Brook's eyes widened a fraction as Imu finished speaking.
So that's what it was.
Not one, but two.
Damn it. I'm a Mythical Zoan user too, and not just one!
The Dark Dark Fruit, the Revive Revive Fruit, both of them were divine powers wearing cheap masks. Meanwhile, one day that Straw Hat kid would awaken the so called Gum Gum Fruit and crawl his way into the Mythical Zoan Sun God Nika.
Brook's lips curled.
Compared to my double godhood, that's going to look like a street magic trick.
From today onward, call me the God of Darkness and the God of Hell.
Sun God Nika, God of Destruction, move aside. The main character with two divine seats is already here.
Even those so called Sea Gods and Asura Gods from some other world could go stand in line.
Brook coughed once, then lifted his chin with shameless confidence.
"Ahem. If the god behind my Revive Fruit is older than your so called God of Destruction," Brook said brightly, "then little Imu, tell me the gods' names for the Dark Dark Fruit and the Revive Fruit."
He pointed at himself with his thumb.
"Call me big brother, and we'll rule the world together."
He had fished almost nothing useful out of Imu's mouth. God of Destruction, sure, but no name. He had suspected his own fruits were strange, but he never expected both of them to be true divine class powers.
Imu did not answer.
He simply raised a hand.
A terrifying wave of destructive energy roared out.
Brook barely dodged, but Nansha Island still vanished under the blast. A mushroom cloud thousands of meters tall erupted into the sky, swallowing the horizon.
The shockwave slammed outward like a sea king's roar. Even the Five Elders, the navy's top brass, and the Five Hell Kings were swept away, thrown across the shattered battlefield.
Brook's pupils shrank.
This power was obscene.
It was on the level of Uranus itself, the kind of strike that erased islands as an afterthought.
So this is the God of Destruction who defeated the Sun God Nika.
This was the destructive force that once wiped out a huge kingdom and earned the curse of Mother Nature.
Imu floated above the ruins, expression flat, voice colder than the abyss.
"Boy. I'll give you one more chance to fix your tone."
His gaze pinned Brook in place.
"Join me. Hand over the secret of dual fruit power, and I'll make you the leader of the Five Elders. Second only to me."
It was not generosity. It was calculation.
Imu had not aimed to kill Brook with that strike. He wanted the secret. He wanted the body. He wanted the method.
And he wanted Brook to understand, in his bones, what true power looked like.
Yet even that casual display made Imu feel it again, the invisible pressure tightening around him.
Mother Nature's suppression.
The curse of the New World.
He had never understood why a being with absolute destructive power could not erase that restraint. He had searched for the world's will, for the thing people called Mother Nature, like a hunter chasing smoke.
He wanted to kill that god too.
To destroy the balance itself.
If Devil Fruits existed as a rebellion against nature, then the force that enforced nature should be shattered.
Imu wanted to wipe out everything that stood in his way, including Mother Nature.
But he could never touch it.
Only feel it.
Only be hindered by it.
Only watch it, at times, give Joy Boy a faint push forward.
Brook laughed, light and musical, like he was entertained instead of threatened.
"Yohoho. There can't be two tigers on one mountain."
His tone sharpened.
"I don't believe you'll let me live once you've gotten what you want."
Brook knew people like Imu. Scheming. Patient. Ruthless.
A man who did not truly submit, yet carried monstrous potential, was not a partner.
He was a future threat.
And future threats were erased.
Imu's eyes hardened.
"Hmph. Then I'll capture you first."
His voice sank.
"And I'll study you slowly."
He reached out, and with a casual grip, he seized most of the thunder surging inside the storm clouds that Redfield and Linlin had created.
Lightning shrieked. The sky flashed white.
The thunder twisted in Imu's hand like a chained beast.
Imu looked down at Brook with contempt.
"The power of the God of Destruction lets me command destructive elements, fire, thunder, whatever I want."
His lips curled.
"Even that fool Nika can wield thunder and drive fire. So tell me, Brook…"
His eyes narrowed.
"Can your God of Darkness, your God of Hell, do the same?"
He tilted his head, voice dripping disdain.
"Little dog."
Brook froze for half a heartbeat.
Imu was holding thunder like it was a toy.
Not borrowed lightning, not a Devil Fruit imitation, but raw power bent under sheer will.
"Even I can…?" Brook muttered, stunned.
All this time, he thought his imagination and knowledge from another era was already terrifying.
But this world's logic was worse. It did not just ignore reason, it strangled it and used the corpse as a flag.
