Facing that suffocating sense of crisis, Tengetsu Ares forced his heart into stillness.
It was something he had learned through battle after battle.
The moment he calmed down, his perception sharpened. He could feel the blood raging through him, the tendons in his body thick as dragon sinews, the bones hard as steel. He drew on every ounce of power within himself.
All rivers returning to the sea.
Everything converged.
That feeling of explosive strength filling every inch of his body made Ares intoxicated. No, more than that he enjoyed it.
He stood there as if he were an immeasurable sacred mountain, towering beyond reach. Shoulders holding up the sky, feet pinning down the earth. It gave everyone the illusion that even if heaven collapsed and the world shattered, he would remain as he had always been unyielding, unmoving, eternally suppressing the land beneath him.
"So what if your body is tough?" Rocks' face twisted into wild arrogance, his presence surging like a raging tide. "With this strike, I'll shatter your pride completely!"
The black smoke around him reacted to his aura, swelling and roaring, expanding without end.
Rocks moved.
And behind him, that colossal black hole like a planet moved with him.
Ares' arm bones crackled. Power poured into both arms until his blood thundered. Veins, swollen and congested, rose across his iron skin like a net of braided steel cables.
Savage.
Terrifying.
One glance was enough to make fear bloom in the gut.
When darkness descended, Ares swung both arms at once.
Left and right, a hurricane of fists.
In an instant, he threw dozens of afterimages.
BOOM!
BOOM!
…
Every punch hammered into the darkness and Ares didn't stop. The number of fist shadows grew, the range widened, until it formed a wall of crimson.
Darkness was everywhere.
In only a few breaths, it swallowed Ares whole.
"Darkness," Rocks' lips curled into a smile, "seeps into every crack… and devours all things."
Even if Ares' physique was monstrous, Rocks was confident.
No one could endure the consumption of that dark power an evil force capable of crushing anything into dust.
In the distance, Captain John disengaged from Sladar and leapt back. Sweat slid down his forehead as he laughed.
"Sladar, stop. Ares has already lost. If you stop now, I can plead for you in front of the captain. Otherwise, when the captain blames you, you'll end up just like Ares."
"Ares lost?" Sladar's face went blank, like he'd been struck by a hammer. "He… he can lose?"
To Sladar, Ares' strength was the same as Rocks' in John's eyes.
Unbeatable.
Absolute.
Sladar staggered, panic blooming across his features. He muttered as if refusing to hear the words.
"No… no way…"
"Ares' body is the strongest I've ever seen. It can't be broken. It can't be killed. He won't lose!"
Then he forced himself upright. His expression hardened, vicious again, and his aura began climbing.
"I advise you not to act on impulse," John warned, tightening his stance, wary of what this freakishly strong sea demon might do. "Impulsiveness is pointless."
Just then
A voice roared in, lion-like.
"What the hell is going on?!"
A golden figure streaked across the sky. In only a few breaths, he appeared before John and Sladar.
John's eyes lit up. "Shiki. You finally made it."
With Golden Lion Shiki here, this sea demon wouldn't be able to stir up much trouble.
Shiki frowned, taking in the situation in a single sweep. Then all his questions spilled out at once.
"John, where's Ares? Where did he go? And earlier was Ares fighting the captain?!"
He'd sensed Ares' presence before, but now that he'd arrived… he couldn't feel Ares at all.
"Shiki," John said, "Ares is inside that black sphere. At this point, he's probably about to be completely swallowed by the captain's darkness."
"What?!"
Shiki's face changed. He snapped his head toward that massive black orb, eyes widening.
"You're saying Ares is inside that thing?!"
He launched into the air, no longer caring about the reason.
Whoosh!
Like lightning, he was already in front of Rocks.
Shiki opened his mouth to speak
And
Disaster struck from the blind side.
From the black smoke, a gigantic silhouette exploded outward, carrying a tide of murderous fury and the stench of blood. In less than a blink, a fist slammed into Rocks' body.
CRACK!
CRACK!
Shiki heard the crisp sound of bones breaking with his own ears.
Then he saw it
Rocks flew backward, skidding across the ground and leaving behind a horrifying smear of blood.
Shiki's pupils dilated instinctively. His jaw went slack.
Everything happened in the space between heartbeats, so fast his mind couldn't even catch up.
His head filled with nothing but question marks.
???
Who am I? Where am I? What did I just see???
All he knew was this
Captain Rocks had been punched away.
Blood sprayed.
And that bone-cracking sound meant his ribs had been shattered.
When Shiki finally focused
A figure stood in front of him.
A man drenched in blood, towering like a demon god. Thick, sticky crimson gathered into strands, dripping from his body to the ground as if he'd climbed out of a sea of slaughter.
A monster.
Shiki recognized him at once.
His voice trembled.
"A… Ares?!"
Thud.
The cigar fell from his mouth and hit the dirt.
His eyes could only see Ares' battered body wounds everywhere, miserable beyond words, like a prisoner who'd been tortured to the brink.
It was sickening to look at.
"Your injuries… are you okay?!" Shiki's brain short-circuited. His words came out tangled.
Ares turned his head.
"I'm fine."
He looked horrifying, yes darkness-corroded wounds covered him from head to toe but his life force and recovery were terrifyingly strong. As long as his bones and tendons weren't destroyed…
He could recover quickly.
Only then
BOOM!
Rocks' body finally came to a stop, like a cannonball crashing into the sea. Dust blasted skyward, shattered stones spraying everywhere.
The impact was enormous.
"Captain…" John's scalp went numb. It felt like shock had locked his limbs in place.
His tongue stuttered.
"Ares… Ares broke out of the black sphere… and and he even sent the captain flying!"
John had only just followed Shiki's movement with his eyes when he witnessed Rocks being blasted away.
It shattered his composure.
He looked like a man who'd lost his soul.
Sladar's expression shifted then lit up with pure, genuine joy.
"I knew it!"
"Captain Ares was never the kind of man who could be knocked down that easily!"
"He's Ares!"
"The man who wants to forge his body into a Supreme Grade Blade!"
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