"Roooar!"
The dragon's roar shook the heavens.
The massive azure dragon coiled across the sky above Ringo, its body so enormous that it almost blotted out the entire firmament over the snowy land.
The gentle snowfall was swept upward by the violent air currents and flung high into the clouds. Thick storm clouds gathered with Kaido's dragon body as the eye of the vortex. Purple bolts of lightning slithered through the dark mass, rumbling ominously with every flash.
Every single scale on that dragon body gleamed with a cold metallic luster. His whiskers danced wildly in the storm. Those vertical pupils, molten gold cast into narrow slits, locked firmly onto the tiny figure on the ground as if staring at an ant.
Kaido had fully unleashed his strongest form.
The wind answered his call.
The thunder moved at his command.
"Destructive Wind!"
With a single lash of his tail, several cyan vacuum slashes ripped the air apart.
They were no longer mere blades of wind, but ultra compressed air pressure scythes sharp enough to cut through anything. Wherever they passed, even the air seemed to split open with jagged black tears.
Facing an attack that could cleave mountains apart, Kael did not even move his feet. He simply nudged his naginata to the left with a casual flick.
Something strange happened.
An invisible ripple spread from the tip of the blade. Those terrifying vacuum slashes slammed into it like a current caught by a whirlpool and had their trajectories wrenched aside in an instant.
They screamed past the hem of Kael's coat, hurtling into the distance where they shaved a massive cliff hundreds of meters tall cleanly in half. The cut surface was smooth as a mirror.
The first strike missed. In the vortex of thunderclouds above, a rainstorm of lightning had already begun to fall.
"Thunder!"
Countless thick purple bolts intertwined into a vast net that fell from the sky, enclosing the hundred meter radius around Kael completely, intent on turning him into charcoal.
Kael tilted his head back, glanced up at the dense weave of lightning, and curled his lip in irritation.
The naginata drew an elegant half circle in front of him.
A ring of electromagnetic ripples, almost invisible to the naked eye, spread outward. The sea of lightning froze midair for a heartbeat, as if it had encountered its true sovereign.
Then, as though given new orders, the bolts collectively turned aside and slammed into the empty snowfield off to the side.
Booming thunder rolled without end.
The ground convulsed. Massive charred craters were blasted open across the snowfield, so deep their bottoms could not be seen. Billowing black smoke mingled with white steam, creating a scene straight out of an apocalyptic painting.
Two probing attacks had been brushed aside like nothing. Kaido's fury was ignited completely.
He drew in a deep breath. His serpentine neck arched higher and higher. A blinding light flared within his colossal chest, as if he had swallowed a miniature sun.
A heartbeat later, a torrent of energy so hot it warped the air exploded from his jaws.
"Bolo Breath!"
The dragon's breath was like divine wrath, sweeping across the snowfield with unstoppable force.
Where the beam passed, the earth was plowed into a deep chasm. Hard frozen soil melted instantly into churning red magma.
The terrifying heat slammed into the extreme cold of the ice and snow, and the violent clash spawned a towering wall of steam that swallowed the entire battlefield. In a blink, everything was wrapped in a world of white where one could not see a hand in front of their face.
In that dense mist, visibility was less than half a meter.
Kaido's draconic head loomed and vanished within the fog. His golden eyes swept warily across the blank whiteness, searching for a trace of Kael's presence.
That was when Kael's lazy drawl drifted out, unbothered by distance or obstacle, echoing from every direction in the mist, impossible to pin down.
"Why are you and Douglas Bullet the same kind of idiot? Some things do not get stronger just because they are bigger."
Kael's silhouette flickered somewhere in the mist, like he did not take the enormous dragon seriously at all, muttering to himself as if this were a casual evening walk.
"If I count the years, Bullet should have finished his little Marine Buster Call deluxe set meal by now and checked into Impel Down's VIP suite."
The name "Douglas Bullet" made Kaido's pupils contract sharply.
Before he could respond, however, Kael's tone suddenly dropped.
The lazy indifference vanished. In its place came a pressure that allowed no argument, a voice that rolled through the mist and across the snowy land.
"But there is one thing I really hate the most."
"And that is when someone floats above my head and looks down at me with that condescending gaze."
"So…"
"Lower your head for me!!!"
The instant the words fell, the world itself seemed to flip.
The thick fog blanketing the snowfield and the storm clouds coiled across the heavens were torn open by a colossal unseen hand.
A blinding beam of golden light burst downward, like the very first ray of creation, ripping through mist and cloud alike and driving away all darkness. In an instant, the world turned bright as midday.
"What… what is that?!" Moria gasped.
He raised an arm to shield his eyes from the searing radiance and peered through his fingers, catching a glimpse of a sight he would remember for the rest of his life.
An enormous phantom figure had appeared before Kaido's gigantic dragon form.
It was a towering war god whose very presence defied description. A tall crown thrust toward the skies atop its head. Golden armor encased its entire body. Its face was stern and majestic, like a divine general who had strode down from the heavens.
Its height surpassed even the clouds. Kaido's dragon body, which had just filled the sky, now looked almost… small in front of it.
The golden armored god's eyes lowered, pupils cold with a divinity that looked down on all living things. Slowly, it raised one golden hand, a hand as large as an island.
"What…"
Kaido felt it clearly, a force that came from the depths of his soul, an absolute suppression that could not be resisted.
Under the stunned stares of everyone present, that golden hand moved.
Its motion looked almost slow. In truth, it could not be dodged.
The god's hand closed around the azure dragon's neck.
Just like grabbing a mudfish.
Then it slammed down.
Boom.
The impact shook not just Ringo, but the entire sea region around Wano.
The snowfield was hammered into a titanic crater, so deep it seemed to have no bottom. Webs of fractures spread outward from the pit's center until they vanished at the edge of the horizon.
At the bottom of that crater, the dragon that had once blotted out the sky was now deeply embedded in the rock layer, its body half buried. Azure scales had lost their luster. Skin and flesh were torn and burned in countless places, scorched black.
That massive draconic head lolled to the side, eyes rolled back, completely unconscious.
The golden light slowly faded. The phantom godly avatar dissolved into motes of radiance and scattered.
Only the bottomless crater remained.
And on its rim, a lone figure stood.
Hands back in his coat pockets, black windcoat snapping in the wind, Kael Grylls looked down at the defeated dragon, as calm as if he were admiring the scenery.
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