With only the slightest movement, the entirety of Impel Down began to tremble.
"Wolf, he's the enemy! Take him down with us!"
In that instant, Catarina's body shifted, transforming into Bullet's appearance.
At the same time, she shouted toward everyone who now shared the same battle line, "Don't you understand yet? Either kill him, or kneel and listen to him talk!"
"Zehahahaha! Then let's join forces. Otherwise, we're all dying here today.
"Ever since this guy made his debut, he's climbed his way here by stepping on pirates' skulls!"
Blackbeard swiftly expressed his stance. Then he touched the ground and released Black Hole.
The darkness devoured the ground around Wolf's waist, allowing the giant, whose strength was bound to be terrifying, to move even more freely as he reached out his hand.
The enhancement formed by a giant's body plus the Huge-Huge Fruit naturally could not be limited to size alone.
Or rather, once his body expanded explosively, the terrifying strength of the giant race would also surge along with that size!
"I have no objections!"
Byrnndi World's eyes flickered. Then he held a cannonball in one hand and a gun in the other.
He chose to stand on the side of the prisoners of Infinite Hell.
This guy named Ren was extremely strong, and he had also released them. But from the looks of it, he merely intended to harvest them all at the end.
Since he had no intention of negotiating properly, then they would let this young brat witness the terror of the legends who once roamed the seas!
One-on-one, they might not be his match. But if they joined forces, this young man before them was not someone who could deal with them!
They reached a cooperative understanding with incredible speed.
After all, they were all veteran pirates with years of experience. Although each of them was utterly vicious and depraved, that did not mean they had no brains.
Even Patrick Redfield, who preferred solitude the most, did not object and withdraw.
He had been imprisoned in Impel Down only because, after witnessing Roger and Whitebeard's full power, he had fallen into despair, believing that he could never reach that realm, and had therefore given up on himself.
But that did not mean he would casually give up his life.
The atmosphere became tense in that moment.
The gigantic Wolf was the largest target, and he was also undoubtedly the first person who would launch an attack.
He glared viciously at Ren, who had been targeted by everyone at once, as Armament Haki covered his enormous body.
"Joining forces? That really is a decent choice. If you all attack together, your lives will be greatly extended.
"In theory, that is. But honestly—"
Ren tilted his head, glancing sideways at Patrick Redfield with a faint, mocking smile.
"—will you make it in time?"
The latter's pupils contracted. He looked up at the ceiling in disbelief and shouted sharply, "It's an attack! From above!"
What did that mean?
Wolf froze for a moment. His head was already pressed against the ceiling of the third level.
His Observation Haki had not caught—
That thought vanished in that instant, because a brilliant pillar of lightning pierced straight through Impel Down!
Time turned back by one minute.
When Ren appeared and cut down four people in succession, Nami, who was stationed inside Judgment's power room, had also made her preparations.
"Honestly, he uses me as a battery every time."
Nami muttered under her breath, yet she did not hold back in releasing a massive amount of lightning energy into the power room.
The metal loaded inside the "cannon chamber" melted under the wildly rising temperature, vaporized, then transformed into plasma filled with destructive power!
This massive mass of energy possessed an extreme heat closest to the sun in all the world.
Even though the target was the great prison below, built from exceptionally special materials, standing tall in the Calm Belt and capable of resisting attacks from Sea Kings—
There was still no possibility that it could block it in the slightest.
For Nami, who did not particularly enjoy fighting, each activation left her very exhausted. But this was, after all, a place where she could help Ren.
So, after muttering her complaint, she still decisively activated the final procedure.
Judgment's main cannon, named Falling Star, descended from the heavens, carving a scorching, dazzling, perfectly straight vertical line between sea and sky!
First came the sea-level first floor, its top packed with countless cannons. Before the tyrannical plasma beam, it was split open, leaving behind a hole hundreds of meters in diameter.
Nothing could block the radiance of the "sun." Immediately after came the first underground level, the second level, the third level!
The instant the lightning pillar pierced through the ground and arrived at the third level—
Wolf, whose body was the largest and whose head was pressed against the ceiling of the third level, suffered an extremely heavy blow.
A layer of his massive skull vanished in an instant.
"Ah!"
Wolf let out an agonized scream. Haki surged toward his head as he tried to protect his vital point.
Yet what he could not understand was that the enemy's beam attack seemed to possess life of its own as it flowed away.
Like a river returning to the sea, it gathered toward Ren's location, enveloping him and forming a sphere that constantly compressed and expanded.
Anyone who witnessed it would understand in that instant that this was not luck, nor had it spared them.
It was an even more terrifying attack!
"Stop him!"
Catarina let out a shrill scream as her Observation Haki issued frantic warnings.
Run!
She had to run!
Otherwise—
She would be reduced to ashes!
So, at the same time she shouted those words, Catarina retreated without the slightest hesitation.
As one of the prisoners of Infinite Hell, she was naturally no weakling.
She was a Zoan-Type Devil Fruit user.
The ability she possessed was the Inu-Inu Fruit, Mythical Model: Nine-Tailed Fox!
