The breakwater continued to disintegrate and sink under the bombardment of the two monsters.
Genn's body hissed with high-heat white vapor. The preternatural self-healing of his Zoan Awakening allowed him to withstand Ace's Ryuo and divine fire time and again. With every forced step back, the massive black bull pressed forward with an even more vicious, brutal posture.
"Pirate, do you see! This is the crushing weight of absolute vitality!"
Genn's bull head was covered in scorch marks, but his grin was pure madness. His black horns kicked up gales, crushing giant stones like scrap paper. "Even if you are a Mythical Zoan and can match my attrition, in my awakened state, my recovery is infinite!"
To Genn, every exchange was a countdown to Ace's exhaustion. He just had to maintain the rhythm.
Ace retreated a dozen meters after taking a heavy arm-slash head-on. He didn't throw another punch. He simply watched the "Shield of God" across from him, whose aura was radiating overwhelming arrogance.
Ace took a deep breath of the cold, salty rain.
"Endless vitality? Then using you as a punching bag to test my strength is indeed perfect." A cold smile curled at the corner of Ace's mouth.
During the months of training in the sky, he had struggled to trigger the qualitative change of the divine fire within him. It was too frantic—so volatile that he needed an enemy with extreme hardness just to act as a container for the strike. This CP0 black bull finally met the standard for a nuclear-level test.
"I'll use your flesh and bone as my witness."
Under Genn's wary gaze, Ace's torso leaned back. His heart roared like war drums. The sky-high flames that usually lashed outward suddenly collapsed, sucked back into his pores at a terrifying speed.
Through the ultimate control of Life Return, Ace locked all thermal energy and high-density Armament Haki deep into his bones and muscles. He became a miniature nuclear reactor.
This self-destructive compression would have burned anyone else's organs to ash instantly. But relying on the Suzaku Fruit's super-regeneration, Ace maintained a dynamic balance between total destruction and instant repair.
His body was no longer wreathed in open flames. Instead, glowing crimson-gold divine fire patterns—ancient totems of power—intertwined along his bronzed muscles like flowing lava.
Suzaku Ryuo: Flame Hell Shura.
As he exerted slight force, the concrete beneath his feet instantly melted into a bubbling pit.
Genn's pupils contracted. The beast's instinctual radar for death screamed. He realized that if they touched, the extreme temperature on Ace's surface would burn away his defensive Haki before a blow even landed.
"Don't think you can pull off some ridiculous trump card! Die!"
Genn poured every ounce of over-compressed muscle power into his horns. His four hooves shattered the rock, kicking up sonic boom rings as he launched a final, life-risking charge.
"Secret Technique: Dead Black Spiral Thrust!"
The night rain was cut in half by the charge. But at the moment of impact, Genn's eyes captured only a faint trail of fire.
Ace was ridiculously fast—moving as if teleporting. He shifted past the wind pressure of the horns and came to a violent, silent halt in the shadow of the black bull's chest.
"As the first to witness this form, you should feel honored."
The judgment was a requiem. Ace's black fist, covered in glowing crimson-gold patterns and refined Ryuo, pulled back an inch. Then, he delivered a short-range collapsing punch into the giant bull's belly.
"Try taking this and see if you can still heal."
"Flame Hell: Guren Implosion!"
There was no booming explosion.
The moment the punch landed, the high-pressure kinetic energy and divine fire—like thousands of high-temperature iron sands—used the logic of internal-penetration Ryuo to bypass the surface skin. It poured directly into the core of Genn's body.
The nuclear furnace ignited inside the lungs and heart.
HISS—
For a half-second, there was silence. Then, Genn's mouth pulled into an exaggerated angle. Mouthful after mouthful of mud-like blood, mixed with charred flesh, erupted from his throat.
Inside him, the sound of burning rock cracking echoed. The divine fire burned everything without restraint. The "indestructible" recovery power didn't even have time to stitch a wound before the cells were erased as burnt ash.
The black flame clouds of the Awakening dissipated. The "Shield of God" was hollowed out from the inside.
Ace stood tall as the divine totems faded back into his skin, exiting the burst form. He looked at the collapsed remains of the giant beast.
"Is this all there is to awakening-level self-healing? He feels weaker than the Lucci who reappears two years later."
Ace looked toward the horizon. "It seems I can try testing the waters with an Admiral or a Yonko next."
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