"So this is what you were relying on?!"
Gazing at Moria before him, now towering like a colossal monster, Loki let out an almost cruel laugh. His sharp fangs radiated a thick, bloody aura.
Though he had been cut off from the outside world for so long, the power of a Mythical Zoan fruit still granted him an aura akin to that of a god.
The Dog-Dog Fruit, Mythical Zoan, Model: Fenrir, came from the giant wolf of Norse mythology—a savage creature said to devour the sun and moon!
Whether in terms of its abilities or the myth behind the creature itself, this Devil Fruit seemed as though it had been created especially for Loki.
That was why he had killed the king of Elbaf for it without the slightest hesitation.
Although there were still many unresolved historical issues and hidden truths behind that incident...
None of that mattered anymore!
Ever since he was young, Loki had been prophesied by a witch to one day slay his father. Growing up with that prophecy on his back, he had long since stopped caring about anything in this world.
And the sole meaning of his existence was to fulfill that prophecy—
To destroy this world!!!
"Relying on?!"
Hearing Loki's question, Moria, whose head had already disappeared into the mist, replied in a low voice:
"No! What I rely on has never been myself!"
"This is only a form meant to play with you for a little while!"
"You people have never seen a towering tree reaching into the heavens. You look at the World Tree that shelters you and think you've already seen everything the world has to offer..."
"But you don't realize that the giants of Elbaf, burdened with a special fate, have long since become the most ridiculous frogs at the bottom of a well because of the limitations of their vision!"
"Frogs at the bottom of a well?"
Loki, mocked by Moria, showed not the slightest trace of anger. The curve of his grin even widened.
"I agree with that statement!"
"The giants of this country really are a bunch of short-sighted, narrow-minded fools!"
"It seems the two of us might actually have quite a lot in common!"
"Don't misunderstand me!"
Moria suddenly revealed a sneering expression and refuted Loki without hesitation:
"When I said frogs at the bottom of a well, that included you too, idiot!!!"
"Destroy the world? What a laughable wish. It sounds like something only someone living in a fairy tale would come up with."
"With a capacity as small as yours, what right do you have to compare yourself to this great me, who has joined the Straw Hat Pirates?!"
Boom!!!
A surging force of shadows suddenly erupted from Moria's body, spreading in every direction. In the blink of an eye, it covered the entire battlefield, forming a dense shadow domain that turned the surroundings into a pitch-black land.
"What is this?"
Looking at the shadows that had suddenly enveloped the area around him, Loki immediately felt a burst of surprise.
Fortunately, years of imprisonment with his eyes sealed had allowed him to train his Observation Haki to an extraordinary degree. Naturally, he would not be frightened by mere darkness.
But at that very moment, Loki suddenly sensed danger. Almost instinctively, he flashed sharply to the side.
In the next instant, a pitch-black shadow spear burst from beneath Loki's feet, stabbing toward the place where he had just been standing.
"This is...?!"
A sharp gleam flashed through Loki's crimson, ferocious eyes.
He abruptly raised his head and looked toward Moria in the sky. Licking his tongue with great interest, he laughed.
"Interesting!"
"Is this the awakened power of your fruit?!"
As the prince of Elbaf, Loki saw through it at a glance. The power Moria was using now was far beyond what an ordinary Paramecia should possess.
And within the dark shadows, Moria, who had already fused with the darkness, also revealed a cold smile.
Loki was right. This shadow domain that enveloped even space itself was indeed the product of the awakened Shadow-Shadow Fruit.
Relying on the overwhelming body granted to him by Shadow's Asgard, Moria had finally broken through the final barrier of his Devil Fruit ability and successfully awakened the Shadow-Shadow Fruit.
Unfortunately, awakening the Shadow-Shadow Fruit required one to control an enormous amount of shadow power and use powerful mental strength as the vessel.
In the pirate world, there were almost no methods for training mental power. One could only rely on innate talent and willpower.
In other words, under normal circumstances, Moria might very well have gone his entire life without ever touching the awakening of the Shadow-Shadow Fruit.
Fortunately, things were completely different now!
Rustle! Rustle!
