BOOM!
An earth-shattering explosion rocked the entire island as though an earthquake had struck.
The palace was in complete chaos.
Katakuri had sensed the incoming attack through his Observation Haki and gone to intercept it with Cracker, but the king and his soldiers had no idea what was happening.
They feared that poor hospitality had angered Big Mom's sons and were terrified of retaliation.
The shockwaves from the battle outside the town had already reached the palace. The ground shook like an earthquake, toppling precious vessels inside and smashing them to pieces!
"What's going on? An earthquake?" the king cried, clutching his head in panic.
"No…"
The captain of the palace guard stood beside him, staring blankly out the window.
"It's… it's a mushroom…"
"What mushroom?" The king stood abruptly and looked out the window.
Several kilometers away, a pitch-black mushroom cloud had risen over the wasteland. Its expanding canopy was wider than a mountain range!
"A mushroom cloud…"
The collision between Enel's explosive attack and Katakuri's technique had produced a mushroom cloud. The shockwave rolled up dust and smoke, distorting the air itself into a visible wall of force that crashed outward in all directions!
Even Crocodile and Cracker were affected. Every biscuit soldier was pulverized in an instant by the shockwave!
"Big brother Katakuri!" Cracker had hidden inside multiple layers of Armament-hardened biscuit and suffered minimal damage.
He had created several layers of hardened biscuit, and the outermost layer had already shattered.
Cracker's face was filled with worry as he stared at the center of the explosion.
"Taking such an attack head-on, even that monster called Katakuri can't escape unscathed, right?" Crocodile's body slowly reformed.
In the shockwave, his physical form had been scattered almost instantly. The scorching heat had even crystallized parts of his sand. Fortunately, he had merged with the earth just in time to avoid serious injury.
Such a devastating attack. Crocodile refused to believe anyone could walk away without a scratch. Perhaps that guy had already collapsed!
But the moment those words left his mouth, he was proven wrong.
Crocodile felt the earth beneath his feet come alive. The once-solid ground had turned into a sticky swamp, soft and yielding. With every step, he sank deeper into its grasp.
From the thick clouds of dust came a cold, detached voice.
"Flowing Mochi!"
Hearing that voice, Cracker broke into an immediate smile and called out:
"Underestimating big brother Katakuri will only bring you pain!"
Though he said that, he was clearly relieved.
"What exactly is going on?"
Crocodile's expression was heavy. His body was sinking, and his ankles had already been swallowed by the ground. He tried to wrench his feet free, but the clay held firm, and for a moment, his efforts had no effect.
What answered him was not words, but Katakuri's own action!
The ground beneath him became a swirling vortex. Sticky mochi waves surged in every direction, making it difficult for Crocodile to even stand.
The waves swept aside the dust and smoke, revealing the two figures at the center of the explosion.
Crocodile had expected Enel to be the clear victor. Instead, Enel was firmly trapped inside a dense sphere of mochi, and before Katakuri, the earth had risen into an impossibly tall barrier, as though forming an indestructible wall!
Seeing this, Cracker laughed aloud. "So in the end, you're just a frog in a well from Paradise. Someone like you has probably never heard of Devil Fruits, let alone the concept of Awakening."
"Awakening?"
"It is a higher level of Devil Fruit power. Once a fruit's ability awakens, it can affect things beyond the user's own body," Cracker explained, clearly using this as a way to mock both Crocodile and Enel for their arrogance.
"Affect things beyond one's own body? You mean that guy turned the entire earth into mochi? No wonder he could withstand such a terrifying impact," Crocodile said in a low voice.
"Exactly. Facing a monster like that, how do you expect to win?" Cracker sneered. "I forgot to mention, while I'm not as strong as big brother Katakuri, I'm also one of the Charlotte Family's 'monsters'!"
By volunteering his own status, Cracker had intended to shake Crocodile's confidence. But instead, Crocodile started laughing.
"Interesting. If affecting the outside environment with your own power is what you call Awakening, then my power has long since awakened!"
"Surface Desiccation: Erosion Cycle!"
As if to prove his words, Crocodile pressed his palm against the earth, instantly draining every drop of moisture from the ground. All vegetation withered in an instant, becoming hollow husks that crumbled to powder in the wind!
The earth itself seemed to have undergone centuries of erosion in a single moment, sandifying and collapsing like rotting flesh stripped of its skeleton.
But this display only made Cracker burst out laughing.
"Hahahaha! Foolish man. That is merely your ability at work. It doesn't even qualify as the outermost fringe of Awakening. In the end, whether Logia fruits can even awaken at all is debatable."
Since Ren was the only one who had definitively achieved Logia Awakening, many believed that naturally powerful Logia fruits could not awaken at all. This was a widely held assumption among both Marines and pirates alike.
Crocodile thought he had "influenced" the natural environment, but it was merely a physical effect of his power, not a fundamental transformation of the environment like the Mochi-Mochi Fruit, which defied the laws of physics to reshape its surroundings.
The difference between the two was as vast as heaven and earth!
And now, the trapped Enel had to face an enemy whose Devil Fruit had truly awakened.
"I didn't expect you to have reached the level of Awakening." Enel was locked tight within the mochi sphere, and his gaze toward Katakuri carried a note of genuine admiration.
He was aware of Awakening as a concept. But reaching that level was no simple matter.
Even the strongest fighters did not necessarily mean their abilities had awakened. Even Enel himself fell just short.
Katakuri offered no comment on this.
The fact that he had taken the Mochi-Mochi Fruit, a power that appeared special but was really just ordinary, and cultivated it to this level, was partly thanks to Big Mom.
As a publicly recognized Tier 1 Awakening instructor, Big Mom's awakening lessons were no simple affair. Her methods were unorthodox and often terrifying, but undeniably effective.
It was during one of Big Mom's hunger frenzies that Katakuri had awakened this ability, pushed to the brink by a force even he could not control.
[
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