The air cracked.
The fight was no longer a chase—it was a natural disaster given human form.
Weevil charged, a living battering ram of grief and fury. He threw a right hook with the force of a falling meteor.
Ragnar met it head-on.
His fist, wrapped in the obsidian sheen of Ryuu, collided with Weevil's.
KRA-KOOM!
The sound wasn't a punch—it was an explosion. A shockwave of pure kinetic energy erupted outward, blowing the fronts off nearby houses, sending a tidal wave of snow and debris scouring the street. The ground fractured beneath them, splitting into a web of deep fissures.
Both men were thrown back—not by each other's strength, but by the sheer force of their own collision.
Ragnar skidded twenty feet, boots carving trenches in the frozen earth.
Weevil tumbled end over end, crashing through the wall of a bakery. He emerged covered in flour and fury.
"MY MAMA!" he bellowed, voice thick with rage. He grabbed a massive wood-fired oven, ripped it from its brick foundation, and hurled it like a cannonball.
Ragnar planted his feet, inhaled, and punched.
His Haki-coated fist didn't just stop the oven—it punched through it, detonating the cast iron in a shower of brick and molten metal.
Villagers screamed, fleeing as their town became an arena.
Weevil tackled Ragnar, and the two became a blur of brawling fury. They smashed through a cooper's shop, barrels flying like bowling pins. Weevil locked Ragnar in a monstrous bear hug, squeezing with enough force to crush a Sea King.
Ragnar's face contorted in pain—but he slammed his head back.
CRUNCH.
Weevil howled, blood pouring from his nose. He grabbed Ragnar by the leg and swung him like a club, smashing him through the side of the People's Tavern—his own tavern.
Ragnar crashed through wood and plaster, shattering the bar he'd polished for years. Bottles exploded. Chairs splintered. He lay in the wreckage, ribs screaming.
Weevil charged through the hole, shadow looming.
"YOU! BREAK!"
He raised his foot for a final, bone-shattering stomp.
Ragnar rolled, grabbed a heavy iron beer keg, and swung it upward.
CLANG.
It connected with Weevil's knee. The giant roared in pain. Ragnar surged to his feet.
They exchanged a furious flurry of blows inside the ruined tavern. A right from Weevil sent Ragnar flying into the kitchen. A left from Ragnar sent Weevil stumbling into the hearth, scattering embers.
Ragnar kicked a butcher's block. Weevil punched it to splinters.
Weevil ripped down a ceiling beam and swung it like a club. Ragnar phased through the floorboards, dropping into the cellar to avoid being crushed.
The battle spilled into the town square.
And there, in the center, stood the great bronze bell—a monument gifted to the town generations ago. A symbol of peace. Of history.
Ragnar climbed from the cellar, bloodied but burning. Weevil followed, dragging the broken beam behind him like a club.
They faced each other beneath the bell.
Ragnar's eyes flicked to the monument. To the people watching from the shadows. To the homes they had shattered.
This had to end.
The air cracked.
Weevil grinned through bloodied teeth. He wrapped his massive arms around the base of the bell tower's stone foundation. Muscles bulged. Veins popped. The earth groaned beneath him.
With a deafening roar of stone and bronze, he uprooted the entire bell tower.
Gasps echoed from the distant villagers. The shadow of the tower fell over the square like a falling monument.
Weevil swung it down.
Ragnar didn't run.
He looked up, golden eyes blazing, and ran up the falling tower, his feet finding purchase on crumbling stone. At the apex, he kicked off—just as the tower slammed into the ground, shattering the square and sending a plume of dust and debris hundreds of feet into the air.
From the peak of his leap, Ragnar descended like a thunderbolt, fist cocked back.
Weevil looked up, eyes wide, and raised his own Haki-coated fist.
They collided in mid-air.
VROOOOMMM!
A hemisphere of pure, clashing Conqueror's Haki erupted between them. Red lightning from Weevil's raw rage warred against the golden-black arcs of Ragnar's focused will. The air shrieked. The pressure wave shattered every remaining window in the town.
