"Cough, cough, cough..."
Right then, Daolang's massive physical mass rapidly dissolved, returning to his standard human proportions. He executed a series of sharp coughs, only barely managing to steady his breathing.
"Drake, to be perfectly frank with you, I harbor an incredible amount of words I've been meaning to say..." Daolang rotated his neck, but his entire frame froze solid when his eyes swept across the completely empty clearing behind him.
Where was a single trace of Drake to be found?
"Drake!! You little scumbag!" Daolang's jaw twitched violently. Spatting out a furious roar, he immediately drove his boots off the earth to give chase.
CRASH! KABOOM!
"Aaargh!"
High above, Luffy was sent rocketing straight down toward the terrain. From its very inception to this final arc, this battle had harbored zero suspense. It was a textbook, absolute slaughter.
Setting aside whether Luffy's offensive sequences yielded any practical value, his strikes had fundamentally failed to register a single clean connection against Red Hair since the opening exchange. To claim he had inflicted a single fraction of structural trauma was a total delusion.
Top-Tier Conqueror's Haki... Sailing backward through the air currents, Luffy's brain frantically replayed every microscopic detail of Red Hair's movements. Concurrently, his mind locked onto the exact phrasing Shanks had deployed: Top-Tier Conqueror's Haki.
An unparalleled, absolute presence—a force that belonged exclusively to a sovereign born to rule the high heavens. Compared to this specialized authority, the standard Conqueror's Haki utilized by the collective ocean felt like a cheap counterfeit.
Across the entire chronicle of his voyage, every Conqueror's Haki wielder he had encountered was merely an individual blessed with exceptional biological potential. They weren't true kings.
But the presence Shanks released yielded a real, physical weight that commanded the absolute submission of his soul solely through his unbridled spirit. It was a presence that casually asserted: Mine is the solitary, definitive Conqueror's Haki across this ocean—the rest of your metrics are pure garbage!
It was a counterfeit reality! Even Luffy himself was starting to buy into the theory. Had his vessel not unsealed the methodology of Conqueror's Haki infusion prior to this hour, he would have conclusively rationalized that his own Conqueror's Haki was an absolute fake.
The technical disparity was simply too massive. An individual who lacked the capacity to infuse their strikes with the qualities of a king would look at Shanks's all-suppressing authority and fail to identify them as the same classification of energy.
My presence versus Shanks's presence... where exactly does the structural flaw in my calculation lie?...
Slowly, Luffy's perception of time ground to an absolute crawl, and a dense sequence of historical milestones flashed across his mind like a cinematic reel.
"Conqueror's Haki scales exclusively alongside the absolute spirit of the user; it is mathematically impossible to refine through standard training protocols."
Rayleigh's instructional dialogue resonated clearly in his ears. His initial exposure to the Dark King had transpired amidst the chaotic auction house of the Sabaody Archipelago, where a casual release of the man's presence had cleanly sundered the entire room. That was an absolute display of unbridled majesty!
A short timeline later, his own vessel had unsealed the baseline protocols of the force. And a brief period ago, amidst the flames of Wano Country, he had successfully mastered Conqueror's Haki infusion.
He had never once harbored a single doubt regarding the absolute nature of Conqueror's Haki—until this exact fraction of a second.
"The absolute spirit of the user..." Luffy muttered the phrasing continuously under his breath as countless combat memories surged across his brain.
The baseline clearing of a battlefield, the catastrophic split of the heavens during a clash of kings, the lethal compression of Advanced Conqueror's Haki infusion...
BOOM!
The exact microsecond before his physical vessel could impact the bedrock below, Luffy's eyes snapped wide. A blinding, razor-sharp surge of presence erupted from his frame, violently expanding across all four directions.
An unnatural gale shrieked across the cove, sending volleys of shattered sand rocketing into the atmosphere. Throwing his arms outward, Luffy completely arrested his downward momentum a single centimeter before touching the ground.
CRASH!
"This..."
Materializing across the perimeter via spatial displacement, Drake stood frozen in absolute bewilderment. Staring at Luffy floating completely static in mid-air, his jaw executed a violent twitch. Is this the literal manifestation of the protagonist aura?
Though triggering an instantaneous breakthrough amidst active combat looked thoroughly ridiculous on paper, when mapped onto Luffy's operational profile, such anomalies were practically standard procedure.
"I deciphered the code!!" Luffy suddenly let out a feral screech, rocketing straight toward the high heavens like a breaking missile.
Bypassing the mechanical requirements of his Gear 4 transformations, Luffy was executing sustained atmospheric flight, leaving a continuous trail of crimson energy burning across the void.
"Because I... am the man who will become the Pirate King!"
"Gum-Gum..."
Witnessing this catastrophic resurgence, the core of the Straw Hat vanguard completely deactivated their defensive anxieties. However, in the next microsecond, their collective faces warped into total bewilderment.
