After their brief exchange, the battle resumed—and compared to before, things had changed once again.
Loki’s offense remained every bit as fierce.
The strange one was John.
He fought timidly now, as though his hands and feet had been tied.
That said…
“I’d have a headache too if I were him.” Kyo removed his glasses, as though trying to get a clearer look.
“Tch.
Just don’t touch Loki’s sword.
Kill him before the sword breaks and that’s that.” Shiki curled his lip.
“Idiot!
Do you think your opponent is a baby?
Or is he just as stupid as you are?”
“Bastard!
You’re too damn noisy!”
“…”
The two started arguing again.
Everyone else was already used to it.
Hua Ye only found them a little loud.
“I’m becoming more and more curious about you, Hua Ye.” Rocks wore a strange smile.
“You can make Loki this powerful.”
“What?
Do you want this power too?
That would be boring, Rocks.” Hua Ye smiled back.
“I wasn’t interested in the first place.” Rocks shook his head without hesitation.
“Haki is the foundation of everything!”
“Are you going to tell me that battles between pirates are battles of Haki?
Sorry, I’m a Quincy.”
“Uh…
Devil Fruits are pretty important too.”
That was the truth.
For all that Rocks possessed Haki at the very pinnacle of the sea, he had never rejected Devil Fruits.
He hadn’t eaten one yet only because he was still searching for the particular Fruit he wanted.
A Devil Fruit could raise someone’s strength almost instantly.
Outside a tiny minority of purists who rejected them altogether, most people would gladly eat one.
Even if they tasted absolutely vile.
After all, no matter how much you trained Haki, could Haki turn you into a dragon?
Could it grant you all kinds of strange abilities?
If one were to count the most shamelessly powerful Fruits on the sea, Kaido’s and Kizaru’s would both be textbook examples.
Haki alone ultimately had limits.
The true monsters throughout history inevitably combined top-tier Haki with top-tier Devil Fruit abilities.
Joy Boy, for example.
Countless thoughts passed through Hua Ye’s mind.
The others around him, however, had been quietly shaken by the exchange between him and Rocks.
Hua Ye didn’t care.
He had never intended to hide everything in the first place.
So what if people knew?
‘Loki’s power was given to him by Hua Ye?’
‘Rocks was joking…
right?’
‘How could something like that be possible?’
‘Could that rumor actually have been true?’
Shiki and the others’ minds raced as they recalled the first day they’d met Hua Ye.
Back then, they’d only heard that something strange had happened on the island.
Supposedly, there was a Devil Fruit capable of granting power to people on a large scale, and that power had caused chaos.
If Rocks hadn’t brought them there early enough, the situation might have spiraled completely out of control.
Yet there had never been a Devil Fruit.
There had only been Hua Ye.
If they looked at it from another angle, hadn’t Hua Ye been the true source of everything from the very beginning?
The gazes Shiki, Kyo, and the others directed at him changed completely.
They still didn’t understand why, but one thing was certain: Hua Ye was hiding an enormous secret.
Ochoku stared discreetly at Hua Ye’s back, thoughts flickering behind his eyes.
In the end, he pretended not to care.
“So that’s how it is?” Newgate gave Hua Ye another look, surprise in his eyes.
“Interested too, Newgate?” Hua Ye wore his usual faint smile.
“…Don’t say my name like we’re close.” Newgate looked away, his tone flat.
“Should I call you Whitebeard instead?”
Hua Ye had said it casually, but the people nearby immediately burst into laughter.
Newgate’s face darkened.
At this point, Newgate had yet to earn the famous title of “Whitebeard,” but that distinctive crescent mustache had already become his defining feature.
Using someone’s appearance as a nickname…
it was hard to tell whether that counted as respect or mockery.
“All right, enough.” Rocks stopped the joking.
“Is Loki’s ability really as ridiculous as he said?”
“No,” Hua Ye replied.
Several people visibly relaxed.
