"A whole new round of fighting… Now this is something to look forward to."
Cain and Kaido's battle became even more violent than before. Every collision sent tremors through Onigashima, splitting layers of rock apart and sending showers of debris crashing into the sea.
"Seawater! The seawater's flooding in!"
"Run! Onigashima is collapsing!"
Yamato raced through the crumbling battlefield, hauling a fallen samurai upright with one hand while freezing an incoming surge of seawater with the other. Sweat covered her forehead as she tried to keep up with the destruction around her.
She had never imagined Cain and Kaido's fight would become this extreme. The entire island was breaking apart beneath them and slowly sinking into the sea.
Naturally, the two men fighting above had noticed as well.
Even in their hybrid forms, both were capable of producing enough Flame Clouds to cover the sky, and just as they prepared to support the collapsing island, Uta noticed the danger from where she was still fighting King in the air.
She broke away from his pursuit, created an amplified loudspeaker, and shouted toward the battlefield below.
"Bella! Full power—freeze the sea!"
Bella, who had been happily playing her own version of "dinosaur bumper cars," looked up in confusion. Only then did she notice the widening cracks spreading across Onigashima and the seawater pouring through them.
Without hesitation, she flew toward the coast, formed a small crystalline hand, and pressed it downward.
"Ice Age: Ten-Thousandfold Amplification."
The effect was instantaneous.
It wasn't merely the water surrounding Onigashima or even the inland sea between the island and Wano. Every visible stretch of seawater within Wano's borders froze at the same moment, transforming into a vast, solid plain of ice.
The frozen layer extended to a terrifying depth. Even the cresting waves were locked in place as though time itself had stopped them.
Only the seawater was affected. Nothing on Wano's islands themselves froze, though everyone suddenly felt the temperature plunge.
"Nice work, Bella."
Standing atop a shattered slab of rock, Cain looked down at the endless white ice field and grinned.
Onigashima was now trapped securely within the frozen sea, temporarily resolving the danger of the island sinking.
Cain drew in a deep breath.
"Now then—Animal Path."
His body expanded explosively as white cloud-like ribbons curled around him.
A hundred-meter dragon-headed giant rose between the shattered island and the frozen sea, towering over everything below as Cain looked down at Kaido, who was already grinning back at him.
Cain clenched one enormous fist and felt the awakened power circulating smoothly through his body.
"So using this form after Awakening really does solve the berserk problem."
Kaido stared up at Cain's colossal figure, excitement filling his eyes.
He swung Hassaikai onto his shoulder and laughed hard enough to shake the broken rock behind him.
"Now that's more like it! Come on, my son!"
"Kundali Dragon Swarm!"
The technique was far more powerful than it had ever been before.
Black lightning crackled around both fighters, and even the arcs created when their Haki brushed against one another generated heat comparable to Bolo Breath. Flames distorted the air, whipping the surrounding atmosphere into violent cyclones.
As an Azure Dragon, Kaido controlled wind, fire, and lightning almost instinctively. In his awakened state, those elements no longer required deliberate preparation; they formed around him as naturally as breathing.
He poured everything into his club technique.
Several enormous manifestations of Hassaikai, each wrapped in flames as fierce as Great Torch of Fire and Thunder, descended toward Cain like a meteor shower.
Cain tightened both fists.
"You really haven't given up on the son thing, have you, Kaido?!"
Then he punched downward.
"Infinite Fist Bone!"
Countless enormous fists wrapped in flame, violent wind, and lightning rained toward Kaido in return.
The resulting bombardment shook Onigashima over and over again.
By this point, the fighters below had collectively become numb to it.
Two monsters were tearing the sky apart above them while lightning and fire fell almost continuously, and Onigashima itself was being dismantled piece by piece. Compared with that, the life-and-death battles taking place on the ground felt almost like children playing.
"This battle's pointless now."
"Let those two monsters fight it out. What are we even accomplishing down here besides getting in their way?"
"I don't mind dying, but someone at least tell me whether dying here would accomplish anything."
With thoughts like those spreading through the ranks, more and more Beasts Pirates simply abandoned the fight and ran onto the frozen sea, trying to escape the island altogether. Only the samurai continued pursuing them relentlessly.
Yamato had already realized that the war had effectively become Cain and Kaido's personal battlefield. Continuing to sacrifice people served no purpose, so she finally gave the order.
"Everyone, withdraw from the battlefield!"
