Tiger ignored Reiju, who was still standing there in a daze. His attention was fixed on Vinsmoke Weevil, trapped high above in the massive sphere of debris.
"ROAR!"
The gigantic, three-headed, six-armed monster threw back its heads and howled.
Without Reiju controlling him, Weevil had clearly gone berserk. Little by little, he was beginning to break free from the gravity holding him down, his already monstrous body growing even tougher.
"Adaptation, huh..." Tiger raised an eyebrow.
He was becoming more and more interested in Buckingham and Germa's tech. They really were former members of MADS, the things they had developed were anything but ordinary.
If he could get his hands on both technologies, they would be incredibly valuable to the Twelve Zodiac, which was still little more than an empty organization at the moment.
But before that…
"This uncontrollable thing needs to be dealt with first."
Tiger slowly looked up.
This time, he didn't use gravity or vector manipulation. He could certainly increase the gravitational force even further, but judging by the situation, killing something with a body this absurdly tough would take something else.
"I'll have to use that."
Tiger slowly spread his hands and rose into the air, leaving Germa behind. Passing through the clouds, he stopped right in front of the enormous sphere imprisoning Weevil.
"ROAR!"
Weevil seemed to sense danger. His mind was little more than that of a wild beast, but those same animal instincts made his perception of danger unusually sharp. His roars grew increasingly frantic.
Unfortunately for him, even though he could sense the threat, he still hadn't completely broken free.
There was nowhere to run.
Tiger raised both hands and slowly curled his fingers.
'BOOM!'
An invisible wave spread outward from his body.
'BZZZT!'
An indescribable mass of force suddenly formed above his left palm. The moment it appeared, the surrounding space, light, seawater, and air all seemed to stretch outward. Terrifying winds erupted from Tiger's hand, surging in every direction.
It was a force created by pushing expansion, repulsion, and positive vectors to their absolute limit.
"Positive Primordial Force: Expansion."
At the same time, an entirely different force formed over his right palm. It resembled a void that could swallow everything, dragging in dust and light to be compressed and consumed. It was the ultimate fusion of contraction, absorption, and negative vectors.
"Negative Primordial Force: Collapse."
[Additional Fusion Effect: Unified Force]
[All forms of force can be unified into "Primordial Force," allowing the creation of powerful Positive Primordial Force and Negative Primordial Force.]
Then…
Tiger thrust his hands together, forcing the two completely opposite forces toward each other. An unimaginably violent surge of energy erupted in that instant.
"How is that possible...?"
The explosion of power finally snapped Reiju out of her stupor. She looked up in disbelief, barely able to trust her own eyes.
As Judge's daughter, Reiju wasn't a scientist herself, but she still possessed a wealth of scientific knowledge, which meant she understood exactly how impossible Tiger's actions should have been.
'BOOM!'
Positive and negative. Repulsion and attraction. Gravity and anti-gravity.
Forces that should have violently rejected each other were being forcibly compressed together in Tiger's hands.
'BZZZT! BZZZT!'
Reiju watched the mass of energy repeatedly contract and expand. She knew perfectly well that every single pulse released enough energy to erase all of Germa from existence.
That was what horrified her most: an amount of energy capable of destroying an entire country was being handled in Tiger's palms as casually as a child's toy.
Only Tiger himself knew how he was pulling off what seemed impossible to Reiju.
[Paramecia: Paw-Paw Fruit - LV5]
[Devil Fruit Ability: Repel anything the user touches.]
[Level Effects]
' LV3: Unlocks the full basic abilities of the Devil Fruit. A pair of paw pads can form on the palms, allowing the user to repel anything with a physical form through contact. Locations the user has visited can be recorded, and objects or people can be sent flying directly to those places.
' LV4: Advanced Devil Fruit development. The user can repel non-physical things, use repelled air for high-speed movement and compression attacks, and repel slashes and shockwaves.
' LV5 (Devil Fruit Awakening): Conceptual Repulsion. The fruit's ability is enhanced further, allowing the user to repel or extract "concepts" themselves. Anything can be compressed, including pain, memories, fatigue, and gravity, making flight and healing possible.
That was right.
At this very moment, a pair of transparent paw pads rested in the centers of Tiger's palms, manifestations of the Paw-Paw Fruit. Earlier, when he sent Weevil flying with a single touch and moved at speeds bordering on teleportation, he had been using this power.
And now, he was using it again to forcibly compress and fuse Positive Primordial Force and Negative Primordial Force, two powers that should never have been able to coexist.
The new force created from that fusion had a name.
"Void Primordial Force: Annihilation."
Tiger murmured the words and flicked the tiny speck of light toward Weevil.
The next instant…
There was no deafening explosion. No grand display of light.
Yet destruction had already begun.
Wherever that tiny point of light passed, annihilation spread silently. Alloy, seawater, storms, light, everything touched by the Void Primordial Force was broken down and erased.
Weevil's three heads didn't even have time to scream. In an instant, they vanished alongside the rest of his body.
And just like that, it was over. The sky was left empty, as though nothing had ever happened.
Reiju could only stare blankly upward. For her, everything had happened far too quickly.
Before she could recover…
"Well then... Vinsmoke Reiju?"
A voice sounded beside her as a figure materialized out of thin air.
Reiju's body tensed instinctively. She turned, only to see Tiger reaching out toward her.
'Smack!'
She had no time to react as Tiger's palm struck her body.
'Am I going to die?'
The thought flashed through her mind. But in the very next instant, Reiju realized something was wrong.
She felt no pain at all. Quite the opposite.
'Bang!'
Something was forcibly expelled from inside her body.
It was an ancient tree root.
(End of Chapter)