Shiki's Giant Water Prison was blown apart by an overwhelming burst of repulsive force. Even the distant floating giant islands he controlled were shaken—several of them tilted, on the verge of tumbling from the sky.
Shiki himself was blasted backward, rolling through the air for dozens of miles before he finally managed to steady himself, hair scorched, clothes disheveled—utterly miserable.
"Creed! I'll ask you one last time!"
Shiki's expression twisted into something feral and hideous.
If Creed still refused, then he would truly burn his bridges and stake everything.
"Save your breath."
Creed looked at him, answering in an icy tone.
After unleashing one ultimate move after another, Shiki's stamina was already failing him. Creed, on the other hand, possessed terrifying recovery abilities—his physical strength was rapidly bouncing back.
As one waned and the other rose, Creed had already seized an absolute advantage. Shiki's defeat was written all over him. To agree to any terms now would mean Creed's brain had been soaked in seawater.
"Creed, you're asking for this!"
In just a few moments, Shiki's face grew even more twisted.
Creed saw that look and assumed the man was about to go mad dog, staking everything on one final suicidal blow.
Instead, Shiki suddenly dropped like a meteor, streaking away as though he were… running.
"What, you show up out of nowhere to pick a fight, get your ass kicked, and now you think you can just run off without paying the bill? You think the world's that kind?"
Creed snorted. His body turned into pure light and he shot after him.
At that exact moment—
"Hohoho!"
Far off in the distance, the dozen or so floating giant islands suddenly lost their balance. They rocked violently; countless fierce beasts on their surfaces took to the air in a panic. Even an all-too-familiar pirate ship lifted off from one of them.
Shiki's flagship—the Lion King.
Earlier, the battle's shockwaves had almost blown those islands apart. They rocked, cracked, even shed chunks of earth, yet the creatures living on them hadn't reacted much at all.
But now every living thing seemed to be scrambling for its life, as if some great calamity was about to descend.
Seeing Shiki levitate the Lion King again, a bad feeling flashed through Creed's heart.
Not good… don't tell me he's going to—!!
Sure enough, in the very next instant, one of the outer islands abruptly lost its buoyancy and plummeted.
Boom!
A mass of rock weighing easily over a million tons—and likely far more—dropped from a height of tens of miles. This time the fall was even faster than before, slicing through more than ten thousand meters of sky in a heartbeat, the surface of the island rubbing against the air and kindling into sheets of flame.
It was like a colossal burning meteor, the kind of heavenly disaster that could obliterate everything within a radius of a hundred miles.
And directly beneath that falling island, two pirate ships were sailing.
The Creed, and the Polar Submarine.
Shiki had pulled the same trick again, using a plunging island to threaten Creed.
"Despicable bastard! Shiki, you're going to regret everything you did today!"
Creed abandoned his lock on Shiki and turned his power on the plummeting island instead.
"Yasakani no Magatama (Eight Span Magatama)!"
In that moment, he seemed to transform into a miniature yellow sun. Countless light bullets burst from his body like a storm, streaking out to catch up with the falling landmass in an instant.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom!
The terrifying destructive power of the Glint-Glint Fruit finally bared its fangs. Under the dense barrage of Yasakani no Magatama, the enormous island shattered in a heartbeat, disintegrating into a roiling cloud of dust and stone.
Countless chunks of earth rained down with a rustling roar, but they no longer posed any real threat to Redfield and the others.
Redfield couldn't help but wipe a cold sweat from his brow. If Creed hadn't acted, he figured he had only a fifty–fifty chance of protecting the Creed—and he'd have had to completely give up on the Polar Submarine.
He'd just defected to Creed's side; if he couldn't even keep the man's ship intact, that would be beyond embarrassing. Fortunately… that crisis had passed.
"Shiki really is a despicable bastard. That move is practically beyond what manpower can counter. No wonder he went to all the trouble of raising so many islands into the sky—they're his trump card! Even the strongest pirate crew can't withstand being bombarded by falling islands over and over again!"
Cursing Shiki inwardly, Redfield still couldn't help glancing toward Creed with growing concern.
Back when Creed saved Fishman Island, he'd been pushed to his limits by a single falling island. The one Shiki had just thrown down was less than a tenth the size of Fishman Island; that was the only reason Creed had been able to destroy it so easily.
But there were still more than ten islands hanging overhead—and some of them were even larger than Fishman Island itself.
"Everyone move! We can't be the captain's burden!"
Redfield bellowed, jolting the stunned crew back to their senses. They rushed to their stations and wrung every last knot of speed out of their ships.
But the massive whirlpool left behind when Shiki had drifted hundreds of miles across the sea with his floating islands was still churning.
The Creed and the Polar Submarine couldn't escape the pull of that vortex in a short time.
Which meant they couldn't possibly flee out of Shiki's throwing range any time soon.
"Jihahahahaha! Even if you do get away, so what? My floating islands sail through the sky faster than your ships can ever hope to—where exactly do you think you can run?"
"Creed, I'll give you one more chance! The hell—?!"
Hovering above another island, Shiki laughed wildly, intent on forcing Creed to submit.
He never expected a laser beam to spear in from afar, slicing away half his golden mane.
If he hadn't dodged at the last second, he'd be a blackened mess right now.
Whoosh!
In the next moment, Creed appeared above him, sword already descending.
The blow smashed Shiki from the sky like an arrow shot from the string, slamming him into the island below.
"ROOM!"
A transparent sphere unfurled, the "ROOM" expanding until it enveloped the island, which stretched for several miles in every direction.
Creed was done playing around.
He was going to finish Shiki in just a few moves.
"Jihahahaha! Creed, you wanna kill me, huh? Then your crew can go down with me!"
Shiki roared, brandishing his blades. He surged forward wreathed in countless sword flashes, hacking toward Creed.
At the same time, several more islands suddenly dropped, hurtling straight toward the Creed.
And not just those—
The remaining islands all began to shift rapidly, their positions sliding into place before they too started to fall, every single one of them locked onto the Creed like guided meteors.
Shiki was attacking where Creed was certain to save.
Even if he lost today, he had no intention of breaking here. He wanted to run, lick his wounds, and rise again someday.
But he had underestimated Creed.
"You like dropping islands on people so much?" Creed sneered. "Fine. Today I'll let you experience what it's like being on the receiving end."
He pressed his palms together.
"Cho Chibaku Tensei (Super Planetary Devastation)!"
"Let me 'experience' being crushed by islands? Jihahahaha, Creed, don't talk big—huh?!"
Shiki scoffed. He didn't believe for a second that Creed could wrest control of his floating islands.
But then—
Boom, boom, boom!
A colossal shadow suddenly fell over him. In the next instant, Shiki—along with all the sword lights surrounding him—was sandwiched and swallowed between two colliding islands.
Boom, boom, boom, boom!
And it didn't stop with just two. The islands that had been dropping outward began to veer, one after another, slamming toward the same point as if Shiki were some kind of ultimate gravity well.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom!
With Shiki at the center, more than ten floating islands smashed together, piling and fusing under the raging pull of Creed's gravity.
The force didn't cease. It kept compressing and molding, grinding the shattered landmasses into a single titanic sphere.
In no time at all, a gigantic stone orb hung suspended in the heavens—
a man-made planetoid of death.
(End of Chapter)
[Check Out My P@treon For 20+ Extra Chapters On All My Fanfics!!]
[[email protected]/Draumel]
[Thank You For Your Support!]