Zaraki turned his head, and his gaze swept over Zoro, who was bent over with his hands on his knees, breathing hard.
That single glance made the green-haired boy's whole body stiffen.
In Zoro's eyes, Zaraki's aura had changed again.
The violent force from before had become even more dangerous!
Every strand of it felt sharp, like it was aimed straight at his vitals.
That cold, precise pressure made Zoro's pupils shrink.
His heart clenched, and for a moment, he forgot how to breathe.
"Hey, mosshead, why'd you stop breathing?"
Zaraki looked at Zoro's pale face with faint amusement.
Zoro dragged in a huge gulp of air that smelled of dirt and grass. His legs almost gave out beneath him, and he nearly dropped to his knees in the rubble.
His face still pale, he looked toward Koushirou and asked in a shaking voice, "S-sensei... that guy just now..."
Koushirou's expression was heavy.
As a swordsman, he was far more sensitive to this kind of presence than Zoro.
Just now, he had clearly felt a fully formed sword intent on Zaraki.
It was still rough and carried that same wildness as before, but it had already taken shape.
The beginning of Iron Cutting.
"So this is talent..." Koushirou muttered.
The bitterness at the corner of his mouth felt heavier now than when he took that punch earlier.
"I thought he was only gifted with overwhelming strength. I didn't expect his comprehension to be this frightening."
"Sensei, you mean he..." Zoro's eyes widened.
He pointed stiffly at Zaraki. "He learned it? Just from that one explanation? he learned it? Just like that?!!!"
How was that possible?
He had spent years without touching that threshold!
Yet this guy had only listened to a little theory, stood there in a daze for a while, and somehow grasped it?
"Is he even human..." Zoro muttered, his voice full of defeat.
Zaraki ignored the two of them.
The effect of the Enlightenment Tags was still there, but he had already lost interest in slicing leaves.
That feeling of seeing through everything was good, but the drain on his body was real.
More importantly, he had new equipment now.
Zaraki flexed his still-aching wrist.
The weighted guards he had worn ever since transmigrating here were still strapped there.
At this point, their weight felt no different from two pieces of cotton.
Now that he had the Modified Gravity Adjustment Garment, those things were useless.
Click.
A soft sound rang out as Zaraki undid the clasps at his wrists.
"Catch."
He tossed them over casually.
Two black objects drew a curved line through the air and flew toward Zoro.
"I wrecked your dojo earlier, and I don't have money to pay for it. Take these as a gift, call it an early lesson in how the adult world works."
Zoro raised both hands and caught them on instinct.
He did not take it seriously.
Zaraki's body did not look especially bulky, and there was nothing about those guards that seemed unusual at first glance.
Then, when the weight hit his palms, Zoro's expression changed at once.
His arms bent under a weight far beyond anything he expected.
Caught completely off guard, his upper body pitched forward and his balance broke.
Thud!
A heavy muffled sound rang out.
Zoro and the wrist guards slammed straight into the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Those two ordinary-looking guards now felt like solid blocks of lead, pinning his hands into the dirt and pressing out two shallow dents in the earth.
"W-what the hell is this?!"
Zoro's face flushed red.
Veins stood out across his forehead as he strained with everything he had, trying to yank his hands back out of the dirt.
The two wrist guards were unbelievably heavy!
Beside him, Koushirou's eyelids twitched.
He had seen it clearly just moments ago.
Zaraki had worn those things through the entire fight, and even then his swings had been so fast that not even an afterimage could be caught.
Zaraki watched Zoro struggle with the wrist guards and curled his lip as though he were throwing away worthless scrap.
"Too light. Those childish toys aren't even worth keeping."
Zoro's face turned even redder, and the veins at his temples throbbed!
Being handed something like this so casually hurt worse than the weight itself.
"Who the hell wants your trash?!"
The green-haired boy growled from deep in his throat.
The muscles in his arms swelled until they nearly split his sleeves.
With a hoarse shout, he tore the two lumps of iron out of the dirt and hurled them away with all his strength without even looking.
Two heavy impacts sounded from the distant brush, and several birds flew up in alarm.
Zoro staggered back two steps, shaking out his numb arms, his face still dark with humiliation.
"Oh? You can still throw them? Guess they really were too light."
Zaraki paid no attention to Zoro's wounded pride.
To him now, the weight he had just removed truly felt like nothing.
When the body was too light, the sword felt wrong in his hand.
When the sword felt wrong, the sensation of cutting lost its weight.
The resistance of flesh giving way, the drag of bone and muscle and the feeling of every inch of his body roaring along with the swing.
That was the greatest sense of security he had in this world.
Now he had something new to replace it.
Zaraki reached into the torn inner layer of his coat and pulled out a folded pitch-black trench coat.
It looked plain.
Just an ordinary black outer coat, with no decoration to speak of.
The fabric looked like rough, matte cotton and linen. Even the frayed seams looked coarse and unremarkable.
To anyone else, it looked like the kind of thing sold at a roadside stall for a few hundred Berries.
Only Zaraki knew better.
The moment the coat settled into his hand, his wrist dropped sharply.
'Tch.' Zaraki raised a brow.
The muscles in his arm tensed at once, veins rising as he barely stopped the downward pull.
The system had not lied.
This so-called Gravity Adjustment Garment started at five times gravity.
It felt dense and crushing in his hand, not like clothing at all.
"Wearing something this thick in this weather's going to make me sweat."
Zaraki muttered to himself and flicked his wrist, tossing the bundle of black cloth onto the ground beside him.
An ordinary coat would have spread open in the air and drifted down lightly.
This one dropped straight down.
BOOM—!!
A deep, thunderous crash shook the ground.
The earth caved in where the black trench coat landed. Cracks spread out from the center like a spiderweb.
The dust that burst up did not even have time to scatter before an invisible force crushed it back down into the pit.
The entire back yard of the dojo shook.
Zaraki rolled his slightly numb wrist and looked at the deep pit in the ground.
The black trench coat lay quietly at the bottom without a single wrinkle.
A satisfied grin spread across his face.
This was more like it!
This was the kind of restraint a real monster should wear!
The wind moved through the bamboo forest, stirring a few scattered leaves.
A few steps away, Zoro had been about to rush forward and argue, but now he was frozen in place with one foot still hanging mid-step.
Beside him, Koushirou still held half a bamboo leaf between his fingers.
His eyes, usually narrowed to slits, had opened slightly in stunned silence as both of them were staring at the pit.