"This place is way too lively."
Ren swept his gaze across the scene.
A single ship from the Beasts Pirates, carrying seven to eight hundred men, with over a hundred Artificial Devil Fruit users mixed among them.
And there were even familiar faces.
At that very moment, Speed cursed loudly and loosed the arrow in her hand.
"How dare you ignore me?! I'll skewer you and roast you alive!"
"There's no need for that many people."
Ren raised a hand, and boundless light and heat burst forth from it.
Daytime: Scorching Light!
How should one describe an attack like that?
It was like a sun blooming into existence.
The Haki-coated arrow that touched it first only managed to endure for a single instant before vanishing.
And along with it, the people and ship within several hundred meters were casually erased, as though by the stroke of an eraser.
Then came the immense fireball ignited by the released heat and temperature, a colossal flaming mushroom cloud erupting from the harbor!
The blazing inferno swept outward with a shockwave, devastating a radius of over a thousand meters in a single second!
The entire harbor, just like the shattered corner of Dressrosa from before, was completely reduced to ruins!
This was a natural disaster.
It had surpassed the power limit ordinary top fighters could possess and touched the realm of the world's peak.
If Ren were to reach the center of Dressrosa right now and release all the energy in his body—
then in just a few short minutes, all of Dressrosa would become nothing more than a memory of the past!
Its physical existence would be replaced by flowing molten magma!
This was his trump card, a true island-destroying ultimate move!
"Still, compared to my side, that side isn't any worse…"
Ren withdrew his hand and suddenly turned to look toward the huge hole King had smashed out.
At some point—
King, his whole body covered in advanced Armament Haki, had climbed back out and revealed his true appearance.
A very handsome man, with a stern and steady expression.
The most striking features were his white hair, brown skin, and black wings.
There was also a wreath-like tattoo around his left eye, making him especially eye-catching.
"So this is what it means to be a Lunarian, huh? The race that supposedly gets you a bounty of a hundred million just for reporting information about them to the World Government."
Ren could not help but praise King's resilience.
"After taking an attack on that level, all you've got is a few displaced bones.
And that was with the first blow not even using Armament Haki.
A godly race erased from history… is really this superior?"
"If you ask me, you're the real monster here."
King panted as he spread his black wings, staring fixedly at the figure inside the sphere of light.
"Swallowed the sun… that really is a fitting description.
You possess power on this level, yet you aren't even afraid of the sea's corrosion.
Could it be that you're some rare race whose existence was erased by the World Government?"
"No. This is my own power. There's never been another case like me before."
Ren shook his head.
"To be honest, it still sort of counts as a Devil Fruit ability."
"Heh."
King let out a cold laugh, not believing Ren at all.
What kind of Devil Fruit user gets buried in the sea, then turns into a giant on the spot and swallows lightning?
Did Ren take him for blind?
"So compared to 'a Devil Fruit ability with no weakness,' you find 'rare race' more believable, huh?"
Ren sighed.
"Fine. Let's go with that, then.
So judging by the look on your face, you're planning to keep fighting me?"
"How could this possibly end now? If I don't make you pay back every bit of pain on my body, I won't stop!"
"You think you can win?"
"Turning the earth into magma isn't something only you can do!"
King stood there bare-chested,
gripping the giant katana in his hand as crimson flames rose around him.
"Then let me see it—the power of a godly race erased from history, one that can wield fire."
Ren raised his hand.
His opening move was Daytime: Scorching Light again!
Boundless light and heat surged forth once more, carrying incomparable destructive force!
In this world, no material should have been able to keep ignoring such horrifying temperatures forever.
But in the end, this was a world where individuals reigned supreme, where all kinds of impossibilities existed.
Within the blinding light, spiraling crimson flames rose upward.
At the end of that vortex, King supported a spiral-staircase-like crimson dragon.
The light and heat pouring from Ren's hand continued scorching him—
yet it still couldn't kill King. Instead, it became his strength.
No—
rather, it was being adapted to by the Lunarians' adaptability!
"It's useless!"
King said coldly,
"The reason the World Government hunts the Lunarian race is because of our racial gift.
We can adapt to all kinds of extreme environments. It's not just small tricks like torrential rain, floods, or lightning strikes.
What truly matters—
is limitless and rapid adaptability!
I was captured by the World Government and used in experiments since childhood. I mastered this talent long ago!
Your light and heat are indeed powerful. The amplification they give to your physical combat is terrifying too.
To be honest, if I didn't reveal this talent, I wouldn't be confident in beating you.
But at this point, that no longer matters.
Against a Lunarian's adaptability, the effect of your light-and-heat attacks will only grow weaker and weaker.
As for close combat, I'll maintain my defensive state the whole time and reinforce it with advanced Armament Haki.
If I remember correctly, before you turned into your current form, you swallowed that pillar of lightning, didn't you?
That means your energy has to run out eventually!
As long as your attacks don't exceed the upper limit of my adaptation speed, this becomes a battle of attrition from here on.
