Chapter 356: Kaguya's Growth
Whitebeard had long since pushed the Tremor-Tremor Fruit's power to an entirely new level — one that went beyond even a Devil Fruit's Awakening.
If Yukari hadn't reinforced the Ancient One's mirror-space beforehand, and if the Ancient One hadn't reinforced it herself on top of that —
— Whitebeard cutting loose with the full force of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit might well have blown a hole straight through the mirror-space itself.
His right hand wreathed in the fruit's power, Whitebeard's broad, weathered face showed no sign of losing its grin. Facing down four Void Beasts at once hadn't stirred up the slightest worry in him — if anything, it had stoked something like the fire of his younger days.
That kind of fire he'd only ever felt back in his twenties and thirties, chasing Sengoku back and forth across the open sea.
He hadn't expected to feel that spark again today, and it had left him unusually fired up, unusually bold.
"Gurararara! So what if it's one against four? I couldn't care less about Berries, old man that I am — but Points? Now those I'm plenty interested in! Spatial Quake!!"
His white-glowing fist slammed down into the space itself, and a sound like breaking glass rippled out, faint but unmistakable.
Line after line of white fracture spread outward like a raging tide, sweeping toward the hulking Void Beasts ahead of him in a wave that covered everything in its path.
At a glance, the whole of the mirror-space might as well have been a block of ice, and Whitebeard was hammering long, densely woven cracks straight through it.
The cracks kept spreading, too — wide enough to swallow three or four Void Beasts whole.
The moment the fractures reached the creatures' bodies, several of the massive things began twisting and convulsing in a frenzy.
An agony beyond description tore through their minds, and a chorus of shrill, grating shrieks rose up — sounds no one could make any sense of.
The Dimensional Chat Group's translation, it seemed, didn't extend to whatever language the Void Beasts spoke.
Maybe there was simply no need for it. Or maybe they didn't communicate by sound at all, but by something closer to brainwaves.
"Old man Whitebeard sure doesn't fight quietly. Even from this far off, I can still feel the shockwaves — it's like watching mountains topple one after another."
Tatsumaki murmured this to herself, her cool, striking eyes settling on the cluster of Void Beasts.
In fairness, the creatures were simply too massive — her actual field of view could only take in one of them at a time.
That she could "see" several at once was entirely down to her formidable psychic power.
Just then, a thick tail came whipping toward her. The Void Beasts' actual target was the Wellspring of the Naruto world, true enough —
— but Ryū and the others had already declared open war on them, and the beasts weren't stupid.
They clearly understood these odd little "insects" for the enemies they were, and they didn't hold back when they struck.
The strangest part was that while every Void Beast seemed to have entirely ordinary intelligence, they all appeared to be missing one particular emotion: fear.
The one now swinging its tail at Tatsumaki was already at death's door — by any normal measure, it should have been fleeing.
Instead, mortally wounded as it was, it kept pressing the attack.
The thick tail cracked through the air, the wind it dragged behind it every bit as sharp as a blade strike, a violent gust powerful enough to level a mountain.
Tatsumaki's expression barely shifted — just the faintest crease of her fine brows — before her terrifying psychic power erupted outward.
The surging gale was stopped dead in an instant. The swinging tail froze in midair, as if it had plunged into some invisible bog, utterly unable to move.
At the same moment, another Void Beast's attack came flying in.
The creatures' apparent lack of speed and agility only looked that way next to the Dimensional Chat Group's members. In truth, they weren't slow at all — dropped into the Naruto world, there were probably only a handful of people who could even keep pace with them.
But this second beast met the exact same fate as the first, and worse.
Its entire body was swallowed up by Tatsumaki's psychic power, crushed and compressed again and again, as though she meant to squeeze it until it simply burst.
Its skin and muscle began splitting apart inch by inch, blood pouring freely from every crack as if it cost nothing at all — at a glance, it looked like a forest of grotesque fountains.
Its bones groaned under the strain, its organs took catastrophic damage, until the creature's eyes themselves were spraying blood in a wild, uncontrolled stream.
No one could say how long the fighting had gone on by now. Everyone had settled comfortably into their roles — one person handling several beasts at once, someone else stepping in to lend a hand here and there when needed, someone else who never needed the help at all.
Between all the divided labor, the whole thing had turned into an efficient, well-oiled slaughterhouse.
And that was exactly the word for it. As things stood, the mirror-space was a slaughterhouse.
Only what was being slaughtered wasn't chickens or ducks or fish — it was the Void Beasts, creatures of staggering danger in their own right.
Beasts this powerful — drop even three or four of them into the Naruto world unsupervised, and they could probably wipe the whole world out.
Measured against the Naruto world's power scale, every single Void Beast was a monster in its own right.
Measured against the Dimensional Chat Group, though... even Kaguya could now go toe-to-toe with two of them at once.
And not only hold her own against two — she could kill one of them outright in the process.
Kaguya's fight didn't come with the same thunderous spectacle as Whitebeard's, or Ryū's, or Tatsumaki's, or Tohru the dragon's. She fought more like an assassin who'd made a study of finding weak points — testing an opponent first, probing for the crack, and then unleashing everything on that exact spot.
Which meant that while any single strike of hers might not carry Whitebeard's raw output, every one she landed inflicted devastating damage — and no small amount of agony besides.
For some reason, hand-to-hand combat in particular seemed to be a genuine gift of hers.
On the surface she looked every bit the beautiful girl built for magic — the kind of face that screamed "spellcaster." And yet here she was, a melee powerhouse who could flatten a mountain with a single punch.
Drop the current version of Kaguya Shinomiya into the Naruto world, and she could probably go one-on-one with Ōtsutsuki Kaguya and hold her own — purely in melee, at least.
Ranged combat wasn't her strength. She hadn't even picked up Ki from the Dragon Ball world.
All she had was the path of One Piece-style hand-to-hand combat, walked step by step through Breakthrough Cards and group Points.
It was hard to believe that a little over a year ago, she'd been nothing more than an ordinary girl.
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