The hull burst open.
Karl shot into the sky, drenched from head to toe, but his aura had not weakened at all. If anything, it had grown even more violent.
The wound at his waist had stopped bleeding. It was being forcefully sealed by some kind of power.
Look closely, and you could see something squirming beneath his skin. Muscle fibers multiplied and reknit at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Arohan spoke calmly, still floating in midair, as if he had no intention of intervening yet.
"Karl has eaten the Ancient Zoan"
"His vitality, regeneration, and physical strength have already surpassed human limits."
Before the last word faded, Karl's body began to swell.
Bones cracked like firecrackers. Muscles ballooned as if being inflated. Brown fur sprouted across his skin.
His face pushed forward into a muzzle. Teeth lengthened and sharpened. Hands turned into massive paws, feet into bear claws.
Five meters, eight meters, ten...
In the end, a thirty meter tall giant bear with shoulders twenty meters wide loomed over the shattered deck.
Its entire body was covered in armor that looked like basalt plates. Jagged bone spikes jutted from its joints. Each claw of its paws was as long as a grown man's arm, the tips gleaming with a metallic sheen.
Most unsettling of all were its eyes.
No longer muddy yellow, but burning with blood red light. All reason had been swallowed by pure beast instinct.
"Roooar!"
Karl's beast form unleashed a roar that shook the sky.
The shockwave kicked up a small tsunami. Several damaged ships nearby lurched wildly. Pirates who were too close had their eardrums blown out and collapsed in a faint, bleeding from every opening.
Arohan drifted back a hundred meters, yielding the battlefield. His expression remained utterly blank, as if he were watching a play that had nothing to do with him.
Bullet hovered in the air, scarlet pupils calmly dissecting the opponent before him.
An Ancient Zoan, and clearly stronger than any enemy he had faced so far.
From the energy he sensed, Karl's life force had more than tripled. His total Haki reserves had doubled.
And that rock like armor... its defensive power probably did not fall far short of Bullet's Black Scale Armament.
But only "not far short."
"Come on then."
The Black Dragon's low rumble rolled out across the air.
"Let me see if the Ancient Zoan version of you is worthy of becoming my food."
That line was the final spark.
The titanic bear that was Karl slammed both feet into the deck.
Boom.
The entire ship split down the middle, the recoil launching him skyward.
He used nothing but leg strength to jump, yet that single leap carried him up a full hundred meters, level with Bullet.
The giant paw slashed out.
Simple. Brutal. No flourish, no technique.
But it was so fast it left afterimages. So strong it compressed the air into a visible shock front.
Bullet did not dodge.
He wanted to feel, for himself, just how powerful an awakened Ancient Zoan really was.
Black Scale Armament roared fully to life. He lifted his right foreleg and swung his claw to meet the blow.
Dragon claw against bear paw.
Clang.
For a heartbeat, the sky itself seemed to dim.
A ring shaped shockwave pulsed outward. Below, the sea was punched into a three hundred meter wide crater, whose rim threw up waves tens of meters high.
The two forces struggled for dominance for three full seconds.
Then Karl began to slide back.
He was losing in raw power.
Bullet's claw pushed forward inch by inch. The molten dark gold lines of his Black Scale Armament flowed like lava, grinding away the Armament Haki on Karl's paw bit by bit.
Dragon scale scraped against rock armor, raising a shrill screech and throwing sparks.
"How is this possible..."
A flash of disbelief crossed Karl's blood red eyes.
He was an Ancient Zoan user, his strength already towering above most of the New World. With Armament reinforcing him, this one blow should have been enough to crush every bone in a Marine vice admiral's body.
Yet here, in a pure clash of strength, he was being pushed back.
"Your strength is indeed impressive," Bullet's voice rolled out of his dragon throat, calm to the point of being terrifying.
"But mine far surpasses yours."
As he spoke, he suddenly bore down harder.
Crack.
The stone armor on Karl's paw split.
Cracks spiderwebbed out in an instant, racing along his forearm until they covered it entirely.
"Roooar!"
Karl howled in rage and swung his other paw from the flank.
Bullet was faster.
His tail whipped across the air, arriving first and snapping down on the left wrist joint.
Another clear crack of breaking bone.
With both paws damaged, Karl lost his balance completely.
Bullet surged forward. His dragon head smashed into Karl's chest.
Thud.
Karl's chest plate caved in. His enormous body was hurled away, carving a long arc through the sky before crashing down on another enemy ship that had been relatively intact.
He punched through the deck, through the hold, and through the bottom of the ship.
Water blasted through the hole in a furious torrent as the vessel began to sink fast.
Karl lay at the bottom of the wreckage, hacking up blood.
At least six of his ribs were broken. His internal organs had taken serious damage.
But the monstrous regeneration of the Ancient Zoan had already begun.
Shattered bones were setting themselves. Torn organs were knitting. New flesh budded and grew over his wounds at a speed the naked eye could track.
"Useless."
Bullet dropped down onto the tilting deck of the sinking ship and reverted to human form.
He walked to the edge of the hole and looked down at Karl.
"Your regeneration burns through a huge amount of stamina and life force."