"...The black sun ruled the sky, bringing fear and darkness. It was the deepest shade before the dawn.
Then the white wolf devoured the sun and drove away the night.
A new era began."
Maybe countless years from now, what was happening right now would be recorded like this, written with a mythic tone in some old book for later generations to read.
But no matter how those books described it.
No written depiction could possibly match the shock of what was happening before their eyes.
Imu had never imagined it.
Magnus had actually chosen to devour her sun by force.
And now.
It was already too late for her to create a second one.
Because the white wolf that Magnus had become was clutching her, running at extreme speed away from the battlefield, giving her no chance to struggle, hauling her across more than a hundred kilometers and smashing her hard into the Red Soil Continent, ten thousand meters high.
Only then.
Did the giant wolf finally let out a few pained whimpers, like he had eaten something bad.
"Ugh… what the hell is this… it tastes awful."
Below the Red Line was the exclusive harbor of the World Government. Even now, quite a few Marines were garrisoned there.
Magnus moved so fast that before they even knew what was happening, a deafening boom slammed through the ground.
The whole area shook violently. When the dust cleared, what they saw was Imu, body completely embedded in the wall, clutched in Magnus's grip.
The giant wolf form peeled back. One of his claws still held Imu pinned. With the other, Magnus clawed at his own throat, like he wanted to dig the black sun back out of his stomach.
Of course, nothing came out.
Black flames burst across his entire body. They were not hot to the touch, but they were constantly eroding him, trying to reshape Magnus into a demon.
"How… absurdly arrogant."
Imu's elegant body twisted and warped under his grip. Even with all her strength resisting it, Magnus's claw almost crushed her outright.
With his body fully pushed beyond its limits, even without Haki, Magnus's physical strength completely overwhelmed Imu. He could casually smack her around with attacks she had no way of stopping.
Yet Imu laughed.
"Do you mean to become one of my thralls?"
If Magnus had just dragged her far from the battlefield and fought her head on, she was not sure she could have beaten him. She might have infinite life, but that did not mean her stamina was infinite.
But he had swallowed the black sun she created.
Devil Fruits were terrifying for a simple reason.
Their power did not care about reason. It ignored the user's current stamina. As long as you activated it, it would continue to function.
The black sun she had created at the cost of her lifespan was the same.
Unless she chose to cancel it herself, or she died.
That black sun would continue to exist, and continue to spew out flames of domination.
As soon as those words left her lips, a pair of crimson eyes cut sideways at her.
"Shut up."
Magnus's claw squeezed hard. Imu's bones creaked one after another. Her graceful body twisted into unnatural shapes, yet not a drop of blood spilled out.
"Why not try Haki?"
Imu mocked her own situation with a curled lip. She could tell that Magnus was only managing to hold the black flames at bay because his body had been reinforced with Haki to an absurd level.
The reason he was able to suppress her was the same.
But the moment he used Haki to fortify his body, he could no longer use it to suppress her immortality. And without suppressing that immortality, he had no way to finish her.
If he reverted to his normal state.
The black sun inside him would explode his weakened body in an instant. His everyday self would never be able to hold it back.
It was a deadlock with no solution.
She had barely finished speaking when her head exploded.
Magnus's fist crashed into her skull, turning it into a headless corpse in an instant.
A moment later.
A new head grew on the neck of the body, that same mocking smile on her face.
Magnus showed no sign of frustration.
One punch, two punches, three punches… each one faster than the last. Every time Imu's head regenerated, Magnus immediately blasted it off again.
The feeling of being butchered like this drove Imu insane.
"S…to…"
"p…"
"Yo…u…"
"Vile…"
Spitting out just four words took her an unknown amount of time.
Magnus's thinking was simple.
No matter how powerful Imu's regeneration was, she still needed a brain to think.
Most Devil Fruit powers required the user to maintain clear consciousness to keep them going. Once a user lost consciousness, the power would vanish.
If you did not even have a head, would that still count as "consciousness"?
The moment this thought took shape, his body moved on its own.
And so this scene unfolded.
The Marines stationed there stared in horror at the half-human, half-wolf Magnus, as he pounded his fists again and again into something in front of him.