Even Mythical Zoan users could reach out and seize thunder?
Then it made sense.
The Straw Hat kid had thrown out moves like Flame Gun and Thunder Axe even before awakening, forcing reality to comply through madness and conviction, whether it was friction, clouds, or pure delusion.
A normal Rubber Fruit user would never dare develop fire techniques. Rubber feared heat.
But Nika did not care.
And in this instant, Brook felt his own thinking snap against invisible chains.
He had been limiting himself.
He had been too reasonable.
If Nika could hold lightning and laugh, then why couldn't Revive power produce ghost fire, bone chilling flames, yin thunder, corrupted water lightning, or whatever else the dead could dream of?
Imu's smile widened.
"The power of Devil Fruits is beyond your imagination."
He lifted his hand.
"But you're limited. You have no time left to grow."
The thunder in his palm expanded, then crashed downward.
A pillar of lightning so vast Brook couldn't fully dodge it.
It was far more terrifying than Redfield's lightning. And worse, it was soaked in destruction itself.
Imu's voice thundered with it.
"Kneel before a god!"
Brook's eyes flashed.
"No."
Then he snarled, the words ripped out with pure disbelief.
"These divine powers are so damn unreasonable."
The lightning fell.
Brook spread his arms.
"Dark Water Black Hole!"
Darkness poured from him like spilled ink, thickening into a sea of shadow. It swelled until it became a world sized void, swallowing the sky itself.
The thunder slammed into it.
Destruction met abyss.
Lightning screamed.
Darkness roared.
In the eyes of the Five Elders and the Five Hell Kings, the heavens split open into a brutal scene of thunder and darkness locked in a death grip.
A clash dozens of times more terrifying than the old battle of darkness and sun between Teach and Ace.
"Move!"
Redfield's face twisted, future sight flaring.
For the first time in a long while, even he looked truly alarmed.
"It's going to explode!"
And without a shred of pride left to protect, Redfield fled.
-------------
A heartbeat later, it happened.
The Four Elders, the fleet marshals, and the admirals all seemed to glimpse the same grim future, and they scattered in a flash of panic. It did not matter.
The explosion swallowed everything.
Only the Five Hell Kings and the Hell Pirates who trusted Redfield's Observation Haki moved the instant he shouted. They fled the moment the warning left his mouth.
Even so, the shockwave still caught them. They could only grit their teeth and rely on brute skill, Haki, and instinct, resisting, countering, or twisting their bodies midair to avoid being torn apart.
"No…!" Redfield's face went pale. "Darkness and destruction lightning, they can even disrupt Devil Fruit powers!"
His Thunder Fruit could not maintain full intangibility. The elemental state collapsed under the pressure, forcing him to harden with Armament Haki just to survive.
Brook's Dark Dark Fruit and Imu's power were so absolute that they were interfering with other top tier users.
Linlin's Zeus and Prometheus snapped back into harmless, dull forms. Napoleon reverted into nothing more than a hat, the Soul Soul Fruit's authority over them forcibly interrupted.
This was even more outrageous than Mars's jealousy ability. That one targeted people. This clash was crushing an entire battlefield at once, over a massive range.
Anyone who had been flying through Devil Fruit power instantly lost stability and had to kick the air with Moon Step and other midair techniques, fighting to keep themselves from being blown away.
Shiki was hit the hardest.
He depended on the Float Float Fruit more than anyone.
On the broken remains of Nansha Island, the collision of darkness and destruction made the sea convulse. The air cracked. The very space around them seemed to splinter.
Then the island's foundation, already shattered, began to dissolve. The seabed supporting it collapsed beneath the pressure, vanishing under the blinding wave until Nansha Island ceased to exist.
The ocean answered with violence.
Tsunamis rose, hundreds of meters tall, one after another, born from the blast like teeth from a monstrous jaw. Even Newgate's Tremor Tremor Fruit had not thrown the sea around like this.
For dozens of seconds, the shock continued, generating wave after wave. At the center of the blast, the seabed was exposed for an instant, as if the sea itself had been scooped out.
A void where an island used to be.
Imu floated above the ruin, his expression unchanged.
"Hmph. You took a serious strike from me and stayed standing," he said coldly. "You really do have the potential to reach Joy Boy's level."
His voice carried no praise.
Only impatience.
Joy Boy had been stronger than him in raw power, the Sun God Nika's might towering over the era, yet Joy Boy had still died by Imu's hand.
