Gaban was so furious he nearly hurled both axes away, but after gritting his teeth, he tightened his grip instead.
There was a target this ridiculously huge sitting right in front of him. Wasn't that practically begging him to hack away to his heart's content?
"So what if he has Kaido's Devil Fruit? So what if he made himself bigger?"
Gaban raised both axes.
"I can still cut him open!"
Then he charged.
"Eighty War Chiefs!"
Jarul, meanwhile, was still staring upward in complete shock.
Apart from Loki's Nidhogg form, this was the first dragon he had ever seen reach such a monstrous size. Cain's current form was enormous enough to stand alongside even Elbaf's legendary national treasure.
Cain was mildly surprised when Gaban came charging at him.
After a moment's thought, he gathered Haki in his mouth.
A mass of emerald-green wind condensed in his throat, but instead of releasing it as a conventional blast, he compressed it and fired it like a cannon shell.
The enormous green sphere of wind shot forward and collided head-on with Gaban's attack.
Black-red Haki crackled through the impact, strands of power tearing against one another until Gaban finally ripped the entire wind blast apart.
'If that's all he's got, I can win!'
Gaban hardened his resolve and immediately rushed toward Cain's gigantic body, swinging both axes with everything he had.
Cain, however, looked almost helpless.
That last attack had genuinely been nothing more than a light probe. He had no intention of accidentally killing one of Roger's old companions.
So he barely moved.
He simply watched as Gaban's twin axes slammed directly into his dragon scales—
and failed to leave even a white scratch.
"W-What?!"
Before Gaban could recover from the shock, Cain lowered his enormous head slightly.
One dragon claw drifted toward the man floating in midair.
Then Cain flicked him.
Just once.
Gaban instantly became a projectile.
"Dad!"
Colon shouted from the distance.
Gaban twisted himself around while flying backward and eventually slammed into the beach, skidding several hundred steps before finally stopping.
He raised one hand toward Colon to show he was fine, then turned back toward Cain with an expression of disbelief.
He had never imagined Cain's defenses could be this absurd.
Seeing that expression, Cain kindly explained.
"If we're talking about my normal defensive ability, then yeah, Kaido and I are roughly comparable."
"Though honestly, even normally, I'm a bit tougher than he is."
Cain tilted his enormous head.
"Under ordinary circumstances, you might actually be able to leave a cut."
"But in this form, my durability has been amplified by a hundred times."
He paused.
"And I haven't even used Haki to defend yet."
Gaban stared blankly.
Cain paid little attention to his reaction and activated his Zoan Awakening.
Black lightning erupted across the immense dragon body.
This wasn't Conqueror's Haki.
It was simply the phenomenon produced by his awakened Zoan.
Cain thought for a second.
"Oh, right."
He added helpfully,
"I almost forgot to mention that my Devil Fruit awakened too."
The sentence landed on Gaban like another hammer blow.
Before he could even fully process that, Cain slapped one of his Flame Clouds.
The space around him seemed to distort.
Four tremendous currents of air erupted from nowhere, carrying the powers of wind, fire, lightning, and ice.
Each elemental force twisted into a tornado more than ten thousand meters tall, circling around Cain's colossal dragon body.
The sky changed color.
The sea roared.
Cain no longer looked like a living creature so much as a walking natural disaster tearing apart the heavens.
Gaban swallowed hard.
"With this kind of power… thank God we're down in the Underworld where nobody lives."
Then he looked toward Jarul.
"So?"
"Still want to fight?"
"Of course!"
Jarul tightened his grip around his sword and raised his voice toward the dragon towering above them.
"Elbaf does not retreat without a fight!"
"Cain!"
"Come at us!"
"The warriors of Elbaf will never back down!"
"Oh?"
Cain grinned.
"So that's how it is."
"Then I'll show you the highest respect I can."
He sounded genuinely cheerful now.
"I'll let you experience the most logical way to use a Zoan Devil Fruit—a technique I learned recently from Kaido's Beasts Pirates!"
Cain suddenly straightened his previously coiling dragon body until it was almost perfectly rigid, with the tip of his tail raised high behind him.
The dragon had looked majestic while coiled across the sky.
Now—
it looked bizarre.
Far away, Colon, Uta, and the few remaining conscious giants stared upward in confusion.