What manner of operational form was this? Had he executed a secret transformation?
What exactly did your brain decipher? Drake questioned silently within his mind.
Regardless of the theoretical physics involved, the data was absolute: Luffy's structural metrics were experiencing another massive surge. Across the lens of the indicator strapped over Drake's eye, the numbers were executing a frantic, high-velocity climb, leaping from a baseline of 7,600 straight to a staggering 8,400 metric. And the hardware verified the ceiling hadn't been reached.
"WHAT?!"
This was an absolute cheat code; how could any physical vessel scale its parameters at this catastrophic rate?
"8,800 combat metric!" This time, a genuine jolt of shock fractured Drake's composure.
What manner of conceptual reality had his younger brother unsealed to vault his baseline straight into the absolute zenith of global powerhouses?
Though Drake had historically refrained from charting Luffy's power levels via the indicator, his personal analytical models allowed him to map a reliable profile. A standard Gear 4 configuration comfortably stabilized around the 7,000 threshold. Even when compounded by Advanced Armament Haki, Conqueror's Haki infusion, and high-level Future Sight, the total package should have mathematically failed to breach the 8,000 parameter. At absolute best, it allowed him to trade neutral blows with a Marine Admiral.
Yet within a single fraction of a second, his output had vaulted to a staggering 8,800—and the data verified this wasn't his terminal limit!
This tier of power comfortably secured a seat upon the absolute throne of an Emperor of the Sea. Within the brief timeline it took Drake to execute a quick loop around the forest, a profound, qualitative metamorphosis had completely rewritten Luffy's biological fabric. From this hour onward, he had officially solidified his status within the supreme hierarchy of the Yonko.
"Shanks! The true battle initiates at this exact coordinate!" Luffy roared, his face radiating an absolute, iron-clad confidence. He felt as though a limitless reservoir of volatile energy was flooding his muscles.
The physical materialization of one's aura! At this fraction of a second, Luffy felt as though his vessel commanded absolute dominion over the heaven and earth; every minimal gesture collected sufficient kinetic mass to execute a global apocalypse.
He could finally comprehend why Shanks's casual, seemingly mundane slashes packed a destructive weight that defied the standard laws of physics.
The raw Conqueror's Haki that had historically been restricted to a psychological presence could now be fluidly channeled across his entire motor network. This was fundamentally distinct from standard Conqueror's Haki infusion.
Infusing one's strikes with the qualities of a king was merely the baseline layer of the force—remarkably similar to the initial, unrefined deployment of Armament Haki. Every single activation merely harvested a miniscule fraction of the user's total reserve. The overwhelming majority of their Conqueror's Haki remained dormant within the depths of their soul, completely inaccessible for active combat application.
But this breakthrough unsealed the absolute totality of his Conqueror's Haki reserves, breaking far past the mechanical constraints of a basic weapon coating. He could smoothly manipulate the geometry of the energy at will, executing any classification of offensive strike with absolute ease.
This was an operational status his vessel had never encountered throughout his entire existence.
So this is the true reality of Conqueror's Haki...
"Aaargh..."
Luffy compressed his absolute power into a singular fist. The sprawling presence that had been violently vibrating the surrounding space was suddenly vacuum-sealed within his knuckles, before detonating outward in a fraction of a microsecond.
KABOOM!
A colossal shockwave of compressed energy erupted from his fist. Drake experienced the profound depth of this strike with absolute, physical clarity.
Because this single fist... had violently distorted the spatial matrix!
The frantic ripples of warped space tearing across the perimeter caused Drake's mind to execute a sharp jolt of alarm; an anomaly of this caliber had never materialized across his data files. Even during his lethal, high-stakes conflict against Big Mom, the fabric of reality hadn't suffered this manner of structural strain.
Concurrently, the numbers dancing across the lens of the indicator were still executing a manic ascent, quickly breaching the 9,300 mark with zero signs of slowing down.
The absolute destructive output of this single technique had reached an incredibly terrifying tier. Even Drake's own specialized spatial-fracturing methodologies would likely trail a fraction behind this sheer mass.
At this precise juncture, Drake felt that external modifiers or supplementary assets were completely irrelevant; the solitary metric that governed the zenith of this world was pure, unadulterated talent. Just observe the manner in which Luffy scaled his metrics—it was the literal equivalent of strapping oneself to a space-bound rocket. He had triggered an absolute, vertical liftoff right from the stone.
"Magnificent! Bring it!"
Shanks's expression remained perfectly serene as he drove his saber forward in another deceptively plain slash.
CRASH... CRACK!
The exact microsecond the two monumental forces collided, the physical atmosphere was brutally sundered by the sheer weight of the kinetic feedback. A massive, jagged fracture in the spatial matrix materialized directly before the eyes of the alliance.