While the battle against Doflamingo was being settled on the other side,
Ren was also locked in combat with King.
He opened with Divine Wrath: Myriad Bolts, unleashing tens of thousands of lightning strikes in pursuit of the prey moving through the clouds.
Each bolt was as thick as an adult's body, compressed into a dense state and carrying terrifying destructive power.
If one of them hit a building, it would be enough to destroy a four-story structure.
But—
King charged straight through it, tanking bolt after bolt with his own body!
During the exchange, Ren also hurled a Divine Wrath: Thunder Spear, the same kind of attack he had used against Doflamingo.
The energy released by that strike had been enough to wipe out a white-earth plain as large as a small city.
And yet, when it hit King, the effect was minimal.
"You really are troublesome. No wonder you managed to defeat Doflamingo. But it's useless!"
Cold light shone in the eyes visible behind King's mask as he beat his wings and tore through the layers of lightning filling the sky.
After more than ten minutes of pulling and chasing, he finally closed the gap in a real sense against the constantly retreating Ren.
"If you stop struggling now, I can at least let you die a little more easily!"
"Isn't it a bit early to be saying that?"
Ren drifted backward at an almost leisurely pace, then raised a hand and released Lightning Control: Thunder Prison.
Lightning from the thunderclouds linked to his body, then poured from his palm, transforming into a prison of thunder like a pack of raging serpents.
Dense, thick lightning branches wrapped themselves around the incoming enemy.
Countless sparks and arcs burst across King's body, even igniting large patches of flame.
And yet King's speed did not decrease in the slightest. The only reason he still could not reach Ren was because the rebounding force of the lightning kept knocking him back.
Up to this point, whether it was Divine Wrath: Thunder Spear, Divine Wrath: Myriad Bolts, or Lightning Control: Thunder Prison, none of them had been able to truly injure him.
Only Thunderflame Greatblade—Body and Soul Obliteration had the power to do it, but that move required time to gather strength and aim, making it impossible to land on a King moving at such high speed.
The battle had reached a stalemate.
But just as Ren had said, it was far too early to speak of victory or defeat.
Ren was being hounded and had no chance to unleash the Thunderflame Greatblade.
But King also had no way to truly catch Ren, much less inflict real damage.
Or at least... that was how it seemed.
"Too naive. Do you really think this is all the speed I have?"
Abruptly, the speeding King changed shape—or rather, revealed his true form!
His legs turned into talons. His upper body swelled larger. His arms transformed into black feathered wings tipped with claws.
His head became birdlike, and flames burned behind his back.
In that instant, King's speed rose explosively!
Measured in meters per second, he was moving at at least six hundred!
But that still was not the end of it!
The flames on his back suddenly vanished, and his speed surged again!
If before he had been approaching twice the speed of sound, now he was moving at nearly three times the speed of sound!
This was King's plan all along!
"A fool with no brains can't survive on these seas!
If you fall for this, then regret your stupidity in hell!"
King exploded forward, closing in at nearly triple sonic speed, his sharp beak aimed straight at Ren.
In the blink of an eye, his enemy would be pierced through!
The tremendous kinetic force behind the attack could even... tear the target apart!
Of course, he would not really tear Ren apart. King still intended to extract information about the artificial Devil Fruits from him.
Someone capable of defeating Doflamingo could not possibly be weak—but perhaps he still needed to hold back?
That thought even crossed King's mind in that very moment.
But in the next blink, his beak struck nothing.
'I missed?!'
King was horrified. His Observation Haki and vision swept the battlefield, and from over a thousand meters away, he caught sight of a six-winged angel.
"Too naive. Do you really think this is all the speed I have?"
Ren threw King's own words back at him in a mocking tone, instantly provoking him into furious pursuit.
But as the six wings on Ren's back beat through the air, he finally displayed his true speed.
Over a thousand meters per second!
King's speed was close to triple the speed of sound, but Ren's speed was truly triple the speed of sound—1,020 meters per second!
Once air resistance was gone, the increase in speed was no small thing.
With three power sources stacked together, reaching 1,020 meters per second was perfectly normal.
If not for the fact that his reaction speed could not quite keep up—making it impossible to maintain that as a normal combat state—
King would not even be able to touch the hem of Ren's clothes. Ren could toy with him all day long.
Even so, King still could not catch him. It looked like the difference between them was only a little speed, but in reality it was a gap as vast as a chasm.
"You're playing with me!?"
King came to an angry halt, staring at Ren with killing intent in his eyes.
"If you don't have any hidden cards left, maybe we really can play all day."
Ren was still smiling mockingly, though his eyes flicked briefly toward the pitch-black sky.
The sky seemed unchanged, but dark clouds were formed from dust high in the atmosphere gathering condensed moisture.
The larger the droplets within, the darker the clouds became. It had no real direct relation to the amount of lightning energy inside them.
Only Ren knew that the lightning energy within those clouds was actually running low, because the original body on the other side had been consuming a great deal of it since the battle began.
"..."
King had clearly been provoked, and his gaze darkened.
He spread his Observation Haki to inspect the surroundings. The Beasts Pirates' massive ship had already drawn close to Dressrosa.
The sky around them was dim and overcast, with very little light.
Which meant visibility was poor.
