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Chapter 473: Where the Hell Did This Ridiculous White Hair Come From? The Ant King Beaten into a U-Shape
The rubble around Luffy floated in mid-air. Black and red Conqueror's Haki lightning began to streak through the air. Meruem paused the gathering white light at his fingertips. He looked at the straw-hat-wearing brat before him. That faint but extremely pure kingly aptitude made him feel a trace of amusement. A mere slightly larger ant actually dared to bare its fangs at the King.
Just as Meruem was about to lower his left arm...
Thump-thump.
An extremely bizarre heartbeat echoed across the dead-silent ruins. It wasn't loud, but it possessed extreme penetrative power. Even Meruem's high-density Nen couldn't stop the sound from reaching his eardrums.
Thump-thump, thump-thump.
The heartbeat grew faster. Louder. Like an ancient war drum being beaten.
Luffy stood with his head lowered. Earth-shattering changes were occurring within his body. Deep within his mysterious consciousness, a cluster of white will was waking up, cursing under its breath. This was the divine will hidden within the Gum-Gum Fruit. The Sun God Nika.
Nika had been extremely frustrated lately. Ever since Luffy met that Shopkeeper Blake, the kid's body had become a melting pot. One day, a green Anemo element was shoved in. The next, a weird energy called Chakra entered. There were even some messy breathing techniques and Haki seeds. Nika felt its living space was severely cramped.
It was, after all, the pinnacle of Mythical Zoan-type fruits. It was an existence that had terrified the World Government for eight hundred years. But look at the situation now. Whenever the host encountered danger, his first reaction was to conjure a wind-fire wheel. Or learn from that guy named Dragon and use Ryuo. The abilities of the Gum-Gum Fruit were almost treated like auxiliary tools.
Nika was getting anxious. It felt that if it didn't come out for some fresh air soon, this kid might actually forget about it. Not to mention, the green-skinned monster outside was being arrogant to the extreme. Even a god like itself couldn't stand watching it anymore.
Thump-thump! Thump-thump! Thump-thump!
The sound of the Drums of Liberation completely drowned out the howling wind on the battlefield. Luffy's hair began to turn white at a visible rate. The original short black hair seemed drained of pigment, turning as pure white as clouds. Even his clothes lost their original colors. A layer of white mist surged from his pores, wrapping around his neck and shoulders like a white ribbon.
Slowly raising his head, his once bloodshot eyes had now turned a pure golden hue. An absolute, free light flickered within his pupils.
"Ahahahahaha!"
An extremely exaggerated, almost mindless roar of laughter burst from Luffy's mouth. He clutched his stomach, laughing so hard tears almost came to his eyes. The despair and sorrow from moments ago were completely swept away by this laughter.
Ace and Sabo watched, dumbfounded. They even forgot to feel that terrifying pressure. They only felt that the Luffy standing before them had become incredibly unfamiliar.
Meruem's brow tied into a dead knot. He couldn't comprehend this emotional shift. One second, he wanted to swallow him alive, and the next, he was actually laughing like an idiot on the battlefield. This completely illogical behavior made the Ant King feel a flash of irritation.
"Playing tricks," Meruem sneered, wasting no more words. He thrust his deformed left arm violently forward. A white Nen bullet, compressed to its limit, tore through the air, heading straight for Luffy's face. The power of this Nen bullet was enough to wipe a city off the map.
Yet Luffy showed absolutely no intention of dodging. He kept laughing, even rolling on the ground in a fit of giggles. Just as the Nen bullet was about to touch the tip of his nose, Luffy suddenly reached out his hands. Like kneading dough, he grabbed that world-destroying Nen bullet.
The moment the violent energy touched Luffy's palms, it instantly transformed into a squishy piece of modeling clay. He rubbed his hands together, rolling the Nen bullet into a long strip. Then, like drawing a bow, he pulled it back.
Whoosh!
The physically altered Nen bullet snapped back at a speed faster than it arrived, smashing directly into Meruem's face.
BOOM!
A violent explosion detonated on the Ant King's face. Green blood and shredded flesh splattered everywhere. Knocked back over a dozen steps by the rebounding force, Meruem's proud absolute defense was actually broken by his own attack. This completely overturned the laws of Nen in the Hunter world.
Wiping the green blood from the corner of his mouth, an emotion called astonishment appeared in Meruem's compound eyes for the first time. He looked at his hand, then at the white-haired youth still clutching his stomach in laughter in the distance. His brain's processing power started to lag.
How could a Nen bullet be grabbed like a physical object? This completely violated the law of conservation of energy.
Luffy didn't give the Ant King time to ponder the laws of physics. Stomping his legs violently on the ground, the earth seemed to transform into a trampoline, bouncing his entire body into mid-air. He spread his arms wide in the sky, his body drawn taut like a fully bent bow.
"Gum-Gum..."
Luffy's voice became ethereal and full of penetrative power. His right fist began to expand insanely, transforming into the size of a small mountain in the blink of an eye. The fist was wrapped in black and red Conqueror's Haki lightning, along with that bizarre pure white mist.
"Bajrang Gun!"
The massive white fist crashed down with world-destroying momentum. Looking up, Meruem snapped the ragged wings on his back open violently. Without holding back, he focused all the Nen in his entire body into his right fist. He refused to believe it. In the face of absolute power, any flashy abilities were just paper tigers.
The two fists, one large and one small, collided fiercely in mid-air. There was no earth-shattering explosion, only an extremely eerie sound of stretching rubber. Meruem felt as if his punch had hit a bottomless pile of cotton. All his Nen and physical impact were absorbed.
Immediately after, an absolutely unreasonable reactive force poured back through Luffy's giant fist. The bones in Meruem's right arm let out groans of overwhelming strain. Under Luffy's punch, his perfect body, fused with the Royal Guards' genetics, was beaten directly into a comical U-shape. His eyeballs nearly popped out of their sockets, and his tongue stretched out absurdly long. He looked like a villain straight out of a slapstick gag manga.
Bang!
Like a green shooting star, Meruem was smashed deep into the ground. The bedrock was shattered into a bottomless crater, the surrounding rock layers churning like ocean waves.
Landing on the ground, Luffy didn't stop. He ran to the edge of the massive crater, plunged his hands into the hard rock layer, and like lifting a carpet, flipped up a massive slab of earth hundreds of meters wide.
Before Meruem, who had just climbed out from the bottom of the pit, could figure out what was happening, he saw the overhead slab of earth crashing down on him like a blanket. This assimilation ability, capable of directly turning inorganic matter into rubber, thoroughly shattered the Ant King's proud combat logic.
.....
Far away in Partys Bar in Foosha Village, Blake looked at the footage in the virtual light screen. He almost spat out the juice in his mouth, unable to hold back a chuckle.
"This Nika Fruit really is a tsundere."
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