Then Hua Ye continued, “More accurately, it’s even stronger than that.”
‘What?!
Could you exaggerate any more?!’
There were twenty-six Schrifts in total.
Anyone decent at English could probably guess why there were twenty-six, so there was no need to explain further.
In essence, those powers originally came from Yhwach engraving fragments of his soul into other Quincy, helping them awaken abilities that were fundamentally derived from his own power.
When Hua Ye crossed worlds with Yhwach’s template, the Schrifts had come with it.
In other words, he could grant other people templates of their own.
As long as he passed the appropriate Schrift through his blood into a target, that person would not only be transformed into a Quincy, but would also obtain the corresponding Schrift ability.
Hua Ye’s method was fairly casual.
Whenever he found someone who suited a particular letter, he simply let the appropriate Schrift load automatically.
So far, he’d only given them to two people.
As for the remaining Schrifts, he didn’t yet have clear candidates in mind.
Either way…
the fight came first.
“This is too damn humiliating!”
Out on the battlefield, John had finally had enough.
If he kept letting Loki beat him around like this, how was he supposed to show his face on Hachinosu afterward?
Pirates were brutally realistic.
A man might call you boss today, but if you lost to someone tomorrow, that same subordinate might cut off your head that very night and offer it to your enemy.
“Supreme Magnetism: Dragon-Elephant Mighty Blade!”
John roared as every piece of metal covering his body peeled away and compressed even further.
The gigantic robot transformed into a colossal sword dozens of meters long, forged together under the pressure of John’s extreme magnetic force.
Its edge was so thick that when gravity dragged it downward, it looked less like a slash and more like someone trying to smash a mountain into the ground.
Loki raised his head and reflexively lifted his own sword to block.
The next moment, the absurdly heavy solid-metal blade crushed him beneath it.
John barely had time to catch his breath before three or four wounds suddenly split open across his own body.
They weren’t small either.
The pain made him scream.
“AAAAH!
Damn it!
I can’t believe I took wounds like this!
That bastard!”
Even as he cursed, John felt relieved.
He had still suffered reflected damage, but at least he’d finally brought Loki down.
Once an ability user was defeated, their Devil Fruit power normally stopped working as well.
Still, he desperately wanted to curse someone.
The one that had injured Loki was the giant machine, not John himself!
If the damn ability wanted to reflect damage, why couldn’t it reflect it onto the machine?
What did it have to do with him?!
Of course, that argument was somehow even more ridiculous than Loki’s ability itself.
It was like stabbing someone with a knife and then insisting, ‘The knife killed him, not me.’
RUMBLE!
A sound came from beneath the massive sword.
Cold sweat formed on John’s forehead.
A gigantic figure pushed the metal blade aside and rose to his feet.
“Bastard…
that hurt!”
Loki wiped his face and stared down at John, the pressure of his enormous presence settling over everyone nearby.
At this point, even a blind pirate could tell that Loki had grown considerably larger than before.
And most importantly—he still didn’t have a single wound on his body.
John had officially stopped understanding what he was looking at.
What kind of Devil Fruit did Loki have?
He kept getting bigger during the battle, and his wounds healed almost as quickly as John could create them.
John was starting to regret ever stepping out to fight.
He’d been enjoying the show just fine.
Why had he volunteered for this?!
A tremendous pressure suddenly struck him.
John looked up, and his pupils contracted violently.
Loki’s headgear had changed.
A protective mask now covered most of his face, leaving only his eyes and part of his mouth visible.
A wreath of olive branches circled his forehead.
Black markings stretched from his shoulders down his arms, while his trousers had taken on the opposite pattern—white designs over a black base.
The angelic wings on his back had grown larger.
In his right hand he held a sacred sword with a radiant hilt.
His left arm carried a sun-shaped holy shield studded with spikes.
At that moment, his entire appearance resembled a god of war.
“Vollständig: Aschtonig!”
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