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Chapter 585: The Oriole Behind
A pale blue rift tore open the sky above Knowhere.
Kuzan stepped out slowly, his boots touching down on a thin layer of frost. His Marine greatcoat was gone, leaving him in a loose white dress shirt, the cuffs of his trousers still dusted with a bit of Titan's red soil carried over by the spatial turbulence.
He stopped as soon as he landed. Knowhere no longer looked like a cosmic black market; it looked more like a junkyard that a madman had rummaged through a hundred times. The Collector's vault had been torn to pieces. Glass enclosures holding alien creatures were shattered across the ground. A few surviving Ravagers cowered in the corners, afraid to even breathe too loudly.
Further away, a massive pink figure stood amidst the ruins. Charlotte Linlin clutched a mass of dark red fluid in one hand while suspending the half-dead Collector, Taneleer Tivan, in the air with the other. The true administrator of Knowhere had completely lost his usual elegance. His hair was a mess, and he was coughing up mouthfuls of blood.
Big Mom didn't care who he was. She only stared intensely at the object in her hand.
"Mamamamama!"
"Is this the power that can change everything?! Candy! Castles! Souls! Lifespans! Whatever I want, I can manifest it all!"
The dark red light churned in her palm. The Reality Stone.
Kuzan took one look and scratched his head. He had thought getting dumped here by the spatial turbulence would just mean finding a stone and maybe fighting a few aliens.
"Arara. Why did it have to be the most troublesome old hag?"
Hearing his voice, Big Mom slowly turned her head. Her maniacal grin remained, her eyes brimming with extreme possessiveness. "A Marine brat? Kuzan! You came to steal my prize too?"
Kuzan sighed. "To be honest, I don't really want to fight you. But if you take that thing back to Totto Land, things will get very messy."
Big Mom's smile grew even wider. "Messy? Isn't that even better!"
With a tight grip, she forcibly injected the dark red energy of the Reality Stone into the thundercloud, Zeus. Zeus had originally been a mass of black storm clouds. As the Reality Stone infused him, his face began to warp frantically. One second he was a candy cloud, the next a metallic sphere, and then he stretched into a monster lined with fangs.
The surrounding space rippled violently with his laughter. A shattered floorboard flew into the air, transforming into a cake, then into a swarm of screaming rats before it even hit the ground. A few Ravagers scrambled back in terror, but the wall behind them turned into soft mud, swallowing them whole.
"Mama!" Zeus shrieked weirdly. "I'm so hungry!"
Big Mom raised her emperor sword, Napoleon, laughing so hard tears formed in her eyes. "Eat! Eat anything that gets in your way!"
Kuzan reached up and pulled off his eye mask. Ice, fire, thunder, lightning, and even spatial distances were all frantically rearranging themselves to the rhythm of the thundercloud's laughter.
"Good grief. That guy Blake really should have warned us the stones would be this crazy before opening the dungeon."
The next moment, brilliant blue light ignited in his eye sockets. The Tenseigan.
The blue light expanded, and a Chakra Cloak enveloped his entire body. Several pitch-black Truth-Seeking Orbs floated up behind him, rotating slowly.
The temperature in Knowhere plummeted. Frost coated the ground first. Then the walls. Then the soft mud, the cake, the rats, and the fractured space twisted by the Reality Stone. Every maddening mutation was forcibly suppressed by absolute zero. It didn't just freeze matter; the warped reality itself was violently frozen in that exact second.
The Collector shuddered from the cold. Capitalizing on Big Mom loosening her grip, he rolled and scrambled behind a pile of debris. The look he gave Kuzan was full of sheer terror. "This is an Earthling too?!"
Kuzan ignored him. Big Mom's maniacal laughter abruptly stopped. Seeing her new toy forcibly frozen brought a vicious glint to her eyes.
"Marine brat! You really are here to ruin my fun!"
Napoleon ignited with flames. Prometheus attached himself to the blade. Meanwhile, Zeus shifted back into a dark red thundercloud, swirling above Big Mom's head with a cackling laugh.
"Ikoku Sovereignty!"
Big Mom gripped the sword with both hands and brought it down heavily. Flames, lightning, and reality-warping energy fused within the sword pressure, violently tearing the entire street down the middle.
Kuzan raised his right hand. A Truth-Seeking Orb flew to his palm, elongating into a pitch-black sword. He didn't dodge. The black sword met the emperor sword head-on.