Power alone did not decide the last page of history.
Imu would not repeat the same mistake. He struck again instantly, pressing forward without mercy, refusing to give Brook even a breath to recover.
No chances.
No second wind.
No heroic comeback.
For the first time in a long while, Brook felt pain that dug deep.
Imu's destructive force clung like thorns buried in flesh, chewing through him from the inside. Brook burned a huge amount of energy just to scrape the destruction away.
He did not waste more energy restoring what was already damaged.
Half his face had been stripped to bone. The right hand gripping the Seven Star Demon Sword showed white knuckles and exposed bone beneath torn flesh.
Brook laughed anyway.
"Yohoho. Do I look like a proper Grim Reaper now?"
The Seven Star Demon Sword was pitch black, wrapped in Armament and Conqueror's Haki, with strange dark matter swirling around its edge like a living shadow.
Imu's fist came in like an executioner's hammer.
Brook did not retreat.
He smiled and charged straight into it, the arrogance of the Dark Dark Fruit leaking through his restraint.
If the Seven Star Demon Sword had not already reached the level of a divine weapon, it would not have lasted. Even a Supreme Grade blade would have cracked under that power, Armament Haki or not.
Because Imu's Haki was monstrous.
He was a thousand year immortal who had dragged body, Devil Fruit, and all three types of Haki to their absolute limit.
This was the true strongest man alive, the one who made the Five Elders kneel.
Imu's punch slammed into Brook's blade, sparks bursting in wild sprays. Destruction and darkness gnawed at each other in the collision.
Even the Seven Star Demon Sword, impossibly hard, bent into an arc under the force.
Imu's eyes gleamed.
"The Revive Fruit really is impressive," he said, voice sharp with greed. "Once I kill you, I'll collect it. Treasure it."
His smile was thin.
"I wonder if it carries a will of its own, like the Sun God Nika Fruit."
Brook's gaze narrowed. He tried to drag Imu in with the Dark Dark Fruit's gravity, to seize the user himself and lock his power down.
At the same time, the ghost generals around him charged like suicide soldiers, slamming into Imu, trying to invade his soul with pure spiritual force.
It did not work.
Imu's speed was too fast, his body too strong. Brook could not get a clean grip.
The Dark Dark Fruit's pull could not catch him.
And the suppression, the sealing effect, it barely scratched the surface of Imu's awakened destruction, refined to a depth Brook could not measure.
Imu's eyes flicked, cold and amused.
"It seems you've been digging into my world for quite a while," he said. "That Den Den Mushi user of yours… he'll be part of my collection too."
His pressure rose.
Destruction and Conqueror's Haki fused into something unique, a crushing aura that felt like the world itself was collapsing. Every blow carried the scent of death, enough to wipe out admiral level fighters in a single brutal exchange.
Brook's heart sank as he endured it.
If he had not stolen the Dark Dark Fruit and become a dual fruit user, the Revive Revive Fruit alone would have left him dead within ten moves.
Only the Dark Dark Fruit's restraint, only that hated gravity and suppression, allowed Brook to barely hold the line against the God of Destruction.
Imu's plan had never included this.
He had come personally to sweep Brook aside, to crush the Hell Pirates and end this era quickly. Then he would clean up the remaining great pirates, wait for the next Nika, the next Joy Boy, the next Poseidon.
Kill them too.
If those destined threats were erased, the World Government would enjoy hundreds, even thousands of years of peaceful rule.
But Brook was still standing.
And while Brook and Imu fought, the rest of the battlefield twisted into chaos.
The Four Elders, flung away by the blast, were in miserable shape. Their clothes were shredded, their bodies marked with wounds, and the less injured Five Hell Kings immediately pounced, hammering them with vicious attacks while they were still reeling.
Elsewhere, the Pluton replica fleet, led by Shakky and Stussy, kept harassing the World Government coalition.
Wang Zhi, the giant warrior Jennifer, the world breaker World, Fujitora, Crocodile, they struck like knives in the dark, issuing death orders toward the remaining Warlords and constantly prying apart the kingdom elites' morale from the World Government's grip.
And Uranus, unleashed by Imu, began slaughtering New World pirates across the sea.
That burden fell onto the second generation of Hell, led by Hades.
Brook's trust in them was absolute, the same blind, stubborn faith a battle crazed Saiyan father would place in his son.
They would destroy Uranus.
They would do it the way Gohan had destroyed Cell.
Because if they failed…
This war would not have a second chance.
.....
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