"Whoosh—!"
Gern twisted his wrist. The black blade Bahuang traced a cold, gleaming arc through the air before he casually drove it backward into the ground beside him.
His right hand clenched into a fist.
No dramatic wind-up.
No elaborate stance.
Just a direct, brutal punch thrown straight into the empty air ahead.
BOOM—CRACK!!!
The air in front of him shattered like an enormous pane of glass.
Pale fractures spread instantly across the sky in a spiderweb pattern.
The cracks raced outward, and a violent shockwave of vibrating force surged forward in a fan-shaped blast, pulverizing every rock and grain of sand along its path into dust.
The purest form of vibration power—a sweeping field-clearing strike meant to suppress everything before it.
Facing the overwhelming shockwave rushing toward him, Nusjuro's eyes flashed sharply.
He did not attempt to tank it head-on.
He understood far too well how troublesome Gern's power was.
So—
Tap! Tap! Tap! Tap!!!
The skeletal horse body beneath him stomped the ground violently with all four hooves.
Black flames and crackling lightning exploded beneath them.
The terrifying explosive strength and speed granted by an awakened Zoan manifested fully in that moment.
Nusjuro vanished from where he stood.
All that remained behind was a fading afterimage and a crater shattered into the earth.
In the blink of an eye, using the astonishing speed of his centaur form, he slipped past the frontal shockwave—
And appeared high in the air behind Gern, almost as if he had teleported.
The Shodai Kitetsu in his hand had already gathered power.
Now he drew it in a perfect iaido motion.
Around the blade coiled black Haki lightning intertwined with an orange-red blaze that looked like molten fire from the depths of hell.
"Divine Corpse Slash—Infernal Severance!"
With a low roar, Nusjuro brought the cursed blade crashing down.
A colossal crescent slash wrapped in dual-colored energy tore through the sky like the scythe of a death god from the underworld, descending toward Gern's back.
Where the slash passed—
All life withered.
SHING!
The strike passed straight through Gern's body without resistance.
His figure was sliced cleanly in half.
But the expected spray of blood never came.
The cut surfaces of Gern's body contained no flesh or bone.
Instead, they dissolved into countless pale vibration particles that flickered and flowed like living energy.
Logia — Heavenly Quake Fruit elementalization.
Gern had already transformed.
Even as his upper half separated in the air, it turned its head slightly toward Nusjuro behind him.
A mocking grin stretched across his face.
"Not bad…"
"For a 'horse' with four legs."
"That speed's something else."
"At the very least… you're a lot faster than that big spider."
Before the last word faded—
Both halves of his body exploded apart into two raging torrents of pale vibration particles.
They surged outward and dissolved into the surrounding air and molecular currents.
His physical form vanished completely.
"!?"
Nusjuro's pupils shrank.
The situation he dreaded most had appeared.
Observation Haki could no longer accurately predict him.
Gern had fully elementalized himself, synchronizing his own vibration frequency with the surrounding environment.
Hidden.
Merged.
His very existence had become part of the natural vibration of the world itself.
For Observation Haki—which relied on sensing life force and hostile intent—
That meant total failure.
And for someone like Nusjuro, an ancient relic who had gone centuries without needing to fight with such desperate intensity—
This was an extremely troublesome situation.
Immediately, he entered full alert.
The skeletal horse body lowered slightly, all four hooves gripping the ground firmly.
The Shodai Kitetsu was held horizontally before him as his senses expanded to their limits, searching for even the slightest abnormal vibration or fluctuation of energy.
Whoosh!
Suddenly—
A pale energy sphere the size of a fist shot out without warning from the shadow of a rock on his lower left side—an area that looked completely empty.
The orb struck the underside of his skeletal horse body—his abdomen—with vicious precision.
BAM!!!
The moment it made contact, the sphere did not explode immediately.
Instead, it clung to the bone armor like a parasitic leech.
Then—
The compressed vibration energy inside it detonated wildly.
"Ghh!"
Nusjuro let out a muffled grunt as fine cracks spread across the bone armor covering his horse abdomen.
(That portion, having become skeletal horse form, likely had no internal organs anyway—Mythical Zoans came with all sorts of bizarre traits.)
"Found you!!!"
Ignoring the pain, Nusjuro violently twisted his body.
The Shodai Kitetsu howled like a screaming demon as he slashed backward toward the direction the energy sphere had come from.
Unfortunately—
He was still half a beat too slow.
"Black Quake—Instant Hell."
Gern's icy voice whispered right beside his ear.
In the instant Nusjuro twisted his body to attack—creating the briefest opening—
The air warped violently.
Countless pale vibration particles gathered together in a flash.
Gern's figure stepped out of the void itself.
His right fist was already clenched, wrapped in dark violet Conqueror's Haki lightning.
Without hesitation—
He launched a brutal uppercut straight into the jaw of Nusjuro's human upper body.
BOOOOOM!!!!!!
A deafening impact exploded outward, accompanied by the faint but unmistakable sound of cracking bones.
Nusjuro's head snapped violently backward.
His entire body—horse form and all—was blasted upward into the air, completely off balance.
The initiative had once again fallen firmly into Gern's hands.
A fleeting opportunity.
And Gern had no intention of letting the immortal old monster recover.
His figure flickered again, returning instantly to the spot where Bahuang had been planted in the ground earlier.
But he did not draw the blade.
Instead—
He slowly brought both hands together in front of his chest.
BUZZZZ!!!
The moment his palms closed together—
Within the small frame formed by his hands, everything his eyes could see began collapsing inward.
Air.
Light.
Even the earth beneath his feet and the sky above.
Everything began compressing toward the center.
Countless pale vibration particles were forcibly pulled from every direction—from the very void itself—gathering between his palms.
They condensed into a violently unstable core roughly the size of a basketball.
A pale nucleus whose mere existence caused the entire island—and even the surrounding sea—to begin trembling.
Between his hands—
Was the world itself.
"Old fossil…"
Through the frame of his hands, Gern looked at Nusjuro, who had just barely regained his balance.
A near-maniacal grin spread across his face.
"Let me show you personally…"
His palms, pressed together around that core of destruction, slammed forward through the air like someone pushing open a forbidden gate.
With every ounce of strength he possessed—
He thrust it outward.
"…what it truly means…"
"…to be called—"
"HEAVENQUAKE!!!"
When the words fell—
It was not sound that followed.
It was—
The wail of the world itself.
From the direction Gern's palms struck outward, a stroke like the brush of a creator god tore across the heavens.
No—
Not just the sky.
Where the fracture passed, space itself shattered like fragile glass.
Beyond the breaking cracks lay a deep, chaotic void filled with destructive energy.
Clouds evaporated instantly.
Sunlight twisted and dimmed.
The atmosphere itself was violently expelled, leaving behind a terrifying vacuum corridor.
The will of destruction and reconstruction surged forward—
Devouring Nusjuro.
Devouring everything behind him.
To Nusjuro's perception, the speed did not seem particularly fast—
But he was locked in place.
And he could feel his very soul being torn apart by an overwhelming sense of collapse and annihilation.
"I carry the blessing of Lord Imu…!"
"I WILL NOT BE DEFEATED!!!"
Nusjuro roared hysterically.
Relying on his nearly monstrous regenerative ability, he forced every ounce of power he had into the cursed blade.
Then he swung.
"All Underworlds… Reduced to Ash!!!"
The jet-black demonic flames erupted into a torrent of death that devoured everything as it surged upward in defiance.
The next instant—
White and black.
Vibration and death.
Collided.
...
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