CRACK!
High above, in the thin, frozen air bordering the vacuum of space, the Eye of Heaven shattered. Even a divine gaze had its limits; under the relentless, multi-angled assault of the shadows, Rowen's manifestation finally reached its breaking point, dissolving into a rain of useless sparks.
Simultaneously, Im's composure buckled. His face flushed a dark, bruised violet. New wrinkles, deep as scars, etched themselves into his skin as he doubled over.
"Puff!"
He spat out a mouthful of thick, clotted blood.
Hiss... hiss...
The smell of scorched hair and burnt meat filled the sky. The shadows, the physical vessels of Im's stolen powers, writhed and shriveled under the lingering white lightning. They looked like silkworm cocoons tossed into a boiling vat of oil, crackling and bubbling in a grotesque display of agony.
Heaven-Shaking Tremor!
Then came the counter-surge: frost, searing flames, and a fog of lethal poison.
The Tremor shadow and the Yamata no Orochi shadow, the heavy hitters, unleashed their volleys in a desperate bid to reclaim the sky. The resulting energy wave was a wall of pure destruction that scoured the atmosphere, snapping Rowen's Thunder Pillar in half like a dry twig.
"Gah!"
Rowen couldn't swallow it back. A spray of dark blood left his lips as he was hurled backward by the shockwave, his body tumbling through the thin air.
Imu stared at the charred, fetal ball that remained of the Dream shadow. Ignoring the tremors in his own limbs, he pressed his palm against its smoking shoulder.
Buzz!
A vortex of pure darkness began to spin. The shadow's body, which had looked deep-fried only seconds ago, began to knit itself back together with unnatural speed. By the time Rowen had managed to stabilize himself, the Dream shadow stood fully healed, as if the lightning had never touched it.
"So you can even do that, huh?" Rowen panted, wiping the blood from his mouth. He shook his head, a dark laugh bubbling in his chest. "Of course. They're extensions of you. The Dark-Dark Fruit's healing properties aren't just for you, they're for the whole set."
He stood upright, his movements slow and deliberate. He reached up and tore away the remains of his suit jacket, revealing a torso of knotted, corded muscle that looked as if it had been forged from molten steel.
"But how long can you keep that up, Lord Imu?" Rowen's eyes gleamed with a terrifying clarity. "You're weak. To have someone like me show up right as you're about to finish plundering this world... it must be a hell of a headache."
He wasn't guessing anymore. He was stating a fact.
"This backup plan, harvesting these fruits, it was a safety net for when your true body grew frail. But you weren't always this reliant on puppets, were you?"
Eight hundred years ago, there were barely two hundred fruits recorded in the logs. Imu hadn't had an army of shadows back then. He had held off the Twenty Kingdoms and the "Great Enemy" with something else entirely.
Rowen felt a chill of pure, electric excitement. Behind these six shadows, once the peak of his world, lay the true, unadulterated power of the God-King.
"Survive," Imu said, his voice a cold, thin rasp. He waved a hand, and the six shadows glided forward in a lethal formation. "Then you'll see."
There was no more probing. No more games. Five of the shadows before Rowen were ghosts of men he had personally killed. He knew their rhythms. He knew their flaws. And Im knew he knew.
This was fate. The deck was stacked with Rowen's own history.
Since there was no hiding their secrets, there was nothing left but the raw, bloody work of attrition. Imu, once shielded by the arrogance of age and the fear of his own weakening body, found his unease replaced by a desperate, focused courage. He would fight like a cornered animal.
The storm above the clouds could not be hidden.
The sky itself seemed to be tearing open. From the East Blue to the Grand Line, ordinary people looked up to see the atmosphere bruising purple and gold. A sense of doomsday, more profound than any tsunami, gripped the world.
"He went to the Palace of Heaven?!"
In a remote corner of the New World, Poseidon paused her flight. Despite the millions of miles between them, her senses locked onto the two specks of light clashing in the stratosphere.
She ground her teeth, her eyes wide with a mix of terror and envy.
"Has a new god truly come to claim this world?!"
Who in the hell did I even provoke?!
Poseidon's thoughts were a chaotic swirl of fury and ancient resentment. First, those alien beasts had fallen from the stars, "smashing" the previous god into oblivion and bringing the world to its knees. She had been promoted from a mere Saintess to the genuine article, but the price of godhood had been high, she had to shatter the planet's very foundations just to keep the monsters at bay.