Thud.
Thud thud thud thud thud…
At first only the rock around him showed fine cracks. Then the fractures grew larger, spreading upward bit by bit.
One hundred meters, two hundred, three hundred…
Countless web-like fissures spread through the Red Line beneath their feet. Every one of Magnus's blows triggered another quake-like shock.
Immortality was an incredibly troublesome ability.
If he did not believe that even swallowing Imu whole would not kill her, Magnus would not have minded simply shoving her straight into his gut.
He considered himself a normal man. Normal people did not eat other people.
But did Imu count as a person?
She called herself a "god". If people could not be eaten, surely eating a "god" was fair game.
Unfortunately, it was not that simple.
Even if he swallowed Imu, she would keep regenerating inside his stomach.
So he still had to rely on Haki.
Boom.
While the Marines shivered at his back, black flames suddenly roared hundreds of meters high off Magnus's body.
They did not burn him. Instead, Magnus grinned.
"Hah. Imu, you can't hold it either, huh?"
He had pummeled her for a full ten minutes, nearly collapsing half of Red Port, before Imu's consciousness finally blurred out.
In that instant, Magnus seized the chance and completely forced the black sun out of his body.
At the same time.
He flung Imu's body away with a single swing of his arm.
"Phew…"
Steam poured from every inch of his body. Even if he was much stronger now than he had been at Acropolis Port, strengthening his body with Haki like this had still burned through an enormous amount of energy.
But it was worth it.
The moment Imu's body left his grip, black and red lightning flared around Magnus once more. He did not pause for even a heartbeat.
"Dragon Slash."
His blade, wrapped in Conqueror's Haki, came crashing down from above.
Imu's mind had been numb from that ten-minute-long beatdown. But the moment Magnus loosened his hold, her mental state began to recover at an incredible speed.
It did not matter.
Her recovery would never outpace Magnus now that he held the initiative.
Boom.
The strike split the whole of Red Port in two. Magnus held nothing back. All of his Conqueror's Haki poured into that single blow and hammered straight into Imu's body.
A spray of nothing.
Half her body was completely obliterated on the spot.
"Mag…nus!!!"
Finally back to full awareness, Imu unleashed her Conqueror's Haki in all directions. She tried to take to the sky again, but this time, Magnus did not let her.
Another slash fell, forcing Imu into utter disgrace.
Strike while she is weak, kill while she is down.
Magnus knew all too well how hard it was to push Imu this far. With immortality, her room for error was far greater than his.
But even in a top-tier battle, not even Imu could afford to "save stamina" by not using Haki to defend.
A person only had two arms and two legs. Lose any of them and your combat power dropped. In a fight at this level, even a momentary drop was enough to turn the whole tide around.
He had only managed to shatter half her body because her consciousness had been scattered.
And for Imu, that level of damage was nothing.
It was only because Magnus kept flooding her with Haki that her regeneration could not catch up. Under that relentless assault, she was dragged fully into the losing side.
"Damn wretch."
Imu seethed. She knew she could not let it continue like this.
She had not expected Magnus to swallow her sun.
Nor had she expected him to keep hammering her until she blacked out and then use that gap to erase the black sun entirely.
Now she could not call forth a second sun. She had lost her chance to turn Magnus into her thrall, or rather, she had never truly had a chance from the start.
Magnus might not think so, but in Imu's eyes, his arrogance far surpassed her own. Arrogance was not even the right word anymore. He was simply lawless.
How could a man like that ever be someone else's puppet?
If this went on…
Without even a second's hesitation, faced with the line between life and death, Imu threw the distant Mars elder under the carriage without mercy.
A massive magic circle bloomed under her feet.
Conqueror's Haki collided.
Magnus managed to hold Imu and keep her out of the circle, but he could not stop her from dragging others out of it.
Except…
"Don't even think about it!"
Angry roars echoed from the other side of the summoning. If Magnus alone tried to stop her, he would never prevent her from pulling her contracted servants through.
With Rocks and the others, it was a different story.
Their Haki could not match an existence that had ruled this world for eight hundred years, but stopping her summons was still well within their reach.
