Kaido's reptilian gaze swept across the surrounding, apocalyptic environment, his mind rapidly calculating the potential weaknesses of Ochoku's terrifying Devil Fruit ability.
Currently, the absolute strangeness of Ochoku's Logia-type Awakening lay entirely in the sheer inability to grasp his true physical body. In terms of raw attack power and lethality, the mud tsunami posed absolutely zero threat to Kaido's invincible Oni physiology.
'So, is this like going back to the chaotic era before Haki became mainstream to counter Logia-type Devil Fruits?' Kaido thought, his boots sinking into the endless swamp.
Kaido suddenly recalled a tactical discussion York had casually shared with them during a War Council. He had mentioned the second fundamental weakness of all Devil Fruits, aside from Seastone and the ocean: elemental incompatibility.
The Suna Suna no Mi (Sand) fears water. The Goro Goro no Mi (Lightning) fears rubber insulation. The Gomu Gomu no Mi (Rubber) fears piercing slashes.
Recalling this specific topic, Kaido's eyes widened. He suddenly realized exactly how to deal with Ochoku's seemingly invincible Logia Awakening. What was the natural enemy of a wet, viscous, bottomless swamp?
"Worororororo!! Ochoku, your doomsday is here!"
Kaido let out a deafening, sky-shaking laugh. His muscular, bipedal body rapidly expanded, his skin erupting into impenetrable, azure dragon scales as his snout elongated. The colossal Azure Dragon once again soared high into the storm clouds above Hachinosu.
Ochoku, lurking silently deep within the bottomless swamp he had assimilated, watched Kaido's draconic transformation with a sudden, sinking feeling of dread.
As the master of the Numa Numa no Mi (Swamp-Swamp Fruit), Ochoku naturally knew his elemental weaknesses better than anyone. A swamp was defined entirely by its moisture and humidity. When he saw Kaido take to the sky as a dragon, he immediately knew he was in catastrophic trouble.
Without hesitation, Ochoku began aggressively digging deeper underground. As long as his assimilation speed was fast enough, he could plunge deep enough into the earth's crust to evade whatever apocalyptic attack Kaido was charging.
Kaido, swirling in the thunderclouds, naturally didn't know that Ochoku had already cowardly started to burrow away. But operating under the absolute philosophy of an Emperor—never giving an enemy a chance to breathe—Kaido inhaled deeply, his massive chest expanding.
"Boro Breath!!"
Thanks to the ambient, million-degree heat radiating from York's battlefield on the other side of the island, Kaido's dragon breath was pre-heated and unimaginably concentrated.
A colossal, continuous torrent of blazing, superheated plasma descended from the heavens, violently striking the absolute center of the kilometer-wide swamp.
The wet, viscous mud was instantly flash-vaporized by the terrifying high temperature. Steam exploded upward in a mushroom cloud, and the swamp rapidly baked, dried, and hardened into solid, cracked terracotta.
Ochoku, desperately burrowing underground, felt the terrifying, dehydrating heat rapidly closing in behind him. Realizing his element was being annihilated, he immediately canceled his Awakening, forcefully reverting to his original human form to avoid being baked alive inside the hardening clay.
This was the absolute terrifying double-edged sword of a Logia-type Awakening.
The ultimate advantage was embodying the concept of nature itself, making localized physical attacks completely ineffective, no matter how strong the opponent's Armament Haki was.
The ultimate disadvantage, however, was the extreme vulnerability to massive, area-of-effect elemental counters. Once a Logia user encountered a direct counter to their element on a massive scale, they were often worse off than a mere foot soldier. A foot soldier could at least leave behind a corpse; a Logia user assimilated into an element would be completely eradicated alongside it.
Ochoku, having reverted to his true human form deep within the crater, instantly felt the terrifying, ambient high temperature of the dragon flames bleeding through the rock.
The scorching plasma burst through the cracked earth. The sheer kinetic impact force, combined with the incinerating heat, violently struck Ochoku. It was only fortunate that his baseline physical Haki was incredibly dense; he barely managed to survive the blast by instantly coating his entire body in Full-Body Armament Haki.
But... before he could even catch his breath to celebrate his survival, the giant Azure Dragon transformed back into a hybrid Dragon-Human, plummeting from the sky like a dark meteor.
BOOM!
Kaido's clawed feet landed heavily on the glowing, molten edge of the giant pit blasted out by the dragon flames. He looked down at the burned, panting Warlord.
"Wororororo! Found you, Ochoku!"
Ochoku was silent for a long moment. His eyes were cold, tinged with a profound unwillingness to die, and a faint, pathetic hint of regret.
