"Ah, brother, I'd better advise you not to say too much."
Within the shattered cavity of the iceberg, Aokiji knelt, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. His Marine coat was stained with crimson and half-frozen onto his body. One hand braced against the mountain wall, the other clutching his ribs, he looked up at Ragnar.
"In terms of raw attack power... I'm not Sakazuki. Magma is more destructive than ice."
"But the lethality of the Ice-Ice Fruit... isn't about brute force."
cough cough "You're feeling it now, aren't you? The cold. It's already inside."
Even though his speech strained his injuries and sent fresh pain shooting through his ribs, Aokiji's tone remained calm and composed, brimming with the chill of quiet confidence.
Ragnar lowered his gaze. Frost crackled on the wound over his chest, where Aokiji's two spears had grazed his skin.
As Aokiji had said—
The true danger of the Hie Hie no Mi isn't in impact or penetration. It's in invasion—frostbite, cellular freeze, freezing organs from the inside out.
And Ragnar knew it.
He could already feel the sub-zero cold gnawing its way in, even through his draconic physique. The chill, likely hundreds of degrees below freezing, seeped through every capillary the ice had touched.
And yet—
"Aokiji... your little ice cubes are only good for chilling beer."
Ragnar raised his hand and exhaled. A hot breath, heavy with life energy and heat, gushed over his chest.
Hisssss...
The ice instantly vaporized, rising in clouds of white mist.
Aokiji's pupils shrank.
He barely had time to process what had happened when—Ragnar vanished.
"Damn—!"
Aokiji's instincts screamed. He activated Observation Haki, his hands instantly manifesting blackened ice blades, which he raised in a defensive cross—
"RAIMEI HAKKE!!" (Roaring Thunder Bagua!)
A thunderous impact exploded in front of him.
Ragnar reappeared like a demon, clad in black lightning and swirling Dragon Aura. His punch slammed into the convergence point of Aokiji's dual ice blades—Haki-clad, reinforced—but it wasn't enough.
A surge of Conqueror's Haki thundered down like a black dragon.
Cracks danced along the blades.
Aokiji gritted his teeth, muscles bulging with Armament Haki reinforcement—but his knees buckled.
CLANG!!
The collision of Haki echoed across the frozen battlefield. Aokiji's defenses shattered under the crushing weight. Ragnar's fist connected with his chest.
PUH!!
Blood sprayed from Aokiji's mouth as he was hurled backward like a cannonball. His body crashed into the already-damaged iceberg behind him—
KRA-KOOM!!
A colossal chunk of the ice mountain collapsed from the impact. The midsection of the glacier was obliterated, snow and shards launching skyward in an icy explosion.
But Ragnar didn't stop.
Leaping high, he appeared again above Aokiji's flight path, rotating mid-air and delivering a devastating downward punch infused with Armament and Conqueror's Haki straight into Aokiji's midsection.
BOOOOM!!
Lightning-like black ropes of Conqueror's Haki whipped around Aokiji's body and slammed him head-first into the ice.
The moment his body hit—
CRAAACK!!
The ice floor collapsed beneath him, a spiderweb of deep fractures spreading out for dozens of meters. Massive clouds of frost and mist exploded upward like a geyser.
Then—thud.
The heavy mist fell, coating the battlefield in silence.
It was as if an icy coffin lid had slammed shut over Aokiji.
But Ragnar didn't let his guard down.
He knew.
This wasn't over.
No matter how strong the blow, he'd seen what Admirals were capable of. He had seen Sakazuki—Akainu—take Whitebeard's full-force quake punches and still rise to his feet, magma burning hotter than ever.
There was no way Kuzan—Aokiji—would fall from a few direct hits.
Not a chance.
"Aokiji... You think it's over?" Ragnar muttered as he approached the rising mist, fists clenched and aura rising again.
"Then I'm afraid you have a misunderstanding—of what it means to face a king."
As expected.
Just as Ragnar dove toward the ice pit below, dozens of massive, razor-sharp ice spears erupted upward through the swirling smoke, converging on him with deadly precision.
Even though the spears shattered one after another under the force of Ragnar's violent charge, their sheer number and resistance slowed his momentum mid-descent.
Suddenly—
Crack!
From within one of the shattered icicles, Aokiji materialized, seamlessly reforming from the shards of ice. With his body partially dematerialized in his elemental form, he re-solidified just long enough to reach out—
"Ice Age!!"
His right hand clamped onto Ragnar's shoulder.
A surge of freezing energy erupted outward.
This wasn't the casual freezing Aokiji often used on oceans or pirates. This was the pure, unrestrained version of his signature technique, capable of freezing the sea for miles. In that instant, Aokiji tapped into the true depths of his awakened Logia powers.
A horrifying cold that defied natural law spilled from his hand, as if the boundaries of temperature themselves were torn open. It was as though Aokiji had ripped a hole into absolute zero—a realm where atoms could no longer move.
Even as Ragnar continued to swing his fists in a blur of wind and flame, his body seized up mid-motion.
Crackle—!
The frost didn't creep. It devoured.
In a split second, Ragnar was encased in a colossal, crystal-clear glacier, suspended in an aggressive forward punch.
His draconic features glinted beneath the layers of ice, sealed in place.
From afar, it looked like a titan frozen mid-rage—a monument to Aokiji's elemental supremacy.
Standing atop the jagged rim of the frozen crater, Aokiji exhaled slowly, his breath curling into mist.
"This time… don't thaw out so fast."
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