Chapter 174: The Most Difficult Battle!
Beneath the moonlit night, above the clouds, the Golden Lion soared proudly through the sky, arms spread wide as he laughed like a madman.
Roy and Gion were already moving, burning stamina with Moonwalk as they tried to break out of the encirclement formed by Lion's Might.
Shanks, however, was facing an even larger scale attack.
A vast mass of seawater surged toward him. Shanks twisted and dodged as best he could, but there was nowhere to fully escape.
This was the Golden Lion gathering all the water around the floating island and turning it into a small ocean in the sky.
But Shanks was not a Devil Fruit user.
The seawater crashed around him and swallowed him whole. Shanks swung his sword forward, and a massive slashing wave tore through the water, carving a path for him to burst through!
At the same time, Roy and Gion were still trapped. Even with Moonwalk at full speed, the enormous lions of earth and stone, connected to the island itself, kept closing in around them, leaving them no clean line to escape.
Through the gaps between those giant lions, there was still a sliver of sky.
But it was shrinking fast.
In the next moment, an overwhelming lion shaped wall closed in, swallowing them completely.
"How could I pass up a chance like this to fight the Golden Lion!" Roy roared.
His hands formed into tiger claws. He grabbed the closing earth and rock and tore with brute force, ripping open space inside the crushing cage and buying room for both himself and Gion.
Gion seized his shoulder and followed his movement. At the same time, she swung Kinpira and fired a huge slashing wave.
Roy stepped on the air with Moonwalk, guiding her through the temporary passage the slashing wave had created, and the two shot forward at high speed!
Under Shiki's control, the encircling space created by Lion's Might, Earth Scroll kept closing in, while also trying to mend the massive裂 crack the slashing wave had torn open.
But at the most critical moments, Roy would reach out and rip the surrounding walls apart again, and Gion would strike in perfect rhythm right after him.
The two worked together without pause.
Before long, the encirclement finally shattered. With a thunderous blast, a fist smashed through the outer stone wall and blew it open.
Roy stepped out, one arm wrapped around Gion's slender waist.
"Golden Lion!"
With three furious roars, Roy, Gion, and Shanks attacked from two directions at once, fists swinging and blades raised as they struck Shiki from both sides.
"Hahahaha!"
Shiki looked like he was laughing at children.
In the next instant, his yellow striped cloak snapped in the wind. His body twisted violently in midair, and the blades fixed to his legs, Sakura Ten and Withered Tree, launched a savage counterattack, completing several ferocious slashes in the space of a heartbeat.
Clang clang clang!
Shanks parried again and again, sparks bursting from every impact.
Shiki kicked and slashed at Roy, only making sparks explode off Roy's defense. Even with Armament Haki, Shiki could not break through Roy's body cleanly.
Even so, the three of them still could not match the Golden Lion. In an instant, all three were knocked away.
Roy caught Gion as she was thrown backward.
"Whew. Moonwalk isn't a long duration flight ability," Roy said, keeping an arm around her waist. "I need to conserve stamina so I can stay in the air longer and fight the Golden Lion properly."
Gion rolled her eyes at him. She could feel his intentions were not exactly pure.
But what he said was also true.
It really did look like he was using the battle to get closer to her, but she had no proof.
"You bastard!" Shiki's expression turned vicious.
Sweat covered his forehead as he stared at Roy with a feral glare.
In the middle of that glare, Shiki made a bold guess.
From the moment Roy started fighting him, Shiki had noticed it. Roy's defense was terrifying.
He was not even using Armament Haki, yet his body still had that kind of iron hard toughness.
Wasn't that Big Mom's natural talent?
Who in the world did not know it?
Linlin was born with iron like defense, and Roy…
"You wouldn't happen to be Charlotte Linlin's brother, would you!" Shiki's face flashed with shock, then turned even darker.
That expression looked like the weather in the New World itself.
Roy was speechless inside.
My surname is Harold…
But he did not have time to argue.
Shiki did not even give him a chance to deny it. He directly decided Roy was Linlin's brother, completely ignoring Shanks on the other side, and roared as he charged.
Roy snapped into motion with Moonwalk and fired a punch at the Golden Lion.
With Roy supporting her, Gion stopped using Moonwalk to conserve energy. She gripped her sword with both hands and slashed at Shiki with everything she had.
Coordinated attacks…
Whether it was a man and a woman working together or anything else, it could make hard work feel easier.
But against a top tier monster like this, it meant nothing.
Two attackers or three attackers.
None of them could match the Golden Lion.
A rapid chain of metallic clashes rang out, sparks exploding across the sky. Even with severed legs, Shiki at his peak wielded his blades with dazzling golden light, each strike lethal and terrifying.
In the next moment, the three were blasted away again.
Shanks was sent flying to the north.
Roy and Gion were thrown to the south.
"Go to hell, Lingling's brother!" Shiki laughed arrogantly.
Armament Haki coiled around Oto and Kogarashi. He swung both swords with all his strength, one aimed at Roy, the other aimed at Gion.
His long golden hair whipped wildly in the wind. His face twisted into something savage, and even the ship's wheel lodged behind his head trembled slightly.
The Golden Lion roared and chopped down.
In an instant, the tips of both blades, wrapped in oppressive power, were right in front of Roy and Gion.
It felt like the two of them could die at any moment.
Pfft. Pfft.
Roy shot out both hands at once.
One hand seized Oto.
The other cut across and caught Kogarashi, blocking Gion's line at the same time.
These were Shiki's two strongest slashes, the most terrifying sword strikes he had thrown so far.
They cut straight through Roy's steel like defense.
The blades drove into his palms, slicing through flesh and grinding forward until they hit bone.
They nearly severed Roy's hands.
"Roy!" Gion cried out.
She grabbed Roy's waist with one hand, and with the other she thrust Kinpira straight at Shiki.
"Hmph."
Shiki tilted his head slightly and slipped past the blade.
At the same time, the long sword fixed near his head changed its line midair and slashed back toward Gion.
"I'll kill you!" Gion's face went ice cold, rage boiling in her eyes.
Roy still had not even met her sister yet.
He could not die here.
She would never allow herself to bring a crippled Roy to his sister. That would break her sister's heart.
Shiki sneered, then manipulated his long golden hair. Under his ability, it floated upward, and Armament Haki wrapped around it as it whipped out like a weapon, tangling and lashing through the air to suppress them.
Clang!
Shanks appeared from behind.
But Shiki's thick golden hair suddenly surged again, coated in Armament Haki, and blocked Shanks's slash head on.
"Die!"
Shiki's eyes burned with barely restrained killing intent as he locked onto Roy.
Revenge would begin with this brat.
The Golden Lion at his peak was truly terrifying, living up to every rumor and every shadow of his old reputation.
Roy, Gion, and Shanks were now locked into the hardest battle they had faced since taking to the sea.
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