"Let's start," Jozu murmured, a dangerous glint in his eye.
"With a little warm-up."
He confidently pointed a single diamond finger at the crimson dragon hovering in midair.
The pinpoint of light at his fingertip pulsed once, then erupted with a silent, blinding brilliance.
A thin, searing beam of pure energy shot forth with a sound like tearing silk, crossing the vast distance in a fraction of second.
Almost simultaneously, a pained shriek echoed from the sky as the crimson dragon writhed in agony, its massive body thrown off balance as if struck by an invisible meteor.
Upon closer inspection, a thin, perfectly cauterized hole could be seen on its tough underbelly.
The surrounding scales were blackened and warped from the intense heat, and a wisp of thick, acrid smoke curled from the injury.
Though the dragon's incredible regenerative ability quickly sealed the wound, the shock of the attack went far beyond the physical.
All the captains, both in the sky and on the ground, stood frozen, staring at Jozu with expressions of utter disbelief.
The speed of that attack... it was so fast that no one could have possibly reacted, let alone raised a defense.
"Heh, how was that?" Jozu stood in place, a smug, triumphant grin on his face.
The crimson dragon stared in shock at the fresh scar on his abdomen.
"My... my Armament Haki," he stammered, his voice filled with a terrifying disbelief.
"It was pierced... like it was nothing."
"If your Haki couldn't stop it," another dragon captain mused aloud, his voice tinged with a new kind of fear.
"Does that mean... Jozu is now stronger than an Admiral?"
"Heh, you idiots," Jozu sneered mercilessly, clearly relishing their confusion.
He slowly spread his arms, and a new, even more astonishing transformation occurred.
His already impressive limbs began to shift glittering diamond turning perfectly like flawless crystal.
Inside, they could now see an impossibly intricate, almost alien lattice of prisms and lenses that shimmered with a mesmerizing glow.
"Do you get it now, you bunch of brutes who only know how to solve problems with raw force?" Jozu smirked.
"Ron really should give you all a proper lesson in physics." He then revealed a perfectly formed concave mirror embedded in the joint of his wrist.
"This is the key to everything," he declared. "With this, I can control and converge every beam of light that travels through my arm."
He held up his other hand, and in the blink of an eye, a hundred dazzling beams of light erupted within his arm.
They refracted and bent through the internal prisms, converging in his palm until they formed a miniature, impossibly bright sun, cradled effortlessly in his hand.
"To put it simply," Jozu chuckled, "if Kizaru's laser is a single, concentrated beam... this move is a hundred of those beams, focused into one."
A deep, profound silence fell over the nine dragons.
Their earlier pride and bravado had been completely incinerated, replaced by an indescribable, chilling fear.
They now understood.
If Jozu had truly wanted to kill them, he could have simply blasted their heads off, one by one, before they could even react.
A collective, unspoken agreement passed between them: never, ever piss off Jozu again.
Armament Haki was a shield against all things—a universally acknowledged fact across the seas.
But that fact was predicated on Haki being able to meet and repel an attack.
Jozu's attack was different.
It wasn't a blunt force; it was a needle of pure, concentrated light energy, so intensely hot and fast that it seemed to vaporize their defenses before their Haki could fully harden against it.
Their spiritual armor was useless against an attack that simply burned it away in an instant.
They were terrified.
Genuinely terrified.
They had never encountered such an insane ability.
But Jozu clearly wasn't done yet.
"Hey, don't stop now!" he shouted, his tone brimming with a frustrated excitement.
"I haven't even used my Thousand Paths or Ten Thousand Paths techniques yet!"
Seeing the nine dragons quickly revert to their human forms and descend from the sky with their faces pale, Jozu felt a keen pang of disappointment.
One of the commanders, Kingdew, physically recoiled, holding up his hands in surrender.
"Screw that," he muttered, his lips twitching nervously. "I'd rather not risk getting accidentally vaporized by you."
"Yeah, go fight a Logia!" another chimed in, shamelessly pointing a thumb towards a certain
corner."Go find Enel! He's been looking a lot livelier since he got back!"
In his corner, Enel, who had been trying to be invisible, felt a jolt of pure panic, his eyes wide as he silently cursed his crewmates.
Frustrated that no one would play with him any longer, Jozu simply raised his hands, the miniature suns in his palms flaring back to life.
With a bored sigh, he unleashed them into the sky over the empty sea.
The world went white.
A silent, blinding flash was followed by a deafening BOOM that felt like the sky itself was cracking open.
A colossal mushroom cloud of steam and vaporized seawater rose into the sky, so vast it blotted out the sun.
The shockwave hit them moments later like an invisible wall, nearly knocking the entire crew off their feet.
"Jozu, you call this a spar?!" one of the captains roared, his voice trembling with a mix of terror and fury.
"That was clearly an attempt to send us all to the afterlife!"
Jozu had the decency to look sheepish, scratching his head with a genuinely embarrassed expression.
"Heh, sorry about that guys. It's my first time using a fully charged one. Didn't expect it to be this strong." He then nodded thoughtfully.
"But 'Send to the Afterlife' is a good name. Since this move doesn't have one yet, let's go with that. Ten Thousand Paths: Nuclear Blast! Send All to the Afterlife!"
The crew could only stare in stunned silence, their anger momentarily forgotten and replaced by sheer disbelief at his audacity.
"Jozu," Ace finally breathed, his eyes shining with pure admiration.
"Your strength... it's already on par with an Admiral's."
"Yeah," Ron nodded in agreement. "Judging by the power of that attack alone, you've definitely reached that level."
"Gurararara, well done, Jozu," Whitebeard's voice boomed with pride.
"If you really want to know if you have Admiral-level strength," he added with a grin.
"Go find one and pick a fight with them."
Jozu's face lit up, taking the joke with complete seriousness.
"Alright, Pops! When should we go?"
A collective, exasperated groan went through the crew.
The Kaido situation wasn't even resolved yet.
Ron, seeing the dangerous glint in Jozu's eye, quickly stepped in.
"Jozu, there will be plenty of chances to fight. But before that, I think we should test your limits first."
Hearing this, Jozu paused, a new, thoughtful expression on his face.
"My limits, huh..."
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