"Turned into a carpet? Teacups? Guitar strings?"
Those words were like rusty iron nails, hammered one by one into Kaido's proud skull by a giant mallet called "humiliation."
The air completely froze at that moment.
The sea wind that had been howling moments ago suddenly stopped, as though an invisible hand had strangled its throat.
The waves no longer crashed against the shore.
Even the distant flames still burning seemed to lower themselves in fear.
Kaido did not immediately fly into a rage.
He simply stood there quietly.
Those bell-like eyes, once clouded by drunkenness, were now terrifyingly clear.
That clarity was far more frightening than his drunken rampages.
Like an ancient beast entering absolute silence right before a hunt.
"Worororo…"
A low laugh rumbled from deep within Kaido's massive chest.
There was no joy in it.
To everyone present, it sounded like a dull saw grinding through bone, numbing them from scalp to heel.
"Renzo…"
Kaido slowly raised his head.
His thick black hair moved without wind, like black flames burning wildly.
"Good… very good…"
"I've ruled these seas for decades. Even that old bastard never dared say he'd turn me into a carpet."
"And you, a brat who only gives orders from under a blanket, actually dare look down on me like this?!"
BOOOOM!
A visible wave of terrifying dark-purple energy exploded outward from Kaido in all directions.
This was no ordinary Haki.
This was the top-tier Conqueror's Haki of the world's strongest creature, unleashed without restraint in absolute fury!
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The already crumbling ruins nearby instantly disintegrated into fine powder under the pressure, as though subjected to violent vibration.
The ground split apart.
Bottomless cracks spread like spiderwebs, as if all of Dressrosa trembled and screamed beneath Kaido's wrath.
"This is bad!!"
In the distance, Trafalgar D. Water Law turned deathly pale.
He felt as though an invisible hand had seized his heart, making it impossible to breathe.
Roronoa Zoro's swords trembled violently.
Grinding his teeth, he tried to resist the pressure with his own demonic aura, yet his body still slid backward uncontrollably.
This was a Yonko.
This was the true face of the monster known as the strongest creature in a one-on-one battle.
Even while brawling with Rehn earlier, Kaido had still carried traces of drunken amusement.
But now, the man named Renzo had completely awakened the sleeping dragon with just a few casual words.
"Rehn!!!"
Kaido suddenly stepped forward.
BOOM!
The entire island shook violently as though struck by a magnitude-seven earthquake.
Dark blue dragon scales spread crazily across Kaido's gigantic body.
His muscles swelled, veins bulged, and his entire frame expanded again like an inflating monster.
The kanabo in his hand became completely wrapped in dense black-red Haki.
The heavens themselves reacted as black lightning rained from the sky!
"Since your master refuses to get out of bed…"
"Then I'll smash you into meat paste first…"
"And then sink that worthless G-5 base to the bottom of the ocean!!!"
"DIE!!!"
Kaido moved.
This time, there was no flashy named technique.
Only pure power.
Ultimate speed.
And absolute murderous intent.
He raised the kanabo high overhead and transformed into a black meteor of destruction, crashing straight toward Rehn!
The might of this strike was several times greater than the earlier Great Majestic Thunder Bagua!
Space visibly twisted beneath the swing.
It was as if the very concept of "distance" had been smashed apart by this blow.
Facing this apocalyptic strike,
The fake arrogant grin on Rehn's fat face instantly stiffened.
He had just fought Kaido to a standstill.
He trusted his awakened Rumble-Rumble Fruit.
But every instinct screamed at him, he couldn't block this.
Absolutely couldn't.
"Damn it! This old monster's gone insane! Completely insane!"
Cold sweat drenched Rehn's back.
He wanted to dodge.
But beneath Kaido's fully locked Conqueror's Haki pressure, his body felt heavy as lead.
Even turning into lightning felt like moving through a swamp.
For the first time, death felt so close.
"No choice…"
"I wanted to save this…"
At the critical moment,
Rehn neither defended nor fled.
Instead, he did something nobody expected.
He shoved his hand into his clothes and pulled out the solid gold abacus hanging around his neck, the one he normally used for accounting.
The abacus looked vulgar beyond belief.
Gold-plated.
Gem-encrusted.
Overflowing with nouveau riche energy.
But now, Rehn looked at it like a savior.
Like the only god left.
"OPEN FOR ME!!!"
With a shrill scream, Rehn gripped both ends of the abacus and snapped it apart with all his strength!
Crack!
The priceless golden abacus broke cleanly in two.
And from the crack, there was no sound.
No light.
Only a strange gray substance.
An indescribable gRehnss that seemed to represent all "stillness" and "ending" in the world, pouring out like spilled ink.
It wasn't smoke.
Wasn't gas.
It was more like tangible law manifest.
"The trump card Lord Renzo gave me-"
Rehn's tiny eyes widened with fanatic reverence.
Using every ounce of strength left, he hurled the gray substance at Kaido!
"[Divine Decree: Universal Sloth]!!!"
Bzzzzzz
At that moment, time itself seemed paused over the ruins of Dressrosa.
No earth-shattering explosion.
