Boom!!!
The enormous dragon's body bent like a stretched rubber band before it slammed viciously into the mountains below.
Buried beneath shattered stone and rubble, Kaido lay there with a vicious draconic expression, roaring in furious disbelief:
"Impossible!"
"How could your strength possibly be this great!!!"
The reality was right in front of him, yet no matter what, Kaido simply could not accept it.
He had expected Luffy to be powerful. After all, this was the man who could suppress the Five Elders.
But what he had never imagined was that Luffy's power wasn't merely overwhelming...
It was downright unreasonable!!!
It was not as though Kaido had never seen Devil Fruits that could alter other people's forms. Sugar of the former Donquixote Family, for example, could use the Hobby-Hobby Fruit to turn people into toys under her control.
But...
He still could not understand just what in the world Luffy's power was supposed to be!?
Using him as a jump rope!?
What kind of nonsense was that!!!?
"Hehehe~ You're still full of energy, huh!?"
At that moment, Luffy, transformed into his gigantic form, descended from the sky.
The tremendous impact of his landing struck the earth, yet instead of shattering the hard rocky mountain, it instantly turned the ground into something like a trampoline. His whole body bounced up and down on it, the scene looking as absurd as a bug dropping onto pudding.
"Damn it all~!!!"
Kaido's mighty azure dragon body suddenly convulsed, and he shot out of the mountain ruins at high speed, returning to the sky once more.
Waves of Haki stirred heavenly thunder, and the entire sky was enveloped beneath the might of the azure dragon.
If not for the wariness in his eyes, Kaido's current appearance alone would have been enough to terrify heroes across the world.
However...
"Hehe, you really can still get back up!?"
"Compared to those Five Elders, you're way stronger."
Luffy praised him with complete sincerity, but to Kaido, those words were unbearably grating.
Since when did he need some outsider to evaluate his strength!?
"Don't celebrate too early! I refuse to believe your power has no limits!"
Kaido still could not accept that a young upstart could possess strength capable of crushing him.
Or rather...
He could not accept this reality.
But just as he had always believed, in this world, the weak only had the right to be chosen. They never had the right to choose.
It was just that in the past, he had always been the one choosing others.
Today, he was the one being chosen.
"Gum-Gum... White Giant Swing!!!"
Without even using the clones granted by Pokémon-ization, Luffy relied on nothing but the power of his ordinary Nika form and still suppressed Kaido so completely that he had no room to fight back.
After merely two more exchanges, Luffy seized another opening, grabbed Kaido by the tail, and swung him around wildly, smashing him into the landscape until mountains cracked and the earth split apart.
On the other battlefield—
After entering their Pokémon-ized forms, both Zoro and Sanji likewise overwhelmed King and Queen, beating the two of them until they had no temper left at all.
It could be said that from the very beginning, this battle had been a complete one-sided stomp!
The three greatest combat forces of the mighty Four Emperors crew, the Beasts Pirates, were utterly incapable of fighting back before the monsters of the Straw Hat Pirates!
"So... this is the power of the Straw Hat crew!?"
At the edge of Festival Island, Smoker, who had just finished settling the Marines who had fallen into the sea, floated high in the air with his lower body transformed into smoke.
As he watched the battlefield in the distance, his usually stern face was now filled with nothing but shock.
Only at this moment did he finally understand why even a powerhouse like Fujitora, Issho himself, had been willing to follow the Straw Hats' command!
They were too strong!!!
It had only been a year since they last met. How had the Straw Hat Pirates become this powerful!?
If he had not returned to the Marines and been sidelined for a year, but had instead remained aboard the Straw Hat Pirates' ship...
At that thought, Smoker could not help but shake his head helplessly.
Because there had never been any such possibility.
Time slowly passed.
The overwhelming power displayed by the Straw Hats shocked not only Smoker and the other Marines, but also gave the pirates present quite the spectacle.
In the span of just two days, they had witnessed two legendary battles worthy of being written into history: the Straw Hat Pirates versus the legendary pirates, and then the Straw Hat Pirates versus the Beasts Pirates!
And in both battles, the Straw Hats had utterly crushed their enemies.
No wonder even the World Government had repeatedly suffered defeat at the hands of the Straw Hat Pirates!
With this kind of power, was there really still any need to search for Laugh Tale!?
Wouldn't it be more convincing to simply declare themselves Pirate King on the spot, challenge anyone who objected, and beat the whole world into submission instead of sailing all the way around the world?
Of course, ordinary pirates could never understand the Straw Hat Pirates' way of thinking, just as they could not understand the source of the Straw Hats' strength.
