[Outer Horizon of God's Island – White Sea Battle Zone]
Rumble—!
Thunder split the heavens. The White Sea churned in fury, whitecaps frothing like the breath of a wounded beast.
On the battlefield below, Angel Island soldiers and Shandian warriors clashed in brutal combat—steel ringing, smoke rising, blood staining the clouds. Chaos reigned.
Then—Enel descended.
With a single discharge of divine thunder, the tide of battle froze. Morale shattered. Fear spread like wildfire through both armies, mortal hearts quailing before the self-proclaimed god.
But just as despair began to take root…
[Ronan's Elite Forces] mobilized!
At their vanguard stood Rett, blade bared, eyes blazing. His Armament Haki surged outward in rippling waves, vibrating the very air with a deep, metallic hum.
"All troops—heed my command!" he roared, voice iron-clad and resonant, cutting through the din like a war horn.
"Extremists—suppress them by force!"
"Civilians—protect them first!"
Dozens of battle-hardened veterans answered in unison, their swords sheathed in blackened Haki. Clad in crisp naval uniforms, their discipline was absolute, their fighting spirit a white-hot inferno. Together, they carved a relentless path through the chaos—a torrent of steel and justice slicing through the White Sea.
Rett led the charge.
[Armament Haki: Heavy Strike Dance]!
His fists fell like meteors. His blade sang like thunder. Every strike was precision and power fused into one brutal statement: this ends now.
The extremist Shandian samurai—fierce, proud, blinded by vengeance—could not withstand the veterans' overwhelming coordination. One by one, they fell.
These were no green recruits.
They were Ronan's elite—warriors who'd eradicated over a hundred pirate crews in the East Blue, forged in fire and tempered by justice.
Rett deflected twin sneak attacks with contemptuous ease, spun on his heel, and drove a Haki-infused elbow into a warrior's sternum.
Crack!—the sound of shattered ribs echoed above the battlefield.
Then, with a voice that shook the clouds, he bellowed:
"Open your eyes and see clearly!"
"We—the Navy—are not here to seize your land!"
"We are not here to help Angel Island oppress you!"
He cleaved the sky before him with a single downward slash, splitting mist and myth alike.
"We are here to END this meaningless slaughter!"
"Nowhere—in heaven or on earth—should innocent blood be shed!"
"This… is our justice!"
His words landed like judgment.
For a heartbeat, the battlefield stilled. Angel Island officers gaped. Shandian warriors hesitated. Even the wind held its breath.
The elite seized the moment.
With surgical precision, they disarmed, subdued, and secured the extremist fighters—quelling the rebellion's fiercest embers before they could ignite into conflagration.
[High Above the White Sea]
At the apex of the sky—where cloud met void—the true battle for Sky Island's fate had only just begun.
RUMBLE!!!
The heavens tore asunder. A sea of lightning roared, its fury dwarfing the chaos below. The White Sea writhed beneath a storm not of nature—but of will.
Two figures clashed in the heart of the tempest.
One—gold, crackling with divine wrath: Enel, god of thunder, fury incarnate.
The other—black, cloaked in absolute authority: Ronan, the Navy's iron-fisted executor, master of the skies and arbiter of justice.
Lightning coiled around Enel like living serpents, surging with untamed power. Though his mastery of the Goro Goro no Mi was still nascent, raw voltage alone was enough to level armies.
He threw back his head and roared:
"RAIKO—TEN MAN VOLT!"
CRACK—!!!
Hundreds of lightning spears converged into a spiraling vortex of destruction, screaming through the White Sea like the wrath of heaven itself—
—and hurtled straight toward Ronan.
Lightning ripped through the sky—accompanied by a deafening sonic boom—as a golden spear shot straight for Ronan's chest!
But Ronan's eyes only turned colder.
His right palm lifted slightly, fingers spreading with deliberate slowness.
[Reverse Explosion]!
The air collapsed inward.
Space itself seemed to warp.
BOOM!!!
A visible vortex of reversed airflow erupted three meters around Ronan, tearing the lightning spear apart before it could reach him.
Electric arcs shattered like glass.
The sky above them split open—white-hot and raw—as if the heavens themselves had been cleaved like paper.
Enel's pupils shrank to pinpricks. His heart clenched like a fist.
"This… isn't mere suppression…"
"It's absolute dominion over the airflow itself…!!!"
A power no law of nature could explain.
Fury blazed in Enel's eyes. With a roar, he compressed the lightning within his body—then unleashed it in a violent expansion.
[Thor Form: Lightning Burst]!!!
BOOM—!!!
