The cannon barrel gathered heat, compressing a core of blue flame within.
"No one but God may stand upon the land of Shandia!"
With Wiper's roar, the recoil drove his boots half an inch into the cloud beach.
Boom!
A blue-white fireball shot forward as dozens of Shandia warriors pulled their triggers. A web of lead and shockwaves engulfed the wounded Blue Sea man.
He did not dodge.
High above, Gan Fall pulled back on Pierre's reins, intending to charge in and save the stranger, but the barrage forced him to gain altitude. Sighing atop the pink bird's back, the old knight's expression turned grim. Under such fire, a man forged of iron would be riddled with holes.
'The young man's arrogance doomed him.'
The smoke had not yet cleared, but the screams of agony never came.
At the center of the explosion, Zaraki felt only a faint tingling.
The bullets, powerful enough to pierce rock, struck his skin—enhanced by the Kenpachi template and Busoshoku Haki—like raindrops hitting steel plates.
Aside from a rapid series of ding-dang sounds, they left no marks.
As for the burning cannon shot...
Zaraki didn't bother to raise Oto or Kogarashi to block.
He tilted his body slightly, allowing the flames to graze past his shoulder, scorching a few loose scraps of cloth hanging from his shredded clothes.
"Too weak."
The voice emerging from the smoke carried a lazy, half-awake tone.
Zaraki waved his hand in front of his face, as if shooing away a fly. With the motion, a gust of wind dispersed the smoke, revealing his unharmed figure.
Not a single drop of blood was shed. Even the dust from his fall had been shaken clean by the explosion.
"H-how... is this possible?"
A Shandia warrior holding a long spear trembled, his weapon clattering onto the cloud ground.
His eyes widened as if he had seen something more terrifying than the monsters of Skypiea.
Even the usually calm Kamakiri now had cold sweat beading on his forehead.
Kamakiri stared at the yawning man, his Adam's apple bobbing.
"Wiper! Normal attacks are useless against him! This guy is a monster!" Kamakiri turned to his leader. "Use the Reject Dial! Only that can—"
"Shut up! I know that already!"
Wiper's expression looked ferocious, yet a trace of gravity flickered in his eyes.
As the War Demon, his sense of danger was sharper than anyone else's. Moments ago, he felt as if he had attacked an immovable iron mountain.
"Everyone, cover me!"
Wiper discarded the burning cannon.
The wind dials in his boots released compressed jets of air, propelling him toward Zaraki at high speed.
Seeing this, Kamakiri gritted his teeth, drew his gas-powered sword, and flanked Zaraki from the side, coordinating with the surrounding firepower.
"Still trying these boring attempts?"
Zaraki watched the two figures close in.
The initial interest sparked by this new territory extinguished.
He had hoped this War Demon might bring a little surprise, even if it was just a scratch from a wildcat.
But these feeble movements, this sluggish speed...
Compared to the Golden Lion who fought even after being driven to the edge, this felt like an infant swinging its fists.
"Boring." Zaraki sighed.
The moment his words fell, his half-lidded eyes snapped wide open.
Boom!
A wave of tangible, dark-red energy erupted from his body.
It was the Reiatsu and killing intent inherent to the Kenpachi template, born from accumulated slaughter.
The air thickened instantly, every inch of space saturated with the scent of blood.
Kamakiri felt as if his heart had been seized. His legs gave way, and he crashed to the ground from his momentum, sliding several meters.
The ordinary Shandia warriors fared worse.
One by one, they collapsed onto the cloud beach, as if their spines had been ripped out, unable to grip their weapons.
In their vision, standing before them was a towering, grinning skeletal demon.
It was the primal fear of a natural predator ingrained in biological instinct.
Across the battlefield, only Gan Fall circling high above managed to maintain his posture.
On the ground, only one figure remained moving.
"Give... our land back to us!"
Wiper's eyes were bloodshot, his teeth grinding, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.
Driven by obsessive willpower, he pushed his way through the killing intent, charging right up to Zaraki.
His right palm was bound with an inconspicuous shell, yet it emitted a heart-palpitating fluctuation.
Reject Dial.
A double-edged weapon that would inflict severe injuries even upon its user.
"Oh? Still moving?"
Zaraki's eyebrows lifted slightly as he watched Wiper closing in on his chest.
This stubborn display earned a bit of his respect.
But that was all.