Peace had been a fleeting dream. Before she could even grow accustomed to her throne, an invader from the outer void had struck. The warriors she'd summoned to protect her had turned into vipers; they didn't just fail to repel the invader, they betrayed her, sealing her into the dark.
And now, after finally clawing her way back to the light... this?
She could feel Im's power in the distance, but the tether was severed. Only another god, or something very close to it, could plunder a deity's strength so completely. And they were fighting at the Palace of Heaven, the very site where her true divinity lay dormant.
"No... I won't let them take it!" she hissed, her voice lost in the roaring wake of her own speed. "The barriers will hold as long as I live... but if they find a way through, the world is finished. And I'm finished with it."
She knew better than anyone that history was written by the victors. She had ordered the erasure of every trace of the god who came before her. If she fell now, there wouldn't even be a legend left behind, only a void where she once stood.
With a violent whip of her tail, Poseidon pulled a hard 180-degree turn, the water screaming against her scales.
On the deck of the pursuing battleship, a messenger's voice cracked with tension. "Fleet Admiral! Poseidon has changed course! She's turning back!"
"What?!" Akainu's face was a mask of cold, murderous intent. Laugh Tale was almost within reach, and now this? "She's sensed the trap. She's too scared to go any further."
He didn't care about her reasons. Whether she was running toward a goal or away from a threat, the destination was irrelevant as long as she ended up in the dirt.
"Fire!" Akainu roared, the sound making the hardened soldiers around him flinch. "Do you think I dragged this weaponry across the New World for decoration? Kill her!"
The canisters of Uranus, the Marines' forbidden biological ace, were shoved into the launch tubes. The fleet's elite gunners dialed in the coordinates, tracking the white wake that cut across the ocean's surface like a scar.
"Fire!"
Boom... boom-boom!
Akainu followed the Marine doctrine of absolute annihilation. Even with a virus weapon, there was no room for precision; he ordered full-area saturation. Better to turn a thousand leagues of sea into a graveyard than to let her slip away.
Poseidon felt the chill of impending death crawling up her spine. She looked back at the falling shells, her eyes wide. "These mortals... they've lost their minds!"
Did they have any idea what her death would unleash?
Pop! Pop! Pop!
The detonations were small, crisp sounds. Uranus didn't need a massive explosion; it only needed enough of a burst to aerosolize the rot.
"All units, fall back! Keep the radar locked on that position!" Akainu ordered, waving his hand.
The fleet retreated with frantic efficiency. Even in biohazard suits and gas masks, the sailors held their breath, terrified that a single stray breeze might carry the end of the world into their lungs. An eerie, suffocating silence fell over the water, as if the sea itself had stopped breathing.
Then… BOOM!
A massive wall of water erupted. Shirahoshi, Poseidon's current vessel, burst through the surface, her face contorted in a scream of agony. White foam bubbled at the corners of her mouth as the virus began to tear her apart from the inside.
High above the East Blue, the two combatants felt the shift. Rowen and Im broke their clash, standing apart in the thin air, panting.
Rowen ignored the blood trickling from the wound in his chest, a gift from the Vampire shadow, and focused his healing. He looked toward the ruined shrine, where the stone egg was suddenly pulsing with a rhythmic, sickly glow.
"What is that...?"
"She's wounded!" Imu's voice cracked with a sudden, desperate hunger. "A perfect chance!"
The God-King didn't hesitate. He turned his back on Rowen and lunged toward the shrine. He was too weak, his stolen powers fraying at the edges. He needed the catalyst inside that egg to bridge the gap.
"Not so fast!" Rowen snarled, kicking off the air to intercept.
BOOM!
A fist wreathed in white tremor-light slammed into Rowen's ribs, forcing a spray of blood from his lips. He slashed back with his halberd, shearing an arm off the Tremor shadow, but he was drowning in numbers. The remaining shadows swarmed him like starving dogs, pinning him in place through sheer attrition.
Im reached the shrine's threshold. He raised the stone egg high and brought it down like a hammer against the temple's ancient stone.
KUANG-DANG!
A translucent white shield flared into existence around the temple, the final barrier of the Palace. The stone egg struck it with a sound like a tolling bell, the impact sending ripples through the air that threatened to shatter the very island. Cracks began to spider-web across the shield, groaning under the strain.
Both the egg and the shrine were keys to the same lock, but Imu wasn't trying to open it anymore. He was trying to break the door down.
(End of Chapter)
This novel is finished, and I have posted all the advanced chapters on my Patreon https://www.patreon.com/darkshadow6395
PS— I will post 1 Bonus Chapter for every 100 Power Stones