"Kaido... can we reconcile?" Ochoku gasped, gripping his burned shoulder. "No matter what happened... we were once comrades in the same crew!"
"Comrades?!"
Kaido scoffed, genuinely looking as if he had just heard the funniest joke in the New World.
"Go to hell and ask Shakky about reconciliation! I'm just the executioner responsible for sending you to meet her!"
Terrifying black-and-red lightning, mixed with azure-black plasma, violently burst from Kaido's body. He swung Hassaikai with both hands, leaping high into the air, leaving a jagged trail of lightning in his wake before smashing down with apocalyptic fury.
"Conqueror of Three Worlds: Ragnarok!!"
The two-colored lightning exploded violently behind the Great Skull Mountain. The sheer kinetic shockwave mirrored Whitebeard's tremor punches, visually shattering the atmosphere behind the fortress into a spiderweb of cracked glass.
The Main Battlefield — Front of Skull Mountain.
York's arrogant words did not sway the absolute will of the entity possessing Saint Saturn to obliterate—or perhaps capture—him. Similarly, the World Government's veiled threats did not sway York's resolve in the slightest.
York had already invited Charlotte Linlin to heavily fortify his home base. With the Queen of Totto Land's help, alongside the combined forces of Gloriosa, Stussy, and Dragon, his Empire was essentially impenetrable. Unless Garp personally led the assault, it was foolproof.
And York understood Garp very well. After the bitter atrocities of the God Valley Incident, even if Garp was still nominally willing to serve the World Government, the old Marine Hero would certainly disdain participating in a despicable, cowardly tactic like raiding an Emperor's home to kidnap women and children.
If Garp didn't participate in the home invasion, even if Sengoku brought Vice Admirals Tsuru and Zephyr, there was nothing to worry about. Zephyr was a master of martial arts, but his style was entirely physical and predictable. Optimistically, Ginny's indestructible Barrier Ball could likely lock him in a stalemate from start to finish.
Confident in his Empire's safety, York engaged in an even more intense, catastrophic battle against Imu in front of the skull fortress.
The entity possessing Saint Saturn attacked York relentlessly from all directions with massive, piercing shadow tentacles. The other four Elders—despite being repeatedly burned to charred husks by York's solar flares—relentlessly regenerated and charged him.
The surviving pirates, horribly mutated into mindless demons by Imu's dark influence, had completely lost their sanity and only knew how to blindly obey the entity's commands. No matter how many thousands of them York instantly incinerated, as long as they could somewhat recover, they would throw themselves at York, sacrificing decades of their lifespans just to distract him. Their once-healthy bodies visibly aged and withered into gray husks with every charge.
York calmly deflected the apocalyptic encirclement, his mind racing to calculate a definitive countermeasure.
Further increasing the upper limit of his flame temperature was tactically meaningless. One million degrees Celsius was more than enough to vaporize these enemies; pushing it to fifteen million degrees (the core of the sun) would only slightly increase his killing efficiency while burning through his stamina exponentially faster.
However, if he could somehow enhance his Purification power and completely shatter Imu's Black Turn Domination, then the tide of this battle would be definitively reversed.
York acted the very second the thought crystallized. But before unleashing his trump card, he needed to replenish his stamina to maximum capacity.
Although he still possessed a massive reserve of stolen life force from the earlier harvest, York was a pragmatic hoarder; he would rather end the fight with a full tank than risk running out of reserves halfway through a clash with the Gods.
"Fire Dance: Cyclone!"
Under York's absolute control, a swirling vortex of one-million-degree plasma transformed into a towering fire tornado, protecting him in the absolute center while completely vaporizing the immediate surroundings.
The four Elders, who had thought they had finally found an opening for a combined strike, were instantly engulfed by the apocalyptic flames.
Saint Mars, the colossal Itsumade bird, and Saint Ju Peter, the massive Sandworm, were instantly vaporized into ash. Saint Nusjuro, the skeletal horse, desperately resisted for a few seconds using the freezing chill of the Underworld, but ultimately couldn't escape the fate of being flash-fried into charcoal. Only Saint Warcury, the impenetrable Houki boar, lasted a full ten seconds before finally collapsing and disappearing into the white-hot flames.
Simultaneously, Imu's countless, encroaching shadow tentacles were entirely burned away by the sheer ambient roar of the fire tornado.
Naturally, the thousands of mutated pirate demons didn't even stand a chance. They were turned to dust before they even felt the heat.
When the apocalyptic fire tornado finally dissipated, York's blazing, white, flame-like hair seamlessly reverted to its natural jet-black color. However, the black flame ribbon swirling behind his shoulders completely inverted, turning into a halo of pure, blinding white light.
