In an instant, the sky bled a deep, bruised crimson and black.
A suffocating pressure rolled outward like a tidal wave, crashing over the two brothers in relentless, heavy surges.
Such an immense, crushing display of Haoshoku Haki, they had only ever felt it from one man before.
Rosinante looked up.
The moment he saw the figure suspended in midair, his eyes widened, a sudden wave of relief and excitement breaking across his face.
Across from him, however, Doflamingo was violently yanked back to a primal fear buried deep within his memories.
His expression instantly turned venomous.
"He's still alive...!"
Behind his tinted sunglasses, a rare fracture of raw shock and dread split his vision.
This was completely beyond Doflamingo's calculations.
A man who had vanished from the world for over a decade… A man who was supposed to be rotting in the deepest abyss of Impel Down… Had suddenly materialized right before his eyes.
What exactly had happened?
What was the real truth behind the events of more than ten years ago?
And why had he appeared here, of all places, now?
A torrent of frantic questions flooded Doflamingo's mind, leaving him feeling suffocated and completely off-balance.
If there was one person in this world he least wanted to face… Aside from that monster, the Emperor of the New World… It was undoubtedly the man standing above them.
Even after more than ten years, and despite the monumental growth of his own strength, he had absolutely no confidence that he could surpass him.
The powerful silhouette before him remained the ultimate obstacle of his life, an insurmountable peak looming in the unreachable distance.
"That's... him?!"
On the ground below, Diamante and Trebol exchanged frantic looks.
Their faces drained of color, frozen in disbelief and terror.
They recognized him instantly and with that recognition came the paralyzing memory of the fear they had endured over a decade ago.
Back then, the entire Donquixote Family had been utterly dismantled by this single man.
The defeat had been so absolute that they hadn't even possessed the power to resist.
"Kojin..." Doflamingo ground out the name, spitting it like venom.
His face had darkened into a mask of pure shadow.
"Senior Officer Koji!" In stark contrast to Doflamingo's rigid tension, Rosinante was practically overflowing with fervor.
"To have trained such power… It seems you haven't wasted these past years, Rosinante." Koji spoke, his voice tinged with quiet emotion.
More than a decade had passed and the world had changed.
The boys he once knew had grown into formidable men.
Even he couldn't help but feel a flicker of surprise at Rosinante's Awakening of the Calm-Calm Fruit.
In fact, he could keenly sense that after Awakening, the absolute destructive potential of Rosinante's silence was likely no weaker than the Tremor-Tremor Fruit itself.
One fruit forced all things to vibrate violently. The other brought all vibrations in the world to a grinding, absolute halt.
They were conceptual opposites.
Two Devil Fruits that had reached completely diametric extremes.
"Yes, sir!" Rosinante nodded fiercely, entirely unable to hide his excitement.
Koji offered a faint smile.
Then, he slowly turned his head. His gaze sharpened into razor-thin blades as he locked eyes with Doflamingo.
"You've certainly carved out quite a life for yourself during my absence… Doflamingo."
The Warlord's posture shifted instantly. He quietly raised his guard, tensing every muscle in his body.
His eyes became extraordinarily serious.
After a heavy silence, a sudden, familiar laugh broke through his teeth.
"Fufufufufufu! A giant like you vanishes for over a decade, only to casually stroll back onto the stage. In all of history, the only man to enter Impel Down and escape was the Golden Lion, Shiki."
He paused.
His gaze grew progressively heavier, weighed down by suspicion.
"And even he had to lose both of his legs to do it. But you… You look to be in even better condition than before."
"I'm curious. What exactly happened to you during those ten years in that great prison?"
"Or perhaps you can tell me what truly went down all those years ago?"
His calculated questions caused the excitement on Rosinante's face to wither.
A sharp curiosity appeared in the younger brother's eyes as well.
At the same time, he was jarred by the sheer depth of Doflamingo's information network. The fact that Doflamingo possessed actual clues regarding Koji's whereabouts over the last decade was a secret very few people in the world were aware of.
