In the brief moment Whitebeard cleaved apart the exoskeleton of the horned monster bull, the remaining six biological weapons had already been intercepted by other top-tier fighters.
Drawn by the pull of his Haki, Red-Haired Shanks faced off against a bizarrely thin creature—its entire form seemingly nothing more than two bone-like arms, each more than ten meters long.
Though his eyes caught no movement from those skeletal arms, a suffocating sense of danger surged through Shanks' instincts.
Trusting that intuition, he unsheathed Gryphon and wove a dense net of sword strikes before him, guarding against the unseen assault.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
To Shanks' astonishment, every slash connected—each one meeting with staggering resistance.
The recoil from just three or five clashes sent jolts through his arms, leaving them numb, his grip on Gryphon nearly slipping.
Shanks cursed inwardly:
"Impossible! I can't see it, I can't hear it—only faintly sense it! Is its speed simply too great? Or is this some form of invisible attack?"
"Could those elongated arms just be a decoy to distract me?"
"If its strikes are truly this fast, how can it still unleash such overwhelming power with such stability?!"
Even as doubt gnawed at him, a sudden searing heat surged past his guard, slipping through the blade-net and rushing straight toward him.
That scorching wave instantly drew Shanks' mind back to his clash with Akainu—each of Sakazuki's fists had burned with lethal magma heat.
But this… this heat was far worse.
The temperature roaring toward him was several times hotter than Akainu's full-force Magma Fist!
In an instant, even the battle-hardened Gryphon, forged to withstand magma's searing touch, glowed red, softened, and began to melt before his eyes.
Shanks' expression twisted with shock. He could no longer maintain his net of slashes. With a snap of his wrist, he flung the half-melted Gryphon like a thrown blade toward the floating bone-armed creature.
At the same time, his body flipped backward in rapid succession, darting ten meters across the deck to put distance between them.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Explosions thundered across the deck.
The Moby Dick, which had endured countless wars, splintered and cracked under the unknown assault.
Within moments, the ruined planks ignited under temperatures of thousands of degrees, flames towering ten meters high.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Another wave of unseen strikes slashed toward Shanks.
This time, thanks to the wall of fire, he finally caught a glimpse of the assault.
But that glimpse yielded no understanding—only confusion.
The flames suddenly tore open with two fist-sized holes, as if some invisible force punched straight through.
From those holes, something formless and unseen streaked toward him.
In an instant, two became four, four became eight, until they multiplied beyond counting.
Shanks could do nothing. His body too slow to dodge, his guard destroyed, he could only stare helplessly at his beloved Gryphon.
The blade that had accompanied him through countless battles never even reached its foe.
Instead, in midair, it disintegrated under the impossible heat—first melting, then evaporating entirely into vapor.
A temperature high enough to vaporize forged steel!
Watching Gryphon vanish, Shanks was struck by a crushing despair unlike anything he had ever known.
There was nothing left—no sword, no defense, no hope.
All that remained was death.
But just as the formless barrage tore through the flames toward him, a broad figure suddenly appeared before Shanks.
It was Roya.
He stood tall, his back shielding Shanks from the oncoming strike.
Half-turned, his gaze flicked toward Shanks, while his left arm thrust forward toward the blazing wall.
Shanks saw no movement—yet the air cracked with the unmistakable sound of fists colliding in rapid succession.
Roya tilted his head slightly, speaking calmly:
"Understand now? It's nothing but an oversized mantis shrimp. All it's doing is punching fast enough to create shockwaves, with the excess kinetic energy converted into heat. Nothing special."
"As long as you free your mind—don't let your old understanding limit you—you can absolutely strike faster than it can."
With that, Roya flickered away, already rushing to reinforce another stretch of the battlefront that now spanned several kilometers.
Shanks' heart, only just beginning to calm after brushing death, leapt into turmoil again. His savior was gone—he was once more alone, forced to face this monstrous foe.
This time, he knew. He could rely on no one but himself.
Either he would shatter the limits of his perception, unleash his full strength as Roya urged…
Or he would be pummeled into pulp by this colossal shrimp, only to be reduced to ash in an instant.
Faced with the edge of despair, Shanks entered a state of absolute clarity.
His entire being became like a still, mirror-like lake.
Every ripple in the world outside reflected perfectly upon its surface.
And in that heightened perception, the truth became clear.
Just as Roya had said—it wasn't invincible.
Its strikes were fast, yes—too fast for the eye to follow, too fast for the senses to track.
But that speed came with a flaw. Once it punched, its body locked in place, relying only on the recoil of its own blows to hover in the air.
Shanks' lips curved in the faintest smile.
"If that's all you've got… then I can be faster."
Calm as still water, he channeled Armament Haki to his fingertips, lacing them with a crackle of Conqueror's black lightning.
Then his Shigan—finger pistols—flashed forth like bolts of thunder, stabbing into the unseen barrage.
Within moments, his strikes outpaced the creature's flurry, his speed utterly overwhelming the two bone arms.
From his fingertips, heat of his own began to blaze forth, clashing with the ever-rising temperature between them.
The vacuum between fighter and beast superheated, pushing back toward the colossal shrimp hovering above.
Seconds later, Shanks' assault halted.
The reason was clear—its arms, unable to withstand the strain, shattered to pieces under his blows.
The heat vortex he created consumed the creature, its exoskeleton vaporized in an instant.
Only a strange, indestructible stomach sac remained, plummeting toward the deck.
Roya reappeared at that moment, binding the sac with threads of spirit energy before tossing it below deck for containment.
He nodded to Shanks.
"Well done. Now, go assist the others."
His expression darkened as he added:
"This was only the first probing wave—meant to gather intel on your combat abilities. The next will adapt and evolve… and then they'll come to eliminate each of you specifically."
Pls drop some power stones supper me at my
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