BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
High above the horizon, violent energy fluctuations rolled outward like muffled thunder, echoing over God Valley's skies without end.
Trees erupted upward in a single surge—like a towering tidal wave—roaring toward the seven silver-armored knights.
At the same time, the several-hundred-meter wooden dragon's maw pulsed with light again and again.
One energy sphere after another poured down like a rain of fire.
Rōmu narrowed his eyes, voice low.
"Let's see what these freaks can really do…"
His gaze on the seven knights grew colder by the second.
He knew these moves wouldn't accomplish much—this was testing, nothing more.
From the way they had casually erased Bullet, they clearly possessed something similar to him—an ability that devoured life force.
Until he understood their method, closing the distance was suicide.
The knights answered his probing without the slightest ripple of emotion.
"Rebel."
That same icy word.
Then—
all seven raised their silver lances in perfect unison.
No flourish.
No hesitation.
Slash!
From the lance tips, streaks of eerie lightning burst forth, carving seven crescent arcs through the air.
BOOM!
A thunderous detonation shook the heavens. Every eye on every island snapped toward the sound.
Those seven arcs were like scythes.
They met the incoming forest wave and the orange energy rain head-on—
and the result made people's blood run cold.
The energy spheres were swallowed instantly.
Not dispersed.
Not blocked.
Absorbed.
As for the "Deep Forest" tide—
the charging trees froze in midair, as if time itself had been pinned down.
Then, in the next instant, they shriveled violently.
Their color drained into dead black.
They became withered, charcoal-like trunks—lifeless husks—then shattered into black flakes that scattered on the wind.
And the seven crescent slashes?
They didn't stop.
After destroying Rōmu's forest surge and the dragon's bombardment, they continued cutting forward—unstained, unspent—straight toward the island's edge.
Even the energy barrier around the battlefield offered no resistance.
The seven slashes kept flying.
"Dodge!!"
On the nearby island, Redfield's face twisted. He didn't hesitate for even a heartbeat.
He yanked Whitebeard and Shiki and threw them sideways.
Kaido reacted at the same time, leaping away instinctively.
And just as everyone expected—
those seven cuts split the island open like paper.
Seven deep fissures ripped across the land, then the slashes kept going, flying onward—
until, dozens of kilometers away, they finally detonated.
A calm stretch of sea erupted into a colossal wave.
Up in God Valley's skies, Rōmu glanced at the island that had been cleanly sliced into seven pieces, then at the distant ocean boiling up toward the heavens.
The light in his eyes hardened.
His expression—finally—became truly serious.
"Deep Forest Emergence" was a wide-area technique.
But after awakening, his wood wasn't just faster and stronger.
He could coat it in extreme Armament Haki—enough to shred most top-tiers like paper.
And the wooden dragon's energy spheres…
Their destructive force was comparable to Sengoku's ordinary Buddha Shockwave.
Using those two as probes should've been more than enough.
Yet the seven knights erased them like swatting dust.
Rōmu's gaze swept slowly across his enemies.
Silver armor.
Armored pegasi beneath them—snorting lightning—black wings spread wide.
And those eyes—
a darkness so absolute it made your instincts scream.
Just looking at them made a chill rise from the marrow.
No more testing.
Rōmu's right arm tightened around the wooden sword.
Haki surged.
He snapped his wrist and cut forward—clean, brutal, direct.
A dragon-shaped emerald slash tore open the air and roared toward the knights.
Right before it struck—
a massive silver shield suddenly thrust out of the void in front of them.
It slammed down with the weight of a mountain.
CRACK—!
The collision sent a horrifying ripple through space itself.
Mirror-like fractures spiderwebbed outward from the impact point, and the shockwave tore through the sky—pulverizing rain within dozens of square meters into blue mist.
On the island, Redfield exhaled sharply, eyes widening.
"They're actually defending now…?"
Whitebeard nodded, but his face remained heavy.
"Yeah. That's the first time they've chosen to block."
Shiki's voice was grim.
"And the worst part—look at the vortex."
Everyone looked.
The spiral swallowing the golden altar was expanding faster and faster.
"At this rate," Shiki said, "an hour. Maybe less."
"The whole of God Valley gets eaten by the sea."
Kaido slammed a fist into the ground.
Rock exploded beneath his knuckles.
"Damn it… Captain Rōmu will find a way!!"
Elsewhere, Kong's group was no longer fighting.
They were running.
Roger's eyes were bloodshot as he stared at the knight advancing toward him with steady, unhurried hoofbeats.
Between the earlier battle against Rocks, the deaths of Gaban and Bullet, and now these nightmare knights—
even a monster like him felt his will fraying.
He forced himself to raise Ace.
But the price of enduring was being paid in his body.
His heart—already sick—was starting to fail him.
Its rhythm grew faster.
More unstable.
More violent.
"Damn it!"
Roger pressed fingers against his chest, cursing through his teeth.
He had no intention of "fighting" these things.
Not anymore.
Overhead, thunder detonated again.
Roger jerked his head up—
and saw Rōmu launching slash after slash, dragon-shaped arcs tearing through the rain.
Roger's mind raced.
He tried to think.
To find anything.
Any thread of survival.
In the clouds, Rōmu landed back on the crimson flower after dodging a lance of lightning.
He looked down at his right arm.
A long, pitch-black wound split the flesh, bleeding steadily.
Green light shimmered at the edges as his regeneration tried to knit it shut—
but the healing was slow.
