However, at the very center of this desperate situation, Rain showed not the slightest hint of panic.
He slowly closed his eyes, pushing his Observation Haki to its absolute limit.
The deafening roar around him—Shiki's laughter, Shiki's bellow, the crashing sea—seemed to be pulled far, far away in an instant.
The world grew quiet.
In that silence, a faint red glow quietly bloomed beneath his eyelids.
In that moment, Rain saw it.
He saw several seconds into the future.
He saw, along the bite trajectory of the water lion on his left, a tiny cavity in the flow—an air pocket formed by a subtle pressure shift. He saw, within the collapsing gap of rock on his right, a floating stone about to fracture. He even saw, in the airflow above—where two lions collided—a brief vacuum strip—
The one and only path to life among countless lines of death.
Rain's eyes snapped open, red light blazing in his pupils.
At the hair's-breadth moment when the eight beasts were about to close in and crush him completely—
"Bzz—"
Rain moved.
In Gion's vision, Rain's entire body instantly became a streak of blue lightning, refracting at an impossibly strange angle.
Whoosh!
He didn't retreat. He charged straight toward the largest rock lion dead ahead!
"Looking for death!" Shiki sneered, controlling the massive stone jaws to snap shut. The rock teeth—coated in Haki—bit down like a meat grinder.
But at the instant of impact, Rain twisted his body in a bizarre contortion and slipped through the 0.1-second gap between two colliding boulders—like a fish darting through a crack!
Then he stepped off exploding fragments in midair, borrowing the momentum to carve an impossible Z-shaped zigzag, barely avoiding the gigantic water-lion claw smashing down from the side.
Fast—too fast!
This wasn't a reaction a human body should be capable of.
Every dodge was timed precisely at the edge of the hitbox, as if death scraped his scalp. Every refraction exploited that sliver of delay and blind spot that came with Shiki controlling colossal masses.
Shiki's proud kill-zone didn't even graze Rain's sleeve.
"What?!"
On the lion's head, Shiki's eyes nearly bulged out.
"Seeing the future, huh…" he snorted, his tone turning heavier. "Even in the New World, there aren't many monsters who've trained Observation to this level. And you're this young—already touching that realm?!"
"No wonder you're so cocky. You really do have some capital."
"Got you."
In the instant Shiki was still reeling—
A blue bolt pierced the layers of blockade and appeared in front of him like a ghost.
Less than five meters away!
Rain's crimson sword screamed with a shrill whine that stabbed at the eardrums.
Using the Rumble-Rumble Fruit's magnetic control, Rain forced the blade—still half-molten—into ultra-high-frequency vibration. The edge blurred. Heat-haze ripples shimmered in the air around it from the friction.
"Taste this!"
Rain roared and swung.
"Cheap parlor tricks!!"
Shiki sensed lethal danger. He couldn't change tactics in time—he could only lift his right "leg" and drive both Armament and Conqueror's coating to their limit to tank it head-on.
"ZZZZT—!!!"
This time the weapons didn't bounce away.
That high-frequency crimson blade bit into Oto like a spinning saw, grinding and chewing.
Sparks erupted like a fountain!
Shiki's Haki defense—his once-absolute black armor—actually let out a cracking, overloaded sound.
Rain's arm muscles bulged as he forced power through!
RRRIP—!!!
With a teeth-grinding screech, the crimson blade sawed through the Haki layer and carved a bone-deep gash into Shiki's right leg—right at the connection point of sword and limb!
"Hng!"
Shiki grunted, the sudden agony freezing him for a split beat.
But at the same time—
Rain's "hot-melt sword," cobbled together on the spot, finally hit its limit.
It had been a crude, forcibly fused product from the start—never meant to withstand this level of Haki collision and ultra-high-frequency vibration.
The moment after it cut through Shiki's defense—
BOOM!!!
The crimson blade exploded.
It disintegrated into countless scalding metal pellets, detonating at point-blank range between them!
WHAM—!!
Molten iron at thousands of degrees and razor fragments—carrying the last of their momentum—burst outward like a fragmentation grenade, indiscriminately blasting both Rain and Shiki.
Both were thrown back by the shockwave.
Rain turned into an electric stream midair, reformed, and landed smoothly.
Molten droplets and fragments passed through his Logia body and splattered onto the ground with sizzling hisses—without leaving a scratch.
As a Rumble-Rumble user, pure physical shrapnel and heat meant nothing to him.
Shiki steadied himself too.
Even under a point-blank blast, the old legend showed iron-clad composure—his Haki barrier blunted most of it. Only his clothes were singed at the edges, and his wild golden mane still whipped arrogantly in the wind.
He glanced at Oto—the blade still gleamed, pristine and undamaged.
"Haa…"
Shiki exhaled, locking onto Rain with the wary look reserved for a peer-level monster.
This kid… was insane.
Shiki wiped soot from his face and grinned savagely. "To leave a mark on me, you even blew up your own weapon? Now you don't even have a fire poker in your hand—what are you going to use to fight me?"
Rain didn't answer the taunt.
He lowered his gaze to the charred hilt by his feet, then casually kicked it into the sea.
"As expected…"
He shook his head, sounding almost resigned. "A weapon forged on the spot is still too forced. It can't hold up in a fight at this level the way a named blade can."
Shiki wasn't about to give him another chance to forge.
He slammed his hands together, veins bulging at his temples!
"Shishi Odoshi: Chimaki!!"
RUMBLE—!!!
The eight element lions Rain had just evaded instantly reformed under the Float-Float Fruit's power—
Condensing into a single colossal hand, ready to crush the ant in its palm.
There was nowhere left to dodge.
Shiki's roar echoed through the thunder: "Brat—now let's see you dodge this!"
Faced with a no-angle, no-gap execution, Rain slowly let both arms fall to his sides.
He let the gale tear through his black hair. He let the shadow of annihilation swallow him whole.
Then he lifted his head and looked up at Shiki.
It was noon.
The clouds above Merveille had been shredded apart by the battle, and the sun blazed down unobstructed.
But the light surging from Rain's body was brighter than the sun itself.
Countless strands of white lightning erupted from every cell in his body and rushed to the surface, condensing violently.
The air filled with a terrifying sound—like ten thousand birds shrieking at once.
BOOM!
The already-torn clouds began to gather again—this time, forcibly dragged in by Rain.
Rain's eyes snapped open.
His once-black pupils were now nothing but searing, pure-white lightning.
He stared at Shiki and spoke—not loudly, but with a clarity that cut through the roaring sea of destruction and detonated beside Shiki's ear:
"Who said I was going to dodge?"
Rain raised his right hand, fingers half-curled—
as if he were gripping the thunder of the entire sky.
~~~
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