'What is he doing?'
'Why does a dragon need to straighten itself like that?'
Then Cain activated Life Return.
The flame-shaped mane running along his back gathered tightly in one direction, becoming uniformly sharp.
Next came the Asura Path.
The four colossal tornadoes representing wind, fire, lightning, and ice converged around Cain.
Normally, this sort of power would have wrapped directly around his body, much like the Great Torch of Fire and Thunder.
Instead, Cain deliberately molded all four elemental forces together.
They formed an enormous humanoid elemental giant.
This time, the giant didn't wrap around Cain.
It stood independently beside his dragon body.
And it was even larger than Cain himself, nearly reaching all the way up toward Elbaf's Sun World.
Cain then coated his entire dragon body in Haki.
His scales darkened into glossy black with reflective pink highlights.
The elemental giant reached out, grabbed Cain by the head—
and swung his perfectly straight dragon body like a gigantic blade.
"Divine Departure!"
Gaban stared.
Then stared some more.
Finally, he completely lost it.
"He turned himself into a sword?!"
"That's cheating!"
"What the hell did this lunatic even learn from the Beasts Pirates?!"
The others watching from the distance immediately began shouting similar complaints.
Cain, however, was remembering the magnificent techniques demonstrated by the Beasts Pirates.
King had pulled his pteranodon head backward like a slingshot and insisted that this was how pteranodons hunted in ancient times.
Queen had launched his brachiosaurus head, neck, and tail out of his own body like projectiles.
Sasaki had spun the frill around his triceratops skull at high speed and confidently declared that this was how triceratops flew.
Every single one of them had been immensely proud of these techniques.
Every single one had insisted that ancient creatures obviously worked that way.
And so Cain proudly shouted,
"Exactly!"
"In mythology, this is how pink dragons—Azure Dragons—used to attack!"
His voice dropped to almost nothing for the final words.
"…Obviously not."
"There aren't even any damn pink dragons in mythology!"
Gaban was still shouting complaints when he turned his head—
and saw Jarul charging forward.
His expression immediately collapsed.
Gaban could tell Cain wasn't genuinely trying to hit them.
The direction and angle made that obvious.
Once that dragon-blade came down, it would unleash a slash more than ten thousand meters tall. Anything in its direct path would be erased.
But if they simply moved aside, the slash would pass harmlessly into the ocean.
So why the hell was this old man trying to block it?!
"Jarul! Don't go up there!"
"You can't take that!"
"I can."
"You absolutely cannot!"
At the very last moment, Gaban rushed forward and kicked Jarul off his feet.
The titanic sword slash passed directly beside them.
It was more than ten thousand meters high and several hundred meters wide.
Then it plunged into the ocean.
The sea split cleanly apart.
Massive walls of water rose on either side as the slash continued traveling across the surface, farther and farther until it disappeared beyond anything they could see.
Nearly a full minute passed.
Then—
BOOOOOOM!
Even though the impact occurred so far away that it was invisible to the naked eye, the resulting column of water still surged all the way into the clouds.
Gaban and Jarul stared.
Neither spoke for several seconds.
That was absolutely not something a person should try to block.
…
My name is Scopper Gaban.
Former second-in-command of the Roger Pirates.
Roger's left hand.
Back then, when we found Shanks, it almost felt like destiny.
We treated that kid the way fathers would treat their own son.
And yet—
"THIS ISN'T HOW A SON IS SUPPOSED TO SCREW OVER HIS DADS!"
Gaban threw both axes onto the ground.
"When you said Cain was 'a little troublesome,' this is what you meant?!"
"That brat is a goddamn monster!"
"How the hell are we supposed to fight that?!"
He stormed away in fury.
Seeing that the trial was clearly over, Cain deactivated all his abilities and calmly returned to the beach.
The instant his feet touched the ground, however, he sensed another presence suddenly pressing toward him from somewhere else.
It was much too far away to actually reach him.
But Cain still noticed it.
A smile appeared on his face.
"Looks like you're looking forward to meeting me too."
Several kilometers from Cain's position, beneath Treasure Tree Adam, a gigantic figure wrapped in chains was observing everything that had just happened through Observation Haki.
The giant threw back his head and laughed.
"Dogyahaha!"
"Looks like someone interesting has finally come to Elbaf!"