Up in the sky.
Rain still had no idea his "disguise" had been completely blown with Gion.
Right now, though, he was in a bad spot.
Even though he'd used technique to borrow force and shove Golden Lion back, the recoil was still brutal—his palm split open, and blood ran down the hilt.
"Interesting."
Golden Lion stared at Rain, killing intent thickening. "That last sword… had a bit of a true great-swordsman's flavor. Didn't think a brat like you actually had some skill."
"But—"
He slowly lifted his right "leg," the famed blade Oto pointing straight at Rain. "Technique is still just technique. In front of absolute power, every fancy trick is useless!"
"Crackle—SNAP!"
Without warning, a streak of black-and-red lightning erupted from Shiki's body and wrapped around both swords he used as legs.
The sky changed color—gray cloud cover dyed a dark blood red.
A terrifying pressure, several times stronger than before, slammed down like a tsunami.
Rain's expression shifted.
Conqueror's coating.
That was the real threshold of an emperor-class monster—the old era's most unfair "cheat code."
"Kid," Shiki grinned, "you know how to do this too?"
His body vanished.
When he reappeared, he'd already crossed the distance—right in Rain's face.
Kogarashi, wrapped in black-red lightning, came down with the weight of annihilation.
"Lion: Hakoku!!"
No dodging.
This kind of strike didn't just lock onto your body—it locked onto your will.
Rain roared. Lightning exploded from him without restraint, and he drove his Armament to its limit, coating his fine-grade blade as he raised it crosswise to block.
"CLANG—!!!!"
Two top-tier forces collided head-on—no flourish, no tricks.
For an instant, heaven and earth went silent.
Then a shockwave—black-red and blue-violet intertwined—detonated outward from the two of them.
Below, Merveille looked like it had taken a nuclear hit.
Mountains collapsed. The ground split. Countless giant trees were uprooted and pulverized.
The mutated beasts that had been so ferocious earlier now cowered deep in caves like quails, shaking, not even daring to whimper.
This was a battle of legends—everything else was an ant.
And at the center of it—
Rain felt real danger for the first time.
Not "this is tough."
This was tier pressure.
Shiki's Conqueror's coating was like an indestructible sledgehammer, smashing Rain's defense again and again.
"Crack… crack…"
A tiny brittle sound slipped into Rain's hearing.
His pupils shrank.
The weapon in his hands—the fine-grade blade that had taken so many pirate heads, drunk so much blood—
was still just steel.
It had endured Rain's violent lightning. It had endured Armament hardening.
But it couldn't endure a direct emperor-grade clash.
A fracture raced across the blade.
"Break!!!"
Shiki barked, his power surging again—
"CRACK—!!"
A sharp snap echoed through the sky.
In Gion's stunned gaze, Rain's sword exploded into fragments.
With the weapon gone, Shiki's Conqueror-coated kick slammed clean into Rain's crossed arms.
"BOOM!"
Rain was launched like a meteor.
"THUD—!!!"
He smashed into the side of a mountain on Merveille, shaking the earth. Dust erupted skyward, leaving a massive crater punched deep into the rock.
"RAIN!!" Gion cried out, instinctively rushing forward.
"Don't come!"
Rain's voice came from within the dust, hoarse but sharp.
Gion's feet froze mid-step.
Up above, Shiki didn't even chase.
He floated there, pinching a fragment of Rain's shattered blade. With a casual squeeze, it crumbled to iron powder and drifted away.
"What a waste."
Shiki shook his head, looking down into the smoke with a mix of regret and mockery. "Good Haki. A first-rate fruit. But your capacity—is too small."
"It's not just that you were holding a toothpick made of scrap metal."
He tapped his own head, voice booming. "It's your identity. A marine. A dog on a leash for the Celestial Dragons."
"On this sea, a true king never bows."
"As long as you're still willing to take orders from those idiots in Mary Geoise…"
"Without the spirit to stand above everything—you'll never awaken Conqueror's Haki."
Down in the broken mountainside, the wind tore the dust away.
Rain climbed out of the rubble.
His top was shredded, revealing a lean, hardened torso. Blood hung at the corner of his mouth—he didn't bother wiping it.
He glanced at the half-hilt in his hand, silent for a beat.
"You're right."
He tossed the broken handle aside with a clink.
Then he looked up at Shiki—not furious, not rattled—just wearing a grin that was hotter, sharper, more dangerous.
"Without Conqueror's coating… ordinary blades really are too fragile."
"So if I don't have a good sword—"
He raised both hands toward the surrounding mountain riddled with metal veins, the scattered floating-island debris, and the fragments of his shattered blade.
"Bzzzz—"
Blue lightning gathered violently in his palms. The magnetic field twisted hard enough to blur the air, even making the light itself waver.
"Then I'll… forge one."
BOOM!
High-voltage current pierced through the scattered metal.
Under thousands of degrees of lightning heat, the steel glowed red, softened, and turned half-molten—like sticky taffy.
Rain held his hands as if kneading blazing clay. Under brute electromagnetic compression, the red-hot mass was stretched, flattened, fused.
Shiki narrowed his eye. "That's…?"
Rain ignored him.
He clapped his hands together.
"BZZZRRR—!!!"
The molten metal spun, compressed, and drawn out under crushing current and magnetic restraint.
Impurities flashed into vapor. What remained was the purest essence.
Only a few seconds passed.
The glare dimmed.
A savage-looking, crimson long sword hovered in front of Rain.
No guard. A long, narrow blade. Golden lightning patterns flowed across it like veins. A visible magnetic storm warped the air around it.
Rain reached out and grabbed the still-glowing hilt.
"SSS—!"
The heat instantly evaporated the sweat on his palm, but he felt no pain—only a feral grin as he poured Armament into it, forcibly stabilizing the newborn weapon.
He swung the sword once.
The air warped from the heat, leaving a dark-red afterimage.
Then he crouched—
BOOM!
And became a streak of crimson lightning that shot straight back into the sky.
He appeared in front of Shiki in an instant, and the red blade came down like the end of the world.
~~~
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