Suspended in the eye of their own hurricane, fists locked, faces inches apart—they were no longer men.
The ground beneath them crumbled, sinking into a vast crater.
Then—
The stalemate shattered.
Weevil roared, and something new flared around his fist. Not just Armament. Not just rage.
Crimson lightning.
Untamed. Violent. The raw power of a king.
"THIS!" he bellowed, voice distorted by power, "IS THE KING'S STRENGTH!"
Ragnar's eyes widened—too late.
The crimson-laced fist smashed through his guard. It bypassed his defenses. It struck not just his body, but his spirit.
Pain exploded through him.
He was launched like a cannonball, a streak of red and black tearing through the town. He crashed through the wreckage of the tavern, then a house, then another. Each building exploded outward in a chain of destruction.
He finally slammed into the base of the mountain, carving a crater into solid rock.
He collapsed to his knees, coughing blood, vision swimming.
The world was pain.
Weevil landed in the square, panting, his fist still smoking with crimson energy. He looked at the devastation.
"It hurts from the inside," he muttered, a rare moment of clarity. "That's what Mama said. The power of a true king."
From the edge of the crater, Stussy walked forward, her composure restored, a cruel smile on her lips.
She looked toward the mountain.
"Did you see that, Gunnar?" she called, voice dripping with venom. "That is the power you forsook. The power of your father, passed to his true son. You are nothing but a pale imitation. A ghost."
Stussy paused, her breath visible in the cold air. Then her smile twisted into something truly malevolent.
"And now," she purred, "that ghost will watch his last link to this world be severed."
Her eyes flicked toward the forest.
"I'll find your precious daughter. And when I do, I'll kill her. Slowly. I want to see if she has her grandfather's resilience."
A line had been crossed.
At the base of the mountain, Ragnar—bloodied, broken, kneeling in the rubble—went still.
The pain vanished. The shattered ribs, the torn muscles, the blood in his mouth—all gone.
In its place: silence.
Terrifying, absolute silence.
The world seemed to hold its breath.
Slowly, he pushed himself to his feet.
He didn't look angry. He didn't look hurt.
He looked empty.
A vessel hollowed out to make room for something terrible.
He closed his eyes.
He stood amidst the wreckage, motionless. His breathing was so shallow it seemed to have stopped.
Stussy's smile faltered.
"What are you waiting for, Weevil!?" she shrieked, her voice cracking. "He's open! Finish him! Take his head!"
Weevil roared, charging across the ruined square, pouring every last ounce of strength and Haki into one final blow.
His fist, glowing with crimson lightning, was inches from Ragnar's face.
Ragnar's eyes snapped open.
They were no longer gold.
They were black. Solidified darkness. Voids that swallowed light.
He didn't block. He didn't dodge.
He punched the air.
A short, straight punch. It didn't even seem to connect.
But something was unleashed.
A wave. A projection. Not wind. Not shockwave.
A spear of pure, condensed Conqueror's Haki, laced with the flowing destruction of Ryuu.
It struck Weevil square in the face.
No sound. No explosion.
Just silence.
Weevil's charge stopped.
His eyes went wide—not with pain, but with blank shock.
The crimson Haki around his fist sputtered and died.
The attack hadn't just hit him—it had passed through him.
The wave of black energy continued, silent and unstoppable. It shot across the town, through the sky, and vanished against the distant peaks.
Weevil stood frozen.
Then he swayed.
One step back. Then another.
Blood poured from his eyes, nose, ears.
He touched his face. His fingers came away wet.
He looked at the blood, confused.
Then he collapsed.
Unconscious before he hit the ground.
Ragnar stood over him, arm still outstretched.
The blackness faded from his eyes, leaving the familiar burning gold.
He exhaled, slow and shuddering.
Then he turned.
Stussy stood frozen, her face a mask of pure terror.
"You will not touch my daughter," Ragnar said, voice quiet, but heavy with finality. "You will not speak her name. You will take him, and you will vanish."
He lowered his arm.