The night wind swept over the Mokomo Dukedom, carrying the salt of the sea and the chill of the forest.
Tonight, Zou's clouds were thin.
The colossal Zunesha trudged slowly across the ocean. With every step, the entire country trembled.
But that tremor could not touch the suffocating tension gripping the plaza.
The central square before the royal palace had been cleared.
The Musketeers, the Guardians, every Mink resident had withdrawn to the forest edge and the high ruins at the square's perimeter.
No one spoke. Every eye was locked on the torchlit clearing at the center.
Four figures stood there.
On the left, the two rulers of the Minks.
The Ruler of Day, Duke Inuarashi.
The Ruler of Night, Duke Nekomamushi.
On the right, the two Supreme Commanders of the Eclipse Pirates.
Chief of Staff, Sabo.
The Thunder Calamity, Enel.
Ace had not entered the field. He sat high above on a broken wall at the square's edge, a flask of Zou's fruit wine in one hand.
Kuma, Leona, Carina, and the others stood beside him, watching like an audience awaiting a grand performance.
"Hey, mutt. Stray cat."
Enel rested his Thunder God Staff, gleaming with metallic luster, across his shoulder. He yawned lazily, sparks dancing at his fingertips.
"My time is precious. If all you can do is glare like the past few days, I suggest you surrender now."
"Shut your mouth, brat." Nekomamushi exhaled a thick plume of white smoke and tossed his pipe aside.
His massive frame sank low, claws gouging deep into the stone with a grinding screech.
Inuarashi slowly drew the famed blade at his hip. The steel gleamed cold in the torchlight.
"Our intent was to witness Ace's caliber with our own eyes."
Inuarashi's gaze passed over Sabo and Enel, fixing on Ace where he sat watching above. "Since you two insist on standing in our way, even boasting that we are unworthy to challenge your captain."
Inuarashi's eyes returned to them. He gripped his sword in both hands, his gaze sharpening to a blade's edge.
"Then we will grant your wish. We will break through you with everything we have, and then drag him onto the field ourselves."
A high-altitude gale tore across the square.
The last thin veil of cloud covering the sky was ripped apart by the wind.
A colossal, flawless, perfectly round full moon hung unveiled in Zou's night sky.
The cold moonlight poured down like a silver waterfall, falling precisely upon Inuarashi and Nekomamushi.
Transformation erupted in that instant.
"Roar!"
Two howls, like ancient beasts tearing free from the depths of time, exploded from their throats.
Under the fervent, reverent gaze of every Mink present, the two dukes' bodies began to warp violently.
Their already massive frames swelled further. Their fur grew at visible speed, surging into waves of pure white that whipped wildly in the night wind.
This was the ultimate curse and blessing buried in Mink blood.
"Crackle! Crackle!"
The electricity was no longer mere static from rubbing fur. It became visible bolts of deep blue lightning, coiling around their limbs and torsos like thousands of serpents.
When they raised their heads again, their eyes had turned a feral, unrestrained crimson.
The Mink Tribe's ultimate art. Sulong Form.
Boom.
The instant the transformation completed, the stone beneath their feet could no longer bear the monstrous muscle density and explosive force. It collapsed into a massive crater.
A shockwave of pressure and electric sparks swept outward in a ring, forcing the front row of Musketeers to shield their faces and retreat.
"Oh?"
Ace's eyes flickered with appreciation from his high perch. "Their presence has multiplied several times over. Speed and power have broken past normal physical limits. This form has some substance."
On the plaza below, Sabo adjusted his top hat, the smile fading from his lips.
He could feel it. The presence of these two beasts had surged, brushing against or even crossing the threshold of the New World's top commanders.
"That's more like it."
The boredom in Enel's eyes finally dissolved, replaced by a feverish battle lust.
"If you put up no fight at all, I'd be terribly disappointed."
Before his words finished.
Whoosh.
The pure white wave at the plaza's center vanished.
Not a blur of high-speed movement. It simply disappeared beyond the capture limit of the naked eye.
"So fast!"
Carrot couldn't hold back her gasp from above.