The battle did not last much longer.
The first to fall was one of the Three Disasters of the Beasts Pirates—Jack the Drought.
Though Jack, a Fish-Man by birth, had obtained terrifying and savage power through the Mammoth Fruit...
Before Sanji's speed, he was nothing more than a giant toy to be played with at will. Let alone fighting back, even clearly seeing Sanji's movements was already an extremely difficult task for him.
More importantly...
Before Sanji, who possessed the power of the Lineage Factor, Jack's prideful, powerful body was beaten into complete humiliation.
In the end, under this all-around suppression, he managed to hold out beneath Sanji's kicks for only fifteen minutes before his stamina gave out. Gravely injured, he lost consciousness on the spot.
On the other side, Zoro's fight with King was nowhere near as easy as Sanji's.
King's strength could be called the greatest beneath an Admiral.
In fact, if the boost from Devil Fruit abilities were excluded, King's combat power would not be inferior to that of Big Mom, one of the Four Emperors.
If this had been their first encounter with the Beasts Pirates, then unless he entered his Mega Evolution state, Zoro would have stood no chance against King.
But now... two months had already passed.
Converted into time inside the Room of Spirit and Time, Zoro had already spent a full six months training.
For ordinary strong men of the sea, six months might not mean much.
But for the Straw Hats, who were still in a period of explosive growth, it was enough to completely transform their combat power.
And the current Zoro, once he entered his fully enhanced state, might still be a little short of Four Emperors level—
But against King, he already possessed enough power to dominate him completely.
"Three Sword Style Secret Technique: Dragon Pulse · Dark Extinction Slash!!!"
A tremendous slash, formed from sword intent infused with Dragon-type power, Ghost-type power, and Steel-type sharpness, burst forth from the blades of Zoro's three swords.
Then the three slashes fused into one, crossing through the void like a phantom and crashing onto King before he could properly grasp or observe it at all.
Slash!!!
The fierce strike easily cut through Armament Haki that was harder than armor, leaving a huge wound across King's body.
Scarlet blood instantly sprayed outward, filling the air with the scent of iron.
"Damn it all!!!"
Wounded, King hastily clutched at his chest, yet even then he could not stop the blood from continuing to pour from the wound.
It could not be helped.
Zoro's strike carried not only the domineering ferocity of a dragon and the keen sharpness of steel, but also the eerie, unpredictable quality of a ghost.
A wound cursed by ghostly aura was far harder to heal than an ordinary injury.
Even King, a Lunarian, could not resist it in the slightest.
But just as he raised the giant blade in his hand, intending to return the favor, a ghostly sigh suddenly drifted into his ears.
"Hah... is this all you've got!?"
Clang!!!
King instinctively turned and slashed, only for the suddenly appearing Zoro to block him dead with Sandai Kitetsu.
In the next instant, before King could react, a chilling yet solemn aura suddenly erupted from Zoro's body.
Perhaps King's injured eyes were playing tricks on him.
For that single moment, he actually saw two additional heads and four extra arms appear behind Zoro.
Dark, eerie energy rose endlessly from his body, as though the entire battlefield had become a domain belonging to him alone.
"Demon Aura · Nine Sword Style Secret Technique: Dragon Roar · Thunderflash!!!"
Crackle!!!
Brilliant lightning suddenly exploded from Zoro's body, rapidly forming behind him into a gigantic dragon of lightning with glowing eyes.
At that moment, the ultimate yin of ghostly aura and the ultimate yang of thunder fused together, condensing into a hellish evil dragon reborn from the abyss.
The instant that wicked dragon appeared, it opened its savage maw and lunged violently toward King's body.
At the same time, Zoro's body moved with it, executing a sword slash of his own.
Rumbleeeee...!!!
Above the heavens, a bolt of lightning like the wrath of a god suddenly tore through space, leaving behind a terrifying scar in the sky.
And on the ground, Zoro's figure had somehow already appeared behind King.
All of the ghostly aura and dragon roars had vanished, as though nothing had happened at all.
Only King's body remained standing there stiffly in a strange posture.
Time itself seemed to freeze at that moment.
It was only after quite a while, when a gust of sea wind swept in from the ocean and carried the dust across King's body, that he seemed to come back to life, his body jerking as he slowly turned around.
"This... is... impossible..."
King's eyes were filled with shock.
In the next second, his right arm—together with the black wing behind him—was split apart by a clear line of light.
Slash!!!
A great quantity of fresh blood burst forth, sending King's body toppling to the side.
(End of Chapter)