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"What the hell?!" World stared in shock. "How did it not pierce you at all?!"
He had expected the knife to at least severely wound Zechs, even if it failed to kill him. Instead, all it had managed to do was tear his shirt. That was it. As for his flesh, that was completely intact. Not even a single drop of blood had been drawn.
How could that be acceptable? No, better yet, how could that even be possible?
"Byrnndi World..." Zechs said as he slowly looked at the man who was trying to plunge that knife into his body, "You do not have any means of injuring me or killing me."
He was completely confident in the defence of the Steel Balloon Physique.
To get past it, an opponent needed one of only a few things: the ability to make Armament Haki flow into the body and cause internal destruction, the ability to use Conqueror's Haki infusion, or some other power that bypassed defence altogether, such as the awakened abilities of the Op-Op no Mi.
Without one of those, breaking through the Steel Balloon Physique was simply impossible.
And as Zechs looked at World, he did not believe the man possessed any of those methods.
Even if, somehow, World did have one of them, Zechs could still reinforce his own body with Conqueror's Haki and increase his defence even further.
So as far as Zechs was concerned, there was no real way for World to injure him.
But World, of course, refused to believe that Asmodeus Zechs was invulnerable. "Oh yeah? I don't believe it!!"
He dropped the knife. There was no point relying on projectiles anymore when they clearly could not do anything to Zechs.
Instead, he decided to rely on his own fists. Amplifying his speed seventy-fivefold, he instantly vanished from in front of Zechs and reappeared behind him in an instant. Then, boosting his strength seventy-fivefold as well, he raised his fist, coated it in thick black Armament Haki, and smashed it down toward Zechs' back.
'If I am behind him, then even if he senses me with Observation Haki... he should not be able to react in time...'
World intended to shatter Zechs' spine with a single blow.
Zechs' instincts screamed at him.
He sensed World appearing behind him. But the speed was simply too great. He could not react in time.
Bang!
World's fist slammed into his back, "Let's see you do anything against this…!"
"It's… useless!" Zechs only said that as the force of World's punch blasted him away. He smashed through several parts of the ship before being thrown completely off the deck and sent hurtling toward the ocean.
But before he could actually fall into the sea, Zechs, who had already lashed out his tail, had it wrap around the ship's railing. The tail tightened and stopped his fall, leaving him hanging above the water for a moment before he shot himself back onto the deck and turned toward World once more, attacking him.
"That didn't kill him?" World stared in shock. He had been certain that the attack would break Zechs' spine and kill him instantly.
But it had not. And what shocked him even more was that Zechs had not even used Armament Haki to defend himself.
'What kind of ridiculous body does he have? How thick is his skin?' he thought in disbelief. This has really never happened before.
Even though he was shocked, his reactions did not slow in the slightest. The sense of danger coming from Zechs' blade was so intense that he immediately dodged it.
"Running away now?" Zechs taunted with a grin as he chased after him.
"I'm not—" World began to argue. But he cut himself off the moment he saw Zechs swing his sword again. 'No time for this...!'
He immediately increased his speed a hundredfold and dodged the slash. Once again, that blade gave him an inexplicably dangerous feeling.
He wanted to understand why. 'Why did a sword just coated in Armament Haki feel so deadly?'
But he had no time to think about it.
He vanished from his position and, using Shave and Moonwalk together with his amplified speed, once again darted across the ship and through the air while Zechs pursued him.
Of course, Zechs could not keep up with World's Hundredfold Speed.
Taking advantage of that, he moved even faster and created hundreds of afterimages across the deck and throughout the sky above the ship, making it nearly impossible to tell which one was real and which one was fake.
In truth, none of them were fake.
Each afterimage was simply World moving from one position to another so quickly that it looked as though he existed in all of those places at once. And in a sense, he did. Every fraction of a second, he truly was present at each of those positions.
Indeed, he was moving so fast that, even if only for a millisecond, he seemed to exist in each afterimage, thus giving the feeling that every afterimage is his real self, and also not his real self.
'This guy... seriously...' Zechs sighed, genuinely astonished to see a technique that reminded him of a certain naïve Uchiha from the neighbouring universe with shinobis in it.
He really had not expected World to be able to move this fast.
At a hundredfold increase, World's speed had become so absurd that Zechs did not even know which afterimage to attack. By the time any attack would reach its target afterimage, World would already have moved to another position, rendering the attack completely useless.
"What's wrong?" World's voice echoed from every direction. "Can't tell which one is real?"
"Tch," Zechs clicked his tongue. Then he slowly let out a breath, thinking, 'I need to know where he'll appear before he appears there...'
The problem was that World was not moving in any determinable pattern. There was no rhythm, no order, no specific sequence to predict future positions. His movements were completely random, making it impossible to determine where he would appear next.
