Just as Darren was about to blur forward in a burst of speed, his body stalled mid-motion.
The air thickened, clamping down like tar. An unseen pressure wrapped him in bands of force, locking his limbs and pinning him to the spot.
I can't allow you to continue your rampage—slaughtering my brethren.
The rasping voice slithered through the North Blue gale, cold enough to cut.
A vast shadow swelled from the snow, climbing higher and higher.
The black, smoke-wreathed monster crushed the crusted ground beneath its feet, toppling pines like matchsticks. Malevolence spread in waves—as if a demon from the Pit had stepped into the world and pressed the air flat with its presence.
Darren's brow lifted. He looked up into a towering shape dozens of meters tall.
Saint Saturn had changed.
Black, jointed spider-legs. Massive, razor horns like a bull's. The thing looked like nothing that should exist—yet it resembled the yokai of legend: the Gyuki.
"A Mythical Zoan, then?" Darren's eyes glinted with a fierce, hungry light as the beast's aura rolled over him. "Feels too strong… chances are he's Awakened."
The Gyuki loomed, Saturn's voice curling down with contempt. "Little brat Darren—an insect like you can't fathom whom you defy."
One spider-leg scythed up and came down like a ballista bolt, aimed squarely at Darren's chest. White ripples boomed along its path.
"The World Government has ruled these seas for eight centuries. You cannot begin to imagine the depth of our power!"
BOOM.
The impact detonated a hundred meters of ground, the land buckling and writhing as if earth-dragons thrashed beneath the surface.
Saturn's pupils shrank.
A gale stripped the smoke away—and there stood the Vice Admiral, unbudging as bedrock, one hand clamped around the tip of the spider-leg. Cords of muscle coiled along his arm, threatening to burst his uniform. His blood-wet cloak snapped in the wind. The leg had barely dimpled his skin before raw strength stopped it dead. A slow trickle of blood spread from the puncture.
"A suppression trick… paired with a Mythical Zoan," Darren said, hair whipping across his face. Through the strands, Saturn saw the slow, feral curl of a smile. "An impressive combination."
He ripped his uniform open at the chest, wiped away a smear of blood and flesh, and touched it to his tongue. Under Saturn's startled gaze, his eyes lit with predatory delight.
"Now this is the kind of tension worth feeling."
Saturn froze, an absurd thought flashing through his mind.
He took that on purpose… to test me?
Unease pricked him. He tried to yank the limb back—and found he couldn't. That "insignificant" arm radiated impossible force.
Black lightning crawled over Darren's body. Armament Haki surged; the unseen pressure shattered off him.
Left hand still gripping the leg, Darren stepped in. His right hand snapped into a three-fingered talon, Armament flooding it until the claw turned slick, pitch-black.
"This one suits you."
He lunged, grin gone savage.
"This is the tyrant's claw that crushes authority."
"Dragon Claw Fist: Dragon's Claw!"
His hand smashed into the joint—and tore.
Crack. Tear.
Saturn groaned as the Gyuki's massive limb ripped free at the socket. Green blood sheeted outward; the beast reeled, each backward step making the world quake.
Laughing through the spray, Darren lowered his stance; power coiled in his legs.
"Eight centuries of heritage? Don't make me laugh."
"Do you even know how long I've trained?"
Boom.
The ground collapsed in a vast ring, towers of mud and slush geysering skyward.
"Real training… two and a half years."
He slammed his foot down and launched.
Boom.
He became a black comet, a jet of rage tearing the air. Vicious dragon-claws shredded the sky.
The fleeing nobles, who thought themselves safe, looked back—and their faces broke.
A dragon's bellow rolled across the mountain.
Darren's tall frame soared, hurtling down with a triumphant laugh. His speed spiked hard; the black claws kindled with flame from the friction.
Saturn's eyes darkened. Two spider-legs whistled up to skewer him.
Clang!
Clang!
The dragon-claw battered them aside, sparks spitting, lighting Darren's handsome, blood-slashed face with a hard, arrogant gleam. He dropped faster.
He struck.
Saturn lunged with his horns.
BOOM.
Lightning-laced shockwaves burst outward.
Then Saturn went still.
Darren had slipped past the clumsy horns in a blink. His jointed hand locked around the Gyuki's skull.
Saturn's pupils needled.
Time seemed to hesitate.
"Eight hundred years to cultivate this?" Darren's voice was a low, taunting snarl. "What a joke."
"Dragon Claw Fist: Dragon's Breath!!"
BOOM.
Power erupted from his claw, pancaking the Gyuki's head and driving it into the earth.
Darren flipped lightly upward, his form a clean line in the storm. His right foot—wreathed in Haki—rose like a falling axe.
"After all this time, even a trained dog would be better than you."
CRASH.
BOOM—!!
His black boot slammed down, crushing the struggling head again.
The earth groaned; lightning crackled across the torn sky; winds churned like Purgatory's breath.
Humiliated and howling, the Gyuki convulsed, its titanic body thrashing in rage. Compared to that hundred-meter frame, the Vice Admiral—drenched in crimson and green—was a speck.
Yet he stood upon its skull as if on a peak,
a mountain no one could climb.
To be continued...