Within the shadow domain, Moria's attacks did not stop because of Loki's words. Several shadow spears suddenly charged at Loki from every direction, sealing off every possible escape route.
However, what Moria did not expect was...
Pfft!!!
Facing the many shadow spears attacking him, Loki actually made no attempt to dodge. He simply allowed them to pierce into his body.
Within the endless darkness, a flash of scarlet blood suddenly shone.
"Hm?"
Moria immediately let out a doubtful hum.
"Why didn't you dodge?"
"Because there was no need!!!"
With several bloody holes opened in his body, Loki smiled sinisterly. He grabbed the shadow spears and pulled them out of his body one by one, letting his blood gush outward.
Yet in the blink of an eye, the wounds on his body rapidly healed, soon vanishing without a trace!
The legendary creature Fenrir, though not as undying and indestructible as a phoenix, possessed terrifying healing abilities thanks to its powerful fleshly body.
Before its stamina and lifeblood were completely exhausted, even fatal wounds were little more than meaningless decorations.
Boom!!!
Boiling flames suddenly surged out from Loki's body. The flames were utterly pitch-black, blending into the surrounding darkness, yet they radiated a scorching heat impossible to ignore.
The black flames flowed downward along Loki's hands like liquid, finally forming two flaming chains that he gripped tightly.
A brutal smile appeared on Loki's crazed face.
"I've already experienced your moves!"
"Next, it's your turn to witness my power!!!"
Whoosh!!!
The instant his voice fell, Loki's figure suddenly transformed into a pitch-black streak of light. Wherever he passed, even the air seemed to burn and distort.
In an instant, Loki had arrived in front of Moria.
Though he was only a quarter of Moria's height, he suddenly swung both arms forward. The bizarre black-flame chains instantly moved like two infinite serpents, coiling flexibly toward Moria's calves.
"Godfall · Strangulation!!!"
Rustle...
Accompanied by a series of faint rustling noises, the endless chains instantly wrapped around Moria's body. Then, as Loki lifted both hands, Moria's massive body actually staggered forward under the pull of the chains.
Rumble!!!
From within the shadows came a violent impact.
Outside the shadow domain, everyone else revealed stunned expressions one after another, looking in confusion toward the dark region before them.
...
...
"What's going on?! Why can't we see anymore?!"
"Judging by the sound, they should be fighting inside! Damn it, what kind of ability is this? How are we supposed to watch anything?!"
"Stop arguing! Listen! Something seems to have happened inside. Was that the sound of a collision?!"
"..."
"..."
Because of Moria's shadow domain, whether it was the people at the scene or the audience in front of the screens, all of them developed an intense curiosity about what was happening beneath that terrifying darkness.
But no matter how curious they were, unable to observe the inside of the shadows, they could only obediently wait for the battle to end.
At that moment, they were just like Tristan and Téa watching Yugi and Pegasus play a Shadow Game.
They clearly knew the truth was right in front of them, yet because they were blinded by darkness, they could not uncover anything.
...
...
At the same time.
Inside the shadows, Loki's expression suddenly changed drastically after that attack.
"What?!"
Feeling the pulling force transmitted through the black-flame chains in his hands, before he could even react, his body was violently lifted up. Then, after the world spun around him, he was slammed fiercely into the roots of the World Tree.
RUMBLE!!!!!
At that moment, the entirety of Elbaf—whether it was the Underworld, the Sun World, or even the mysterious Heaven World—shook violently as though an earthquake had struck.
And within the darkness, Loki's body slid down from the World Tree in a rather sorry state, his mouth still murmuring in shock:
"How is that possible?!"
Just as Logia fruits had upper and lower ranks, Mythical Zoans clearly had similar hierarchies.
Fenrir was not some trash like a phoenix or Yamata no Orochi...
It was a mighty creature from myth that had once killed and devoured the father of the gods!
High-speed healing, black flames...
Those were all merely byproducts of his ability!
Just like how the Azure Dragon fruit could control flames and lightning, Loki's true trump card was the supreme strength brought to him by the Fenrir fruit!!!
Already the strongest among the giant race, when combined with the power of this Devil Fruit, the result was far more than simply one plus one equaling two!
And yet today...
He had actually lost in a contest of strength against someone else!