Especially when Imu's Haki was already locked against Magnus's.
From the very start, she had never expected to summon any other contracted ones.
Her goal had always been just one.
The massive demon she had earlier summoned to help Mars fight Harald. That, and only that, could be pulled back regardless of outside interference.
"Return."
The massive demon burst from the magic circle under her, lunging at Magnus with jaws open wide.
What Imu had not expected was that the magic circle brought back not just her summoned beast, but a searing torrent of heat.
"Dragon Breath."
Azure dragon flames speared through the circle and blasted into Imu. Wrapped in Harald's Haki, they wrung a low cry of pain from her.
"Urgh…"
She had recalled the demon, but it was far from intact. While she had been trading blows with Magnus, the battle on the other side had not stopped for a second.
Harald had already broken one of the demon's arms. Haki still clung to the stump, keeping it from regenerating even now.
With the added breath that pierced the circle.
The demon only managed to stall Magnus for a heartbeat.
In the next, his muscles surged, his strength going wild.
"Raaaah!"
Like some savage brute.
Magnus reached out and, right in front of Imu, tore the massive demon straight in half.
Split clean from top to bottom.
And once he was done, Imu was still reeling from Harald's breath. The half of her body that he had shattered earlier had not fully regenerated. Now scorch marks spread across her remaining flesh.
Boom.
His fist descended again, packed with wild force. A surge of Conqueror's Haki poured into Imu, blurring her consciousness all over again.
"How… is this… possible?"
Imu could not accept the idea of losing. Joy Boy had lost to her. How could Magnus, a mere mortal who had never even eaten the Nika Fruit, possibly defeat the "god" she believed herself to be?
"It is about time to finish this."
There was a trace of fatigue in Magnus's eyes. He had not actually been fighting her for very long, but every single exchange had cost him a massive amount of Haki.
If she had been clear-headed enough to think about it, she would have realized something.
In less than half an hour, Magnus had unleashed more total Haki than she had in her entire fight.
And though he was tired, that did not mean he was drained.
"What a broken Fruit you have."
Her Fruit alone was powerful, yes. If it were just her Fruit, even if she was stronger than Rocks and Newgate, she would not be that far above them.
But add in the immortality her contract power granted, and everything changed. She could wield forbidden techniques as she pleased.
That was why Magnus still had not killed her.
It was fine.
He did not need to kill her himself. As long as he could pin her down, it was enough.
His final blow shattered the entire Red Port landmass. The sea roared in, flooding everything, and Magnus simply held her by the neck and hurled her into the shallow surf.
The woman who had once stood above the world, boundless and untouchable, now floundered like an ordinary human, barely able to stay upright as the waves crashed into her.
"Hah. In the end, no matter how strong your Devil Fruit is…"
"You are still afraid of the sea."
Devil Fruit users were hated by the sea. Even if they climbed to the absolute peak of the world, once they fell in, they were nothing more than normal men and women.
Magnus did not dare underestimate her even now.
She had lost her Fruit power, but her Haki was still there, and her immortality still clung to her.
Without her Fruit, her strength was cut in half.
And soaking in seawater left her so weak she could not even stabilize her stance.
What Conqueror's Haki was she going to throw around like this?
Staring up at Magnus looming over her, Imu clenched her teeth so hard they almost shattered.
"What do you want?"
"Do you take pleasure in seeing me in such a wretched state?"
"Or do you intend to make me your plaything?"
Imu believed she understood Magnus. She had absolute confidence in her own beauty as well. As the victor, which man would willingly kill the most noble and most beautiful woman in the world?
If it truly came to that, Imu would endure.
What was one defeat?
As long as she did not die, there would come a day she took back everything she had lost.
"No."
Magnus's calm voice cut through her thoughts.
"I am not interested in women more than eight hundred years older than me."
"For the record."
"I like them younger than I am."
He grinned down at her as her eyes froze in disbelief.
"So."
"Farewell."
"Former king of this world."
He had not thrown Imu into the water to watch her flail around.
He had done it because.
It made her easier to kill.
The ending had been decided from the moment he asked if she had any other trump cards.
She herself had never counted as one.
(End of Chapter)
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