Painfully slow.
Worse—
every time it began to close, the blackness spread again, widening the rupture.
For the first time since he awakened his power—
his regeneration was being suppressed.
Restricted.
The knights didn't care.
They moved as one, pegasi surging forward, lances cutting down in violent arcs.
"Rebel. Die."
Rōmu's eyes narrowed.
"Rebel, rebel—every other word."
He spat to the side.
"You really think you're something, don't you?"
Masks erupted into existence in front of him—rows of grim, fanged wooden faces.
The black wooden masks collided with the eerie lance slashes, exploding into thunderous impacts.
But the knights didn't stop.
Their wrists rotated—smooth, mechanical, relentless.
They spun their lances like wheels, launching crescent arcs in endless succession.
A storm of cuts.
A wall of death.
Rōmu's brows knitted deeper.
"Armament Awakening: Explosive Spear Trees!"
"Armament Awakening: Impaling Grove!"
Spikes.
Explosions.
Black thorns.
His counter-techniques erupted in layers while his Observation Haki spread across the battlefield.
The crimson flower jerked and dove, weaving desperately through the kill-zone.
BOOM—BOOM—BOOM—BOOM—!
Slashes.
Spikes.
Explosions.
Everything crashed together like a chained detonation.
Shockwaves rolled across the ground like raging tides, shaking the entire island.
Even the expanding vortex stalled for a single heartbeat.
Rōmu burst out of the explosion cloud and exhaled hard.
Below—
the spiral centered on the golden altar was visibly larger now.
Nearly a tenth of the island had already been swallowed.
And the energy barrier around the island was shrinking inward.
If he didn't break out soon—
he'd be crushed by the collapse and drowned with the island.
"So it's time to end this."
Rōmu's voice was low.
His aura began rising.
Slowly.
Dangerously.
The seven knights sensed the shift instantly.
The one in the center urged his mount forward and spoke, cold and absolute:
"Rebel."
"Your strength is notable. The world may change because of you."
"But since we have been awakened… that future will not exist."
"We will erase you."
The air around God Valley turned icy.
Frost formed across their silver armor.
The seven pegasi spread their black wings and vanished.
Rōmu's brows snapped into a hard furrow.
He knew it.
This was the strongest enemy he had faced since entering this world.
One mistake—
and it would be death.
No second chances.
Before he could finish gathering what he needed, they were already back.
"Rebel."
"Abandon resistance."
Their black eyes flashed.
They crossed nearly a hundred meters in less than half a second—
appearing directly above him.
The silver lances moved.
In that storm of spear shadows, thunder seemed to scream.
The rolling clouds above were sliced apart, strand by strand, by the killing chill of their pressure.
Rōmu's fist tightened.
"Too strong…"
He wasn't ready yet.
Not ready to unleash that move.
So he threw up defense—hundreds, then thousands of those fanged wooden masks.
At the same time, his Observation Haki flared to the limit as the crimson flower shot backward at full speed.
"Useless."
"Accept judgment."
The seven shouted in unison.
Their accumulated power snapped into alignment.
The countless spear shadows fused—
condensing into a single point.
A single path.
A single execution.
A spear formed from pure energy.
On its surface, violent Haki raged like a tidal sea.
Then the seven hurled it together.
The spear tore a terrifying scar through the sky as it stabbed toward Rōmu's retreating figure.
Rōmu's spine went cold.
The energy in him surged brighter—
but it still wasn't at its peak.
Not yet.
He forced the crimson flower faster.
But behind him—
that violet-black spear of judgment accelerated too.
One man.
One spear.
A chase that made the heart stop.
Far away, in Mary Geoise, the Five Elders watched.
Their expressions carried only contempt.
"Run," the man in black suit murmured. "Run in fear of the gods, you lowly thing."
The man in green suit stared at the spear with satisfaction.
"This combined strike… already belongs to the realm of the divine."
The blue-suited elder sighed, almost regretful.
"A pity. If he survived, I would have liked to study that body."
The elder in kimono sheathed his blade and spoke calmly.
"Enough. Prepare the aftermath. The vacancies in the World Government and the Navy must be filled."
They were already treating it as finished.
On the battlefield, Roger staggered and dodged a knight's advance by inches, one hand clamped over his chest.
His eyes, full of blood and fury, snapped upward.
"Damn it…"
"Even that monster… can't beat them?!"
He had already understood it:
In front of those knights, they were children.
They could not win.
The only hope of living—
was Rōmu.
So when he saw Rōmu "running," despair nearly tore him in half.
Then—
everyone felt it.
A terrifying pressure erupted from Rōmu.
It was even more oppressive than when the knights first appeared.
Roger froze.
Kong, Garp, Sengoku—half-dead as they were—still froze.
Even the seven knights paused for a fraction of a beat, all eyes turning to the same point in the sky.
"Rebel?"
In the clouds, Rōmu laughed—cold, sharp.
He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth.
Countless emerald currents wrapped around his wounded body, reflecting aurora-like light through the rain.
Then, a voice rose.
Not loud.
But deep.
Heavy.
Like a bell striking the world.
"Armament Awakening: World of Wood…"
"Buddha at the Summit!!!"
◇ I'll drop one bonus chapter for every 10 reviews (leave a review/comment!)
◇ One bonus chapter will be released for every 100 Power Stones.
◇ Read 60 chapters ahead on P@treon: patreon.com/KageNaruto