"Exactly what I wanted!!!"
The corner of Oden's blood-smeared mouth split into a grin steeped in madness. Blood dripped steadily from his battered body onto the ground below. His arms bulged with coiled muscle, veins surging like enraged dragons beneath his skin.
Enma and Ame-no-Habakiri hummed violently in his hands, their blades trembling as crimson-black arcs of Conqueror's Haki grew ever more ferocious.
Gern Reginald Sigmar watched coldly. Blood was still seeping from the wound across his chest—but the black blade Bahuang shook violently in his grasp, violet-white destructive energy coiling around the blade like a living thing.
Oden's unrestrained figure was reflected in Gern's pupils. His Observation Haki had long since spread outward, capturing every tremor in the air, every ripple of vibration.
"BOOM!!"
Both figures vanished from where they stood, their speed so extreme that only fading afterimages were left hanging in the air.
When they reappeared—
"CLANG!!"
The instant their blades collided, the entire desolate island convulsed violently.
Centered on the two of them, the ground collapsed in a radius of several hundred meters. Spiderweb-like fissures raced outward in every direction.
Seawater burst up through the cracks—only to be instantly vaporized into white mist the moment it touched the high-frequency vibration particles.
The clouds overhead were torn apart by the shockwave of clashing Haki, ripped open into a massive gash as sunlight plunged down like a descending blade.
"Hahahaha! This is incredible!!"Oden laughed wildly, muscles in his arms swelling as his twin swords lashed out like a torrential storm.
"How could I only be meeting a man with strength like yours now?!"
A storm of crimson-black slashes swept forward, every arc of light carrying Conqueror's Haki powerful enough to tear the earth itself apart.
Gern's gaze sharpened. Bahuang spun in his hand as he reversed his grip and swept the blade horizontally.
Where the blade passed, eight parallel rifts tore through space itself. Like snapping fangs, the cracks closed in, dragging everything between them into a violent vibration field.
Immediately after, Gern raised his left hand.
"Heavenquake · Thousand-Light Wheel!"
Hundreds of high-frequency vibration bombs burst from the blade, colliding head-on with Oden's slashes in midair.
"BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!!"
A chain of explosions overturned everything within a kilometer. The ground was pulverized into dust, the碎stone reduced to powder—then lifted into the air by the raging shockwaves, suspended unnaturally.
"Oooohhh!!"Oden roared as his figure burst out of the smoke, charging straight through, twin blades crossing as he struck.
"Paradise White Falls!"
The slash was lightning-fast—a razor-thin crimson-black line flashing through the air.
But this time, Gern's Observation Haki once again glimpsed the future.
At the critical instant, he twisted aside.
The blade skimmed past his shoulder, drawing a string of blood beads through the air.
In the same motion, Gern spun and appeared above Oden, his left fist wrapped in violently churning vibration particles as it slammed down.
"Black Quake · Piercing Star!"
"THUD!!"
The heavy impact sent Oden flying backward dozens of meters. Yet he twisted midair, planting his feet and carving two deep trenches into the ground before finally stopping.
After steadying himself, the grin on his face only grew more savage.
"Yes—this is it! Again!!"
At this moment, Gern and Oden were nearly evenly matched. Neither could end the other with a single decisive blow.
Which was why—
This was the first time Kozuki Oden had ever fought to his heart's content.
And Gern could clearly feel it as well:If he could defeat Oden on his own, without relying on anyone else—
His strength would unquestionably step fully into the commander-tier.
Because this, too, was the first time he had faced a monster of this level alone—and engaged in a true fight to the death.
For a time, the contrast in their combat styles became starkly clear:
Oden was the embodiment of a pure twin-sword master. Every move condensed the pinnacle of swordsmanship.
His slashes roared like furious dragons; wherever his blades passed, the earth split open into yawning abysses.With every swing of his twin swords, crimson-black lightning poured down like a violent storm.
Gern, on the other hand, was the perfect fusion of blade, Devil Fruit, and physical combat.
Bahuang, wrapped in annihilating energy—one swing shattered space itself.Vibration particles compressed into his fists—one punch collapsed mountains.Elemental movement combined with high-frequency shock assaults made his attacks impossible to guard against.
The island was already unrecognizable.
