On the other side of the battlefield, Sabo's clash with Inuarashi was an entirely different breed of combat.
No wild energy explosions filled the air. Only the pinnacle of technique, speed, and Armament Haki in brutal close-quarters slaughter.
Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang.
The dense percussion of steel on steel stitched through the night without pause.
To the onlookers, only two shapes existed. A streak of pure white lightning and a blur of dark crimson flame, carving mad, intersecting arcs across the plaza.
Inuarashi's Sulong swordsmanship had accelerated into the realm of the incomprehensible.
He had sailed with Oden. His blade carried the lethal, absolute finality of Wano's samurai. Layered with the limit-shattering speed of the Sulong form, every strike drove straight for Sabo's throat or heart.
"One-Sword Style: Inu-Giri!"
Inuarashi's form split into four identical images before Sabo. Four arcs of lightning-wreathed steel sealed every avenue of retreat.
"Fast blade."
Sabo stood his ground. Beneath the brim of his top hat, his eyes held the stillness of an abyss.
"But you won't hit me."
He gripped the Flame Dragon Staff in both hands.
The living weapon, which had consumed the Pink Dragon Fruit, let out a low, rumbling roar. The pink scales along its shaft bristled upright.
"Wind."
Sabo spoke the single word softly.
A vortex of unnatural wind spiraled outward from his body. That gale forced Inuarashi's impossibly fast sword-light to stutter in midair for a single instant.
At this level of combat, a tenth of a second was the chasm between life and death.
Sabo's Armament Haki erupted from within, coiling around his arms and the Flame Dragon Staff.
"Dragon's Claw: Flame Dragon Breaker!"
He stepped forward. The staff transformed into a roaring dragon of fire.
But this was no ordinary orange flame. It was plasma, compressed by the staff to its absolute limit, burning a deep, ghostly blue.
Boom.
The blue fire dragon tore through Inuarashi's four sword arcs with obliterating force and slammed into his chest.
"Gah!"
Inuarashi spat blood. His body rocketed backward like a cannonball, tumbling across the ground a dozen times before he drove his famed blade deep into the stone and wrenched himself to a halt.
Across his chest, the pure white Sulong fur was scorched black in a massive patch.
But the frenzy of the Sulong form devoured the pain.
Without a heartbeat's pause, Inuarashi ripped his longsword free, kicked off the ground, and shot toward Sabo as a white bolt of lightning once more.
On the other side, Nekomamushi erupted from the rubble with a roar.
Half his body was charred black from the lightning. But those crimson eyes burned with a madness that would not accept death.
"Not done! This old cat can still fight!"
Nekomamushi and Inuarashi, left and right, two fully berserk Sulong beasts, surged toward Sabo and Enel at the plaza's center with a fury that made all of Zou tremble.
"Seems we have to put them down completely to end this farce."
Enel dissolved his colossal thunder god form and landed beside Sabo. His Thunder God Staff hummed with a low, resonant frequency.
"Yeah." Sabo rested the Flame Dragon Staff across one shoulder and pressed down his hat brim with the other hand. "Then witness the power at the summit of the new era."
The next instant, the air across all of Zou turned crushingly heavy.
Mid-charge, Inuarashi and Nekomamushi felt their pupils contract to pinpricks.
Beast instinct screamed a warning. There was no gale, no shockwave. But the seemingly open stances of Sabo and Enel ahead had, in an instant, become an insurmountable, invisible mountain.
Boom.
Two surges of dark crimson lightning erupted from Sabo and Enel's bodies.
This presence did not sweep indiscriminately across the field like a tidal wave. Wanda, Pedro, and the elite Mink warriors at the perimeter felt only a sudden, violent clutch at their hearts. Cold sweat soaked their backs in an instant. Breathing became a struggle. But they did not collapse.
Because those two razor-sharp wills were compressed to an extreme, focused like invisible sledgehammers, and driven with surgical precision straight into the two kings in midair.
"Conqueror's... Haki?!"
Inuarashi, barely landed, dug his feet into the ground. A flash of utter disbelief crossed his crimson eyes.
"You're joking. Even these brats have that?!" Nekomamushi's mountain of a body seized up in the air.
As warriors of the old era who had sailed with Roger and Whitebeard, they knew this presence intimately.
One in a million. The quality of a king. Anywhere in the New World, it was enough to stand as a supreme ruler.
And now, under the man called the Fifth Emperor, two of them had appeared at once.
For battle-hardened veterans like Inuarashi and Nekomamushi, Conqueror's Haki of this level was not enough to crush them.
But it was enough.
"In a fight between the strong, a single moment's lapse is fatal."
Sabo stood within the dark crimson lightning, his eyes beneath the top hat as calm as still water.
"Besides, your Sulong forms hit their limit a while ago."
He raised the Flame Dragon Staff high.
Along its shaft, the orange Mythical Zoan flame clouds, the ghostly blue plasma fire, and the raging hurricane winds were compressed to their absolute extreme.
Beside him, Enel pointed his Thunder God Staff at the sky with a cold smirk.
Storm clouds churned together at a speed that defied nature. A colossal black sphere of lightning, large enough to cover half the Mokomo Dukedom, slowly took shape in the heavens.
