Backan sat heavily on the ground, his face deathly pale. His clothes were thoroughly soaked in crimson from a patchwork of gruesome lacerations covering his body. Standing tall and imposing right beside him, Enel wielded his golden staff, arcs of stray electricity snapping and crackling in the air around him as he cast a thoroughly provocative glare at Katakuri.
"I didn't manage to put you down last time, but this time I'll make sure to carve your head clean off!" Enel bared his teeth, his tone dripping with cold malice.
At the mention of his past injury, Katakuri's eyes grew fractionally colder. He leveled his heavy trident, Mogura, and said in a low, even voice, "Last time was last time. Today, there's no one else around to save you."
Refusing to waste another breath, Katakuri vanished from his spot in a seamless blur.
"Too slow! Eighty Million Volts: Thunder Frenzy!!!"
Enel let out a savage laugh as lightning erupted from his body. Countless columns of raw electricity, each as thick as a barrel, blasted outward in a chaotic storm.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The tempest pulverized everything within a hundred-meter radius into a charred, cratered wasteland of molten stone.
The suffocating wall of lightning completely denied Katakuri any close-range approach, forcing the Sweet Commander to strafe along the perimeter. From afar, he could only watch as Backan reached into his coat, pulled out a vial of pale-green fluid, and stabbed the syringe straight into his own skin.
Katakuri recognized that substance. It was an exceptionally rare and exorbitant restorative drug traded on the black market, a priceless commodity that could rapidly stabilize and patch up injuries. While it couldn't exactly raise the dead or instantly regrow shattered bone, administering a single dose to a dying man was more than enough to temporarily keep them tethered to life until medical help arrived.
Given Backan's current constitution, this single injection would be enough to restore a baseline portion of his combat readiness in short order.
"I know exactly what you're plotting, so..." Enel grinned like a demon. "Why don't you focus your complete attention on fighting me!"
RUMBLE—!!!
Accompanied by a low, ominous roll of thunder, Enel transformed into a brilliant flash of lightning, instantaneous traversing the hundred-meter gap to appear dead in front of Katakuri.
A crimson glint flashed across Katakuri's eyes. Anticipating the trajectory, he thrust his spear upward. With a deafening CLANG, Mogura intercepted the downward strike of the golden staff. The sheer kinetic shock vibrated through the atmosphere, forcing a violent gust of wind to billow outward.
BZZZZ— ZAP!
Blinding electrical currents violently surged from Enel's form, conducting down the metal weapons to assault Katakuri's body.
However, Katakuri simply liquefied his torso into pliable mochi, allowing Enel's lightning to pass harmlessly through his fluid shape. Simultaneously, several dense mochi tendrils sprouted from his back, quickly hardening under a thick coating of pitch-black Armament Haki. Resembling spiked morning stars, they whipped forward to pulverize Enel from behind.
"What?!"
Enel's eyes widened. Converting his body back into pure electricity, he zipped up into the upper atmosphere, causing Katakuri's counter-strike to smash nothing but thin air.
Observing this, Katakuri's brow twitched upward slightly. A troublesome opponent, he thought to himself.
The man's mobility was simply absurd. Even though Katakuri could foresee the future ahead of time, his physical reactions struggled to keep pace with an entity moving at the literal speed of lightning.
Conversely, Enel was finding it equally impossible to landing a telling blow on Katakuri. Every single one of his tactical choices and movements was being read by the Sweet Commander in advance, allowing Katakuri to effortlessly reposition ahead of time.
"Inazuma!!!"
"El Thor!!!"
"Sixty Million Volts: Thunder Dragon!!!"
"Willow Mochi!!!"
"Mochi Thrust!!!"
"Unstoppable Mochi Gatling!!!"
The two powerhouses unleashed a devastating sequence of exchanges. Colossal detonations, expanding shockwaves, stray hardened pellets, blinding lightning arcs, and choking curtains of dust pulverized the landscape as their duel gradually expanded across the entire harbor.
The apocalyptic lightning and the shifting, gelatinous mochi terrain tore the coastal docks apart. A Germa 66 vessel that had been anchored too close was entirely shredded by a stray bolt of lightning; its giant sea snail was instantaneously roasted into a blackened piece of charcoal, while hundreds of Germa clone soldiers under its deck were decimated before they could even react.
One was a legendary future seer who had pushed Observation Haki to its absolute zenith; the other was a peerless speedster who could freely embody the concept of lightning. Their clash appeared staggeringly violent, yet after an extended period of high-intensity warfare, neither had managed to score a clean, decisive hit on the other.