'A problem like this... can only be solved with Future Sight...'
If he could use Future Sight, then he would know World's next position in advance and could attack accordingly.
But—
'Damn it... I am unable to use Future Sight at all!' Zechs felt a little helpless.
Despite training with Katakuri for months in an attempt to awaken Future Sight, he had failed every time. If he had already mastered it, then this situation would not have been a problem at all.
'It doesn't matter... this is my chance...'
Haki bloomed in battle.
Since that was the case, he would use this very fight to awaken Future Sight.
With that thought in mind, he, while remaining afloat in midair, closed his eyes and cut off his sight entirely, intending to rely solely on his Observation Haki, and he pushed it to its absolute limit, trying to catch even the faintest glimpse of the future and 'hear' where World would appear next.
World certainly noticed Zechs' act of closing his eye. But he didn't care about that. In fact, he didn't really know what Zechs was attempting, nor did he bother to know, as he was tackling another problem, 'There's no possible opening to exploit at all...'
He searched for a chance to attack Zechs, but all he noticed were deliberate openings left as bait to draw him in. As for any real openings, he could not find one he could exploit.
'Hah... but… so what? Since there aren't any openings, he'd just create his own.'
As he flickered from place to place, he grabbed loose objects from around the deck and began hurling them toward Zechs.
'More-More Hundredfold Gun!'
'More-More Fiftyfold Gun!'
'More-More Seventyfold Gun!'
Some flew fast, others slow. Some were large, others small. He deliberately varied the speed and size of everything he threw, trying to disrupt Zechs' senses and force an opening he could exploit.
But Zechs could sense every single one of them, and since they came in fixed trajectories, even if their speed or size varied, he wasn't worried about them all that much.
Sha! Sha! Sha!
Each time Zechs swung his sword, a slash shot forward and split the incoming object cleanly in half. The shattered pieces flew past him on either side and crashed behind him into the ocean, never giving World the opening he wanted.
'Tch... if that won't work...'
World's gaze shifted, and he quickly grabbed several guns scattered around the ship. Then, while continuing to move at impossible speed, he fired at Zechs from multiple positions and angles.
'More-More Hundredfold: Gunshot!' Bang!
'More-More Hundredfold: Gunshot!' Bang!
'More-More Hundredfold: Gunshot!' Bang!
"Fuck!" Zechs cursed as his instincts screamed at him to dodge.
Amplified a hundredfold, each bullet had become as large as a truck. And as for their speed... it was so absurd that Zechs was certain that, while the impact would not kill him, it would still send him flying for dozens of kilometres before the momentum finally died out.
And he definitely did not want that. So he abandoned all thoughts of trying to see the future and focused entirely on dodging.
Using quick bursts of Shave and Moonwalk, Zechs barely managed to evade more than a dozen shots.
The bullets that missed him continued flying onward for two to three seconds. Eventually, they crashed into the sea fifty to seventy kilometres away. If there happened to be a ship passing through that area, or an island nearby, then whoever was there would be incredibly unlucky.
But that had nothing to do with either World or Zechs.
Right now, one of them was firing, and the other was dodging.
After firing more than a dozen shots without landing even one, World clicked his tongue in annoyance. Then a thought crossed his mind. 'What if I fire toward his ship?'
World felt certain that Asmodeus Zechs would try to intercept the bullet. If he did not, the shot would destroy the ship and kill the two people aboard.
For a moment, he was tempted. But then he remembered that his own three subordinates, Nightin, Gairam, and Sebastian, were also still on Zechs' ship. And just like that, he realised he could not do it. Since that option was unavailable, World quickly thought of something else.
Instead of firing from a distance, he began closing the gap, reducing the amount of time Zechs had to react to the incoming bullets.
Closing the distance while maintaining his afterimages proved extremely effective, and Zechs was quickly pushed onto the defensive.
"Tch..." Zechs clicked his tongue.
All he could do was keep increasing his own dodging speed.
'This isn't getting me anywhere... if anything, the situation is only getting worse...'
He desperately searched for some way to turn things around, but honestly, he could not think of anything.
Except...
"Byrnndi World... damn it, man, are you really such a coward that you only know how to attack from a distance?" Zechs taunted, trying to provoke him and throw him off.
"Pointless squabbling..." World snorted.
He did not take the bait in the slightest.
But Zechs did not give up. "What, are you afraid of me? Afraid that if you get close, I'll kill you in a single hit? Is that why you keep running around instead of fighting me directly?"
Bang! Bang!
"Hah... just as I thought. You really are a coward. The great captain of the World Pirates is nothing but a coward... Hah... no wonder barely anyone knows who you are, and why your bounty is so much lower than mine."
"..."
Bang! Bang! Bang!
