“GANZUI, SAVE ME!!”
John threw dignity aside and shouted at the top of his lungs.
A violent explosion immediately erupted against Loki’s body, swallowing him in rolling black smoke.
John seized the opportunity to retreat.
Only then did everyone notice that another figure had appeared at the edge of the battlefield at some point.
He was a tall, massively built man with a long beard and his hair tied into a ponytail.
Golden armor covered his body, and a pair of glasses rested on his face.
Amusement filled the eyes behind those lenses as one hand idly rubbed at his own body.
“How embarrassing, John.”
“Shut up!”
John ran over and snapped back irritably.
With his Observation Haki, he’d noticed Ganzui arriving some time ago.
The two were fairly close in their everyday dealings, so the moment John sensed trouble, he’d dragged Ganzui into the fight.
“That’s Harald’s son, isn’t it?
Why are you fighting him?”
Ganzui flicked away a clump of grime he’d rubbed from his own skin.
An explosion sounded in the distance almost immediately afterward.
“Your techniques are disgusting as hell.” John shot him a look of open disgust.
Ganzui was a Bomb-Bomb Fruit user.
His fingers were too thick to fit into his nostrils, so unlike certain other bomb users, he couldn’t pick his nose for ammunition.
Instead, when he fought, he normally rubbed grime from his own body, turned it into explosives, and hurled it at people.
Among the Rocks Pirates, he was a figure with real standing.
A gigantic shadow suddenly fell over both men.
Loki lowered his head expressionlessly.
His eyes had become entirely red, the pupils no longer visible, while faint light glowed around the sockets.
“Giant brat!
Were you the one who killed my good brother Koden?!” Ganzui shouted.
“…Huh?” Loki tilted his head.
“Don’t ask.
Other than him, nobody even knows who that guy is.” John waved dismissively.
Ganzui really did stop asking.
When the news had reached him, someone had said that after the Berserker died, Koden had stepped forward to fight Loki and gotten killed within a few exchanges.
With the battlefield ruined to this extent, there probably wasn’t even a corpse left to recover.
“I’ll avenge him!” Ganzui roared.
“Skysnake Red Cannon!”
He rubbed dirt from his body into a ball, flicked it away with one finger, and detonated it.
BOOM!
Flames surged upward as a scorching blast swept across the area, raising the temperature of the surrounding air.
The explosion struck Loki dead-on.
One pirate, moved by Ganzui’s words, shouted emotionally, “Boss Ganzui may have started out as a smuggler, but he’s unbelievably loyal!”
“Weren’t they from the same ship?
See, this is why you need a boss like that when you’re out on the sea!”
“Yeah!
Take down that giant bastard!”
John listened to the cheering with a face full of black lines, unsure what expression he was supposed to make.
The truth was, Koden owed Ganzui tens of millions of Berries.
Now that the man was dead, that money was never getting paid back.
ROOOAR!
With a thunderous bellow, Loki burst from the smoke.
Every step of his gigantic body seemed to shake heaven and earth.
He had grown even larger.
At this rate, some of the spectators were beginning to wonder whether Loki would eventually become taller than the skull-shaped mountain on Hachinosu.
Loki advanced with heavy steps, hacking at the ground with his sword and carving deep scars through the earth.
John and Ganzui split apart to dodge.
They didn’t only run, however.
Both kept looking for chances to counterattack.
“Supreme Iron Ball!”
“Filth Grand Celebration!”
John created an enormous iron sphere above Loki’s head, a chaotic mass of countless pieces of metal.
Meanwhile, while Loki chased him, Ganzui scattered explosives across the ground as though laying out a formation, then detonated them all at once.
BOOOOM!!
Loki was struck from above and below simultaneously.
“…Hurts.”
The iron sphere smashed into his skull and knocked his head sideways so violently that his neck bent at an unnatural angle.
Multiple high-powered explosives blew one of his legs off at the ankle.
The severed limb flew from the coast and crashed into a ship, sinking it on impact.
Loki swayed in place.
The voice emerging from his mouth no longer sounded like a boy’s.
It was deep, heavy, and booming.
Seeing that they’d seemingly dealt Loki a devastating blow, John and Ganzui immediately turned around and attacked in earnest.
Metal weapons and explosions battered Loki from every direction.
For a time, the noise was enormous, as though the two men had somehow created the soundscape of an entire army at war.
“That’s enough, isn’t it?” Newgate frowned from the sidelines.
“Hey!
The brat’s already proven he’s strong.
There’s no need to keep going!” Shiki added.
“What are you talking about?
The battle isn’t over yet.
And do you really think John and Ganzui are going to stop that easily?” Ochoku spread his hands.
“Are they actually going to kill him?” Kyo asked in a low voice.
None of them spoke out of kindness.
They had simply recognized Loki’s strength and talent.
He was still immature in some areas, but his potential was already undeniable.
They had deliberately brought him back from Elbaph.
Surely the point wasn’t to beat him to death for entertainment.
So why was Hua Ye still doing nothing?
If anything, Loki’s continuously expanding body only made him an even larger target—one his enemies could practically never miss.
Just as they were thinking that, something unbelievable happened before their eyes.
Loki grabbed his crooked head with both hands and physically wrenched it back into place.
A series of explosive cracks came from his neck as bone, muscle, and sinew repaired themselves.
At the same time, a new foot grew from the stump below his severed ankle.
As his increasing weight settled back onto it, the ground beneath him shattered under the pressure.
All of it happened within a few breaths.
Now Loki simply stood there, his gigantic body casting such an enormous shadow that the entire area seemed to fall beneath overcast skies.
“Biggest!
Fastest!
Strongest!”
Every person present raised their heads to look at him.
Loki suddenly bent down, reached out with one hand, picked up a sailing ship docked at the coast, and casually hurled it into the ground.
BOOOOM!!
The ship blasted out a massive crater.
Splintered timber and stone fragments filled the pit while cracks spread through the surrounding earth like a spiderweb.
“Y-You’ve got to be kidding me…”
A bead of sweat the size of a bean rolled down John’s forehead.
A sudden gale tore across the ground, whipping his long hair around before that drop of sweat fell and shattered against the earth.
Except it wasn’t a gale.
Loki had simply puffed out his cheeks and exhaled.
The breath alone sent numerous pirates flying.
“John, you bastard.
You dragged me into this,” Ganzui said slowly.
“I dragged myself into it too, damn it!” John sounded like he was cursing, but his voice had unconsciously dropped to a whisper.
“I’ll remember this.”
Ganzui turned and ran.
Despite his enormous, muscular frame, his agility was terrifying.
“Don’t leave me behind!”
John jumped onto a metal plate and used magnetic force to skim low across the ground.
The two great pirates abandoned every scrap of pride as they raced away from the battlefield.
Their earlier composure had vanished completely.
Only one thought remained in their heads.
‘GET AWAY!’
A second later, their backs lit up as though a second sun had appeared in the sky.
John still had enough time to glance over his shoulder.
That one look nearly frightened his soul straight out of his mouth.
He hurriedly clamped his lips shut and ran even faster.
“Be destroyed—body and soul—by the greatest torrent of spiritual power I can unleash!”
Loki floated high in the sky, the wings behind him beating slowly.
He raised one hand.
A Reishi bow formed in a fraction of a second, and an arrow immediately condensed against the drawn string.
Visible Reishi flickered around his body as an incalculable amount of energy compressed into a single projectile.
The arrowhead turned such a deep red that it was nearly black, like blood on the verge of dripping.
Loki released the string.
What shot out could barely be called an arrow.
It looked more like light.
Like a flood.
A dense tide of spiritual power poured down over the earth.