Two waves of Conqueror's Haki collided explosively in the center of Knowhere. Every remaining glass tank in the museum shattered. Several small spacecraft parked in the distance were flipped by the shockwave, crashing heavily into a scrap mountain.
The ice beneath Kuzan's feet cracked extensively. Big Mom was forced a half-step back. She looked down at the chip in her emperor sword, her features twitching with savage rage. "What kind of demonic trick is this!"
Kuzan shook his numb wrist. "Arara. Explaining it would be too troublesome. Just consider it a new benefit after the Marines finally got some decent overtime pay."
Big Mom wasn't in the mood for nonsense. She swiped her hand, and Zeus spewed out a torrent of dark red lightning. The lightning didn't travel in a straight line; it split into dozens of branches mid-air, bypassing Kuzan's ice wall to viciously bite at him from every angle.
The blue light in Kuzan's eyes flared. "Ice Age."
A blast of cold air spread. The dark red lightning was frozen into jagged ice snakes, suspended in mid-air.
Zeus shrieked. "Mama! It's so cold!"
Big Mom was furious. "Useless trash!"
She forcefully pumped even more Reality Stone energy into him. Zeus's body swelled dozens of times over, eyes sprouting densely across the cloud layer. As those eyes blinked, the frost surrounding Kuzan began to turn into cotton candy. The ground beneath his feet turned into water. Then the water morphed into a massive maw, trying to swallow him whole.
Kuzan stomped his foot. The water froze. The mouth froze. He glided forward at extreme speed, so fast that Big Mom's eyelids twitched. A Truth-Seeking Orb morphed into a black spear, thrusting straight at her shoulder.
Big Mom raised her arm to block. The black spear pierced right through her Armament Haki, drawing a spray of blood.
"It hurts!" Big Mom shrieked, backhanding a punch into Kuzan's chest.
Kuzan was sent flying backward, crashing through one of the collection towers. He quickly stepped out from the rubble, a fist print on his chest and blood seeping from his mouth. "Still ridiculously tough, huh."
Kuzan exhaled a breath of frosty air. The skin on the arm Big Mom used to hold the stone was beginning to peel. Without the Infinity Gauntlet as a vessel, the furious energy was tearing her monster-like physique apart. Pink flesh curled outward, and dark red light seeped through the cracks.
Big Mom looked at her bleeding hand. Shock gave way to an even deeper greed in her eyes. "To think it can even wound a body like mine. What a magnificent treasure! Mamamamama!"
Kuzan saw the opening. He hesitated no longer. Bringing his hands together, he formed a hand sign. The Truth-Seeking Orbs behind him aligned in a row, spinning at high speed. The Tenseigan's chakra was compressed to its absolute limit, while the frigid air of the Ice-Ice Fruit poured wildly into the core.
A brilliant golden light ignited before his palms. Hiding behind the debris, the Collector went completely pale upon seeing that light. "Where did you monsters come from?!"
Sensing the danger, Big Mom swung her sword down. "Spear of Elbaf!"
Kuzan thrust his hands forward just a moment sooner. "Golden Wheel Reincarnation Explosion."
A colossal beam of golden light cleaved straight through Knowhere. The outer layer of the beam was wrapped in a white blizzard of frost. Wherever it passed, every anomaly created by the Reality Stone was shattered and frozen.
Zeus screamed as he threw himself in front of Big Mom, only to have half his body sliced cleanly away. Big Mom held her emperor sword horizontally across her chest, attempting to tank the strike head-on. A moment later, the blade bent. The golden beam struck her squarely in the chest.
Blood sprayed. Driven by the sheer impact, her massive body was launched backward, crashing through the exterior wall of the museum and hurtling into the deep expanse of space alongside half a chunk of Knowhere itself.
"KUZAAAN!!!"
Big Mom's furious roar faded into the distance. The dark red Reality Stone slipped from her peeling palm, spinning slowly in mid-air.
Kuzan stood on the ice, his breathing heavy. The attack had taken a lot out of him. But the stone was finally out of Charlotte Linlin's hands. He reached out to grab it.
Suddenly, a hand wearing a pristine white glove extended from the shadows of the ruins. The five fingers precisely pinched the dark red stone.
Kuzan's footsteps abruptly halted.
From the depths of the shadows, a highly iconic, low chuckle echoed.
"Fuffuffuffu. Aokiji, I'll hold onto something this dangerous for now."
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