Just as Wiper's palm was about to press against Zaraki's chest, Zaraki didn't even draw his sword.
He merely raised his right boot, acting as if kicking aside a pebble on the roadside.
'Thud.'
Wiper's all-out attack hadn't even been unleashed before his body was sent flying backward like a baseball, moving twice as fast as his approach.
He traced a parabolic arc through the air, shattered two rock fragments upon impact, and embedded himself deeply into the trunk of a giant tree.
"Wiper!" Kamakiri, still pinned to the ground, let out a hoarse roar.
'Was this the difference?'
'Their proud warrior couldn't withstand a single casual move against this Blue Sea man?'
Zaraki retracted his boot, brushed nonexistent dust from his pants, and was about to say something to make these annoying people stop bothering him.
Suddenly, that familiar beast-like intuition exploded in his mind, sharper than when he had faced the Golden Lion's Earth Roll.
A threat was about to come from the sky.
Zaraki looked up abruptly.
Above the Upper Yard airspace, a pitch-black thundercloud had gathered. The dark clouds churned like a solitary eye gazing down at the ants below.
A destructive energy brewed at the cloud's center.
"Yahahaha… So a bug from the Blue Sea has crawled up here. Since you're so noisy, just disappear."
The arrogant voice seemed to echo directly in his mind, carrying an aloof, godly indifference.
The next moment.
A blue-white pillar of lightning, wide enough to cover half the battlefield, pierced through heaven and earth, crashing down toward Zaraki's head.
El Thor. Divine Retribution.
It was the tyrannical manifestation of the Goro Goro no Mi, its stray currents instantly evaporating all the moisture in the surrounding air.
Faced with this divine punishment capable of vaporizing mortals, Zaraki grinned.
His previously bored eyes now gleamed with renewed intensity.
This was interesting. This was the kind of slaughter he wanted!
"This pathetic level of brightness, trying to blind my eyes are you?"
Zaraki didn't retreat a single inch. Instead, he tightened his grip on the hilts of Oto and Kogarashi.
The cloud ground beneath his boots exploded as he leaped high into the air, meeting the lightning pillar head-on.
The rampaging golden Reiatsu and Busoshoku Haki within him entwined around the two famed swords, dyeing their tattered blades pitch-black.
"Get the hell… back!"
No flashy sword techniques, only the pure release of raw power and Haki.
Crossing the two blades, he delivered a fierce slash against the lightning pillar.
Zzzzt!
A piercing electric screech instantly drowned out all other sounds.
Under the disbelieving gazes of the Shandia warriors, including Wiper who had just painfully pulled himself out of the shattered tree trunk, the lightning pillar symbolizing Divine Punishment was… severed in mid-air.
Like a blue silk ribbon effortlessly cut by sharp scissors.
The severed lightning, now out of control, shattered into countless fragmented electric serpents that exploded in all directions, blasting several nearby ruined island fragments into pieces.
Only the area where Zaraki stood remained unscathed.
Zaraki landed, the twin blades in his hands emitted faint wisps of smoke—traces left after intense heat had cooled.
His dark hair stood slightly on end due to static electricity, and a few lingering arcs of blue electricity crackled around his body.
Zaraki lifted his head, his gaze piercing through the clouds to fix on the arrogant figure seated high above in the sky, as if upon a throne of clouds.
"Hey, you up there playing with electricity."
Zaraki raised Oto in his hand, its tip pointing straight at the heavens, a bold grin spreading across his lips.
His rough voice wasn't loud, yet it clearly echoed across the entire expanse of the sky.
"Throwing down little firecrackers like that—is that your pathetic way of saying hello? Wash your neck and wait. I'm coming up to cut you down."
Dead silence.
The entire Upper Yard airspace seemed to freeze in that moment.
Everyone on the battlefield appeared to have lost the ability to speak, whether it was Wiper or the stunned Gan Fall in the sky.
Their shocked eyes widened, the corners even slightly splitting.
This madman…
He had split Divine Punishment, and now he actually wanted to… cut down a God?
High above, the flow of the clouds seemed to halt for an instant because of this provocation.
The previously indifferent rumble of thunder suddenly grew oppressive, like the low growl of a colossal creature right before being provoked.
And in the distant direction of the Upper Yard Shrine, several swift figures frantically darted through the dense forest, rapidly rushing toward the divine throne.