No deafening roar.
Even the sounds of wind, thunder, and crackling Haki vanished completely.
The world became silent.
The gray substance expanded the instant it left Rehn's hands.
It spread, diluted, and assimilated everything around it at a speed beyond physical law.
Within several kilometers, space itself turned monochrome gray.
Inside this gray domain,
Everything slowed.
No. Not merely slowed.
At the microscopic level, the very desire for motion was forcibly stripped away.
Dust in the air stopped drifting.
It hung motionless like a frozen sand painting.
The distant flames remained in the shape of flickering fire, yet no longer moved or emitted heat.
The raging sea became perfectly still.
Towering waves froze in place like glass sculptures.
At the edge of the battlefield, Law remained frozen with his mouth hanging open in terror.
His hand gripped the hilt of his sword, trying to draw it.
But the blade felt welded to the sheath.
No matter how desperately his mind commanded it, his muscles refused to obey even the smallest movement.
Zoro still held his gritted-teeth stance, trying to rush forward and help.
The sharp light remained in his lone eye.
But his body had become a statue.
Even his eyelids could not blink.
Not just the body.
Even thought itself became sluggish and sticky within the gray domain.
"Wh… at… is… th… is…"
Law's thoughts crawled painfully through his mind.
Each idea required thousands of times more effort than normal.
An indescribable urge washed over him repeatedly.
To give up everything.
To lie down.
To sleep forever.
'Too tired.'
'Thinking was too tiring.'
'Living was too tiring.'
'Why fight?'
'Why resist?'
'Wouldn't it be easier… to simply sleep?'
Within this world covered by Renzo's decree of sloth, laziness was no longer an emotion.
It had become the supreme law itself.
Except for Rehn.
As the holder and user of the decree, he carried some sort of mark that exempted him from direct suppression.
"Huff… huff… huff…"
Rehn collapsed onto the ground, gasping heavily.
Sweat poured down like rain.
He looked at the frozen world around him.
At the rocks suspended in midair.
At the crowds with frozen expressions.
A deep shock rose in his heart.
He had always known Lord Renzo was powerful.
He had personally seen Renzo suppress countless enemies with this move.
Yet every time he witnessed it,
This reality-rewriting, law-commanding power still made his scalp go numb.
It even made him want to kneel in worship.
"So this… is Lord Renzo's power…"
Rehn trembled as he wiped sweat from his face.
"Just sealing a strand of his Haki and Devil Fruit power into an abacus can create something like this…"
"If Lord Renzo himself came…"
Rehn dared not imagine it.
Slowly, he stood up and brushed dirt off his pants.
The smug grin of a petty villain returned to his face.
"Heh heh, Kaido, weren't you acting tough?"
"Weren't you gonna smash me to death?"
Rehn turned toward the center of the gray domain, where the pressure of the decree was strongest.
And then, his grin froze.
The tiny eyes that had just narrowed smugly suddenly widened completely.
As if he had witnessed the most impossible and horrifying thing in the world.
"H-how is this possible?!"
Rehn's voice became shrill with terror.
At the center of the gray, motionless world,
The seven-meter-tall Beast Kaido, still frozen mid-swing,
Was not entirely still.
"Graaa… graaa…"
An ear-grinding sound echoed from Kaido's body.
Like gigantic rusted gears forcing themselves to turn after ten thousand years.
It wasn't mechanical.
It was the sound of Kaido's bones, muscles, and blood vessels screaming under the strain of resisting absolute stillness itself!
The expression on Kaido's savage face slowly, very slowly, began changing.
From rage…
Into ultimate ferocity and resistance.
Inside his bloodshot eyes, the pupils that had gone unfocused under the decree slowly sharpened again.
Deep within them burned an undying ghostly flame,
The Conqueror's spirit of the world's strongest creature!
"Ren…"
A low, hoarse sound squeezed painfully from Kaido's throat.
"…zo…"
The moment those two syllables escaped,
BOOM!!!
Though weak, within this silent gray world it sounded like thunder!
Blake-purple Haki forcibly burst through the gray suppression and formed a thin yet incredibly resilient barrier around Kaido's body!
"MOVE!!!"
Kaido roared inwardly.
His will burned.
Every muscle in his body tore apart.
Blood seeped from his pores.
Yet he ignored it all.
In this world where even light itself had grown lazy,
This man was using a body and will beyond biological limits to defy heaven itself!
Crack… crack… crack…
The kanabo in his hand moved.
Slowly.
So slowly.
Like a snail crawling.
One centimeter…
Two centimeters…
But it was truly moving.
"Holy… shit…"
"Is… is this even human?!"
"This is Lord Renzo's strongest decree! He spent three whole days and nights making it! (Actually, he just slept for three straight days while accumulating it.)"
"Even a Fleet Admiral… even the other Admirals… wouldn't be able to move under this kind of law suppression!"
"This monster…"
"He can actually… still move?!"
Watching the kanabo slowly approaching him, though the motion was sluggish, the pressure remained overwhelming,
Rehn stopped hesitating.
His speed exploded to the absolute limit.