At the same time, flashes were erupting from within Dressrosa. The situation there seemed to have changed again.
And his original mission for coming here had been to make this trip and protect the Golden Emperor, Tesoro.
In truth, money was rarely enough to move the power of a Yonko crew. He had originally intended to refuse.
But the price Tesoro had offered was simply too high. After all, he was the man who controlled twenty percent of the world's gold.
Combined with the deliberately leaked intelligence concerning the artificial Devil Fruits in Dressrosa...
that was why King had come.
To fulfill the mercenary request was only secondary.
To investigate the truth behind the artificial Devil Fruits—that was the real priority.
That was also why King was here now instead of going to Tesoro's side.
But the facts had proven that his opponent truly deserved the reputation of being able to crush Doflamingo.
With only the power he had shown so far, there was no way he could defeat Ren in a short time.
At that moment,
King suddenly made a decision and pointed at Ren.
"You. State your name!"
"Ren."
Ren tilted his head, as if he had already realized something.
"Good. I'll remember that there was a bastard of an opponent like you. Very few people can keep up with my current speed."
King's gaze turned ice-cold. He did not shift out of his beast form, but the flames on his back ignited once more.
It looked the same as before.
But something had already changed.
"You'd better pray you're tough enough. Otherwise this is going to be very troublesome for me!"
In the next instant,
King beat his wings, and blazing fire tails burst from the flames on his back.
At the end of those tails, three white rings exploded open in unison!
"Triple?"
Ren raised an eyebrow and beat his six wings again, retreating farther.
But this time, the distance between him and King was shrinking!
"My speed is greater than yours!"
Once he reached a certain range,
King grabbed his own head and yanked it backward, causing his head and beak to deform and elongate until they resembled... the point of a sword!
"Tempuraudon!"
Like stretched rubber snapping back,
King's sharpened head shot forward at an unimaginable speed, crossing hundreds of meters of sky in an instant and slamming into Ren.
In the original timeline, Zoro had once described this attack as impossible to defend against, just like a laser beam, with terrifying power.
An extremely terrifying impact erupted.
For hundreds of meters around them, ring-shaped shock patterns exploded through the sky in succession.
Those were vacuum rings formed by the surrounding air being blasted away by the shockwave!
Amid the sound of bones shattering,
Ren dropped from the sky like a meteor, smashing into the sea in the blink of an eye and sending up monstrous waves.
Tens of thousands of tons of seawater were hurled into the air, and the original sea surface caved inward into the shape of a giant bowl.
A crater hundreds of meters wide had been blasted into the shallow seabed through sheer brute force!
"Drown in the sea! With strength like yours, you're still not qualified to be compared to Kaido-sama!"
King came to an abrupt stop, thrust both wings forward, and began flapping them continuously, unleashing dense golden flying slashes!
He was clearly a true Great Swordsman as well, possessing mastery over Flying Slashes!
Hundreds of slash waves bombarded Ren's body, striking the wounds along the ribs that had just been shattered.
Since the battle in Dressrosa began, this was the first time Ren finally coughed up a mouthful of blood.
That's right.
From the start of the Dressrosa battle until now, this was Ren's first injury—and the first blood he had shed.
'What is this guy? Some special race or something? Why is he as tough as I am...?'
The corner of King's eye twitched as he continued flapping his wings, suppressing Ren with wave after wave of slashes.
At the same time, he could clearly judge the effect of his earlier strike.
If that attack had landed on land, even a mountain of steel would have been shattered.
And yet when it hit Ren, all it had done was break a few bones.
Still, seawater began flooding back into the giant crater. Under King's swordsmanship control, it closed in while preventing Ren from escaping.
"It's over."
King let out a breath of relief and slowly descended, preparing to capture Ren.
He knew very well that no matter how powerful a Devil Fruit user was,
unless they were a Fish-Man like Jack... no, even if they were a Fish-Man like Jack,
there was no way they could break free by their own power from—
Boom—!!
A colossal wave exploded upward from the bottom of the sea, and a gigantic hand reached out from the depths, grabbing King in an instant!
Terrifying strength squeezed down on his body, making his bones crack audibly.
For a brief moment, King even felt as though he were facing a casual strike from Kaido himself!
"Let go!"
Flames erupted, and King broke free from the giant hand and shot back into the sky.
Then he saw an enlarged version of Ren below him, except one purple gourd earring was now missing from beside his ear.
Ren was reaching one hand toward the sky, as if summoning something.
"You're not a Devil Fruit user?!"
This time, King was truly shocked.
Ren did not answer him. Blinding radiance reflected in his eyes.
That was—
Lightning!
Hidden within the thunderclouds, the underside of the Judgment fired a dazzling pillar of lightning—an island-destroying plasma cannon!
It was also the greatest killing weapon aboard the Judgment, a weapon that normally required a user of the Rumble-Rumble Fruit to control.
But now, that pillar of lightning was heading straight toward—
Ren!
Suicide?
That was King's first thought. He could feel the overwhelming power contained within that beam of lightning.
But along with it came a calm, indifferent voice.
"I'll let you witness it for just a moment.
My trump card. The source of the confidence I had when I started this battle—"
The upper half of Ren's body floated above the sea as he reached out and touched the lightning pillar of his own accord!
"—Meteor Burst!"