The instant Kaizen moved, the world answered.
Not with sound—Stillness ruled the air—but with pressure. With intent. With trained will clashing against something that did not yet have a name.
Cipher Pol 7 scattered in a practiced burst, their movements sharp and disciplined. This was not panic. This was protocol.
They had seen monsters before.
They had simply never seen one this young.
Kaizen's Doom Step detonated the ground where he had stood, pulverizing stone into a shallow crater. His body vanished in the same breath, reappearing in the blind spot of the CP7 formation, fist already cocked back.
Too slow.
A distortion rippled through the air.
Kaizen's eyes narrowed an instant before impact—his punch met resistance. Not flesh. Not bone.
Gravity folded.
His fist slammed into an invisible wall of crushing force, the pressure multiplying against itself. The air screamed as it compacted, the shockwave blasting outward in a violent ring that uprooted trees and split stone.
Kaizen slid back several meters, boots carving lines into the earth.
His grin widened. Devil fruit users. And one of them was a welder of a gravity type paramecia.
"So," he muttered. "You're not decoration."
Raze Kallus, the commander of this CP unit, stepped forward. He was tall, wielding broad shoulders that were covered in a white tuxedo that was draped in a white overcoat.
On his face was a mask in the shape of an oni with five horns—a devious looking demonic entity that represented his hierarchy amongst the unit.
The CP7 commander planted his feet, seastone-lined gauntlets appearing around his clenched hands, veins standing out along his forearms. The air around him warped subtly, dust and debris dragging downward as if the world itself leaned toward him.
"Target confirmed to be hostile," Raze said flatly.
"Engage with suppression authority."
His eyes locked onto Kaizen—not with fear, but with resentment through the mask.
"You shouldn't exist," he added with a ruthless coldness.
Kaizen tilted his head. His eyes narrowed dangerously at those words. He hadn't heard them before, however—he'd seen them through the eyes of those that looked upon him.
"You're the first to actually say it with your own voice rather than your eyes."
And just like that—The ground collapsed.
Raze slammed his palm downward, gravity spiking violently in the zone around Kaizen. The pressure hit like a mountain, forcing the earth to crater and buckle inward.
For a fraction of a second, Kaizen felt it—his body pressed downward, bones screaming as weight multiplied.
'H-Holy shit—!"
He felt pressured beyond anything he had faced up until now. Sweat built on his forehead as his teeth began to ground on one another.
ENOUGH—!
Suddenly, a deep breath of oxygen was sucked into his mouth.
'Deep! I've got to dig deep—!'
At first there was silence. But then—Haki surged.
And with it, void ash colored lightning bloomed. At that moment, the world seemed to have lost color as he dug up his suppressed Conqueror's Haki.
A Haki he didn't know he would have to resort to using since choosing to oppose these CP teams. Arcs of lightning warped around him before warping back inward into his body.
Not outward. Inward.
He observed himself as he understood his natural potential at that moment.
Conqueror's Haki. And a variant type at that too. His lips parted, a wicked smile staining his face.
The pressure warped, slid, and failed to settle. The gravity field bent around Kaizen instead of crushing him, as if the concept itself could not decide where to anchor.
Kaizen straightened under the impossible weight.
Raze's eyes widened despite himself.
Watching this unbelievable scene playoff from the sidelines, Nyx, a tall woman with a beautiful sculpted figure, well built thighs that seemed unreal and a slim and firm waist that would make models of Kaizen's previous Earth blush with shame, acted
On her face was an oni mask similar to Raze's own, the only difference was the number of horns on it. Three horns. Which indicated that she was the third strongest of the five.
Her hand stretched forth.
Threads—thin, black, and barely visible—snapped through the air, wrapping around Kaizen's arms, legs, and torso in a lattice of shadowed wire. The moment they made contact, Kaizen felt it: a sudden drag, a dulling of sensation, his body stiffening unnaturally.
Seastone-thread composite.
Kaizen looked down at the bindings, then backed up at Nyx's masked face.
"Creative. But I'm not a Devil Fruit user. These are nothing more than just a simple binding to me."
To those words she smirked beneath that mask. Her fingers clawed inward into the air—the wires tightened.
The world went silent as a terrifying suction power erupted from the threads. Kaizen's eyes widened momentarily as he felt his Haki, strength and mental power being sucked away.
At the same time, Corvin Hale's ability bloomed outward—an absolute nullification of sound. No explosions. No footsteps. No breath. Even the wind ceased to exist at that moment.