To the proud Loki, this was no different from having a vicious slap delivered straight across his face!
"What's so impossible about it?!"
"A frog at the bottom of a well sees only the patch of sky above the well and thinks it has seen the entire world!"
"But in truth, from beginning to end, you were nothing more than a clown living in your own little world!!!"
The enormous Moria turned around, his tone filled with mockery.
In truth, Loki's sudden attack just now had not been as pathetic as Moria made it sound.
It could only be said that, fortunately, under Red's influence, Moria had learned to be more cautious and had made ample preparations before coming here.
If he had not prepared so many shadows, that attack just now really might have allowed Loki to restrain him directly.
Even so, feeling the burning pain coming from his calves, Moria could not help but marvel inwardly at Loki's strength.
After all, just now, he had already prepared an Armament Haki defense!
However, no matter how powerful Loki was, to the current Moria, it was not a serious problem.
Having absorbed countless shadows from powerful people and Sea King beasts, Moria even wanted to directly spar with Red-Haired Shanks or Gaban and witness the strength of the strongest from the previous era!
At this moment, aside from those monsters in the Straw Hat Pirates, Moria truly could not think of anyone else in the world who could compete with him physically!!!
And all of this had to be credited to the move he had developed when he was young—
Shadow's Asgard.
This move could be considered the strongest technique Moria currently possessed!
Unfortunately, because of the limits of his own ability, this move, which seemed capable of allowing him to grow infinitely stronger, had never allowed him to successfully step into the ranks of the top-tier powerhouses in the past.
Added to Moria's self-indulgent decline in later years, this move had also fallen silent.
Until...
He met the Straw Hat crew and somehow inexplicably became a member of the Straw Hat Pirates.
At first, as an overlord in his own right, he had been extremely resistant to his new identity.
A dignified Warlord of the Sea, a world-famous great pirate of the past—how could he possibly remain under someone else forever in frustration?!
But as time passed, relying on his identity as a Warlord to receive quite a bit of Red's attention, he suddenly discovered...
Who said joining the Straw Hat crew was bad?!
Joining the Straw Hat crew was absolutely amazing!!!
The law of "it smells good now" did not fail when it came to Moria.
After inexplicably becoming a subordinate of the Straw Hats and serving as a little brother for a period of time, Moria suddenly looked back and realized that, without knowing it, he had grown to a degree he had never dared to imagine before!
The appearance of the Pokémon template allowed Moria to recover to his peak in an extremely short amount of time.
With the attribute enhancements of Ghost and Dark, both of which greatly boosted mental power, even his mental strength—originally considered one of his weaknesses—underwent a leap-like improvement after his second upgrade.
Of course, if he had only relied on the attribute boosts brought by leveling up, that still would not have been enough for Moria to swallow the shadows of so many powerful creatures in one breath.
The secret behind why he could now accomplish this lay in the first shadow he swallowed—
His own shadow!
Moria's Pokémon-ization was similar in approach to Cavendish's.
Through Pokémon-ization, Cavendish turned his second consciousness into an independently existing individual.
After Moria's Pokémon-ization, his shadow similarly obtained the ability and consciousness to act independently. It could move on its own without consuming any of Moria's attention.
Furthermore, his shadow was his servant to begin with. Unlike Cavendish, he did not need to divide his focus to control it.
Before Pokémon-ization, if Moria swallowed his own shadow, the effect would not have been very different from an ordinary Shadow's Asgard. At most, he would not need to endure as much mental pressure as he did when devouring other shadows.
But after Pokémon-ization, Moria's shadow successfully gained independent consciousness and became a separate individual.
After being devoured by Moria through Shadow's Asgard, it could even help him suppress those foreign shadows from within his body!
And because it had been transformed from Moria's own shadow, in a certain sense, it was the Lord of Shadows!
Suppressing those foreign shadows was even easier for it than for Moria himself!
And this gave Moria himself infinite possibilities!!!
As long as he had enough time and collected enough shadows...
What was some cursed prince of Elbaf supposed to amount to?!
Even if it were an Emperor of the Sea, the Five Elders, or Imu!!!
He might not be without the strength to fight them!!!
(End of Chapter)