That's right—compared to the beginning, when Akashō could only rely on Moon Breathing he had secretly learned from the Kokushibo template, his true body's strength has now unquestionably reached the Kage-transcending level.
And all of this stems from the system upgrade brought by unlocking the Doflamingo template after the three-way battle on the Earth-Fire battlefield.
After that upgrade, the trash system gained a feature that could strengthen the main body: by consuming template reputation, one could exchange for abilities and skills from villain templates.
Since then, almost all the reputation Akashō harvested from ordinary people has been poured into this function.
First among them were Kokushibo's Transparent World, Neferpitou's malice and En, and Doflamingo's Observation Haki.
The reason Akashō prioritized these perception-type abilities wasn't for survival, but because they could enhance his learning efficiency.
Without exaggeration, with the sight of the Transparent World, the hearing of Observation Haki, and the all-encompassing perception of En, aside from special techniques like the Flying Thunder God, Akashō can learn almost any other jutsu at a glance.
The simplest examples are Might Guy's Eight Gates, Namikaze Minato's Rasengan, Kakashi's Lightning Blade, and Kushina's sealing techniques. Among them, Lightning Blade was achieved by Akashō through observing others' nature transformation training, allowing him to acquire Lightning Release chakra in an extremely short time. This also serves as preparation for later copying the Third Raikage's Lightning Release Armor.
Of course, this monstrous learning ability doesn't only apply to ninjutsu. Later, by transforming into template characters himself and having shadow clones do the same for observation, Akashō quickly obtained Armament Haki and made rapid progress in Moon Breathing, even mastering the technique of turning his blade into a high-temperature Crimson Blade.
However, this kind of learning only works for skills without special requirements. Abilities like Bertholdt Hoover's depend on the power of the Colossal Titan, while all of Neferpitou's abilities and Nen techniques rely on her Nen. Without direct exchange, Akashō could never master them.
If even dependent skills are like this, then special abilities of template characters are even more so. Whether it's Kokushibo's Demon Body, Neferpitou's malice, or Doflamingo's String-String Fruit abilities, all of them were directly exchanged using reputation, just like those perception abilities.
Of course, the system's original rules haven't changed—Akashō's main body growing stronger has absolutely nothing to do with the transformed template characters. In fact, because of this, after all this time he's only managed to accumulate a little over five million reputation points.
Oh, and as for why Akashō can remain unaffected in daylight after obtaining Kokushibo's Demon Body—that relates to his current appearance.
After experimenting, he made a decision. Through Doflamingo's Shadow Knight Thread—essentially string clones—Akashō came up with a new application of the String-String Fruit: creating all things from threads, freely shaping them and even altering their color.
On top of that, he can wrap threads around his skin to completely block out sunlight. Even critical areas like his eyes and nostrils are temporarily sealed with threads when he tilts his head.
Though it's uncomfortable, combining these two abilities to gain an immortal body in his base form is well worth it.
Still, out of sheer aversion to sunlight, Akashō later developed the habit of always carrying an oil-paper umbrella made of threads to block it.
...
That sums up Akashō's current status in detail.
On the charred, cratered land, the crimson figure standing in the night looked eerie and terrifying.
Rōshi's eyes widened. Though he had never directly encountered Kokushibo, among all the intelligence gathered by the Dark Council, Kokushibo was one of the most frequently mentioned.
Then what exactly are these unheard-of crimson threads, writhing like maggots?
Why had Kokushibo never shown them before? Come to think of it, Kokushibo never really had a life-and-death battle where he was forced to go all out. Even in the battle in the Land of Lightning, though he seemed pushed to the brink, didn't he recover afterward by devouring humans?
His clash with the Third Raikage also ended without a decisive result—a draw.
Was that really Kokushibo's final trump card?
Maybe not…
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