Corvin Hale, a short and slender man with short red hair and an Oni mask wielding four horns. Yes, he was the second strongest amongst the five CP7 members.
In that soundless void, Elio activated his fruit. The fourth strongest of the five, a chubby man with blonde hair and an oni mask of two horns.
Windows fractured into existence around the battlefield—translucent panes showing Kaizen from multiple angles, moments behind real-time, tracking movement and predicting vectors.
"He's compensating," Elio said, voice steady despite the tension. "But the suppression is working. He's not—"
Kaizen moved.
It was unexpected. It was…frightening!
Just then, his unique Conqueror's Haki boomed outwards, no longer being used internally. He no longer suppressed it. It simply flared.
No restraint. No hesitation.
Nyx's threads snapped immediately, dissolving where Void Ash lightning crawled along his skin. The gravity field shuddered again as Kaizen stepped forward, the ground cracking beneath each footfall.
He walked through the silence.
Each step felt heavy—not to him, but to everyone watching.
Then—Nothing.
Nyx suddenly recoiled.
At that moment all eyes turned to her.
They had lost track of Kaizen!
Her body recoiled, performing a Soru involuntarily as Kaizen appeared before her. Though, that Soru was simply wasted.
Kaizen closed the distance once more.
His palm pressed gently against her mask as he closed in again.
Palm of Severing
Nyx collapsed with a 'boom', her body creating a large crater into the ground.
Her threads evaporated instantly, wires clattering uselessly to the ground. She lay still, breathing shallow, eyes unfocused—alive, but wrecked.
Kaizen turned his gaze to another member. His eyes drooped. It was devoid of much emotion. Merely the eyes of a Judge one would say.
BUZZ!
A flare of Conqueror's Haki tore out of Kaizen's body.
Void Ash lightning beating against the cold and unforgiving battlefield.
Corvin staggered.
His silence field tore.
Sound rushed back in violently—air exploding as reality hurriedly corrected itself. Corvin dropped to one knee, clutching his head, blood trickling from his ear.
Raze roared as he witnessed the state of his fallen comrades.
Gravity spiked again, far stronger this time, compressing inward like a collapsing star. Trees flattened. Stone liquefied. The pressure screamed for Kaizen to kneel.
Kaizen did not kneel yet his eyes sharpened.
For the briefest moment—something shifted behind them.
Not fully, not yet.
Raze felt it before he saw it.
Judgment.
Kaizen vanished.
He reappeared inside the gravity field's core, directly in front of Raze, arm coated in pitch black Armament Haki already in motion.
Severing Impact.
The punch landed squarely in Raze's chest and the sound that followed was not an explosion.
It was a conclusion.
Raze's body folded around the strike, gravity collapsing inward as his own power betrayed him. He was launched backward like a cannonball, plowing through stone, trees, and earth until he vanished into the mountainside in a distant plume of dust.
Silence fell.
What remained of Cipher Pol 7 stood frozen—Elio and the last member, the weakest of them all, Solvian trembling, Corvin barely upright and Nyx, now unconscious in the crater.
Kaizen straightened slowly, breathing steady. Blood leaked from his nose, ears and mouth. His giant body ached as he gathered himself.
His frustration had burned off.
What remained was clarity.
"…You're not ready," he said calmly. His eyes scanned where he had sent the other CP team and then back to the current team he had defeated.
Pathetic.
"The Gorosei must be going senile. I don't know if they underestimate Stillreach or if they just wanted to get rid of me so soon."
Elio swallowed hard hearing those words. His mind that was now filled with clarity was soon replaced by confusion and anger.
"You—" His voice shook. "You attacked us for what purpose?!"
Kaizen paused.
"For what purpose? Why—I was merely testing the waters." His voice deep and gruff, his eyes devoid of pupils glimpsing into the depths of his soul.
Elio's gaze dropped at that remark.
"Testing the waters?" he asked, his breath shaky.
Tsk.
"Don't tell me, you truly thought that the Stillreach was going to be conquered with merely this level of your strength? Pathetic!"
Kaizen shot back, his eyes focused and filled with disdain. He stared at his work for a moment and then turned.
He turned away, looking toward the horizon—toward a place the world pretended didn't exist.
"They don't understand it," he replied.
Behind him, Cipher Pol 3 had recovered and had begun collecting the wrecked Cipher Pol 7. They retreated. Going back to recover and report this madness to the Five Elders who guarded the suspected empty throne.
As Kaizen walked back toward the capital, his thoughts churned—not with victory, but with unease.
The Stillreach waited.
And somewhere within it—
Something waited for him.
TO BE CONTINUED