"It's not as simple as just releasing Armament Haki."
"If it were, Dover wouldn't have suffered so badly."
"That Haki not only struck him—it invaded his body and caused internal damage."
Trebol stared at Donquixote Doflamingo, still buried in rubble, unmoving.
And then—he realized.
A cold sweat burst from his forehead, neck, and back.
An immense, suffocating terror swallowed what courage remained in his heart.
"The gap... is too wide."
"A gap that Dover can never cross in his lifetime!"
"The Schichibukai... and the Five Emperors... they're not even the same species."
Shaking, Trebol lowered his head. He couldn't watch. He didn't want to watch.
After all, Doflamingo was the king he had followed all his life.
Bang!
Suddenly, an explosion of debris and shattered beams erupted from the ruins.
And from the dust, a staggering figure emerged—Donquixote Doflamingo, bloodied and broken.
Just as Trebol feared.
This was no longer the haughty, arrogant Heavenly Yaksha.
His clothes, though intact, were stained crimson at the edges—blood seeping from his mouth, nose, and eyes.
Puff—
Two steps out of the rubble, his knees buckled, and he collapsed.
Then, he vomited blood—this time mixed with pieces of internal organs.
Clearly—
He was not the world's strongest creature.
He was not Kaido, with a body bordering on immortality.
His organs, battered by Ragnar's Armament Haki, were spasming and hemorrhaging.
His vision blurred, ears rang, chest felt like it might explode.
And yet—
"Is the gap between us… truly that vast?"
"I used Armament Haki to defend myself immediately..."
"But it tore through me like paper."
Coughing violently, Doflamingo forced himself upright as the threads of his Devil Fruit began desperately stitching his organs back together.
Then he looked up—at the man who hadn't even moved from his chair.
From somewhere deep inside, a dark emotion began to rise.
Despair.
"Can you still stand?"
"How pitiful."
"That vitality of yours—so mismatched with your strength—it's just a waste."
Ragnar's brow flashed with golden light.
In an instant, Doflamingo's internal condition appeared before his eyes—ruptured organs, failing nerves, chaotic regeneration.
But the Heavenly Yaksha didn't break.
"Don't underestimate me… Donquixote Doflamingo!"
Grinning through blood, he drove sixteen massive white threads into the earth—twisting skyward like serpents.
As they rose, Armament Haki flooded them, turning them into sixteen obsidian-black tentacles of destruction.
"Ragnar..."
"I'm betting everything on this move."
"I'm betting everything I am—everything I was—on Donquixote Doflamingo!"
"I will knock you off that chair!"
He knew.
He knew the gap between them.
And yet—this wasn't about victory anymore.
It was about dignity.
Pride.
The king's final resolve.
Even if he lost—he couldn't lose like this.
Not while the man who humiliated him hadn't even stood.
"Sixteen Holy Bullets—GOD SLAYING!!"
The wild cry of a desperate king tore across the battlefield.
Sixteen threads, now veined with purple-black Armament, launched all at once.
The
air was instantly pierced by the white lines, drawing out a shrill wail.
Centered around his body, rings of airwaves surged outward, visible to the naked eye.
Then—
The purple-black line columns, carrying terrifying destructive power like sixteen indestructible laser blades, bombarded Ragnar in an instant.
But in that very moment—
Ragnar moved.
He didn't stand up. He simply raised his hand.
A hissing, majestic surge of freezing air burst forth, enveloping his body and the chair beneath him.
It finally condensed into a layer of ice armor, covering both him and the chair.
"My devil fruit!"
Yamato, recognizing the technique at once, turned her head away in frustration. Her expression showed embarrassment, yet she peeked sideways at Ragnar from the corner of her eye.
She wanted to see.
The same ability of the mythical beast species.
The same technique.
What was the difference between her Beast form and Ragnar's?
Bang—
It happened in an instant.
Just as the ice armor formed, the sixteen purple-black and white lines had already torn through the air, unleashing all their terrifying might upon Ragnar's ice armor.
Snap—
The moment the wires and ice collided—
The catastrophic explosion that everyone expected never came.
There was no shockwave flattening the surroundings.
No deafening impact.
Only a chilling stillness.
The instant the wire pillars touched the thin layer of ice armor, a terrifying surge of cold erupted, freezing the very kinetic energy of the attack.
The sixteen wire pillars straightened—then, from their tips, frost began to spread at a speed visible to the naked eye.
In the blink of an eye—
The sixteen sacred bullets that Don Quixote Doflamingo had staked everything on were transformed into sixteen ice pillars.
Yet the point of impact—the ice armor that bore the brunt of those sacred bullets—remained completely unscathed.
Standing nearby, Yamato glanced around, searching for even a hint of frost damage on Ragnar's armor.
She found nothing. Not even a trace of white.
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