As Charles and Blackbeard began their true clash, Stella forced the rest of the Blackbeard Pirates into hard fights.
"Heaven-Scorching Earth-Burning Dragon King Flame!"
Burgess was blown away by the erupting flames. Lacking the Dark-Dark Fruit's damage absorption, half his body turned to charcoal.
A spark traced past Stella's temple, and a deformed round shattered away.
As a sniper, Van Augur's arm stability was beyond question, yet even he trembled slightly at the sight.
Never mind the protection granted by the Dragon God possession; Stella's own defense alone was enough to drive one to despair.
In her original world, the most direct function of mana, beyond powering various abilities, was to provide defense.
Attacks that fail to reach a certain threshold cannot harm a Slayer at all, and that threshold depends on the Slayer's own mana.
And the girl named Stella Vermilion possesses the greatest mana on record.
What's more, Stella had activated the Slayer ultimate, the Feilong Feather Raiment, at the outset. Even with Armament Haki, Van Augur's bullet was merely not melted; it had no power to pierce her defense.
Lafitte came at that moment, his cane-sword scattering cold stars toward Stella's vital points.
Stella ignored feints and true thrusts alike and hewed down with the Feilong Sin Sword.
This world does indeed have great swordsmen who've reached the realm of making the light feel heavy—but Lafitte was not one of them. Faced with her cut, he could only retreat.
That stroke carved a fissure dozens of meters long through the ravaged street—and also split the Blackbeard Pirates' confidence.
Doc Q and Van Augur, those two who prattle about fate all day, began to feel that their destinies would end here.
Their captain wasn't faring much better.
The dark field Blackbeard laid down never lasted more than a few seconds before being torn apart by flame, and it had happened several times already.
To show respect to this villain who climbed step by step toward an emperor's throne, Charles opened the Dragon King Battle Form.
Casting off every last scrap of wishful thinking, Blackbeard barely weathered Charles's furious assault, but he had practically no ability to strike back.
A dark-misting palm slammed down, and Blackbeard smashed the street to pieces.
The Dark-Dark Fruit may be called the most malevolent, but in terms of direct destructive power it's not that strong. Thus the centerpiece of Blackbeard's plan was obtaining Whitebeard's Tremor-Tremor Fruit.
That Devil Fruit, capable of destroying the world, would make up the gap in attack power between Blackbeard and the monsters that stalked the seas.
For now he could only rely on his own strength. Though he burst with enough force to shatter the ground, he was far from felling Charles.
Charles leapt high and dove with a flying kick, his heel cracking against Blackbeard's upraised forearm.
Dense cracks spidered under Blackbeard's feet, yet he still managed to shove Charles back.
"I know another user of darkness. You're a far cry from him!"
Charles landed and said it. Perhaps because he'd long planned to use the Tremor-Tremor Fruit as his main offense, Blackbeard had not developed many attack techniques with the Dark-Dark Fruit.
As a fellow darkness user, Yami wielded horrors like Dimensional Slash.
Charles wasn't about to regret not getting to fight a dual-fruit user. Scum like this is better off dead early.
He stepped in decisively to meet Blackbeard's charge.
Flame and darkness split the space in half, and the two, wreathed in those powers, unleashed their blows.
"Fire Dragon's Crushing Fist!"
Charles's punch made Blackbeard spit blood. Enduring the pain, Blackbeard slapped a palm into Charles's shoulder.
Blackbeard possesses every quality of a superb villain; even in such straits, he never thought of giving up.
The Dark-Dark Fruit's damage absorption was his crutch now—he meant to wear Charles down.
Charles staggered a step, then swung again, his fist colliding with Blackbeard's.
Flame and black mist twined into a double helix, churning the sky to chaos.
An instant later, the energy spiral broke, and both men tumbled back.
"Fire Dragon's Wing Attack!"
Flame whips swept in under Charles's control, lashing at Blackbeard.
"Black Hole!"
Driven by the need to cope with Charles's assault, Blackbeard had been forced to improve his usage as well.
Once the flame whips entered the darkness's range, they twisted, then were swallowed whole.
But after devouring Charles's attack, the darkness Blackbeard had spread hit its limit and began to collapse. In that moment Charles closed in.
"Fire Dragon's Wing Blade!"
Charles's knife-hand carved a wound deep enough to show bone across Blackbeard's chest. As the wound vanished, the agony reddened his eyes like a demon's.
Even so, he bit back the howl he'd given before and reached for Charles's throat.
Compared to the skull's hardness, the softness of the throat made it an easier target to injure. Blackbeard's vicious nature manifested as a chilling calm like this.
Charles arched into a bridge, slipping the blackened swipe, then flipped to a handstand, body snapping up to avoid Blackbeard's kick.
The instant he landed, a slick of black sludge came seeping in.
Charles's left hand clawed down, and firelines jetted from his fingers, slicing the darkness before him into separate panels.
Turbulent flame and black mist veiled sight, but Blackbeard felt the mounting, terrifying danger from ahead.
"Fire Dragon's Roar!"
The pillar of fire shredded the remnants of flame and mist and rammed straight at Blackbeard.
All the black fog pouring from him rose to meet it. For a few seconds it even pushed the fire back a little.
But only for a few seconds. The pillar punched through, and the fire swallowed Blackbeard whole.
No matter how hard he grit his teeth, he couldn't endure that pain. His screams in the flames turned even more wretched.
After a long moment, the fire guttered, revealing Blackbeard smoking blackly. In the space of a breath, the carbonized burns on his body began to vanish.
"Zehahahaha! I spent twenty years to get this fruit. With this power, I'll never lose!"
A triumphant smile creased his face as he tried to shake Charles's fighting spirit.
Charles blew a white plume. "It's certainly a nasty ability—completely absorbing bodily damage. But it isn't without a counter.
Option one is to exhaust your stamina. But for a mutant freak like you who doesn't even need sleep, that'd take too long. I don't have that kind of patience.
Which leaves option two: if the user dies before the damage is absorbed, that absorption does nothing, right?"
Blackbeard's pupils tightened. "To think you could kill me in an instant—you take me too lightly!"
His mouth said it, but he didn't think Charles was bluffing. He was on the highest alert.
The flames surging from Charles gathered and compressed, all concentrating into one palm.
That palm looked no longer of flesh and blood, but formed of pure energy.
"Don't blink. Here I come!"
Blackbeard felt that before Charles's voice faded, the man was already in his face.
Even so, fully focused as he was, it wasn't that he couldn't react—only his body suddenly locked.
"Stimulate pain too far and the nerves go numb."
Charles didn't begrudge him an explanation before death. That numbness slowed Blackbeard's motion by a hair—and that hair cost him his last chance.
"Dragon Slayer Secret Art: Flame Dragon Demon-Cleaving Blade!"
Charles's self-devised ultimate cut fell. From shoulder to lower abdomen, Blackbeard was erased along a diagonal gap; the two halves of his corpse thumped to the ground.
Whether the others could escape Stella's hands or not, with Blackbeard dead, the Blackbeard Pirates were, for all intents and purposes, annihilated.
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