The moment Hakai was unleashed, Ortoren's figure was swallowed up in an instant.
His first instinct was to turn intangible and slip away from the brutal blow, but as Hakai crashed down on him, he felt it. Mixed into that raging shockwave were two streams of Conqueror's Haki, overflowing everywhere.
There was no dealing with this using intangibility. And of course there wasn't. This was Charlotte Linlin and Kaidou's combined technique. An attack created by two top-tier monsters would naturally be airtight. There was no way they'd leave a hole big enough for something as basic as "turn intangible" to bypass it.
If they went through all the trouble of unleashing a trump card like this, only for a Logia user to dodge it without a scratch by going intangible, that would be beyond embarrassing.
The moment he confirmed he couldn't avoid it that way, Ortoren's entire body shifted into that black-gold state.
If he couldn't dodge, then he'd take it head-on.
Hakai came fast, and it was gone just as fast. In the blink of an eye, the ground directly in front of Kaidou and Charlotte Linlin was shaved down by at least two meters. The once barren, jagged terrain of the island had become smooth and flat, almost like a mirror.
Beyond the island, the sea's surface was scraped clean, as if a layer had been peeled off. The shockwave dragged that "skin" of seawater with it as it surged outward, giving the ocean no chance to resist. In the next instant, it had already raced past the horizon.
Maybe once that force dispersed beyond the edge of sight, the remaining turbulence would gather into a massive tsunami.
Hundreds of meters away, on the newly smoothed ground, Ortoren stood planted in place like a nail hammered into stone.
The justice coat on his shoulders was in tatters now, flapping in the wind and showing holes of every size. The black vest on his upper body had been shredded into something closer to a rag, stuck to his chest with no trace of its original shape. His brown work pants, once full-length and tucked into his boots, had been torn off at the knees, turning them into shorts.
And strangely enough, the battle-worn look suited him. Paired with Ortoren's broad, powerful frame, it even had a certain edge to it.
"Damn… that hurts…" Ortoren flexed his arms stiffly and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth.
From the outside, he didn't look much different. There were no obvious wounds. But inside, every one of his organs felt like it was groaning in pain.
That shockwave hadn't just hit him, it had flooded through him completely. His black-gold training had only hardened his muscles so far. It hadn't reached his internal organs. So his exterior held up, but the damage inside was anything but light.
"Kh…" Ortoren grimaced, worked something up in his throat, then spat.
What hit the ground was a filthy, clotted mass of bloody fluid.
Across from him, Kaidou stared. "Even that didn't knock him down?"
Hakai was the combined technique he and Charlotte Linlin took pride in. They'd always believed that on this sea, no one could take it head-on.
But Ortoren had.
Charlotte Linlin watched him, the excitement in her eyes growing even stronger.
"Looks like I haven't sacrificed enough," she snarled. She stepped forward and growled, "Soul Sacrifice: Gluttony Power!!!"
Charlotte Linlin's normal height was already a ridiculous 8.8 meters. Before teaming up with Kaidou to unleash Hakai, she'd already sacrificed a round of soul power to boost her physical abilities, pushing her height to around thirteen meters, easily a third larger than before.
At only seven meters tall, Kaidou looked like a kid standing beside her, barely reaching her waist. And with her figure still holding its shape, that only made one thing clear: her legs were freakishly long.
Now, with Charlotte Linlin already close to thirteen meters, she devoured an even greater mass of soul power. Her enormous body swelled again, and in the blink of an eye, she rose to something like sixteen or seventeen meters.
That was already on par with a large portion of the giant race. Among giants, an adult's height generally doesn't fall below twelve meters. That's their racial baseline. According to records, even giants afflicted with "dwarfism" can still reach at least twelve meters tall.
Among the giant race, the ones afflicted with gigantism are even more terrifying. Some scholars believe the giant branch known as the "demons," the group Oars belonged to, were several times larger than normal giants for two reasons: they were ancient giants, and they likely suffered from the giant race's "gigantism."