"You've certainly kept your ears to the ground." Koji raised an eyebrow, a casual smile playing on his lips.
His face was smiling, but the Haki radiating from his frame grew exponentially colder and more oppressive.
The entire sky hanging over Mock Town curdled into a violent whorl of black and red.
Even the ambient light seemed to be swallowed whole by his presence. The bedrock of the island itself groaned and shuddered violently under the strain.
"But I have absolutely no obligation to explain anything to a traitor."
The moment those words left his lips, his eyes froze into chips of ice.
Simultaneously, a massive pair of wings unfurled from his back. With a single, powerful downbeat, pitch-black flames seemed to ignite along their edges, sending ripples of distorted space tearing through the air.
At the sight, Doflamingo's pupils contracted to pinpricks. Almost purely on instinct, the ultimate attack he had momentarily paused shifted its trajectory.
It locked onto Koji and fired.
A manic, desperate light erupted from his eyes.
"It's been more than ten years! I refuse to believe that I am still completely helpless against you! The shadow you've cast over my life ends right here, today!"
The veins in his eyes went bloodshot.
Doflamingo's entire frame vibrated with rage.
Boom!
The ground fractured beneath his boots. Countless strands of string, thoroughly saturated with Haoshoku Haki and coated in dense, high-density Busoshoku Haki, erupted toward the heavens.
Yet to his utter horror, Koji's speed bypassed the realm of absurdity.
Every single strike sliced through empty air.
Not a single thread could even graze his cloak.
"It seems your growth has given you an excess of confidence." Koji remarked in a perfectly level tone.
"Then let me see… exactly how much you've improved under my teachings."
His voice resonated across the entire battlefield.
With another stroke of his wings, the space between them seemed to fold in on itself.
In a fraction of a heartbeat, Koji materialized directly in front of Doflamingo. He pulled back his right arm and drove a simple, straightforward punch forward.
No tricks.
No theatricality.
Just absolute, unadulterated force.
Doflamingo's pupils contracted.
A desperate crimson glare flashed in his eyes as he ripped both hands back.
Countless strings compressed into his palms, supercharged with his own Haoshoku Haki.
Then he violently whipped them forward.
"Super Strike Whip!"
The fierce attack collided head-on with Koji's advancing fist.
BOOM!!
The atmosphere buckled. The resulting shockwave detonated outward, tearing downward toward Mock Town below.
Almost instantaneously, on a thoroughfare several kilometers away, fifteen concrete buildings were sliced cleanly in half by the aftermath.
Colossal plumes of dust choked the sky.
The pedestrians froze in sheer shock.
Two seconds later, a wave of terrified screams rippled across the town.
Crocodile and his group were navigating the streets when the chaos suddenly erupted overhead.
They watched Mock Town plunge into an absolute panic. A profound seriousness settled over their features as they raised their heads toward the clouds.
Toward the two figures tearing the sky apart.
"Doflamingo," Smoker grunted, his voice dropping low.
"Heh." Crocodile let out a cold, humorless smile.
The group remained anchored in place amidst the stampede of fleeing civilians, silently watching the sudden battle unfold above.
High in the sky… Kojin's white Marine cloak snapped and fluttered violently against the pressure.
Feeling the surging Haki grinding against his fist, a small, approving smile touched his lips.
"You've become quite proficient with Ryuo."
Doflamingo's face grew heavy under the strain. After the deadlock ground on for roughly two seconds, his body was blasted backward several hundred meters through the air.
"That's a skill you personally taught me!" He shouted.
Instantly, from the space behind him, more than a dozen enormous pillars of sharpened white string emerged.
Each one was thick, dense, and heavily coated in highly concentrated Haki.
Whoosh!
The Haki-clad strings shot toward Koji like homing missiles.
Kojin chuckled softly. His wings hummed with a gentle rhythm, keeping him perfectly level in the air.
Looking at the incoming attacks, his eyes narrowed into slits.
Then, he suddenly took a deep, massive breath.
Woooooooom!
A low, roaring sound echoed through the heavens.