"As one of the few true powers on these seas, this god grants you the most magnificent end."
Enel flicked his wrist downward.
"Two Hundred Million Volts: Thunder God's Judgment - Ten Thousand Bolts!"
Sabo gripped his staff with both hands and brought it crashing down.
"Four Deities: Dragon's Claw - Wind, Lightning, Fire - Great Scorching Hell!"
It was an apocalyptic vision.
Bolts of lightning thick as dragons fell from the sky, merging perfectly in midair with the ghostly blue plasma fire that tore the earth asunder. Wind fed the flames. Lightning rode the gale.
The three most violent forces of nature, fused with Sabo's advanced Ryuo, became a single annihilating pillar of light capable of erasing the entire royal city from existence. It swallowed Inuarashi and Nekomamushi completely.
"BOOM!"
The searing white flash stole everyone's sight.
The cataclysmic roar plunged every ear into temporary deafness.
A colossal mushroom cloud rose from Zunesha's back.
Had this place not been far from the capital and its people, had Sabo and Enel not deliberately channeled the force skyward at the final moment, that single strike would have wiped the Mokomo Dukedom from the map entirely.
An unknown stretch of time passed.
The wind scoured away the smoke and dust.
At the center of the devastated plaza, a massive, charred crater plunged dozens of meters deep.
At its bottom, Inuarashi and Nekomamushi had reverted from their Sulong forms.
Their fur was scorched away in great patches. Blood stained the ground red.
The two kings who had once stood unchallenged atop Zou now lay in the rubble, breathing in shallow, threadbare gasps, without the strength to lift a finger.
They had lost.
Completely. Utterly. Without a shred of doubt.
Before the true power that stood at the summit of the New World, the Minks' ultimate trump card was nothing more than the desperate, final struggle of cornered beasts.
"It's over."
Sabo stowed the Flame Dragon Staff and exhaled softly.
His coat didn't have a single wrinkle.
Enel yawned and slung his Thunder God Staff back over his shoulder.
"Boring."
Just then, crisp footsteps sounded from above.
Ace, wine flask in hand, walked slowly across the charred rubble to the edge of the massive crater.
He looked down at the two dukes, barely clinging to life at the bottom, and a trace of amusement flickered in his dark eyes.
"Still alive, Your Graces?"
Nekomamushi forced one swollen eye open, coughed up a mouthful of bloody froth, and bared his fangs in a wretched, bitter grin.
"Cough... This old cat... concedes... Captain Roger... really did sire one hell of a monster..."
Inuarashi lacked even the strength to speak. He managed only the faintest, most labored nod.
"Good that you concede. I was worried you'd be stubborn to the bitter end and make me waste more effort."
Ace tossed the wine flask aside into the rubble and opened his right hand.
The next second, beneath the cold moonlight, a cluster of crimson-gold sacred flame kindled slowly in his palm.
The fire radiated no heat whatsoever. Instead, it carried a holy, life-giving presence, as if it could heal all wounds and nurture all things.
The Flames of Nirvana.
"Go."
Ace flicked his wrist. The Vermilion Bird's sacred fire drifted into the crater like a living spirit, spreading into a sea of crimson-gold flame that enveloped the two critically wounded dukes entirely.
A miracle unfolded.
Before the stunned eyes of the Mink warriors, the deep, bone-visible wounds on Inuarashi and Nekomamushi began to close at visible speed. Scorched fur regrew. Even the life force they had burned through to sustain their Sulong forms was nourished and restored by the sacred fire.
In less than ten seconds, the flames dispersed.
Inuarashi and Nekomamushi sat bolt upright at the bottom of the crater.
They stared at their own hands, completely restored.
The physical stamina consumed by the Sulong transformation and the fierce battle had not returned. But they could feel, with absolute clarity, that not only had their fatal wounds fully healed, but the deep, chronic injuries buried in their bones and blood over twenty years had been purged entirely.
Feeling their bodies in a state lighter and more comfortable than before they were injured, a miracle that defied all natural law, the two kings' minds went blank.
"What... what power is this?!" Inuarashi gasped.
"Beat us half to death, then heal us in an instant. Not even Marco can do that!" Nekomamushi stared up at Ace as if looking at a true monster. "Just what the hell is your ability, brat?"
Ace did not answer.
He turned his back on the two Mink kings and every Mink warrior present, and left behind a calm, indisputable declaration.
"Now you've seen the Eclipse's foundation."
"Starting tomorrow, hand over the rubbing of the red stone."
Ace glanced back over his shoulder, the moonlight of Zou reflected in his black eyes.
"Then grip your weapons tight. Be ready to follow me to Wano and take Kaido's head."
This time, no one objected.
Inuarashi and Nekomamushi exchanged a look.
The two kings who had once sailed with the Pirate King, who had witnessed the pinnacle of the old era, did not hesitate in this moment.
Dragging their newly restored bodies upright, they knelt on one knee at the bottom of the charred crater, facing the back of the figure standing above.
"The Mokomo Dukedom... obeys!"
The Fifth Emperor, on this night, brought the ancient land of the giant elephant fully into the Eclipse's dominion.
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