She moved rapidly through the collapsing terrain, dragging every samurai who could still breathe out from beneath the rubble.
As for the Beasts Pirates attempting to flee, Yamato knew perfectly well that letting thousands of pirates scatter across Wano would create another disaster later.
So she asked Bella for one more favor.
A towering ring of ice rose approximately a hundred meters offshore, completely enclosing the battlefield and cutting off every possible escape route.
"Hey! Wait! Get back here!"
Queen, still reduced to a head, long neck, and tail, screamed after his retreating allies.
"THE FIGHT ISN'T OVER YET!"
Nobody paid him the slightest attention.
Then he noticed the small white cloud drifting away in the distance.
Queen froze.
His eyes widened.
Bella had stopped playing with his body.
Which meant—
his body was sitting somewhere unattended.
Queen immediately brightened.
"My body! Come back here!"
The invisible Brachiosaurus received the voice command and instantly broke into a full sprint toward the sound of Queen's voice.
Then—
STOMP!
Four invisible feet ran directly over Queen's head.
"DAMN IT! I forgot the stupid thing was still invisible!"
Queen coughed and screamed,
"Deactivate stealth!"
The command registered, and the Brachiosaurus body finally reappeared.
Queen lay flattened against the ground, bruised and furious as he watched his body continue running far beyond him.
"Why are you going so far?! Get over here—wait, don't—!"
STOMP!
The body ran over him again.
By the time Queen finally managed to reconnect his head to his torso and stand upright, he stared across the devastated battlefield with an utterly defeated expression.
He had barely fought an enemy at all.
Almost every injury on his body had come from being trampled by his own body.
Queen had just finished sighing when cheerful laughter came from behind him.
"Mister, can Bella borrow your body again?"
Queen's entire body stiffened.
Slowly, reluctantly, he turned around.
Bella was floating directly in front of him again.
She had already used the More-More Fruit to multiply her speed, finished everything Yamato had asked of her, and immediately returned.
Queen's face went pale.
"N-No…"
Then his voice erupted across the battlefield.
"STOOOOOOP!!!"
…
Meanwhile, Uta was still fighting King in the air.
Because King had witnessed Uta's battle in Totto Land, he already knew better than to directly block or catch any weapon she threw. Instead, he kept his distance, constantly evading while occasionally launching sword slashes toward her.
Unfortunately for him, Uta could simply phase through the attacks.
One refused to let himself be touched.
The other couldn't be hit.
Eventually, Uta couldn't help sighing.
"So… how long are we planning to keep doing this?"
"I don't know."
King's voice remained calm.
"As long as Kaido-san hasn't ordered me to stop, I won't lose."
Uta smiled at that.
She glanced at the distance between them.
Close enough.
Her voice would reach him.
So she cleared her throat and began singing as casually as though she were merely humming to herself.
A short while later, King folded his wings and fell peacefully asleep.
Uta dusted off her hands, then turned toward the battle between Cain and Kaido.
…
"Hah! I actually broke a bone!"
At the bottom of a deep crater, Kaido stared at his twisted arm with genuine surprise.
His expression barely changed as he grabbed the broken limb and forcefully bent it back into place.
Crack.
The awakened Zoan's terrifying regenerative power immediately took over. Within moments, the fracture had already repaired itself.
Kaido flexed his fingers twice.
Clearly, the battle wasn't ending.
If anything, it had only just begun.
Cain's eyelid twitched.
His Infinite Fist Bone barrage had struck with enough force that every individual punch could probably have put down ten three-billion-Berry versions of Kid, and Cain himself had lost count of how many punches he had thrown.
Kaido had taken the entire barrage—
and all it had done was break one arm.
Then he simply snapped the bone back into place and kept going.
On second thought, Cain wasn't exactly in a position to complain.
He had eaten almost as many club strikes as Kaido had taken punches. His own bones had broken, healed, and broken again so many times that neither fighter had any meaningful advantage in durability.
Both of them were absurdly hard to put down.
And their stamina was even more ridiculous.
Cain couldn't help thinking that if Gear Five Luffy were thrown into a prolonged battle like this, his notoriously poor endurance would become a serious problem. Even with his ability to force himself back into the fight after collapsing, trying to outlast two awakened monsters with this kind of regeneration and stamina would be an entirely different challenge.
"This really is going to be a hard fight."
Cain rolled his wrists, settled back into his stance, and prepared to continue.