A blinding radiance flooded the sea, bringing with it a suffocating sense of pressure.
Just drawing near it inspired a primal fear of being reduced to ashes on the spot.
In terms of sheer destructive power, this was lightning force enough to wipe an island off the map!
If one were not a Logia user, then facing this blow would basically mean instant death.
Unless, of course, they were among the very strongest.
For example, someone like Kaido, who could fall from a height of ten thousand meters with nothing but his flesh and survive.
Or BIG MOM, the so-called Iron Balloon, whose body alone rivaled steel while still retaining terrifying toughness and flexibility.
But even people at that level would still need to use Haki to withstand it, and even then, injury afterward would be inevitable.
With my Lunarian physique, I might be able to adapt to this kind of energy… but I'd be heavily injured before that adaptation took place.
Even in my flame-on state, that outcome wouldn't change, so there's no point in taking it head-on.
But what is he trying to do? Commit suicide?
No… being submerged at the bottom of the sea and still able to use his power in the first place is already strange enough.
What looks like suicide to me… may be something else entirely!
King was utterly confused, and cautiously chose to retreat farther away.
If he had still held even the slightest trace of contempt for Ren earlier, then now that feeling was completely gone.
In terms of durability, Ren was comparable to him, a Lunarian.
After taking a direct hit from Tempuraudon, the man had only cracked a few bones.
In terms of speed, he was even faster than King in his flame-off state after eating the Ancient Zoan Pteranodon fruit.
If King had not revealed one of his trump cards and reignited his flames while in flame-off mode for propulsion, he would never have been able to catch up to him.
And in terms of attack power, just the scale of the lightning Ren controlled was enough to destroy an entire kingdom.
That bizarre beam attack had even pierced King's defenses while he was in his flame-on state.
This was no longer the level of some brat who had only just entered the New World. Even as a core executive in a Yonko crew, Ren would be more than qualified.
Rather than assuming the enemy was foolish enough to kill himself, it made far more sense to treat this as some hidden trump card!
If King had not suspected that this might be a reverse trap laid specifically to bait him in, he might already have charged straight in to interrupt Ren.
And in truth…
That was exactly what it was.
Ren bathed in the "plasma," while the Thunder and Flame Mastery trait granted him its natural 10% resistance to lightning not under direct control.
At the same time, one hand rested on his shoulder.
It was Nami's hand, naturally elementalized, using the Rumble-Rumble Fruit's power to restrain the lightning with all her might.
Enel could naturally elementalize his hand and unleash lightning strikes from extreme distances.
Naturally, Nami could do the same.
At present, her control over lightning had already surpassed Enel's.
That was also why she had not taken part in the battle at Dressrosa.
Because she had been contributing all along!
Even so, it was still difficult for her to control such violent power.
All she could do was restrain it as much as possible, weakening it to a degree the Indestructible Vajra Glazed Body could bear.
This pillar of lightning was Judgment's hidden trump card.
A weapon capable of destroying an island.
To put it bluntly—
It was a plasma cannon.
Gas produced from vaporized metal, under ultra-high temperatures and an intense electromagnetic field, would transform into plasma.
It was the fourth major state of matter, beyond solid, liquid, and gas.
And one must note—
The sun itself was, in theory, also plasma, only with energy countless times greater than ordinary plasma.
But in essence, they belonged to the same general category.
And the appearance of this trump card had also given rise to Ren's ultimate move!
Its prototype had first been conceived and tested within Space-Time: The Creator.
Of course, the "material" used back then definitely had not been plasma.
It had been born after seeing Judgment's hidden trump card, during one of his intimate nights with Nami, and had become reality in only a few short days.
The essence of Meteor Burst is the combined use of energy and the body. And because I can withstand external energy, it can function in many energy-rich environments—volcanoes, power plants, and so on.
According to the original plan, I intended to draw power from thunderstorm weather.
But after learning about plasma, I changed my mind.
If the point is to absorb energy and strengthen myself… then why not try placing the sun itself inside my body?
Ren stretched out a hand and grasped that terrifying power.
At this moment, with Meteor Burst activated, he had already drawn all the surrounding plasma into his body.
In theory, a living creature should be incapable of enduring this much energy.
But I'm different. I have a powerful body.
At forty meters in size, gigantification grants me a fourfold increase in Strength, a 0.8 multiplier in Agility, and a sixfold increase in Constitution.
That puts me at around Strength S-, Agility A+, Constitution S.
And in my judgment, reaching S rank means standing at the level occupied by the Yonko who reign at the summit of the sea.
At the same time, I have resistance, and the Indestructible Vajra Glazed Body serves as the carrier that guarantees my body's toughness.
And there's also Nami. She is lightning itself. She can interfere at both the macro and micro levels, reducing what should have been unbearable energy damage to a range that the Indestructible Vajra Glazed Body can endure.
Thus… I can swallow energy far beyond my normal limits!
And this ability still isn't at its limit. If I can one day find the Mother Flame from the original story, use it as an energy source, and meet the other necessary conditions…
Then by relying on the HP-bar setting to swallow that power, maybe… I won't need any Nika at all.