He had switched modes.
He gazed across the scorched wasteland at the entity possessing Saint Saturn, a terrifying, confident grin spreading across his lips.
"Do you remember this?!" York taunted, his voice echoing across the wasteland.
The entity possessing Saturn froze. The demonic, concentric-circle eyes narrowed sharply, clearly recalling deeply unpleasant, humiliating memories.
"YORK!!!"
A deep, unnatural, multi-layered growl, vibrating with sheer, cosmic anger, caused the shadowy aura enveloping Saint Saturn to tremble violently.
"Hahahahaha!" York laughed uproariously. He knew that his suicidal sneak attack back at God Valley had succeeded in deeply wounding Imu's pride, and his ability had definitely permanently affected the entity's true body.
"Want to try it again?!"
York raised his hands. The aura he released was no longer the blazing, incinerating heat of the Sun God. Instead, it was a warm, sacred, profoundly gentle wave of energy. Countless, glowing Holy Light tentacles shot out from his back like angelic wings.
Imu, recognizing the absolute danger, instantly controlled Saint Saturn's massive spider body to leap violently backward, desperately widening the distance like a startled bird fleeing a predator.
York's lips curled into a cruel smile. The tentacles that had initially shot toward Saturn suddenly whipped and curved mid-air, directly piercing into the massive, regenerating body of Saint Ju Peter, the Sandworm.
"Uh—hhnn!"
Saint Ju Peter let out a sudden, deeply muffled groan. The colossal Sandworm, which was already struggling to regenerate from being vaporized, immediately collapsed limply to the scorched earth. Its thick, segmented body twitched uncontrollably, but its massive eyes revealed a look of profound, mind-melting confusion and overwhelming, paralyzing ecstasy.
After completely disabling Saint Ju Peter with a single strike, a second set of Holy Light tentacles immediately snapped like a whip, shooting toward Saint Mars, who was also mid-regeneration.
The Mythical Zoan Awakening in 'Happy Mode', while no longer possessing the devastating, city-leveling area-of-effect damage of its unawakened state, had instead absolutely maximized its single-target, armor-piercing potency.
Saint Mars, who had been too slow to cover his entire massive body in Supreme King Haki, was instantly penetrated. The giant, terrifying Itsumade bird let out a bizarre, euphoric trill and fell out of the sky, crashing into the rubble. His wings twitched lazily, completely unable to muster the willpower to rise again.
Saint Warcury and Saint Nusjuro, seeing two of the invincible Five Elders fall so easily and so shamefully, simultaneously showed expressions of profound horror in their eyes.
They weren't worried about dying from York's ability. So far, York hadn't shown any physical attack that could permanently bypass their immortality.
What they were absolutely terrified of was being so utterly humiliated by being forcefully brought to paralyzing ecstasy in front of their absolute master, thereby permanently losing Imu's trust.
Coincidentally, Imu—watching two of the highest authorities in the world lose their combat capability while drooling in the dirt—could no longer sit still.
The absolute encirclement they had painstakingly designed couldn't be dismantled by York one by one in such an insulting manner.
At that moment, the entity temporarily set aside its deep apprehension regarding York's corrupting ability and once again launched a massive barrage of dark tentacles toward the Emperor.
York, temporarily distracted by the barrage, couldn't ambush the remaining two Elders. Instead, he released an equal number of Holy Light tentacles to directly intercept and clash with Imu's shadows.
At the exact same time, York slyly released thousands of thinner, microscopic Holy Light threads, piercing through the surviving horde of pirates who had been mutated into demons.
Make no mistake: York was absolutely not trying to save them. These pirates had already consumed decades of their own lifespans under Imu's dark command and wouldn't live out the week anyway. They might as well contribute their remaining vitality to the Empire's cause!
Gurgle. Gurgle.
Like a massive, divine pump, thousands of glowing pink clusters representing raw life force were violently extracted from the demons and directly transferred into York's core, supercharging his stamina and making him even more terrifyingly confident in this clash of Gods.
Simultaneously, the horrifying, demonic visages of the mutated pirates vanished, replaced by faces showing peaceful, euphoric smiles.
"So comfortable~~" they sighed collectively, collapsing to the ground.
To allow them to die in absolute happiness—this was the very last, twisted tenderness York bestowed upon the traitors of Hachinosu.
Imu, naturally, couldn't just sit back and watch York violently replenish his health bar to full. But with Saint Ju Peter and Saint Mars completely incapacitated by pleasure, and Saint Warcury and Nusjuro desperately trying to avoid the same fate, the combat power Imu could exert purely by possessing Saint Saturn made it very difficult to permanently interrupt York's harvest.
