"FUCK YOUR MOTHER... You inbred moron!"
When Rehn's line, packed with boundless contempt and the ultimate blasphemous insult, rang clearly in Jalmack's ears, the air across the entire Ryugu Palace plaza seemed to freeze.
King Neptune and the three princes' hearts nearly stopped.
Princess Shirahoshi was so frightened that she stopped crying.
The CP0 guards stiffened, their minds going blank.
They… what had they just heard?
This fat man…
Was insulting a "god"?!
And using words so crude, so direct, so… painfully accurate?
"My, my~"
Kizaru helplessly held his forehead, though beneath his lenses his eyes gleamed with the excitement of someone enjoying a spectacle.
"This has really… stirred up a gigantic hornet's nest~"
Jalmack, the World Noble, still held his arrogant pose.
Beneath his glass helmet, his face instantly flushed liver-red at the word inbred, then turned iron-blue at moron.
In his lofty eyes, confusion appeared first, then a humiliation and fury like a volcanic eruption filled them.
"Ah…"
A shriek, no longer human, sharp enough to pierce eardrums, burst from deep within Jalmack's throat.
"AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!"
"Kill! Kill him!!"
He completely lost his mind. All the dignity of a "god," all pretense of elegance, was shattered in that moment.
Like a deranged oversized infant whose toys had been stolen, he jumped in place and screamed:
"You useless trash! CP0! Guards!!"
"What are you standing around for?!"
"Kill him! Tear that fat man apart alive!!"
"And that Haiiroyo! And that Kizaru! They're accomplices too!!"
"Kill them! Kill them all!! And destroy this damned Fish-Man Island along with them!!!"
Jalmack's order struck like a mad curse, making every CP0 agent and guard tremble.
'He'd gone insane.'
'This Celestial Dragon had completely lost it.'
'He had actually ordered an attack… on Marine Admirals?!'
The CP0 commander's face turned pale. He knew that once they moved, no matter the outcome, they were finished.
But…
A Celestial Dragon's command was absolute.
The punishment for disobedience was worse than death.
"…Yes! Saint Jalmack!"
Despair flashed through the commander's eyes. He drew the long blade at his waist and roared to the hundreds of elite guards behind him:
"All units! Carry out Saint Jalmack's will!"
"Targets, Haiiroyo! Kizaru! And… that fat man!"
"Attack!!!"
"Soru!"
"Shingan!"
"Rankyaku!"
In an instant, dozens of CP0 elites struck first.
They turned into afterimages, ignoring the kneeling Neptune royal family, and attacked Renzo's group from every direction like blades.
Behind them, hundreds of guards raised their weapons and charged murderously.
The Ryugu Palace plaza filled instantly with killing intent.
"Maa~… this has become the most troublesome situation."
Kizaru sighed and slowly raised his hand, golden light gathering at his fingertip.
He was lazy, but under a direct CP0 assault he had no choice but to act in "self-defense."
However, just before he moved, the man who had been lying on the floating sofa the entire time, seemingly asleep, finally stirred.
Renzo slowly pulled the blanket off his face.
He didn't look at the charging CP0, nor the furious Jalmack.
He simply… yawned.
"…Sigh."
A soft sigh, yet every person present heard it clearly.
"Rehn."
"At your service, Lord Renzo!!"
Rehn's fat face trembled with excitement. He had waited far too long to hear those words.
Renzo spoke in the same lazy tone, as if giving an insignificant instruction:
"Finish it quickly."
"They're… too noisy."
"Understood!!!"
The instant Renzo shouted those two words, his "simple and humorous" persona shattered completely.
BOOM!!!
An indescribable, terrifying pressure, like a god awakening, erupted from his round body.
Golden lightning burst forth, forming tangible armor over his entire form.
"A bunch of insects… daring to disturb Lord Renzo's sacred vacation…"
Rehn slowly floated into the air. His squinting eyes became two blazing suns of golden flame.
Looking down at the charging CP0 and guards, his voice rolled like heavenly thunder across all Fish-Man Island.
"Insects!!!"
Buzz
Two breaths.
Only two breaths of time.
The foremost CP0 elites had already reached striking distance with Shingan and Rankyaku.
Rehn didn't even lower his head to look at them.
He simply inhaled.
"Two Hundred Million Volts, God's Silence."
His plump hand gently pressed downward.
There was no earth-shattering explosion, no apocalyptic beam of destruction.
There was only… light.
