist: Gut Strike!"
Slipping past Moria's massive palm thrust, Bardock drove a devastating punch squarely into Moria's bloated stomach. Moria stumbled backward, dry-heaving violently before vomiting up a few shadows. Panicking, the Warlord quickly clamped both hands over his mouth, forcefully swallowing the remaining shadows back down his throat.
"Damn you! Brick Bat!"
Moria's shadow instantly split into a massive swarm of screeching bats that swarmed Bardock's face, wildly biting and flapping to obscure his vision and disrupt his counterattack.
Bardock knew these bats were just shadows; destroying them would only cause them to reform. He simply ignored them. Closing his eyes, he expanded his Observation Haki, locking precisely onto Moria's massive signature amidst the chaos.
"Steel Fist: Rising Elbow!"
Stepping directly through the bat swarm, Bardock closed the distance and delivered a flawless, devastating elbow strike to the exact same spot on Moria's abdomen.
The impact launched Moria clean into the air. While he was still airborne, his mouth flew open, and a torrential stream of black shadows spewed out uncontrollably.
By the time Moria crashed back into the dirt, every single stolen shadow had escaped. His body rapidly deflated back to its original, relatively smaller size. Bardock walked over and found the Warlord completely unconscious, his eyes rolled into the back of his head.
It made sense. Even Bardock, with his Armament Haki and Mythical Zoan toughness, had been beaten until he coughed up blood. Moria's injuries were far worse. He had just been pushing through the pain using sheer willpower and stolen strength. That final elbow was simply the straw that broke the camel's back.
Exhaling a long breath, Bardock deactivated his Devil Fruit, shrinking back down to his normal human form. From a carefully protected inner pocket, he pulled out a Blood Dandelion and swallowed it. In the spirit of a fair fight, he hadn't used the miracle drug during the battle, but now that it was over, he wasn't going to suffer unnecessarily.
Footsteps approached. Robin and the others hurried over, seeing the fight had concluded.
"Bardock! Thank goodness, you actually beat him," Robin sighed, the heavy weight of anxiety finally lifting from her chest. Perona nodded enthusiastically next to her; she had been the most terrified out of all of them.
"Yeah, Captain! You beat that giant weirdo! You're amazing!" Leo praised, looking around at the absolute devastation the two titans had left in their wake.
"Captain, do you need healing?" Mansherry asked with deep concern, noticing the dried blood on the corner of his mouth. The others immediately looked at him in worry.
"I'm fine, already took care of it," Bardock smiled, wiping the blood away and waving his hand dismissively.
"Boss, what should we do with Moria?" Daz Bonez asked curiously, looking down at the unconscious pirate.
"Moria?" Bardock rubbed his chin in thought. "He's heavily injured, but none of the wounds are fatal. Let me rest and recover some stamina first. We'll have a little chat with him when he wakes up."
With the battle over, the terrified citizens of Troia Island finally breathed a sigh of relief. Ever since midnight, continuous, deafening booms had shaken the ground. They all thought a massive earthquake had struck. Little did they know, if Bardock and Moria had fought inside the town, the destruction would have been exponentially worse than any natural disaster.
Meanwhile, far away in various locations across the sea, countless people simultaneously erupted into cheers of pure joy.
On a pirate ship somewhere in the West Blue, a pirate pointed at the deck illuminated by candlelight. "Captain! Look! A shadow!"
"If you're tired, go to sleep. Stop spouting nonsense," the captain replied listlessly, not even lifting his head. Ever since Moria had stolen their shadows, they had been forced to live like vampires, sleeping during the day and only moving at night. Stripped of the sun, they had lost all motivation to do anything.
"I'm serious, Captain! I'm not lying! Our shadows are back!" the crewman insisted frantically.
The captain finally looked up. His eyes widened to the size of saucers. "A shadow... it really is a shadow! Our shadows have returned!"
"Hell yes! Our shadows are back! We all have shadows again!" the crew cheered wildly, tears streaming down their faces.
At a Marine Base in the West Blue, a squad of Marines was pulling the graveyard shift. They had no choice; without their shadows, they couldn't patrol in the sunlight, so they were permanently assigned to night duty.
"Hey, look... what's that?" A Marine pointed at the ground beneath a streetlamp, rubbing his eyes in disbelief.
"That's a shadow, you idiot... Wait. Why is there a shadow? It really is a shadow! I have one too! We all do!" another Marine stammered, so excited he could barely form a coherent sentence.
"Our shadows are back! Does this mean... did someone actually defeat Gecko Moria?!" "No way... Moria is a legendary pirate who sailed the New World!" "Who cares?! We don't have to be afraid of the sun anymore!" "Yeah! No more permanent night shifts for me!"
"What is all that racket?! Have you forgotten military discipline?!" a Colonel roared from the distance.
The Marines quickly pulled their caps down, desperately fighting back huge grins as they forced themselves to finish their patrol, their hearts soaring with absolute joy.
All across the West Blue and parts of the Grand Line, people who had been robbed of their lives by the Shadow-Shadow Fruit were finally dancing in the light again.