Chapter 264: Difficult, As Expected
The moment Sengoku threw his first punch, both sides understood the situation. The Void Creatures' intelligence was not something to underestimate — these beings had lived long enough that their cunning ran deeper than most humans. The instant Sengoku attacked, they identified the assembled group as the enemy.
Over a hundred Void Beasts converged almost immediately, encircling Yukari, Sengoku, Kizaru, Whitebeard, and Tatsumaki from every direction, and without any further preamble launched a coordinated assault.
The sheer displacement of air from a Void Beast simply shifting its body was enough to produce gale-force winds. When they attacked, the resulting pressure fronts were like a typhoon making direct landfall — the kind measured in the tens of levels. Even with the fight happening a thousand meters up, the trees below were snapping at the trunk or being torn up by the roots. Dust pillars dozens of meters high kicked up from the earth, only to be immediately scattered by the wind, along with every blade of grass still attached to the ground.
Yukari's expression — usually somewhere between amused and deliberately unreadable — had gone to something genuinely focused. She wasn't in her usual elaborate outfit; she'd dressed practically, nothing that would slow her down.
Her jade-pale fingers moved with precision through the empty air. Gaps bloomed outward in every direction, a field of them enveloping all four of her allies, and every attack that came in fell into a gap — then opened again directly behind the creature that had launched it.
Every Void Beast that attacked found its own strike redirected back at itself.
"How is it that I seem to be the only one actually doing anything? Please don't coast off my efforts — one person holding this is rather a lot~"
She said it lightly, but anyone watching could see she had reserves to spare. Strictly speaking, among the Chat Group's members, Yukari was the strongest after Wandering Earth. Her complaint was more theatrical than accurate.
Tatsumaki, nearby, exhaled once and raised her hand.
Seven or eight Void Beasts directly in front of her. Her psychokinesis roared to life — she drove her fingers shut.
The creatures felt the air around them solidify. An invisible hand was crushing in from every direction simultaneously. Intelligently, their first instinct was to identify the source — those four figures, no question. Their second instinct was to escape before Tatsumaki's telekinesis locked them down completely. A captured Void Beast was just a stationary target.
She didn't give them the opening. Fine veins rose faintly across her forehead, her teeth set, her clenched fists pale at the knuckles.
Seven or eight Void Beasts, unable to move.
Kizaru moved the moment the window opened. Blinding golden light erupted from him, a stream of high-power photon rounds firing in rapid succession. His voice came out flat and unhurried as always:
"A thousand of them, honestly terrifying. This is going to take days, isn't it… Yasakani no Magatama!!"
The light rounds slammed into the immobilized Void Beasts and detonated in a chain of violent explosions — explosive force combined with tremendous penetrating power, and with the targets unable to dodge or defend, several of them had their exterior defenses punched through.
A chorus of agonized shrieks followed.
Tatsumaki and Kizaru had never worked together much before. In this moment they showed inexplicable coordination — because in a fight against an enemy this numerous and this capable, any failure to work as a unit meant getting isolated and overwhelmed one by one.
The blinding golden glow held the sky like a miniature sun.
And Kizaru now was stronger than he'd ever been in the original One Piece story.
Then a bolt of deep blue energy struck from a distance, catching one Void Beast precisely at the neckline, leaving a scorched crater and drawing a howl of pain from the creature.
A voice broadcast through external speakers from somewhere in the melee:
"Ahaha! Uncle Tony makes his grand entrance — does anyone require my assistance?"
Kizaru glanced over at Tony Stark and clicked his tongue in something approaching admiration. "Calling yourself 'uncle' is quite shameless, but the smug Tony Stark really is occasionally shameless, isn't he. Extra firepower is welcome regardless."
"Because these Void Beasts are multiplying fast, and a thousand is genuinely unmanageable at full strength. That Magatama volley hit quite a few of them, but I can see none of them took serious damage. The defense on these things is unsettling."
With Tony's arrival, that side of the battlefield now held five Chat Group members.
The Spiritual Core position had six — protecting the Core was the primary objective, and it needed the heavier coverage.
From his position, Ryū observed the distant fight without needing to move. His Observation Haki's range could blanket an area larger than a major metropolitan area; tracking the battle was effortless.
He ran the numbers.
Yukari's group was handling two hundred or so with room to spare — but there were a thousand of these things. Currently only two hundred and some had emerged. Seven hundred still to come.
His assessment: Yukari's group could probably contain five or six hundred before the pressure became genuinely limiting. The remainder would fall to his side.
The Void Beasts had intelligence — that was clear — but no fear response whatsoever. They could feel pain. Pain didn't change their behavior. Even badly injured ones attacked without hesitation, without retreat. It was like dealing with sentient beings for whom fear was simply a concept that didn't apply.
If they had fear, killing half would probably scatter the rest. That wasn't going to happen here.
A thousand targets. Protect a Spiritual Core a thousand meters underground. Keep the combat radius from expanding to populated areas. Three simultaneous constraints. Ryū's frown was thoughtful rather than anxious. No time limit for a reason. This is a sustained engagement. Hence the six-figure reward.
The more immediate concern: one of those five hundred-plus creatures out there could turn out to be Admiral-tier or above. If it did, it would tie up a group member, and the containment line would start leaking.
On the positive side — healers.
Yukari could perform basic healing magic; she counted as a half. Dragon Tohru could also heal; another half. Josuke was a full unit — Crazy Diamond's restoration ability had no equivalent, capable of reversing damage as long as the soul remained intact.
Three healers, by the informal accounting. The survival odds improved considerably.
"Gurararara — already over five hundred of the things out. Looks like Sengoku and that bunch can manage about this many, but any more and it'll start to strain them."
Whitebeard's voice, watching the far battlefield.
Ryū nodded. "Time to let some through."
He opened the Chat Group and pinged the five across the way.
RawrSoFierce: @Eternally Seventeen @I'm Rolling In It @Senbei Is So Tasty @Admiral Kizaru @Terrible Tornado — hold what you've got and start picking them off one by one. Don't try to contain more than that.
RawrSoFierce: Whatever you can't hold — let them through. Send them our way.
"…"
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