As for that so-called colossal warship, San Juan Wolf, that's obviously an exception among exceptions and not something you can use as a reference.
Generally speaking, the stronger the giant, the taller and more powerfully built they are. Tough giants like Dorry and Brogy typically stand over twenty meters.
Charlotte Linlin wasn't quite that huge right now, but she was already on par with an ordinary giant.
Kaidou didn't even come up to the length of her legs. And Ortoren… at over three meters tall, it wasn't obvious from far away, but up close he didn't even reach her knee.
Basically, the kind of height difference where he'd have to jump just to land a hit on her knee.
"Hey, hey…" Ortoren swallowed as he stared at the sight.
He'd always known Charlotte Linlin had a technique that let her devour soul power to strengthen her body. She'd used it during the war in Wano Country.
But in his memory, back then it hadn't boosted her to anything this outrageous.
Now, even before they traded a single blow, Ortoren could already feel the terrifying pressure rolling off her from afar. In her normal state, he had no chance of winning. None.
"If you could do this, you should've wiped out Whitebeard ages ago…" Ortoren thought.
The truth was, this kind of reinforcement was something Charlotte Linlin had developed after feeling the pressure Ortoren brought. She'd pushed her ability deeper and deeper, crafting power meant specifically to deal with her own "filial" son.
Even as he reeled, Ortoren could tell she was already at her limit, and there was no way she could hold this state for long.
Up until now, even though her looks had started to slip, Charlotte Linlin's figure had still been in good shape. But the moment she entered this state, her body warped noticeably.
She was no longer sharply shaped and well-proportioned. Her muscles had expanded too violently, leaving her looking swollen and heavy, with a hint of the thick, bulky impression she'd have in her later years.
That change meant she was reaching the limit of how much control she had over her own body. Push any further and she'd lose it. At that point, it wouldn't be her controlling the power, it would be the power controlling her.
"If you don't show your real skill now, brat, Mama will finish you within a minute!" Charlotte Linlin snarled.
The instant the words left her mouth, she kicked off the ground. Her massive, giant-like body accelerated hard enough to set off bursts of sonic booms. Wherever she passed, violent air currents erupted outward, spilling into shockwaves.
Kaidou had been standing beside her, and for a split second he wasn't ready. The stray impact nearly knocked him off his feet.
And in that instant, Kaidou understood. Charlotte Linlin and Benn Ortoren—this mother and son—had redefined what the word "monster" even meant.
He and Whitebeard had both been called monsters, but at this moment, they could no longer keep up with the level those two were on.
Kaidou was proud by nature, but right then, he felt powerless.
It was a boundary you were simply born with. Even someone like him, a natural freak who'd been called a monster since childhood, couldn't reach that line now.
Only then did he finally understand why Newgate had been completely unable to fight back against Ortoren at his peak on Achino Island.
"Has the end of power… really reached the other shore?" Kaidou murmured bitterly to himself.
All of that passed through his mind, but in reality it was only a single instant.
In that instant, Charlotte Linlin had already reached Ortoren. A fist nearly half the size of his body came down like a meteor, smashing toward where he stood.
It was precisely because Ortoren possessed such power that he feared it.
He had no intention of taking it head-on. At the critical moment, two arcs of lightning flashed from his feet and the tips of his hair, and his figure vanished from the spot.
At the same time, Charlotte Linlin's punch drove into the ground. The entire island seemed to bounce on the sea for a heartbeat, and the surrounding waters couldn't bear the force. Huge waves rose in layers and spread outward in every direction.
On the warship, Momonga held the broadcast Den Den Mushi, watching the ship lift as the waves surged beneath it. His expression stayed steady as he spoke into it.
"Ortoren, what you've been waiting for is in your hands!"
The moment he finished, a bolt of lightning more than ten meters thick erupted from the shaking island, forming a blinding pillar of light that shot straight into the sky.