"Ah, yes blood food."
Deadpool spread his arms as if showcasing merchandise, nodding toward the Marine soldiers frozen into ice statues in the distance, then at the zombies further off still locked in snarling poses.
"See? To us, are they any different from rats or cockroaches?"
Deadpool advanced toward Kuzan step by step; the ice beneath his feet groaned under the strain.
"Equally fragile, equally stupid, equally… delicious."
"A light squeeze and pop! they burst, spilling crimson juice."
Deadpool let out a manic cackle, the white eye-patches on his mask curving into crescents.
"You, buddy, you're different."
"I can smell that nauseating stench of power on you the scent of something at the very top of the food chain."
"Why waste your gifts on these inferior creatures doomed to be phased out?"
Mordred voice brimmed with seduction; the Blacklight virus cells inside him writhed, hungry to devour the mighty Logia user before him.
"Join us."
Deadpool extended a hand already mutated into a claw, offering the invitation to Kuzan.
"Embrace glorious evolution and see the wider world how about it?"
The air seemed to freeze.
Far away, Smoker gripped his jitte so hard his knuckles whitened.
He was trembling.
Not from the cold, but from rage.
That bastard dared call the Marines who had died for justice, and those innocent civilians, "blood food"?
"Like hell…"
Smoker ground the cigar between his teeth and was about to charge when a far more terrifying chill forced him back.
Kuzan moved.
He didn't roar, nor did he explode like Akainu.
He simply exhaled a puff of white mist; three inches from his lips, it flash-froze into ice shards that clattered to the ground.
"Ara ara…"
Kuzan lifted a hand to scratch the back of his head, the motion stiff.
"I knew you were crazy, but not this far gone."
He raised his eyes, his gaze sweeping past Deadpool to the endless ice field.
"One of us?"
"Don't be mistaken."
Kuzan's voice turned icy; the surrounding temperature plunged dozens of degrees.
"I'm human not a monster!"
Hearing this, Deadpool didn't rage or retort.
He simply tilted his head, his white eye-patches blinking, and then let out a long, regretful sigh.
"Sigh"
The sound dragged on, as if squeezing every ounce of air from his lungs, unsettling to hear.
"The same tired rhetoric how disappointing."
"Until you break the chains of species, you'll never truly grow."
Deadpool lowered his arms; the two custom Desert Eagles spun around his fingers and slid into their holsters.
He lifted his head, looking through the red-black mask at the Admiral as if at an idiot.
Standing beside a Marine ice sculpture on the verge of reanimation, Deadpool rapped the hard ice shell clear, crisp.
"Listen such a lovely sound."
He turned; the red-black bodysuit blazed against the white expanse.
"Kuzan, you think you're the same creature as this thing?"
Pointing at the young Marine frozen in terror, Deadpool spoke with exaggerated mockery.
"Hundreds of millions of years ago, when our ancestors were furry tree-swingers flinging feces, some climbed down, learned fire, learned tools."
He pranced in ridiculous steps toward Kuzan.
"From that moment, they parted ways with their tree-dwelling cousins."
"Do modern humans call monkeys their kind? Do they weep when they step on one?"
Deadpool spread his arms, head cocked, the white eye-patches now different sizes, dripping contempt.
"Nope. The level of life has changed."
"Look at you freeze oceans with a thought, snuff out hundreds of thousands in an instant."
"We stopped being human long ago, Kuzan."
"Done talking?"
"Then it's time to send you off."
Slowly, Kuzan raised his right foot.
His voice was calm like the sea before a storm.
"What a shame."
Deadpool shrugged; his arms morphed into blades.
"You chose wrong."
Boom!
Without warning.
For a hundred meters around Kuzan, the ice shattered not just cracked, but pulverized.
Terrifying Armament Haki cloaked him, dyeing his white suit pitch black.
The next instant, Kuzan vanished.
Fast too fast for even a retinal afterimage.
Deadpool only saw a blur before soul-freezing cold kissed his face.
"Ice Block: Twin Spears."
Two spears of absolute cold, reinforced with Armament Haki, became unstoppable blades.
This wasn't a probing strike the Haki was dense, almost solid.
Thud!
The spears pierced Deadpool's shoulders, the impact flinging him backward.
But that was only the beginning.
Kuzan followed like a shadow.
He didn't use wide-area attacks; he compressed all his power into a single point.
"Your so-called evolution I don't get it."
Kuzan appeared mid-air, looking down at the tumbling Deadpool.
His right fist was encased in thick frost, black Haki flowing beneath, exuding suffocating pressure.
"But I know one thing."
"The difference between me and a monster like you is I revere life."
BOOM!!
The punch smashed square into Deadpool's face.
Air compressed and exploded.
A visible white shockwave flattened every iceberg in its path.
Deadpool crashed into the ice field like a meteor.
The ground quaked; shards of ice and frozen earth shot sky-high.
"Ding! Host's words enraged Admiral Kuzan: astonishment value +800!"
At the bottom of the crater.
Mordred felt as if a hundred elephants had stomped his skull in turn.
Every facial bone shattered, his eyeballs burst, even his brain turned to mush.
Any normal person would be beyond dead.
But the horror of the Blacklight virus is this: as long as one cell survives, it can regenerate endlessly.
"Cough… hell of a hit…"
A muffled complaint rose from the pit.
Black-red tendrils writhed madly; bones re-knit in two seconds, and burst eyes regrew.
Deadpool stood shakily, twisting his jaw back into place with a crack.
"So this is an Admiral going all-out?"
He spat blood and broken teeth, his tone still flippant but his eyes now sharp.
That punch had been more than physical.
The extreme cold had invaded through the wounds, wrecking cell activity and trying to cripple his regeneration.
Without Deadpool's immortality, the body's base stats might not have handled it.