"Now, you should understand what a gap in power truly looks like," Katakuri said coldly. "With only this much strength, challenging Mama is nothing but suicide. The distance between Mama's power and mine is vast."
"Someone like you, and your crew, if you continue to oppose our Big Mom Pirates, death is the only outcome!" Though Katakuri said this, he did not immediately strike.
He actually acknowledged Enel's strength. Moreover, Enel, Buggy, and that Red-Haired one were all quite young. Recruiting them would be like gaining formidable warriors for their forces.
Come to think of it, this entire group of pirates had emerged after Roger's death.
Compared to the so-called Worst Generation of the future, this year's batch of rookie pirates was equally noteworthy. Those who would become Seven Warlords would become Seven Warlords, and those who would become Emperors would become Emperors. All that was missing was another Pirate King.
Katakuri could not see that far into the future, but it did not stop him from wanting to recruit talents like Enel and Buggy for his family.
"Submit to our Big Mom Pirates! If you do, given the joyous occasion, Mama might overlook your past offenses. Even marrying one of my sisters would not be out of the question."
Katakuri said this directly.
Some of his sisters were admittedly hard to look at, even bizarre in appearance, but there were also quite a few beauties. Muscat, who was only in her teens, was still young, but her long legs were already taking shape. In a few years, marrying a strong man like Enel would not be out of the question.
"Sorry, but I already have someone I care about." Enel, trapped though he was, smiled. There was no trace of fear in his eyes, only an unshakable calm.
"Is that a refusal?" Katakuri's gaze gradually cooled. He did not wait for Enel to answer. In the future he could see, he had already received his answer.
He spread his arms wide. Under invisible power, his ability expanded to affect an even greater distance. The undulating earth twisted like a vortex and reared upward like a giant serpent!
"Then choke to death under my power!"
"Mochi Mirrors!"
The earth, transformed into mochi, surged toward Enel in an unstoppable wave!
It was like an endless tide of quicksand, swallowing and burying his figure in an instant!
If he could not break free, then Enel's life would be buried just like this.
"Hey, long-ears!" Crocodile, seeing Enel buried with apparently no ability to resist, grew desperate. He abandoned his fight with Cracker entirely and instantly transformed into a sandstorm, hurtling toward Katakuri!
But Katakuri did not even turn around. From the surging earth, countless elongated strips of mochi shot outward, seizing the sandified Crocodile in an instant!
THUD!
Under a savage barrage of blows, Crocodile could not even maintain his elemental form and was sent flying through the air, crashing into the ground several meters away.
"Damn, what a monster!" Crocodile sat up with a grimace, wiped the blood from his mouth, and stared hard at his opponent. Just then, Cracker suddenly jumped in front of him.
"You're awfully impatient, aren't you? If you want to throw your life away, I'm more than enough." Cracker's expression was cold, filling Crocodile with a sense of dread.
In the next instant, Cracker lunged. His spinning pretzel blade drove through Crocodile's chest like a drill!
Crocodile's pupils contracted sharply. Cold sweat erupted across his body. Then he suddenly realized his chest was still perfectly intact.
For a moment, he was bewildered. But that instinctive jolt of fear had already set his body in motion on its own.
CLANG!
A figure thrust forward, piercing straight through Crocodile's torso. But what sprayed from the wound was not blood. It was sand!
"You dodged by elementizing in advance?" Cracker said, annoyed. His ambush had failed. Not one to linger, he retreated several steps and re-hid himself among the biscuits.
Crocodile, having narrowly escaped death, knew full well that his spotty Observation Haki had saved his life.
The moment he had seen Cracker piercing his chest in the future, he had instinctively dispersed into sand.
That was the only reason he had survived that lethal blow.
However, Crocodile could not see the future at will the way Katakuri could, nor could he see very far ahead. His Observation Haki was patchy and unreliable at best. There was only the briefest flicker between life and death, and that flicker was the only thing standing between him and oblivion.
Having barely survived, Crocodile had no bandwidth left to worry about Enel. He could only pray that the other man would not be defeated so easily.
Enel, of course, was not so easily dispatched.
He had not yet achieved Devil Fruit Awakening, but for Devil Fruits, awakening did not automatically mean greater strength. Katakuri, Doflamingo, and even Kaido had all awakened, yet they had still fallen to Gear Fourth!
What was more, when Katakuri had lost, both his fruit development and his Haki were actually superior to Luffy's.
The only conclusion was that Devil Fruits did have inherent tiers. The Mochi-Mochi Fruit, though special, did not rank high in raw power.
Deep underground, Enel's Haki flowed like water, pouring into the mochi that encased him layer by layer.
In the next instant, the supposedly unbreakable mochi prison began to crumble from the inside, destroyed completely by his Haki!
BOOM!
The earth that was meant to become Enel's grave collapsed entirely, forming an enormous crater!
At the bottom of that crater, Enel stood with his hands cupped like the bud of an unopened flower.
Explosive energy gathered between his palms.
"Twenty-Thousand Tons of TNT: Great Explosion!"
He had gathered every last ounce of his energy and unleashed it upward toward Katakuri on the surface, like a Kamehameha wave!
"You're still alive?" Katakuri did not dodge. Instead, he coated his body in Armament Haki and created countless donuts.
"Unrivaled Donut!"
His fists shot forward, wreathed in Haki, and met the searing energy blast head-on without flinching!
BOOM!
Violent explosions layered upon one another, stacking higher and higher.
The battle had escalated to its most ferocious stage in a single heartbeat.
Enel and Katakuri, both determined to end the fight in the shortest time possible!
"Raindrop Mochi!"
"Supernova Explosion!"
"Nine-Headed Mochi! Clap Mochi! Sweet Chestnut Mochi!"
"Ultimate…"
In an instant, an endless torrent of techniques poured from both fighters!
Countless fists and light projectiles collided in the air, as fierce and sudden as a violent summer downpour!
[
Dear Readers,
I hope you are doing well. I am writing to you today because things have become genuinely difficult, and I need to be honest about where I stand.
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