"So what is your bounty anyway? One hundred million? Two hundred million? It can't possibly be any higher than that... Hah... compared to mine, which is nine hundred million, yours is pathetic."
"..."
Bang! Bang! Bang!
"The Marines and World Government must know exactly what kind of man Byrnndi World really is. Just some nobody pretending to be tough and mighty, when in reality he is a joke. 'Destroyer of the World'? Hah... my ass. The only things Byrnndi World can destroy are empty ships and weak little towns where there is no one to fight back. You are such a coward that you even try to attack while hiding kilometers away. The moment you face someone truly strong, all you know how to do is stay far away and attack from a safe distance, too scared to come close."
Zechs sneered. "What a pathetic pirate. I've never seen anyone so pathetic before. Fufu... Hah..."
World tried to ignore him. He tried to control himself by telling himself, 'These are just the words of a dying man…!'
But Zechs just kept talking, mocking him, provoking him, deliberately hitting every nerve he could by flaunting his own superiority, brought up his higher bounty again and again, and mocked World as nothing more than a green-haired man who doesn't have any girlfriend or lover because of being too afraid to man up or something… being a fraud who only knows how to rely on his Devil Fruit because he knew nothing about real fighting.
Finally, World snapped. He suddenly stopped moving and roared at the top of his lungs, "Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!"
Then he raised both the guns he was holding and fired wildly at Zechs while coming closer…
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
No matter where Zechs moved, World immediately fired another bullet and amplified its speed and size a hundredfold.
'Huh... it actually worked?' Zechs was genuinely surprised.
He had been trying to provoke World, but Zechs had not expected him to actually get offended and lose his mind.
Still, he was hardly going to complain. Faced with the incoming bullets, Zechs, who had already been prepared, swung his sword. A powerful slash infused with Conqueror's Haki shot forward and split every incoming bullet in half, changing their trajectory and the direction of their momentum.
In that same instant, using Shave, he crossed the distance between them in a single step.
In the blink of an eye, he was standing right in front of World and raised his sword, ready to bring it down—
But just before he actually swung it down, his mind suddenly entered a strange trance.
'What? What is this am I seeing?' he thought as some scene flashed through his mind while being in that trance state.
In that flash, he saw Byrnndi World. But it was not the World standing in front of him. The World he saw had both guns raised and was firing at him. The bullets shot straight toward his chest and struck him directly.
That was what made it so strange.
The real World in front of him did indeed have both guns raised... But he had not fired yet.
So why was Zechs seeing World already having fired the bullets?
'Is this...?'
A faint thought appeared in his mind. Trusting what he had seen, Zechs shifted his body ever so slightly. Even though that sudden movement delayed his slash for a brief moment... he still did it.
…
While Zechs had raised his sword to attack, World's instincts began to scream at him, 'I'm going to die! I'm going to die! Fuck, I'm going to die!'
Yet another thought also resounded in his mind, 'But... this is also my chance...! A chance to kill this bastard!'
Even if World could not pierce through Zechs' absurdly tough skin, that did not mean he had no way to kill him.
Who said he had to injure Zechs directly? There were other ways.
And World already had a plan. With that plan in mind, he did not retreat. Instead, he did two other things.
First, he increased the rigidity of his body a hundredfold and coated himself in dense Armament Haki.
Second, with both hands already raised, he pulled the triggers of his guns while amplifying the speed and size of the bullets and coating them in Armament Haki as well.
Then, everything that followed happened within an incredibly tiny window of time, so small that to anyone else it would have looked instantaneous.
But to Zechs, it felt as though time itself had slowed to a crawl as World pulled the trigger of the two guns in his hands.
'More-More Hundredfold: Gunshot!' Bang!
'More-More Hundredfold: Gunshot!' Bang!
…
'Yeah… this was the scene…' Zechs thought, figuring out everything.
From the corner of his eye, he even watched everything play out in slow motion exactly as he had seen in that flash. Sparks burst from the guns, and bullets shot from the muzzle, growing larger and faster with every passing instant.
'If those had hit me...' He knew with certainty that he would have been blasted away.
Fortunately, Zechs had already shifted ever so slightly such that neither muzzle pointed directly at him.
The bullets exploded from the guns at absurd speed. One barely grazed his shoulder, while the other scraped past his arm before both shot past him instead of striking him directly.
For a brief moment, Zechs secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
World frowned, 'Huh... how did both miss?' He was takenaback but regardless of how the bullets missed, he tried to pull the triggers again.
But at that exact moment, Zechs brought his sword down in a diagonal slash across World's chest, 'Angled Netori Slash!'
A burst of dark red aura erupted from the blade as red lightning crackled violently around it. Coated in Conqueror's Haki, Zechs' sword slammed into World's Armament Haki-covered flesh.