Through contact, she could perfectly copy a person's entire outward appearance. For example, right now she had transformed into Bullet.
Aside from internal things such as memories and emotions, Catarina had obtained Bullet's powerful body and his highly cultivated Haki.
Before the crisis arrived, she had already covered and wrapped her entire body in it.
Only at this moment did she discover that no fool had truly rushed forward to stop him.
Teach's entire body was wrapped in black smoke. After issuing his warning, Patrick Redfield had already fled into the distance.
Wolf was still screaming. The beam just now had inflicted severe damage on him, leaving him too busy with himself to do anything else.
Byrnndi World, however, had a convenient ability. He directly threw out several cannonballs and enlarged them a hundredfold with his power, attempting to attack and interrupt Ren.
But… it was too late.
Everything was too late!
The white sphere enveloping Ren compressed to around three meters. In the next instant, it turned pitch-black, with red lightning faintly visible as it coursed within.
It was like the moment before a volcanic eruption, and also like a spring compressed to its limit, ready to release.
In that instant, an incomparably violent power erupted in every direction with no blind spots.
World-Ending Horn: Abyssal Sun!
The destructive blazing sun that had once hung high above Kuja Island was reenacted inside Impel Down, and it was even stronger and more terrifying than before!
The instant it was released, there was no violent sound, nor was there any radiance.
There was only endless blackness swallowing everything it touched.
If one raised their perspective, they would see a small black dot begin expanding from the third underground level. The spherical black light spread in an instant, reaching every corner of Impel Down.
The giant evil spirit, enlarged to monstrous size, dissolved within the black light. Patrick Redfield, who had fled, only had time to look back before he was swallowed with a bitter smile.
The Bullet that Catarina had transformed into used every means at her disposal, defending herself with an extraordinarily thick layer of Armament Haki.
But… in the next instant, she too vanished without a trace.
Bullet, who had reached the first level, had only just turned his head when he was grazed and caught by the black light.
Immediately after came a great explosion that seemed as if it would tear people apart!
Amid a thunderous roar, Impel Down shook wildly, raising a tsunami over the surrounding sea with waves a hundred meters high.
The Sea Kings lurking beneath the surface were startled and emerged from the sea. Then they saw, from the hole that had pierced through the top of Impel Down, a crimson torrent surging upward.
That incomparably violent crimson torrent shot into the sky like a fountain, releasing its energy recklessly as the red current stretched hundreds of meters high!
Something like magma continuously spilled from there and fell into the sea.
At the same time, wrapped within that "flame" was a Conqueror's Haki pressure the Sea Kings could not withstand.
No matter what type they were, and no matter their size, every Sea King lost consciousness in that moment and sank back into the ocean.
No matter how Impel Down continued to shake and tremble afterward, no matter what tsunamis it raised in the surrounding waters, they could not be awakened.
Not until several minutes later.
Only then did the collapses and structural destruction inside Impel Down finally stop.
Standing where he had been all along, Ren slowly withdrew his hand and calmly looked toward the top of Impel Down, where sunlight poured down.
The vast Impel Down no longer had a sea-level first floor to speak of.
All that remained there was a hole hundreds of meters in diameter.
The upward-manipulated torrent of energy had, in that instant, widened the entrance to Impel Down, which had stood for over a century.
And that was not all.
If one looked down from the sky, they would see that Impel Down, whose overall shape had once resembled a tower that was narrow at the top and wide at the bottom—
Had now become an "ice cream cone" hollowed out from within.
Only, what remained inside was not a white mixture, but scorching-hot molten magma.
Nearly half the first underground level had vanished.
The magma formed from the melted structure flowed downward under the pull of gravity, but the second underground level had nowhere to stop the magma either.
More than half of that place had also turned into magma, continuing to pour downward.
The third underground level was the same. The levels beneath had also suffered nearly devastating blows.
These magma streams flowing down from above finally gathered at the bottom of Infinite Hell, forming a massive river-like pool of magma.
"That really is exaggerated."
Ren, who had taken all of this into his perception, sincerely sighed at the destruction he had caused.
One thing was certain.
After today, Impel Down, located in the Calm Belt and known as the great prison from which "no one had escaped in twenty years," would become history.
Although its main framework still remained, its interior had already been melted and hollowed out.
A casual impact from any Sea King would be enough to bury this place completely.
And yet, after unleashing that strike, Ren still remained in an essentially peak condition.
Clearly, he had not achieved this by mindlessly releasing energy. Instead, he had integrated it into a proper technique.
He had even upgraded, revised, and evolved it from its original foundation.
In fact—
If it had been the World-Ending Horn: Abyssal Sun from back on Kuja Island, it would have been impossible to achieve this level of power.
On the surface, Impel Down was called a prison. In reality, its sheer scale was no different from that of a large island, and its mass might even far exceed one.
Back during Kuja Island, World-Ending Horn had merely produced tremendous destructive power against the surface.
But it had not been enough to nearly destroy Impel Down like this.
What truly caused its power to undergo an almost qualitative transformation—
Was the Conqueror's Haki Infusion technique Ren had mastered during his battle with Whitebeard.
(End of Chapter)