This was far from their first encounter. While they might not have known every intimate secret of the other, they were intimately familiar with each other's distinct strengths and systemic flaws.
One relied on the absolute privilege of Future Sight to arrange the board in advance, seeking to lock down the tempo of the battlefield. The other relied on the absolute speed of lightning to break those very shackles, ensuring that no net could ever hold him.
Faced with a clash of two literal monsters, the surrounding combatants from both factions were forced to continuously retreat further back to avoid being wiped out by the collateral damage.
As for Backan, the moment the injection took effect and restored a fraction of his physical capacity, he wasted no time fleeing the immediate vicinity. He knew better than anyone that once Enel completely lost his temper, the entire harbor might cease to exist.
…
Alvis Island, Aerial Harbor.
"Airship Number 7, clear for liftoff!"
"Airship Number 13, clear for liftoff!"
"Clear the central tarmac! Airship Number 20 is cleared for arrival!"
A massive contingent of ground crew members waved signal flags frantically, orchestrating the constant deployment and recovery of the floating airship fleet.
These massive airships were packed to the brim with mass-produced steel killing machines, all slated for deployment onto the open plains located ten kilometers outside of Unzan Port.
Because they deeply feared the volatile capabilities of the storm cloud Zeus, the high command didn't dare risk flying these vital logistics airships directly into Unzan Port, fully aware that a single targeted strike from Zeus could bring an entire vessel crashing down. Consequently, they chose to offload the mechanical forces inland, forcing the activated autonomous units to march across the terrain by foot.
Furthermore, these newly designed airships possessed a strict payload capacity and required specialized handlers to accompany each unit. As a result, each hull could only accommodate a deployment of five fully loaded Devil Spider units and Wolf King Type-4 mechanical beasts.
Even with nearly a hundred airships operating in an unending logistical relay, the physical footprint of the aerial harbor was fundamentally limited. It was perfectly adequate for stationary storage, but it simply lacked the runway space to facilitate the simultaneous launch and recovery of so many vessels at once.
Consequently, the entire aerial harbor had transformed into a chaotic hive of activity. Ground crews, sentries, and supply handlers dashed across every square inch of the tarmac, with Otto personally overseeing the entire operation.
"Commander, we've just received a direct transmission from the front lines! Enel-sama has arrived to reinforce the harbor!" A massive brawny soldier carrying a greatsword sprinted over, delivering a much-needed piece of good news.
"Is that so..."
A rare smile finally broke across Otto's rigid face. "Finally, a shred of good news."
According to the intelligence briefings he had received a short while ago, the 4th Division at Unzan Port, the 'Z' Division, and the fifty-thousand-strong Royal Army had already suffered over fifty percent casualties. The dozen-plus subordinate pirate groups under their banner had been utterly decimated, and their defensive perimeter had been on the absolute verge of total collapse.
Fortunately, the first and second waves, comprising two hundred Devil Spiders, fifty Wolf King Type-4 mechanical beasts, and twenty Dragonian humanoid units, had already successfully integrated into the frontline. Their arrival at the harbor area had managed to grind the Big Mom Pirates' initial vanguard to a halt.
Now, with a pillar of their core military might like Enel joining the fray, the catastrophic disadvantage they had been suffering was finally starting to stabilize.
"Where's Backan?"
Right at that moment, Switch Dalt emerged. He was dressed in his perennial, stark white lab coat, casually riding atop a massive, five-meter-long black reptilian beast as he drifted leisurely toward Otto.
HISS—
The gargantuan black lizard flicked its long, bifurcated tongue. Its dark-brown, vertical slit pupils rotated slowly in their sockets, casting a freezing, entirely emotionless glare over Otto.
This was an A-Rank Experimental Bio-Weapon, the Demon King Lizard, designated M177. Genetically engineered with the spliced traits of eleven distinct apex predators, it was a terrifyingly efficient engine of biological slaughter. It served as the heavily upgraded and combat-optimized successor to the older model, M033 'Demonic Lizard'.
It stood as one of the exceedingly rare A-Rank experimental organisms within the entire laboratory complex, and more importantly, it was the only fully controllable asset within that classification. In terms of raw destructive output, its combat capabilities easily rivaled the two artificial dragons Vegapunk had engineered on Punk Hazard, making it one of Dalt's most prized masterpieces.
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