BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Like the thunder of a colossal engine, the heart beneath the Marine Vice Admiral's blood-soaked chest hammered, awakened by some feral instinct.
His skin flushed, heat fuming from his nostrils.
A beastlike growl tore free. Before Ivankov and Kuma's stunned eyes, Darren's lean frame launched with a single explosive stride—charging headlong into the rampaging Fengxi.
It was a meteor striking earth.
Blood slicking his arms, Darren locked his hands around Fengxi's massive tusks and—
BOOM!!
A dozen columns of mud and water erupted behind him, tens of meters high. The ground trembled, groaned, and began to crumble under the weight of their collision.
Not one step back.
"Hahahaha! Now this is living!"
Head tipped to the sky, Darren's laugh rang out. Wind tore through his disheveled black hair; fire burned in his eyes.
Power poured from every pore until a roar ripped his throat raw.
The blood-red aura boiling off him made even Ivankov and Kuma's scalps prickle. Ivankov, especially, stared wide, purple-shadowed eyes full of disbelief.
"He… he stopped it!"
Shielding his face from flying grit, he watched the impossible clash of mismatched forms.
"My excitement hormones are this strong?!"
"No—it's Darren-san's constitution," Kuma rumbled, awe leaking past his stoicism. He had never seen such brute force.
"This… this is impossible!" Saint Warcury snarled, lantern-sized red eyes fixed on the "insect" before him.
The other three Gorosei were just as shaken.
In strange techniques, Warcury couldn't match Saint Saturn's Gyuki.
In raw offense, he couldn't match Saint Nusjuro's Bakotsu.
In recovery, he couldn't match Saint Peter's Sandworm.
But in sheer toughness, defense, and head-on strength, Warcury's Fengxi was the strongest among them.
Forget humans—Fengxi's full-force charge would flatten even Elbaf's finest elders.
And yet the sight before them shattered everything they knew.
"You old fossils lean on your Devil Fruits and call it strength—what do you know of bodies forged by a thousand battles?" Darren spat, cords of muscle rolling like coiled dragons along his arms.
Fueled by Ivankov's Hormone Fruit, power surged without end.
Every pore, cell, fiber, and nerve sang for release, urging him to let everything inside loose.
It felt as if that force would split him apart.
He could feel it—Ivankov's stimulant had pushed his strength and speed up by at least a fifth.
If he had to name a number, he was past ninety-eight.
"Up you go, bastard!"
Mad light blazed in his eyes. He sank, gathered, and drove his arms.
How strong am I right now…
Before the four highest authorities of the World Government, Darren seized Fengxi's twin tusks and, straining like a demon, heaved the boar—dozens of meters tall—clean off the ground.
…Even I don't know anymore.
Then he hammered it down.
BOOM!!
Like a falling skyscraper, Fengxi smashed through a swath of jungle, the impact gouging a vast crater.
The earth shook.
"Attack!"
Saint Nusjuro's eyes burned with sacred fury. With a thunder of hooves, his body blurred into a black phantom and dived from above.
"I can't drag this out!" he hissed, urgency breaking through. "This Marine brat is too damned strange!"
He was already near his limit, and still his opponent grew stronger with every exchange. The speed of it chilled Nusjuro's bones.
But then a colossal, bear-like figure ghosted in behind Darren. Solemn-faced, the bear raised a broad paw and tapped the Vice Admiral's back.
Thump.
"No!" Saint Nusjuro's pupils snapped tight.
At that touch, Darren convulsed. A swirling mass of blackish-red energy, shaped like a bear's pad, peeled away from his chest.
Time seemed to slow. As the murky orb lifted free, relief flooded Darren's limbs; the exhaustion and pain dogging him since the fight began vanished.
The formless energy surged upward—and slammed straight into the descending Bakotsu.
In that instant—
Saint Nusjuro stared at his own "Bakotsu."
Something burst inside him. His huge frame spasmed; faint, warped ripples crawled across his hide.
"Agh… aaagh…"
His thin voice shredded into gasps as air knifed from his lungs.
Consider this: from intercepting the Whitebeard Pirates at Miracle Island's second battlefield to racing to the Holy Land, from the hunt for Celestial Dragons on Felsek to the direct clash with Saint Saturn—Darren had barely rested at all.
Battle to battle, blood to blood, exhaustion had piled up beyond counting. An ordinary man would have died.
Now all of it—every shard of pain and fatigue—had been transferred to Saint Nusjuro's Bakotsu.
Boom!
The giant skeleton crashed down, rolling and geysering snow and dust.
Black blood poured out in sheets, turning the scene nightmarish.
Even with near-immortal regeneration, the soul-deep fatigue and pain were torment beyond imagining.
"Damn it! That brat's aura is recovering fast!"
Saint Saturn didn't spare Nusjuro a glance. His eyelid twitched as dread took root.
"Finish him. All out!" Saint Peter roared. The Sandworm erupted from the earth, maw yawning to swallow the Vice Admiral whole.
But a torrent of blood-colored energy blasted out of the dust.
"You think… you're the only ones who can get bigger?" A cold, mocking laugh rolled over them.
Everyone froze.
Under Ivankov and Kuma's petrified stare—and the Gorosei's disbelief—the insectlike silhouette in the haze crackled, bones booming as it swelled… growing to a mountain.
Three meters—ten—thirty—fifty—eighty—one hundred.
Now equal to, even surpassing, the monstrous forms of the Gorosei.
Before they could react, a titanic, blood-slick arm shot from the storm and seized the charging Sandworm.
Then—
A black-haired giant, bare to the waist, burst out like a mad god, his hands crushing the Sandworm's gnashing, writhing jaws.
With a roar, he wrenched.
RIP!
A fountain of yellow-green slime arced skyward as the skyscraper-sized Sandworm split from its gaping maw—
—while still alive!
To be continued...