In fact, the primary reason this battle was proving so difficult for the King of the World was that Imu fundamentally couldn't launch Black Turn Domination against York.
Not only because the dark tentacles striking York would be instantly purified by the Sun God's aura, but also because of the strict limitations of the ability itself. To completely dominate a supreme-tier master of York's caliber, one must either entirely break his psychological defense or directly injure him to the absolute brink of death.
The former tactic had completely failed; psychological threats and nightmares were utterly ineffective against York's iron will. The latter tactic—beating him to death—was currently in progress, and it was proving to be a monumental task.
"There is no other choice!"
Imu, sitting in the distant, tranquil Room of Flowers deep within Pangaea Castle, turned their shrouded gaze to look at a young woman kneeling near the vibrant flora.
She was dressed in the traditional robes of a shrine maiden, possessing striking heterochromatic eyes. Her name was Gunko.
"Gunko. Prepare to receive Mu."
The young woman, Gunko, nodded lightly, her face devoid of emotion. A complex, five-pointed star magic circle instantly illuminated the marble floor beneath her feet, activating a long-distance, trans-continental teleportation.
As Imu's most physically compatible, combat-ready host in this era, Gunko represented the absolute highest combat power the King of the World could exert externally without revealing their true, ancient body.
Since merely possessing an old man like Saint Saturn wasn't enough to crush Atlas D. York, then it was time to unleash the apocalypse of God Valley once more!
"I broke the spirit of Rocks D. Xebec..." Imu's voice echoed in the silent room. "...And I will break yours. Feel absolute despair, York!"
Inside the empty room at the top of the Great Skull Mountain, the five-pointed star magic circle once again emitted a blinding, enchanting light.
After a violent crackle of black-and-red lightning, Gunko—who had just been standing in the distant Holy Land—instantaneously materialized on Pirate Island.
With a swift pull of her slender, pale hand, she tore away her restrictive, full-body miko robes. She revealed a highly specialized combat outfit consisting of a tight, military-style top, dark combat shorts, and heavy boots.
Down in the plaza, the massive, oppressive black shadow enveloping Saint Saturn instantly vanished like a blown-out candle.
Back in the tower, Gunko's beautiful heterochromatic eyes—having just discarded her human identity—were rapidly overwritten, replaced by a pair of ancient, terrifying concentric-circle eyes.
Imu flexed Gunko's hands, clenching her fists. The King of the World was incredibly satisfied with the lethal compatibility and raw physical stats of this vessel. If it weren't for the fact that the ancient body Imu currently resided in possessed even higher, god-like compatibility, they would likely have designated Gunko as their permanent vessel.
Down in the scorched crater, York—having just received a massive wave of life force replenishment—immediately noticed the dark, oppressive anomaly vanishing from Saint Saturn's body.
'Did he retreat?' York thought, his eyes narrowing. 'No! Impossible. If he were going to cut his losses and run, he would definitely teleport the Five Elders out together!'
York's Future Sight flared.
'So... did he just teleport that woman over?!'
A sharp, incredibly dangerous glint flashed in York's eyes. During the climax of God Valley, Rocks and the woman Imu possessed (Gunko) had engaged in an apocalyptic, world-breaking duel—an event that left a profound, terrifying impression on York to this very day.
Of course, the taste of that woman's lips at the final moment of the battle had also left a rather unique impression on him.
His already confident, smiling lips curved further upwards into a look of absolute, demonic arrogance.
"If I were to successfully replicate my little stunt from God Valley again..." York murmured softly, resting his three-meter blade on his shoulder. "...I wonder what would actually become of your fragile sanity, Imu!"
Looking up at the skull fortress, York's enhanced vision had already locked onto the sleek, dangerous silhouette of the woman emerging from the high window.
Licking his lips with a hint of genuine, predatory greed, York nonchalantly raised his hand, releasing a third, massive Holy Light tentacle.
The pure white, magically inscribed appendage moved with untrackable speed, shooting forward and directly piercing through Saint Saturn's chest.
Poor Saint Saturn had just abruptly woken up from Imu's absolute possession. He hadn't even fully adapted to regaining control of his own nervous system before he was directly, brutally hit by York's ultimate move.
Immediately after the impact, an overwhelmingly familiar, mind-melting sensation of absolute pleasure surged through his ancient veins. Saint Saturn, trapped in his giant, terrifying Gyuki spider form, immediately softened. All eight of his massive, lethal legs gave out simultaneously, and the highest authority of the World Government collapsed face-first into the dirt, drooling in euphoria.
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