"ZZZ—!!!"
A crimson streak of lightning tore across the sky, and the air filled with the sharp, burnt stink of vaporized metal.
Rain's body shot forward like a meteor flying upstream, crossing hundreds of meters in an instant. The crude crimson sword he'd just forged—still not even cooled—carried searing heat born from lightning as he brought it down toward Golden Lion's head!
There was no fancy technique in this strike.
Only extreme speed—
and terrifying heat!
"Hmph!"
Golden Lion didn't dodge. A cold glint flashed through his unruly eyes.
"Brat—don't get cocky!"
He flipped backward in midair at an impossible angle, and his right "leg"—the famed blade Oto—kicked out.
At the instant the edge was about to meet, black-red lightning burst from Shiki's body again!
"CRACKLE—SNAP!!!"
The air felt like shattered glass.
Rain's crimson blade stopped dead—just a few centimeters from Shiki—blocked by that familiar barrier.
Conqueror's coating.
"Again…?"
Rain's gaze tightened. He'd expected it.
"BOOM!!!"
A massive shockwave detonated outward from the two of them. The clouds were blasted clean, leaving a vacuum zone several kilometers wide.
"Gnh!"
Rain grunted.
Even with preparation, that tyrannical force traveling through the sword still numbed his arms!
Even after seeing it once, the pressure was still suffocating.
"What? That's all you can take?"
Shiki bared his teeth in a savage grin, powering through with his right leg.
"Get—DOWN!!"
"BANG!"
Rain was launched like a cannonball, slamming toward the sea.
At the instant he was about to hit the water, he forced himself to stop—hovering just above the waves.
He glanced at the sword.
The blade that had been crimson metal moments ago was now webbed with black cracks, like he'd just tried to chop through an immovable mountain.
"Without Conqueror's Haki… this is really inconvenient."
Rain wiped the blood at the corner of his mouth, but his eyes shone brighter—almost frighteningly so.
"Still… it's not completely useless."
High above, Golden Lion looked down at his right leg.
Conqueror's coating had stopped the physical cut—but the sword's thousands-of-degrees heat still bled through via radiation.
His pant leg was scorched, and the stump of his severed leg throbbed with a hot, stinging burn.
"Sss—"
It felt like being seared by a branding iron from a distance.
"Using heat to close the Haki gap, huh?"
Shiki spat out the half-burnt cigar. His face hardened, and the murderous intent of a legendary pirate poured out without restraint.
"I'll admit it—you're a combat genius. But in front of absolute strength, that kind of little trick…"
"…won't save your life!"
Whoosh!
Shiki vanished.
Fast—
So fast there wasn't even an afterimage!
The Float-Float Fruit didn't just make objects levitate; it let the user move through the air at insane speed, ignoring air resistance entirely.
"He's here!"
Rain's Observation screamed warnings.
He slashed hard to the left—
CLANG!!
Kogarashi struck like a viper, black-red lightning wrapped around it, stabbing into Rain's blade spine.
Then came a storm of relentless blows!
"Shishi: Senjindani—RANBU!!"
Shiki became a golden whirlwind in midair. His sword-legs turned into tireless meat grinders—each kick carrying a mountain-splitting slash wave and the destructive force of Conqueror's coating.
Sparks exploded across the sky. Lightning and crimson-black Conqueror's lightning twisted together violently.
Rain was driven back step by step.
His sword had been a shortcut from the start. Under Shiki's high-intensity Haki battering, the blade warped, bent, and splattered molten metal.
But Shiki's assault didn't slow in the slightest.
"Too slow! Too light! Too soft!"
He mocked as he attacked. "You're weak! If you don't have the ambition to trample everything under your feet, this limp crap—what, are you trying to tickle me?!"
BOOM!
Another brutal kick.
Rain's sword bent into a "U" shape, and he was blasted away again.
This time, Shiki didn't give him room to breathe.
He dove straight down like a falling meteor, a shriek of sonic boom ripping the air—aiming for the raging sea below!
At the moment he was about to smash into the water, he thrust both hands into the freezing waves!
A normal Devil Fruit user would've collapsed the instant they touched the sea.
But this was Golden Lion—an old-era emperor who once fought Roger for dominance!
He forced his body through the sea's weakening effect by sheer monstrous physique and triggered his power anyway.
"RISE—!!!"
With Shiki's roar, the sea—within several kilometers—boiled.
RUMBLE—!!!!
Under Gion's horrified stare, tens of thousands of tons of seawater broke the law of gravity and surged into the sky the instant Shiki's hands touched it!
And it wasn't just water.
It was the shattered remains of the two floating islands Rain had split, chunks of Merveille's coastal hills, even towering trees hundreds of meters tall ripped from the jungle below!
Soil. Rock. Water. Forest.
Everything Shiki touched—everything nature provided—became his soldiers.
For a moment, it felt like the world flipped upside down.
"Shishi Odoshi: Gosho Chimaki!!"
Seawater and rock interwove, fused, and reshaped in the air.
In the blink of an eye, five raging water lions—each over a kilometer in size—formed in the sky, along with three earth lions forged from stone and giant timber.
They weren't just shaped like lions—
they looked alive.
Their roars were made of grinding rock and crashing waves, shaking the heavens.
Eight colossal beasts surrounded Rain from all directions, sealing every possible escape route.
Each mouth was large enough to swallow a battleship whole.
This was the real might of a legendary pirate—
one man as a natural disaster.
"Now… where are you going to run?!"
Shiki stood atop the head of a massive water lion, looking down on the tiny Rain. He clenched his right hand—
and Conqueror's coating spread across every inch of the eight monsters, turning them into black, steel-like horrors.
ROAR—!!!!
Eight island-destroying, Haki-wrapped element beasts charged at once, bellowing like the end of the world as they crashed toward Rain at the center.
In that instant, the sky seemed to collapse.
A vast shadow swallowed Rain. Mountains were falling in from every side, and oceans were pouring down.
There was nowhere to go.
"RAIN!!"
Gion couldn't stop herself from shouting. At this level, even a Logia's intangibility wouldn't mean much—get caught in that high-density, Haki-laced mass, and you'd be crushed and torn apart all the same.
~~~
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