"Since you're taking it… then take it from me."
Seeing Byakuren catch the Tailed Beast Bomb he'd smashed down, Garp's grin grew even wider, overflowing with satisfaction.
High above the battlefield, his arms sank slightly. Two visible arcs of red-black lightning coiled around his hands like twin black dragons.
With a sharp metallic clang, both his palms were enveloped in a dense, dark reddish sheen, looking as if they'd turned into solid hands of forged iron.
"The kind you'd stake your life on."
The moment that deep, icy shout rang out, Garp's palms, pressing down on the two Tailed Beast Bombs, suddenly plunged.
No Rokushiki.
No techniques.
Nothing but pure Haki hardening, and with those blackened hands he pressed down from above.
An overwhelming force cascaded like a tsunami. The gravity across the battlefield seemed to multiply in an instant.
The air within their clash compressed into a thick, liquid-like current, flowing with the turbulence of a raging river.
Feeling the earth-shaking power transmitted through his three tails, the fully Tailed Beast-transformed Byakuren couldn't help but wonder.
Was Garp's raw strength so heavy that even the skies above the Land of Water would collapse under it?
Soon, it wasn't a question anymore.
Even throwing in everything he had, Byakuren's mind held only one thought as he failed to withstand the pressure:
The sky is falling…
Against a power no human should possess, one that could fight a Tailed Beast head-on, even overwhelm it, Byakuren's bulging eyes burst with crimson veins.
Even giving his all, he couldn't stop his three tails from sinking. The icy hands layered over them cracked piece by piece.
"I… I can't stop it…"
Watching his three Ice Hands shatter, his three tails smashed down, and two Tailed Beast Bombs bearing down straight toward his face, Byakuren's lone eye nearly split open.
His heart filled with choking frustration and unwillingness.
He knew it clearly, even with a second lifetime, even as the Three-Tails' Jinchuriki, he could never match Garp in a frontal clash.
But faced with the breath of death sweeping toward him, all resentment and unwillingness dissolved into a weak, defeated sigh.
"Release!"
Byakuren roared with bitter fury in his heart.
The three tails supporting the Tailed Beast Bombs vanished abruptly, along with the body of the Three-Tails itself.
In that lightning-flash instant, he forcibly undid his complete Tailed Beast Transformation.
"Swift Release!"
Returning from Isobu's form to his human body, he seized the brief moment of sudden weightlessness and instantly used Swift Release, shooting backward like a streak of light.
"Stay right there for this old man."
But even before Byakuren activated Swift Release, Garp had already seen through it. Both hands flicked outward at once.
The two Tailed Beast Bombs, which were like rubber playballs in his grip, became bowling balls the moment he sent them flying.
Shrunken Byakuren had barely dashed a hundred meters away when the two "bowling ball" Tailed Beast Bombs were already closing in on him.
"Ice Release: Crystal Wall"
"Storm Release!"
Full of both anger and helplessness, he stopped running.
He drew massive amounts of Tailed Beast chakra from the Three-Tails sealed inside him, then slammed both hands against the ground.
Crack!
A colossal ice wall, spanning hundreds of meters, burst from the earth and braced itself against the incoming Tailed Beast Bombs.
But against two Tailed Beast Bombs, the ice wall lasted only a heartbeat before shattering. The instant it broke, a towering storm erupted beneath the bombs.
The ice wall shattered. Storm, launched.
The two Tailed Beast Bombs skimmed past Byakuren's face, hurling thousands of meters away. A thunderous explosion followed.
Miles of forest froze solid, then were shredded apart, leaving behind nothing but a barren wasteland of cracked yellow soil.
"Geppo!"
Byakuren had no time to breathe. Garp stepped into the sky, shockwaves tearing trees from the ground as he burst forward.
He appeared in front of Byakuren in a blink, right fist driving toward his face like an eagle diving from the sky.
The massive black fist filled Byakuren's entire vision, and terror surged through him.
Any normal Kage from the village era would've been too slow, and too mentally fragile, to respond.
Before Garp's Iron Fist even hit, they would have collapsed under the sheer oppressive force rolling off it.
But Byakuren was a First-Generation Mizukage level shinobi, someone who had survived countless bloodbaths in the Warring States Period.
His iron willpower held firm under the crushing pressure of Garp's punch, allowing him to barely complete the hand seals.
Fwooo..
A howl of wind burst forth. His body dissolved into a storm so faint the naked eye could barely perceive it, scattering in all directions.
But what almost made him break down on the spot was.
Even though his body had turned into intangible wind, Garp's fist seemed capable of ignoring all storms… and grabbing his physical form directly.
"Ah!"
Garp's punch landed. A deep, explosive boom echoed across the sky.
In the next moment, out of the empty air, where nothing but wind should exist, Byakuren's body suddenly reformed.
He reverted from wind to flesh, coughing blood as he was blasted away. Like a falling meteor, he smashed heavily into the ground hundreds of meters away.
"H-How is this possible…?"
Lying in a deep crater, covered in blood, face pale as death, Byakuren stared wide-eyed. Shock consumed his gaze, his expression, his entire heart.
He couldn't comprehend it.
The ultimate technique he had painstakingly developed specifically to counter Garp's Fist.
Was completely useless.
.........
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