"Above you, Enel." Sabo's calm voice had barely sounded before his Flame Dragon Staff swung up to his left.
Almost simultaneously.
Clang.
A deafening clash of metal and lightning exploded at Sabo's left flank.
Inuarashi, in his Sulong form, had appeared beside Sabo as if by teleportation. His sword, wrapped in high-voltage electricity and jet-black Armament Haki, carried enough kinetic force to cleave a mountain as it crashed against the Flame Dragon Staff.
Sparks and blue lightning erupted wildly. The ground beneath Sabo's feet sank half a meter in an instant.
"Heavy blade."
Sabo raised an eyebrow. Armament Ryuo surged from within, coating the Flame Dragon Staff, and he stopped the strike that could have split a warship in two.
On the other side.
"Get down here, brat!"
With a furious roar, Nekomamushi's mountain-sized Sulong form had already leaped above Enel's head. His massive outstretched claws compressed Armament Haki and blinding electricity to their absolute limit, slashing down at Enel's skull like five thunder spears.
"Playing with lightning in front of a god? Has that stray cat's brain fried?"
Enel did not dodge. Blue light flared in his eyes.
In his future-sensing Observation Haki, the trajectory of Nekomamushi's strike was as clear as slow motion.
Enel raised his right arm. The Thunder God Staff warped instantly, reshaping into a silver shield woven from lightning.
Boom.
Nekomamushi's colossal paw slammed into the staff. The raw force swatted Enel from the air straight to the ground.
Crash.
Enel landed on his feet, carving two deep furrows dozens of meters long through the stone before smashing through a pillar thick enough for two men to embrace.
"Did they get him?" Wanda clenched her fists in the distance, hope surging.
"No. Not even close." Pedro stared into the dust cloud, cold sweat beading on his forehead.
The dust settled.
Enel brushed off his coat and straightened up slowly.
That strike, comparable to a falling meteor, had not even broken his defense.
"The power's decent." Enel shook his numbed wrist, his eyes turning utterly cold. "But far too crude."
Bzzzt.
Two hundred million volts of thunder erupted from Enel's body. The violent lightning shot skyward, bleaching the night into blinding day. Enel's form swelled within the light, becoming a colossal thunder god forged from pure electricity.
"Two Hundred Million Volt Thunder God."
Enel's lightning-wreathed right hand clenched. The Thunder God Staff stretched instantly into a crackling spear of annihilation.
"Disappear, stray cat."
Enel hurled his arm forward. The thunder spear became a beam of light piercing heaven and earth, streaking toward Nekomamushi's chest at unreactable speed.
"Roar!"
Nekomamushi, deep in Sulong, answered with a bestial howl. He had no intention of dodging.
As a monster who ruled atop Zunesha's back, the Minks possessed an innate, towering resistance to lightning.
Every strand of white fur on Nekomamushi's body stood on end. He drove the electricity across his form to its absolute limit and leaped straight into the thunder spear. His colossal tail, coated in dense Armament Haki, swung like a world-splitting iron whip, crashing against Enel's thunder god form.
"Cat Willow Great Rampage!"
Boom.
The thunder spear and the Armament-clad tail collided in midair.
Two entirely different forces of lightning bit and devoured each other.
The blinding flash forced the surrounding Minks to shut their eyes in agony.
Enel's thunder spear was shattered, smashed apart by Nekomamushi's monstrous physical strength and Armament Haki.
"He shattered my lightning? Interesting."
Enel sneered. His body dissolved into a streak of electricity and vanished. In the next heartbeat, he reappeared behind Nekomamushi.
"Advance warning. Your left side is a dead end."
The words fell. Nekomamushi's beast instinct drove him left to evade, and he crashed directly into a high-voltage lightning net Enel had laid in advance.
"God's Judgment."
A pillar of lightning as thick as a water barrel descended from the heavens, slamming into Nekomamushi's back.
Even a Sulong body with immense lightning resistance let out a pained grunt under two hundred million volts of pure destructive force. His colossal frame smashed into the ground, reducing half the plaza to rubble.
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