A vast golden-white radiance swallowed the entire Ryugu Palace plaza and half of Fish-Man Island.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!
The shriek of electric current drowned every shout and battle cry.
It wasn't lightning.
It was a tsunami of pure energy.
Centered on Rehn, a golden-white thunder domain over a kilometer wide expanded instantly.
Indiscriminate. Total coverage.
"What?!"
The grins on the front-line CP0 elites froze.
Their Tekkai was as fragile as paper before 200 million volts.
Their Soru was slower than a snail before lightning.
"…Ah…"
No screams.
No struggle.
The instant they touched the light, 0.01 seconds,
Dozens of CP0 elites, along with the hundreds of guards behind them, carbonized, blackened, and finally… turned into the most primitive form, ash.
"…"
The light at Kizaru's fingertip slowly faded.
He adjusted his glasses and muttered quietly while looking at the now "clean" plaza:
"That's the most efficient 'cleanup' I've ever seen~"
Three breaths.
When the golden-white radiance faded, the world fell silent.
The Ryugu Palace plaza was still the same plaza.
But the charging CP0 agents… and the shouting guards… were gone.
As if they had never existed.
The air was filled with the thick smell of ozone and burnt matter.
Only charred human-shaped shadows remained on the ground.
Total annihilation.
Not missing, no dead bodies. Nothing left.
King Neptune and his three sons knelt petrified, unable to move or think.
Princess Shirahoshi rolled her eyes back and fainted inside her bubble.
Rehn slowly descended from the air and landed with a heavy thud, tiny arcs of electricity still crackling across his body.
"Done."
He ran back to Renzo's sofa and grinned eagerly.
"Lord Renzo! All 'noise sources' have been eliminated! Extremely quiet! Very efficient!"
Renzo nodded in satisfaction.
"Mm. Acceptable efficiency."
...
Meanwhile, at the far end of the plaza, Jalmack's black warship still floated intact. Rehn had carefully controlled the range and spared it as a trophy.
On the bow, Jalmack, the lofty "god," remained frozen in his earlier shouting posture.
Beneath the glass helmet, his twisted face now held only blankness.
What… had he just seen?
His guards…
The elites borrowed from CP0… his so-called "divine enforcers"…
Gone? In one second?
All gone?!
"Ah… ah…"
Air leaked uselessly from his throat.
His bloated body began to tremble violently.
"Y-you…"
He shakily pointed at the harmless-looking fat man wagging his tail at Renzo.
Rehn noticed and smiled kindly.
"Hey there, Mr. Inbred Moron."
"Why are you still standing?"
He walked toward the ship step by step.
"D-don't come closer…"
For the first time, the "god" let out a terrified wail.
"No! You can't come closer! I'm a Celestial Dragon! I'm a god!!"
"God?"
Rehn tilted his head, face full of disdain.
"You? Trash that gets winded just walking?"
He reached the ship and looked up at Jalmack, now collapsed on deck.
Rehn slowly raised his right hand.
A golden spark danced at his fingertips.
"My Lord Renzo," Rehn said coldly, "hates most… noisy, ugly, and completely useless nuisances like you."
"N-no! Don't kill me! Don't kill me!!"
Jalmack finally broke.
He felt it, the threat of death.
This fat man… this demon… truly dared to kill him!
"Help! Help! I don't want to die!!"
He crawled frantically across the deck toward the cabin.
But just as Rehn was about to deliver divine punishment, his body suddenly froze.
A foul stench, accompanied by an ill-timed muffled sound, spread from the bow of the ship.
"…?"
Rehn paused and sniffed.
His face instantly twisted.
"Ugh!!"
He stumbled back three steps and clamped his nose, his expression more horrified than when he was killing people.
On the warship,
Jalmack, the exalted "god," sat collapsed on the ground.
His pristine white suit, the symbol of divine sanctity, was rapidly being soaked by a yellow-brown, indescribable filth.
The stench filled the entire plaza.
Under extreme terror… Jalmack had lost control of his bladder and bowels.
"…"
Rehn stood frozen.
He looked at this "shocking" scene before him, then at his own hand still raised in the air, ready to unleash divine lightning.
An unprecedented sense of humiliation welled up in his heart.
He, Rehn, the "Thunder God," Lord Renzo's chief "cleaner", had been stopped… by a pile of excrement?!
"I... fuck... you..."
His whole body trembled in rage.
"You pile of... walking... ORGANIC FERTILIZER!!!"
His howl was even more miserable than Jalmack's earlier scream.