His entire form transformed into pure lightning—a blazing, golden-blue current that surged beyond the limits of human perception.
He became a bolt of divine wrath, streaking through the heavens with teleportation speed, trailing fire and fury.
The lightning spear lanced forward, aimed to cleave Ronan in two.
But Ronan—
—merely took a single step.
[Explosive Compression Step]!!!
The air imploded, then detonated.
His body shot forward like a black meteor—
WHOOSH!!!
—vanishing from sight at the last possible instant.
CRACK! CRACK!!!
Enel, wreathed in Thor Form, howled. Thousand-volt serpents of lightning writhed across the sky, lashing out in every direction.
He flickered—and lightning exploded.
A refined beam, honed from golden-blue plasma, pierced through the clouds with lethal precision, aimed straight for Ronan's heart.
Against an ordinary man, that strike would've left nothing but ash.
But Ronan?
He didn't dodge.
He didn't flinch.
As the spear neared his chest, he raised his right fist.
[Armament Haki: Hardening]!
Jet-black armor sheathed his arm—dense, gleaming, unyielding. Like forged iron. Like a weapon of the gods.
BOOM—!!
Lightning met Haki in a cataclysmic collision.
Electricity arced wildly. Light tore through the air. The very atmosphere shuddered.
And yet—
Ronan stood unmoved.
His fist, struck dead-center by Enel's full-power assault, held firm as bedrock.
The lightning roared, gnawing, searing—but it was swallowed whole by the flowing black sheen of his Haki, like a drowning ox vanishing into the sea.
Enel's eyes widened in disbelief.
"Wh… what?!"
"My lightning… it can't pierce?!"
Impossible! Lightning incinerated all matter—steel, stone, flesh—it left only cinders.
But this black-haired officer… with that strange black power…
…had blocked a god's strike with his bare hand.
His heart hammered like a war drum.
Ronan slowly retracted his fist. A few dying arcs still danced across his knuckles, his hand trembling faintly from the strain.
His voice cut through the storm, calm and sharp as winter steel:
"Pure energy attack?"
"Too fragile."
His gaze locked onto Enel like twin blades.
"You don't understand what a true combat system is."
Enel stared at the blackened fist, teeth gritted, mind reeling like a ship caught in a tsunami.
"What… what is that?!" he snarled. "That black power—why won't my lightning penetrate?!"
Ronan gave a faint, chilling smile.
"Want to learn? I'll teach you."
In the next instant—
—he stood behind Enel.
In his palm, air compressed to its breaking point spiraled like a scythe forged from death itself.
[Air Blast: Collapse]!!!
BOOOOM—!!!
A high-density implosion—infused with Armament Haki—slammed into Enel's back with planet-shattering force.
Even the Thunder God's innate electromagnetic deflection couldn't withstand it. The attack wasn't electrical—it was physics incarnate.
"UUUUUGHHHH—!!!"
Enel screamed as if struck by a celestial hammer.
BOOM!!!
Golden lightning crashed down, slamming into the ruins of the floating island at the edge of the White Sea.
Debris erupted. Lightning spiraled out of control. The clouds churned as if the White Sea itself were trembling.
Half-buried in scorched rubble, Enel coughed blood, eyes wide with terror and disorientation.
Above him, Ronan hovered in midair—hands clasped behind his back, black cloak snapping in the storm winds.
His voice descended like the verdict of a merciless god:
"You call yourself a god?"
"You're nothing but a child who stumbled upon power… and never learned how to wield it."
Below, Enel trembled in the wreckage, residual volts flickering across his skin—broken, humbled, and utterly outmatched.
He gritted his teeth, his eyes bloodshot.
Humiliation!
Shame!
The so-called "god"… brought low by mere humans!
Yet, amidst the searing tangle of pain and rage, Enel sensed something—
a shift.
In that frozen instant, every tremor of displaced air, every nuance of Ronan's movements, every pulse of released power…
it all resonated through the storm of lightning and wind.
And then—
deep within him, something awoke.
[Observation Haki – Mental Web: Initial Awakening!]
Faint at first, but unmistakable: the battlefield's atmosphere sharpened around him. He could feel the ebb and flow of emotion, the ripples of intent, the unseen currents of energy pulsing through space like spider-silk pulled taut.
Enel's eyes blazed with fanatical light.
"This… this is the path of the strong!" he roared.
"I will—completely awaken!
And then… I will tear apart with my own hands every chain this 'hell' has forged around me!"
His lightning-wreathed form trembled among the ruins—not from weakness, but from the storm of power surging to life within.