The surface was riddled with craters hundreds of meters wide, with the deepest fissures plunging straight down to the seabed.
The surrounding ocean churned with tsunami after tsunami, waves dozens of meters high slamming outward and forcing distant Marine warships farther and farther away.
Above, the clouds had been completely blown away. Sunlight poured straight down, refracting through the rising steam to form eerie, rainbow-hued halos.
......
"Sorry about this, Marine—but I need to finish you off!!!!"
Oden's roar shattered the smoke-filled sky.
His loose hair whipped wildly as his feet sank into the shattered earth. His waist arched backward like a fully drawn bowstring, Ame-no-Habakiri and Enma crossed behind him in an X.
Blood-red Conqueror's Haki erupted from the sword guards, spiraling along the blades and condensing at their tips into two eerie crimson orbs.
Muscle fibers across his body screamed under the strain. His kimono was shredded into dust by the surging Haki, leaving his upper body completely bare.
"You don't have the right to say that yet!!"Gern's pupils contracted sharply.
Bahuang let out a delighted tremor in his grip. The dark red patterns near the hilt began to writhe like living flesh, transforming in an instant into savage purple-black veins.
The blade began to autonomously draw out Gern's boiling Conqueror's Haki. Dark violet lightning and pale vibration waves twisted together at the blade's edge, forming a spiraling convergence.
"Vmmmm—!"
A low hum skyrocketed into a piercing shriek.
The space around the blade began to fracture on a massive scale. Every flicker of dark-violet lightning tore spiderweb-like black cracks through the void itself.
Gern gripped the hilt with both hands, veins bulging across the backs of his hands as he slowly raised Bahuang overhead—
The simplest stance.
And the deadliest.
"Oden Two-Sword Style — Paradise Ten-Fist!!!"
"Heavenquake · Sky Rend!!!"
Both figures surged forward simultaneously.
Oden's twin blades carved a perfect blood-red cross before him—the cross flying ahead while his body followed, like a meteor tearing through the sky.
After unleashing the blindingly fast cross-shaped flying slash, he chased it immediately, severing even light itself and leaving behind two pitch-black vacuum trails.
Gern's black blade fell straight down.
Before the edge even arrived, the air within a hundred meters ahead was already pulverized by high-frequency vibrations.
The instant the three blades collided—
"ZZZANG!!!"
A dazzling white flash exploded from the point of impact.
Time seemed to freeze.
The island's surface rose in concentric rings around them as tens of thousands of tons of rock were hurled into the sky by the shockwave.
The sea first collapsed inward, forming a massive depression over a kilometer wide—then erupted into a ring-shaped tsunami hundreds of meters tall.
"Crk… crraaack…"
Amid the teeth-grinding sound of space itself shattering, the crimson orbs on Oden's twin blades clashed violently against the violet-white energy coating Gern's sword.
A pitch-black spherical void appeared at the collision's center, swallowing light, dust—even sound.
Their Conqueror's Haki exploded outward in red-black and dark-violet sparks. Every single spark that struck the ground detonated into a crater ten meters wide.
"HRAAA!!"Veins bulged across Oden's forehead as muscle fibers in his arms snapped one after another—yet, driven by sheer Haki, they forced themselves to keep moving.
His twin blades pressed inch by inch toward Gern's throat.
Gern's grip split open, blood streaming down the hilt—only to be instantly vaporized into red mist upon touching the vibrating blade.
At the same time, he could clearly feel it:
Bahuang's trembling was growing ever more ecstatic.
"BOOOOM!!!"
The second shockwave detonated.
Oden's left blade suddenly changed trajectory—Ame-no-Habakiri slashing upward toward Gern's jaw.
Gern snapped his head aside, the blade grazing past.
At the same instant, his left fist—wrapped in vibration waves compressed to the absolute limit—smashed brutally into Oden's abdomen.
"PUH—!"
The blood mist Oden spat out was shattered into atomic vapor before it could even fall.
But suddenly—
Enma's blade surged forward by three full inches.
Crimson-black Conqueror's Haki condensed into a solid blade of energy, stabbing straight into Gern's right shoulder.
Blood sprayed as both men were blasted backward, carving trenches hundreds of meters long into the ground.
When the dust finally began to settle—
The entire desolate island had been split cleanly in two along its central axis.