The next moment, everyone stared in absolute, paralyzed disbelief.
Kojin's chest expanded exponentially, bloating outward like a massive balloon.
But it didn't stop there as massive amounts of air poured into his body, causing his entire physical frame to swell to monstrous proportions.
Within moments, his body had expanded to over fifty meters in size.
His head appeared tiny compared to the massive mass of his torso.
From afar, he resembled a gigantic fish floating effortlessly in the sky.
In that exact fraction of a second, the incoming strings arrived before him.
"Haaaaah!"
Kojin exhaled.
The staggering volume of compressed air within his body was instantly unleashed.
It erupted forward as a devastating air cannon.
BOOM!!
The collision was instantaneous.
The dozen Haki-infused strings were blown to absolute splinters, destroyed on impact.
Yet the kinetic energy of the air cannon didn't even slow down.
It tore through the atmosphere at incredible speed, arriving at Doflamingo's chest in the blink of an eye.
"What…?!" His eyes widened.
He had never imagined such a thing.
A single breath, a mere intake and release of oxygen had generated such a terrifying, destructive force.
What kind of ability was this?
Driven by pure instinct, he crossed his forearms before his chest.
At the same time, countless strings gathered together to form a massive white shield.
BOOM!!
The air cannon struck, causing the protective shield shattered instantly.
Then the remaining concussive force slammed directly into Doflamingo's crossed arms.
Pffft!
A heavy spray of blood erupted from his mouth.
His eyes bulged against his skull. His body crashed violently from the sky. He flew thousands of meters through empty space before smashing into the dense forests surrounding Mock Town.
Trees exploded into splinters one after another.
He skidded, tumbled, and plowed a devastating trench through dozens of giant trees before his momentum finally stopped.
By then, he was thoroughly covered in his own blood.
His forehead had split open, a heavy crimson trail obscuring his vision.
The sunglasses on his face had completely shattered.
For the first time, his bare face was revealed to the light.
It was a mask of fear, shock, and total disbelief.
"Zoan Devil Fruit...?"
"This man actually possesses...?!"
Doflamingo's heart hammered violently against his ribs.
A user wielding multiple distinct Devil Fruit abilities.
It was an anomaly that completely overturned common sense.
And judging from what he had just witnessed, Kojin had pulled an entire kilometer's worth of air into his body before weaponizing it as a devastating blast.
Whatever Zoan Fruit he had consumed, it was likely an incredibly powerful Mythical Zoan.
But the exact nature of the creature remained entirely unknown.
"If this is all you've got… then this battle is already over."
Kojin looked down from above, his voice carrying the cold weight of a final verdict.
His right hand slowly, deliberately clenched into a fist. Violent arcs of black-and-red lightning crackled frantically around it as his Haoshoku Haki surged forth.
Doflamingo looked up.
At the black-and-crimson sky.
At the terrifying figure standing within it.
A manic, feral madness flickered to life within his eyes.
He suddenly clenched both fists, forcing himself up.
A tyrannical aura erupted from his broken form.
Though it was vastly weaker than Koji's overwhelming pressure, it possessed an incredibly stubborn, vicious resilience.
Slowly, it carved out its own narrow territory within the crushing gravity.
"Of course it's not just that!! What you taught me wasn't only Ryuo and Awakening! Fufufufufufu!"
As his wild laughter tore from his throat, arcs of purple-black lightning suddenly burst around his body.
His domineering presence expanded, growing far stronger.
"Although I still can't perfectly control it! And it only triggers at a time like this!"
"But right now…"
His eyes snapped wide.
More than a dozen giant strings shot into the sky once again.
Thick branches of purple-black lightning wrapped tightly around the threads.
Haoshoku Haki!
"...there's no room to hold back anymore!!"
With a furious, guttural roar, Doflamingo launched himself off the ground.
He charged back into the air like a madman.
He wanted to erase the humiliation of the past.
He wanted to use the power he had bled for to finally surpass that man.
Even if his light was but a faint, dying spark, he still wished to compete with the sun itself for brilliance.
(End of Chapter)
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