On the battlefield, Kai clenched his right fist.
Black Armament Haki wrapped around it like polished black jade, coating not only his fist but his entire arm in a layer of hard, indestructible armor.
Its aura was sharp.
Its pressure was immense.
Raising his head, Kai casually swept his gaze across the heavily injured Morrison, a faint trace of amusement in his eyes.
"Ready?"
He asked.
The moment those words fell, Morrison's lips twitched, and his face went pale.
His throat felt dry.
Almost instinctively, he turned and tried to flee this nightmare.
Kai was too strong.
And after learning that this child was Fist Demon Kai, Morrison's fear had been magnified countless times over.
That fear pierced straight into his heart.
Faced with a monster like this, Morrison no longer possessed even the slightest confidence.
He was a Logia user—
and yet he had no courage left to fight.
There was only one option remaining.
Run.
"If I don't run, I'll die here!"
"That monster is too strong."
"Fist Demon Kai… that's a monster who captured a pirate worth several hundred million in combat power!"
"Compared to someone like that, my hundred-million bounty probably isn't even enough to fill the gaps between his teeth."
With terror filling his heart, Morrison didn't hesitate for a second.
He immediately activated his Swamp Fruit.
His body turned into a mass of mud and sank into the ground, trying to escape through the earth itself like some sort of burrowing technique.
Seeing that, Kai narrowed his eyes slightly and looked toward the direction Morrison was fleeing.
"Run?"
"You think you can?"
"You came all this way—so stay."
The next instant, Kai's feet blurred as he stomped the ground dozens of times, using the recoil to vanish on the spot.
"Soru."
The Six Powers technique carried him dozens of meters away in an instant.
Then, using Moonwalk, Kai descended from above.
He stomped down hard on the section of earth through which Morrison was trying to escape.
Armament Haki gathered around his foot, coating it in black armor.
That single stomp carried terrifying destructive force.
BOOM—!
With a thunderous crash, the earth beneath him was blasted apart, opening a crater several meters deep.
The force of that stomp cracked the land open like a great well.
Mud and shattered stone exploded upward in all directions.
Crack!
Crack!
Sharp splitting noises rang out nonstop.
The ground shattered.
The earth split apart.
A dense web of cracks spread rapidly outward from the point where Kai's foot had landed.
Rumble…!
The entire area within more than a hundred meters shook as if hit by a miniature earthquake.
The ground trembled violently.
And under that force, Morrison—who had been moving beneath the earth as swamp mud—was literally blasted back up out of the ground.
A jagged fissure ripped across the earth straight toward him.
Bang!
His body burst apart into scattered mud, splashing in every direction like shattered sludge.
Moments later, Morrison used his Logia power to restore himself again.
Clumps of mud surged back over his body, patching together his damaged form.
"That monster!"
Morrison stared at Kai with terror and hostility, his heart pounding after feeling the force of that stomp shake the earth itself.
And right then—
Kai moved again.
A sharp tearing sound split the air.
Morrison's face changed dramatically.
He frantically turned his head, trying to catch any trace of Kai's movement.
But it was impossible.
Kai was too fast.
Morrison's reflexes simply couldn't keep up.
In the blink of an eye, Kai was already standing right in front of him.
Less than half a meter away.
Practically face-to-face.
Their eyes met.
Kai could clearly see the terror exploding into Morrison's pupils.
And before Morrison could react—
Kai struck.
He tightened his right fist.
Armament Haki wrapped around it.
Then he punched.
The blow blasted out with a piercing sonic crack, as though it had shattered the air itself.
The violent pressure of the punch distorted the surrounding space, sending visible ripples through the air like waves spreading across a still lake.
That terrifying force created a vortex in the air itself, locking Morrison in place under its pressure and keeping him from moving.
The sheer momentum of the punch pinned him where he stood.
He couldn't dodge.
He couldn't run.
"No!"
Watching that fist rapidly close in, Morrison let out a panicked scream.
All of the arrogance and swagger he had shown before had vanished without a trace.
At that moment, he felt a deathly sense of crisis unlike anything he had ever known.
If this punch landed—
he would die.
That fist wrapped in black armor filled him with utter despair.
"Stop!"
"I surrender!"
"I admit defeat!"
Morrison cried out in terror, desperately begging for his life.
Faced with death, he had no choice but to surrender.
Even being dragged off to Impel Down sounded better than dying on the spot.
As long as he lived, even prison was acceptable.
But—
his plea changed nothing.
The fist did not stop.
Morrison's terror deepened instantly.
"Stop! Stop!"
His eyes went wide in horror.
Then, right before his eyes—
Kai's Haki-coated fist crashed into his head.
In that instant—
BOOM—!
All the power within that strike erupted.
Overwhelming.
Absolute.
Catastrophic.
It was like a volcano that had been compressed for years finally exploding in a single instant.
The force it carried was enough to obliterate everything in its path.
Even the air seemed to shake under the impact.
Then—
Pffft!
Morrison's head exploded.
It burst apart like a smashed watermelon.
Blood, brain, and flesh sprayed through the air in every direction.
A crimson mist bloomed against the sky.
Chunks of broken flesh and shattered bone were hurled outward in all directions.
The smell of blood instantly thickened in the air.
Even after blowing Morrison's head apart, the force of Kai's punch continued onward, smashing into a wall dozens of meters away and reducing it to powder.
BOOM!
A deafening explosion followed.
The wall collapsed instantly, crumbling into rubble.
And with that—
Morrison was dead.
A pirate worth over a hundred million berries.
A Logia Devil Fruit user.
And yet today—
he had been killed in a single punch.
From beginning to end, he had possessed no ability to resist.
He had been utterly overwhelmed.
Kai's serious punch had blown him apart on the spot.
A moment later—
Thud.
A headless corpse dropped heavily to the ground.
Blood rained down from above, soaking into the earth.
Soon, the ground beneath it became stained a vivid red.
Morrison's corpse lay there in utter misery.
Headless.
Still.
Cold.
The life had already gone from it completely.
Lowering his gaze, Kai looked calmly at the body and casually flicked the blood from his right hand.
"A Logia user?"
"A pirate worth one hundred million berries?"
"So this is all you amount to?"
"That's it?"
Kai looked down at the corpse and shook his head, sounding almost disappointed.
"I originally planned to blow you apart with three punches."
"But in the end…"
"I still overestimated you."
"You're supposed to be a great pirate worth over a hundred million."
"And yet you couldn't even withstand two punches?"
"The second punch was enough to blow you apart completely."
"I really did misjudge your level."
He had originally assumed Morrison wouldn't be too weak.
A pirate with a hundred-million-berry bounty, after all.
Who would have thought—
he couldn't even survive two punches?
And more importantly—
Kai's first punch had merely been a warm-up.
The second was only the beginning of him getting serious.
He hadn't expected Morrison to be blown apart the moment he started trying.
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