The sky above Sabaody Archipelago was bleeding red.
Admiral Sakazuki rocketed upward, propelled by the sheer, explosive force of his own magma. His arms had transformed into snapping, molten hounds—Inugami Guren—their jaws wide open to consume the floating traitor.
Light Yagami didn't retreat. A manic, euphoric laugh tore from his throat. The heavy, suffocating chains of playing the perfect Marine were gone. He was a god off his leash, and the adrenaline of pure, unadulterated combat was intoxicating.
Light drew his pitch-black saber. The steel hummed as he coated it in Level 3 Emission Haki, an invisible tide of dark spirit flowing outward from the blade.
He swung.
It was Level 5 Weapon Arts—absolute, perfection translated into violence. A crescent wave of invisible, razor-sharp Haki tore through the boiling air. It met the two magma hounds head-on and cleaved them perfectly in half.
But Akainu was a monster of the highest order. The severed halves of the molten hounds didn't dissipate; they liquefied, surging forward like a tidal wave of liquid fire trying to engulf Light from four sides.
"Too slow, Sakazuki!" Light laughed, his dark eyes wide and wild.
He didn't use his sword for defense. Light violently thrust his left hand downward.
Force: Uproot.
The cobblestone plaza of Grove 1 exploded. With a deafening, groaning crunch of snapping timber and tearing earth, Light used his macro-telekinesis to literally rip a colossal chunk of the island into the sky. Hundreds of tons of dirt, stone, and a massive, fifty-foot section of a Yarukiman Mangrove root were violently yanked upward, intercepting the magma wave.
The molten rock crashed into the flying island chunk. The wood instantly caught fire, and the stone began to melt, creating a massive, burning shield between the Admiral and the God.
"You throw dirt at me?!" Akainu roared from below.
The burning mass of land suddenly exploded from the inside out. Akainu burst through the center of the mangrove root, completely unharmed, his fist drawn back and glowing with apocalyptic heat. He was right in Light's face.
"MEIGO!" (Hellhound)
Akainu thrust his fist forward. It was a close-range, concentrated blast of magma meant to melt off half a man's face in a fraction of a second.
Light's newly upgraded Level 3 Observation Haki flared. The world slowed to a crawl. He saw the microscopic twitch in Akainu's shoulder, predicting the exact trajectory of the Hellhound an instant before it launched.
Light tilted his head. The magma fist blurred past his cheek, missing his skin by less than a millimeter.
But the radiant heat didn't miss.
Even with Armament Haki guarding his body, the sheer proximity of the Meigo was like pressing his face against the surface of the sun. The right side of Light's pristine white Marine coat instantly caught fire. The intense heat violently scorched his cheek, raising angry, red blisters across his skin.
Light gritted his teeth against the searing pain, his Level 10 Life Force desperately working to knit the burned flesh back together. His euphoric grin didn't falter; it morphed into a terrifying, sadistic snarl.
"You missed, dog!"
Light pivoted in mid-air, bringing his black saber around in a brutal, horizontal arc aimed directly at Akainu's neck.
CLANG!
The sound of the impact echoed like a massive church bell. Akainu had raised his left forearm, hardening it with his own high-level Armament Haki. Light's blade dug into the Admiral's flesh, drawing a thin line of blood before the skin instantly transmuted into bubbling magma, attempting to melt the sword.
Light's Level 3 Armament Haki acted as an invisible buffer, preventing the steel from melting, but the sheer physical strength of the Admiral was monstrous. For a split second, they were deadlocked in the burning sky, a clash of dark will and boiling rock.
"You dance well for a corpse, Yagami," Akainu growled, his face inches from Light's, his eyes burning with absolute, uncompromising hatred. "You have power, but you lack the weight of true justice. You are just a spoiled child throwing a tantrum with a new toy!"
"And you are a blind, obedient pig!" Light spat back, his sociopathic fury boiling over. "You think taking orders from Mariejois makes you righteous? You're a glorified janitor cleaning up the world's shit!"
Light channeled his Force directly into his boot and delivered a devastating, gravity-enhanced front kick straight into Akainu's chest.
The impact sounded like a cannon firing. The Force repelled Akainu backward, sending the massive Admiral plummeting back down toward the ruined plaza.
Akainu crashed into the earth like a meteor. The impact shattered the remaining cobblestones and sent a massive shockwave through the grove. Several towering mangrove trees, already structurally weakened by the fires, groaned and violently collapsed, crashing into the boiling bay and the ruined auction house, sending up colossal clouds of ash and steam.
Light floated above the destruction, breathing heavily. He extinguished the fire on his coat with a quick burst of spatial repulsion, but the right sleeve was entirely burned away, revealing his blistering, reddened arm.
He was hurting.
His Level 10 Life Force provided lots of stamina, but it couldn't turn off his pain receptors. Fighting Akainu was a completely different terrifying reality than fighting the fodder in the South Blue. His Level 3 Armament Haki was acting as a shield, but it was cracking under the ambient temperature. Every time he blocked, the heat soaked through. The air he was breathing was so hot it was scorching his lungs.
Below him, the crater of magma began to expand.
Akainu rose from the molten rock, entirely unfazed by the kick. The Admiral was a machine. His stamina, honed by decades of fighting in the New World, was bottomless.
"Is that all you can muster?" Akainu sneered, wiping a smudge of dirt from his cheek. His entire lower body merged with the magma pool he had created, drawing mass from the melting earth. "You deflect. You dodge. You hide behind your invisible walls. But you cannot defeat me, Yagami. Watch how I burn you to the ground traitor!"
Akainu raised both arms toward the sky. The magma pool around him began to violently bubble and rise, forming into dozens of massive, glowing fists.
"RYUSEI KAZAN!" (Meteor Volcano)
A barrage of colossal magma fists shot into the sky, filling the air with a terrifying, apocalyptic swarm of molten rock. They rained upward, an inescapable dome of absolute destruction aimed squarely at Light.
Light's dark eyes darted across the incoming barrage, his Observation Haki in work. There were too many. He couldn't dodge them all.
Force: Stasis!
Light threw his hands out, pushing his spatial control to its absolute limit. Dozens of the magma meteors suddenly froze in mid-air, suspended in invisible concrete.
But the sheer kinetic output of an Admiral was too overwhelming. As Light froze twenty meteors, thirty more bypassed his guard.
Light raised his saber, his Level 3 Armament flaring as he desperately slashed through the molten rock, deflecting massive chunks of magma.
Splash.
A glancing blow from a meteor struck his left thigh.
Light let out a sharp, genuine cry of agony. The fabric of his trousers vaporized instantly, and the magma seared a deep, blackened burn into his leg. The smell of cooking flesh filled his nostrils.
He violently repelled the magma off his leg with the Force, but the damage was done. The pain was blinding, white-hot, and suffocating.
Light retreated higher into the sky, his chest heaving, his body covered in burns and soot. His pristine image was shattered. He looked down at the Red Dog, who was preparing a second volley of meteors.
The red dog huh... he's right, Light calculated, his psychopathic euphoria momentarily pierced by logic. I can't win a war of attrition. Level 3 Armament is insufficient. It can block the impact, but it cannot pierce his Logia defense deeply enough to cause lethal damage, and it can't fully insulate me from the heat.
If he stayed at this level, Admiral Akainu was going to burn him alive.
The God of the New World wiped a streak of soot and blood from his mouth. His dark eyes narrowed, burning with a sheer, arrogant indignation that dwarfed the heat of the magma below.
He was Light Yagami. He refused to be cooked by a dog.