'This rigidity...? It's even higher than before...' Zechs narrowed his eyes as he realised that.
And this combination of Hundredfold Rigidity and Armament Haki created the strongest defence World could possibly muster.
But in the face of Zechs' Angled Netori Slash, 'It doesn't matter...'
It was indeed not enough as Zechs' ordinary-looking blade, which was not even coated in Armament Haki, cut straight through World's flesh despite the increased rigidity.
Another diagonal wound tore across World's chest as blood sprayed out.
This wound went even deeper than the last.
The blade dug so deeply that parts of World's ribs and even some of his insides briefly became visible. Together with the earlier wound, it formed a bloody cross across his chest, flesh torn open and blood sprayed out.
But Zechs was still not satisfied, because World was still alive. Thus, he wanted to push the blade even deeper, wanting to reach World's heart and pierce straight through it in order to kill him.
But then, he saw another flash—
…
'It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!'
A violent pain suddenly tore through World's body. It hurt so badly that he could not stop himself from coughing up blood.
Even so, World gritted his teeth and forced himself to endure it and finally managed to pull the trigger again.
'More-More Hundredfold: Gunshot!'
Bang!
'Really?!' Zechs' eyes narrowed, having a déjà vu.
Although he had succeeded in carving another scar into World, World had also used that exact moment to attack him, too.
And unlike before, this time the muzzle was not angled away. It pointed directly at Zechs' chest, and unlike the previous time when he had managed to shift his body enough, this time… he wasn't able to do it enough as the bullet coated in Armament Haki slammed straight into him.
Boom!
"Fuck!!!!" was all he could say as the impact felt like being hit by a truck, though Zechs had never actually experienced that before.
If he had experienced it before, he would not have compared the impact to a truck. He would have compared it to being struck by a meteor.
But the comparison did not matter.
What mattered was that the sheer force behind the bullet was unlike anything he had ever felt before.
All the power created by that monstrous speed struck him at once, blasting him backward. At the same time, the bullet continued to expand every millisecond, growing from a small shell into something the size of a motorcycle in the blink of an eye.
Zechs had no way to escape.
The gigantic bullet carrying the momentum of a meteor stuck to him and blasted him straight down into the sea.
Plop!
For a single instant, the sea and the churning waves seemed to freeze.
Then everything exploded.
BOOM!
A deafening roar shook the heavens as the bullet plunged beneath the surface and released all of its remaining momentum at once. The ocean within hundreds of metres caved inward, forming a vast crater in the sea itself.
RUMBLE!!!
The next moment, that crater also collapsed.
A colossal pillar of water erupted skyward, rising dozens upon dozens of metres into the air like a newly born waterspout. Countless tonnes of seawater were hurled upward and outward in every direction.
Crash! Boom! Boom!
Towering waves spread across the sea.
Even Byrnndi World's half-broken ship, despite being hundreds of metres away, was struck by the aftermath. The vessel rocked violently from side to side as the wave smashed into it, nearly capsizing it outright.
The already damaged mast snapped completely and crashed down onto the deck. Loose cannons, crates, and unconscious pirates were thrown across the ship as though they weighed nothing.
Farther away, Zechs' own ship, on which Pudding was fighting Nightin, and Katakuri was fighting Gairam, and Sebastian was not spared either. The sea beneath it rose into a towering swell that lifted the entire vessel high into the air before slamming it back down again.
"What? What happened?!" Pudding cried out as she grabbed onto the ship to stop herself from being thrown overboard and into the sea.
"What is Captain doing? Is he trying to get us all killed?" Nightin said fearfully. She clung to the railing and looked back, only to see World. There was no sign of Zechs. "Where did cutie go?"
On the same ship, Gairam, though heavily wounded and still struggling to stand, let out a rough laugh. "Gairarara... looks like it's over for Asmodeus Zechs..."
Same with the injured Sebastian, who, despite being blind, could still sense what had happened. He felt the violent disturbance in the sea and the waves as he laughed, "Shishishi... as expected of Captain World..."
Katakuri glanced in that direction, "…"
On the horizon, the place where the bullet had struck no longer looked like part of the ocean.
It looked like a natural disaster. The surface of the sea had been torn apart, and at the centre of the impact zone, a vast whirlpool churned violently while enormous waves spread outward in every direction.
Far above, rain began to fall as the water blasted into the sky and descended back down.
And as for Zechs... There was indeed no sign of him at all.
In fact, Katakuri could not even sense his presence.
Which meant only one of two things.
Either Zechs was dead... Or he had been blasted so deep beneath the sea that he had moved completely beyond the range of Katakuri's Haki.
Katakuri frowned. Even when he tried to use Future Sight to see what would happen next, he still could not see Zechs at all. 'Is it really over?'
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