And I—
bet my stamina, as an Ancient Zoan user, is better than yours!"
Flames erupted as King shot forward, becoming a fiery star that lit up the gloomy sky.
Rings of flame vortices spread outward against the light and heat, and from his giant katana burst forth crimson fire dragons one after another!
Guardian Flame: Imperial Fire Dragon!
Hundreds of crimson fire dragons flew and raged across the gradually fading field of thermal radiation.
Every place they passed turned to magma in an instant, painting yet another stretch of molten terrain across the earth.
This, too, was a terrifying high-temperature attack!
By now, the corner of Dressrosa that served as the battlefield for the two of them had already had a huge chunk carved away.
From afar, it looked as if one quarter of the edge of a multi-sided fruit platter had been sliced off!
"But what if…"
Ren slowly raised his fist and spoke,
"there are two suns?"
King: "???"
"Cut the cr—"
King couldn't finish his sentence.
Because in his Observation Haki, behind him—
within the kingdom of Dressrosa—
a second "sun" had risen!
And it was rushing straight at him!
At that instant, Ren moved.
At a speed beyond biological limits, he threw a punch straight into the giant katana King raised to block.
Almost at the same moment,
Ren's true body, charging over from the opposite side, made the exact same move—except this punch smashed into King's back!
Boom—!!
At the point of impact, a gigantic fireball exploded outward, followed by the rising of a mushroom cloud.
The unleashed shockwave ravaged the land, blowing out the magma and leaving behind cold, hardened rock!
Caught at the meeting point of the two punches like the filling in a sandwich biscuit, King's entire body crackled and creaked.
Even with the defense of advanced Armament Haki and his flame-on state, the differently angled force of those two blows nearly tore him apart!
Ren and Ren's true body spoke in unison:
"There are two of me like this."
'That's imposs—'
King's pupils scattered, and his consciousness began to blur again.
One "sun" had already been terrifying enough.
There had actually been another "sun" hidden inside Dressrosa?!
What kind of lineup was this supposed to deal with!?
At that moment, he suddenly realized—
this was never a battle meant for him.
No… his opponent's true target had always been Kaido!
"Get back!"
King's whole body suddenly erupted with blazing fire, igniting himself into a fireball.
Ren and Ren's true body retreated in perfect sync.
One took away a large number of feathers. The other took away part of his body tissue. Then both stored them in the four-dimensional space with tacit coordination.
Excessively high-energy attacks could destabilize the power compressed to the extreme within Ren's body as well.
King swayed as he fell toward the ground. Those two punches had clearly exceeded the limit of what he could endure.
If he wasn't dead, that only proved how powerful his racial talent really was.
But in a sense, this was merely a death struggle.
'If nothing unexpected happens, you're probably dying here today—hm?'
Ren suddenly turned his head.
His passive ability, Premonition Sensing, had detected something "bad" a hundred kilometers away.
At this point… who could still pose something bad to him?
Surely not Kaido?
Hadn't he failed to show up after all that waiting?
Electrical signals exploded by his ear, carrying Nami's voice.
"It really is Kaido!"
Rumble—!!
Thunder roared across the sky.
In the distance, azure clouds appeared, crossing a hundred kilometers at a speed beyond imagination.
Within the gloomy heavens, occasional low thunderous growls echoed.
An azure dragon's body flickered in and out of sight among the clouds, writhing as it stirred up visible hurricanes!
These were true hurricanes in the strictest sense—connecting heaven and earth, and approaching Dressrosa in multiples.
Along the way, the seawater was shredded by the wind blades within them, drawn into the hurricanes, and grew fiercer and fiercer until they turned into towering tsunamis!
Boom—!!
The tsunami slammed against Dressrosa's stone walls, only to be blocked outside by the towering cliffs hundreds of meters high.
Only that one massive missing section—where the land had collapsed—allowed an enormous volume of seawater to pour into the interior of Dressrosa.
At the same time, the cluster of hurricanes made landfall on Dressrosa.
The incomparably violent winds uprooted the dense forests across the plains, growing even larger as they rampaged forward.
Only after destroying nearly one-third of Dressrosa's total area did they finally begin to dissipate!
And at that moment—
the fang-baring azure dragon appeared in the sky above Dressrosa's edge.
The oppressive pressure it brought with it was terrifying, like dark storm clouds pressing down upon a city!
Drunk and roaring loudly, Kaido bellowed,
"Hey, Joker, get out here—… hm? What's that?"
He froze halfway through his shout.
Because inside Dressrosa, near the front of the area ravaged by the hurricanes—
another dragon, almost identical to him except for its color, was flying through the air.
A pink dragon.
Clusters of pink flame clouds wrapped around the last survivors, carrying them off into the distance.
"A mirror?"
That was Kaido's first thought.
"No, that's not right. I'm not pink! That bastard Joker is the one who likes pink!"
Boom—!!
At that very moment, another deafening explosion erupted from the rock wall at the edge of Dressrosa once more.
(End of Chapter)