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Chapter 464: Holding Back the Ant King with One Hand
Dragon didn't look back at the three kids, merely raising his right hand to clench the empty air.
The surrounding air popped with a string of sharp detonations. "Stay close to me. If you fall behind, not even the gods will be able to save you."
Dragon set off. With every step, he left a deep footprint in the ground. Haki and Nen formed a materialized, black armor over his body. It was the ultimate defense he had developed by fusing the two power systems. The forest around them began to wither on a massive scale; the life-stealing aura brought by the Ant King's birth was rapidly altering the region's ecosystem.
On a distant tree canopy, the retreating Neferpitou stopped in her tracks. She turned her head, looking toward the ant nest. Her ruby pupils burned with fanatical devotion.
"My King… what beautiful, overwhelming power." She licked her lips. "It seems I won't need to bring those toys back after all. The King will crush them personally."
Changing direction, Pitou rushed back toward the nest at top speed. She had to stand guard by the King's side. That was the sole meaning of a Royal Guard's existence.
Inside the nest, Meruem had already emerged from the underground cavern. Standing under the sunlight, he examined his green hands. Nen danced across his fingertips. He could feel his power continuing to grow endlessly. The energy fluctuations from the surface—which normally would have irritated him—had somehow become the nourishment for his evolution.
"This world is laughably fragile." Meruem looked up at the sky. His purple eyes reflected the entirety of the NGL Autonomous Region. "Youpi. Pouf. Go clean up those stinking bugs. Don't let them dirty my eyes."
Youpi and Pouf knelt on one knee. "As you command, King."
The two Royal Guards turned into blurs of light, shooting deep into the forest. An apex, cross-dimensional slaughter was officially underway.
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Back in Blake's tavern.
Blake, dozing in his rocking chair, opened his eyes. He stared at the floating virtual light screen displaying real-time data from the Hunter world dungeon. The red dot representing the Ant King was glowing brighter than the system's highest programmed threshold.
Blake rubbed his chin. "Interesting. The Haki from the One Piece world and the elemental power from Teyvat actually catalyzed a genetic mutation in the Chimera Ant. Did this just trigger a system bug?"
He let out a yawn and took a sip from the coffee next to him.
"Whatever, it's fine. If Dragon couldn't even beat a mutated ant, he wouldn't deserve to be the leader of the Revolutionary Army." Blake adjusted the angle of the screen, settling in to enjoy his one-hundred-million-Beri blockbuster movie.
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Deep in the forest, Dragon and Kuma had collided head-on with the approaching Youpi and Pouf.
There was no opening banter. No mutual probing.
Youpi's body instantly tripled in size. Six massive arms slammed down toward Dragon simultaneously. "Die, human!"
Dragon didn't even blink. His purple Rinnegan snapped wide open. "Shinra Tensei."
A violent repulsive force erupted outward with Dragon at the epicenter. Youpi's colossal body crashed into an invisible wall of sighs. The moment his six arms made contact with the repulsion field, they twisted and snapped. Blood sprayed wildly as Youpi screamed, flying backward.
Seeing this, Pouf immediately scattered his body into countless miniature clones in mid-air, attempting to bypass the repulsion field and attack Dragon from his blind spots.
"Spiritual Message!"
A rain of highly toxic, hypnotic scales drifted down. Kuma simply adjusted his signature round sunglasses. Raising both hands, palms facing each other, he murmured, "Yin-Healing Deflection Sphere."
A massive, red paw-shaped bubble enveloped their entire group. The toxic scales landed on the bubble and were instantly repelled hundreds of meters away. The trees that caught the scales dissolved into pools of foul-smelling black sludge.
Pouf's clones reformed in the air. His handsome face was twisted in shock. "Impossible! What kind of bizarre Nen ability is this?!"
Dragon gave him no time to think. Dense, black-red Advanced Armament Haki coiled around his right fist. The destructive power of Ryuo combined seamlessly with a burst of Nen.
"Dragon Claw: Crushing Dragon."
A black and red pillar of energy pierced the heavens. Pouf didn't even have time to scream before half of his body was completely vaporized. His remaining carcass plummeted to the ground like a torn ragdoll.
In just a single exchange, two Royal Guards were taken down—one dead, one critically injured. This was the true foundation of the One Piece world's apex combatants. No flashy, rule-based tricks; just pure, unadulterated, overwhelming violence.
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High above the ant nest, Meruem sensed the death of his Royal Guard. He wasn't angry. He was just slightly surprised.
"Oh? It seems this world has a few interesting bugs after all." Meruem's tail swished gently behind him. He bent his knees slightly.
Bang. The ground beneath him simply caved in, forming a crater a hundred meters wide. Meruem's body transformed into a streak of green lightning, tearing through the sky straight toward Dragon and Kuma's coordinates.
The true Hell-Tier Boss had arrived.
A tearing screech ripped through the sky, the volume so intense it hurt to hear. A dark green streak of lightning plummeted vertically into the center of the battlefield.
With no wasted movement, the ground collapsed. A crater hundreds of meters wide instantly appeared in the previously flat woodland. Furious air currents forcefully blew away the dust cloud, revealing the scene at the bottom in perfect clarity.
Meruem stood atop the torn remnants of Pouf's butterfly wings. He walked up from the bottom of the crater, step by step, not even glancing at the subordinate who had once been endlessly loyal to him. It was like stepping on a dry leaf. He flicked his tail a few times, shaking off the green blood staining its tip—splatter from when Youpi was instantly defeated.
His purple eyes completely bypassed the towering Kuma and the massive-headed Ivankov, locking firmly onto Dragon at the front of the group. There was no rage in that gaze. Only the arrogance of an apex predator evaluating its prey.
"Your life energy is barely enough to serve as my appetizer." Meruem spoke. His voice wasn't loud, but the soundwaves were laced with materialized Nen. The surrounding giant trees, already withered, shattered completely under the vibration. Splinters of wood flew everywhere like shrapnel.
Dragon didn't reply. Trying to reason with a mutated, otherworldly insect was something only the Marines were stupid enough to do. His dark green cloak whipped fiercely in the gale. The red square tattoo on his face distorted slightly. The purple Rinnegan glowed brightly, rings of light shifting within his eye sockets.
Dragon raised his right hand, curling his five fingers into a claw in mid-air. "Bansho Ten'in (Universal Pull)."
A massive gravitational field erupted, centered on Dragon's hand. Surrounding rubble and shattered trees were helplessly pulled into the air. This unreasonable attractive force directly enveloped the Ant King who had just climbed out of the crater, attempting to rip him off the ground.
Meruem leaned forward slightly. The muscles in his legs bulged, pinning him to the bedrock like two steel spikes. He carved two deep trenches into the earth, but he wasn't pulled forward a single inch.
Meruem let out a cold laugh. "You dare show off such cheap tricks?"
The spiked tail behind him snapped upward and lashed down viciously at the empty air ahead. An ear-splitting sonic boom ruptured the air. With pure physical strength combined with ultra-dense Nen, that single tail whip forcibly cleaved right through Dragon's invisible gravitational field.
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