Because I am the Sun God!
But all that comes later.
Meteor Burst ended, and Ren activated Size at Will, using attribute decay to expel the energy beyond his body's endurance limit.
His body rapidly shrank back down to normal size.
At this moment, under Nami's control, the plasma cannon's attack gradually faded away.
As for the place where Ren had originally been—
that section of the sea had now vanished without a trace.
Whether seawater or living creatures, everything had been vaporized into nothingness by the violent energy.
What remained was only a circular crater nearly one hundred square kilometers in area—
almost the size of a city!
And above that crater stood a "sun"!
That was no exaggeration. It had merely appeared casually, yet it caused the hundreds of thousands of tons of seawater rushing into the crater from afar to boil violently!
King: "???"
At that moment,
King's pupils contracted sharply, and his entire body began to tremble.
Because within the perception of his Observation Haki, there was no enemy left at all.
There was only a sun.
"What the hell are you!?"
As the leader of the Beasts Pirates' All-Stars, Kaido's right-hand man, a monster with a bounty of 1.39 billion—
for the first time, King felt fear from someone who was supposedly only eighteen years old.
It was not the same kind of power as Kaido's—but it was unquestionably on the same level!
"As you can see," Ren answered calmly, "I swallowed the sun."
At this moment, his figure was that of a blurry humanoid silhouette floating inside a sphere of light, with six outstretched wings faintly visible.
He looked like a terrifying Sun God descended into the mortal world.
And in truth, he really was terrifying!
There was no sharp cry, because the Angel of Light Wings was still in effect.
Just because King's thoughts split for a single instant upon hearing that answer—
he had already vanished from where he stood and reappeared in the sea thousands of meters away.
In the previous second, seawater had submerged his body.
But in the next second, under a horrifying explosion, the air was violently driven away and turned into a vacuum!
Layer after layer of rings bloomed outward, and the seabed collapsed in spiraling layers.
Then it triggered an undersea earthquake!
Centered on King's position, monstrous waves hundreds of meters tall and spreading across hundreds of nautical miles erupted into the sky.
The instantly released heat transformed that section of seabed into a magma landscape.
And in the end—a concave molten crater appeared in the ocean!
Its area was almost equivalent to several football fields!
Only then did thunderous roars finally erupt along the path the attack had taken, revealing one vacuum zone after another.
"…"
Pinned to the ground by one hand, King opened his mouth and coughed up huge mouthfuls of blood.
Yet he could not even make a sound.
His pupils had already started to lose focus, and he was on the verge of losing consciousness.
The flame on his back was still burning—he was still in his flame-on state, where his defensive power should have been absurdly high.
In the original timeline, even when Zoro poured out all his strength, he had failed to inflict any real damage.
Only after awakening Conqueror's Haki and mastering Advanced Conqueror's infusion had he truly been able to wound King.
But now, King's bones were screaming, his organs were trembling, and his brain felt as though it were boiling!
That long-forgotten agony battered his reason. If he relaxed even a little, everything would be taken from him!
"Too fast. Even I couldn't properly control it," Ren said, reflecting on himself. "It was like a child swinging a giant blade."
"It turned out completely differently from what I expected. Even I didn't know I'd become this strong."
With one hand, he hauled King up.
"Are you ready? It's time for us to dance."
What was he saying?
King's mind was full of ringing noise, and his vision was full of blinding light.
He could not think.
Could not understand.
He had to exhaust everything he had just to cling to sanity.
Before coming here, King had never imagined he would encounter an opponent like this!
Haki!
He had to use Haki…
Otherwise he would die!
As that chaotic thought flashed through his mind, King's field of vision changed again.
He flew.
At a speed he had never experienced before.
Ren yanked him along, bent his knees, exploded upward—and then hurled him away from a certain point.
The result was that King turned into a flaming meteor and, in just a few short seconds, crossed more than a hundred nautical miles before crashing into the rocky cliffs of Dressrosa.
Boom—!!
A tremendous explosion rang out, and Dressrosa, which looked like a giant polygonal fruit platter from above, lost another corner.
Hundreds of thousands of tons of shattered stone rained down, drastically altering the landscape yet again.
King's warped and battered body fell with the debris and slammed into a stretch of stone pavement.
"H-Hey! What happened!?"
At the place where King landed,
the members of the Beasts Pirates who had just arrived at the port stared in utter disbelief at the giant crater formed by the impact.
"Was that… Lord King…?"
One of the leading Shinuchi asked uncertainly, turning to the people beside him. "Or am I seeing things?"
"Lord Poker, I don't know either…"
One of the Gifters looked at this Shinuchi, whose shoulders and feet had all been replaced by snakes, and shook his head in confusion.
And it was at that very moment that
the "sun" appeared above everyone's heads.
"What is that? A ball of light?"
"Enemy attack?"
"You glowing bastard, get down here!"
Another of the leading Shinuchi—Speed—shouted sharply.
She looked like a centaur, with the upper body of a graceful beauty rising from a horse's body.
At the same time, she raised the bow in her hand, and the arrow was already wrapped in Armament Haki.