The mansion sprawled across an enormous area, large enough to fit dozens of buildings and house thousands of people.
Yet under a Yonko's attack, it was as fragile as a toy. Just the aftershock alone flattened the entire complex.
And that was with the opponent merely using an attack he was casually accustomed to.
Multiple Thunder Baguas!
Ren lay in the middle of a meteor-like crater, cracks spreading across the blood-red armor covering his body.
Before he could even get back up, another massive black shadow entered his field of vision.
In his human-beast form, Kaido swung his kanabo, Hassaikai, and descended from the sky. His violent eyes were locked firmly onto the target below.
"Brat, you're freakishly tough, aren't you?Your feel is about the same as King's.
But I'm not someone you can stop! Try this on for size!"
Lightning coiled all around Kaido's body.
Strands of electricity coursed through him, pushing his already monstrous physique to an entirely new level.
Laughing wildly, he unleashed his Conqueror's Haki and wrapped it around Hassaikai.
"Thunder Bagua!"
With one step, Kaido turned into a bolt of lightning.
That was speed bordering on teleportation. In the original timeline, even Luffy, who possessed future-seeing Observation Haki, had not been able to completely evade it.
Using Thunder Bagua once again, he brought down an even more ferocious strike!
Boom—!!
Like wrathful thunder descending from the heavens, the already crumbling King's Plateau collapsed cleanly under the blow.
The King's Plateau, with an area nearly the size of an entire residential district, a height of several kilometers, and an overall mass exceeding hundreds of millions of tons—
before this strike, it was as brittle as tofu!
As the second explosion rang out,
a beam of lightning, together with a straight upward shockwave, blasted into the sky and in an instant tore apart the gloomy heavens!
The sky… split open!
This was—
Conqueror's Haki Infusion · Thunder Bagua!
"Worororo… your presence dropped a lot… but you're still alive?Come to think of it, you're a pretty amazing guy. To have Haki at this level at your age… is it that I haven't lived long enough, or just haven't seen enough?"
Amid the dust cloud churning hundreds of meters high, the drunken Kaido laughed loudly and transformed into an azure dragon, swimming out into the open.
His enormous dragon eyes swept across the surroundings. Then, from the tavern that had been reduced to ruins, he pulled out a barrel of liquor and started drinking in huge gulps.
He did not care whether his enemy lived or died. To him, this was all just play.
He fought when the mood struck him—and drank himself deeper into drunkenness when the mood rose again!
Rumble—!!
Not far away, the King's Plateau finally gave way completely, producing an earthshaking roar.
As Dressrosa's iconic landmark, the King's Plateau now seemed as frail and insignificant as a toy castle.
As it collapsed, rock fragments weighing tens of thousands of tons rained down.
At the center of the plateau's collapse, the earlier strike had carved out a giant crater like one left by a fallen meteor.
Inside that scar,
Ren lay at the center of the lava-like pit, split apart into pieces.
His body had been blown into chunks, scattered here and there through the molten flow—literally torn to pieces.
But he was not dead.
Or rather, in his current state, this only counted as being injured.
That's right—
merely injured!
The pieces of flesh strewn across the molten surface began to glow, transforming into flowing bands of energy.
Then they gathered together, and within mere seconds, a new Ren was re-formed.
Severed limbs?
A detached head?
Missing organs?
For Ren at this stage, none of those were fatal injuries anymore.
One of the powers within the Blood Demon Art was its astonishing healing speed. It could regenerate severed limbs, regrow organs, and more.
As long as he had sufficient energy, he could heal himself endlessly.
It was a thoroughly demonic and wicked cultivation art.
And Ren also possessed a health bar mechanic, along with Meteor Burst as a vast energy source.
Once everything had been integrated through digitization, it produced the abilities of Phase Two · Fallen Angel.
The result was that unless all of his energy was completely exhausted,
there was no real distinction between whether Ren was injured or not.
The shackles of flesh meant nothing to him now, because in this moment he was closer to a life-form made of energy.
Did lightning and light-heat have things like a vital heart weakness?
Of course not.
As Ren's consciousness returned, he swept out with Observation Haki and immediately got his answer.
He had been knocked down again.
"So that just now… was Conqueror's Haki Infusion?"
That strike Kaido had just used was clearly different from the earlier Thunder Bagua.
He had probably noticed something wrong during the hundreds of exchanges before this.
Ren was too hard—and too durable.
A normal Thunder Bagua could not inflict genuine damage on him.
Just like Demolition Gust and the tornadoes, it could not break through the blood-red armor covering his body, that armor-like Protective Qi Barrier.
In truth, that thing was the Blood Demon Protection from the Blood Demon Art.
Ren had simply shaped it into armor and supplied it with an enormous amount of energy, turning it into something he could maintain as a standard defense.
So Kaido had used Conqueror's Haki Infusion—the technique of coating attacks with Conqueror's Haki.
That was a technique unique to the very strongest, or rather, the threshold skill of top-tier monsters.
Its source was Conqueror's Haki, one of the three forms of Haki. The extreme rarity of the required aptitude meant this was a power with an extraordinarily high barrier to entry.
And the mental oppression and impact it possessed were not all that Conqueror's Haki could do.
A true peak-level fighter could compress and condense that formless pressure.
In other words, by manipulating Conqueror's Haki with extreme precision, they could transform it into something halfway between illusion and reality, then use it to coat attacks or defenses.
It was similar to Armament Haki—
but far stronger and far superior!
In the original timeline, Luffy had been defeated by Kaido several times.
The very first time was with Thunder Bagua in Kuri, where a single strike had knocked Gear Fourth Luffy flat, deflated him, and rendered him unconscious.
At that time, Kaido had not even used Conqueror's Haki Infusion.
That was basically the dividing line.
And Ren, relying on the Indestructible Vajra Glazed Body together with Blood Demon Protection to create his blood-red armor, had reached the point where even taking those hits head-on was manageable.
Still, Kaido's combat experience truly was terrifyingly rich.
In just a few short minutes of fighting, he had already grasped the truth.
The moment he realized ordinary Thunder Bagua could not deal real damage, he immediately switched to the Conqueror's Haki-infused version.
And that strike
had indeed surpassed the limits of Ren's normal defenses.
"So there's still such a huge gap…"
Ren looked up at the falling rain of stone overhead, his wings trembling as he left the area.
"The gap really is still too big. Kaido hasn't even used Roaring Thunder Bagua or his other Conqueror's Haki-infused techniques yet… In the end, it's still because I'm not strong enough.
What a pity the Potara Earrings can't be used, otherwise I could try fusing into a two-in-one form.
Still, they were only Silver Roulette prizes that cost ten million each. It's normal that they can't reach this level."
The King's Plateau had completely collapsed, turning into a mountain-like wasteland of shattered stone.
With one step, Ren appeared at the edge of the ruins.
Then, beside his ear, that familiar booming laughter rang out again.
"Wororororo! Your toughness still isn't enough, you damn brat."
Kaido remained in human form as he walked over from afar, still clutching a liquor barrel and chugging from it.
In his drunken state, he looked at Ren—who was almost completely unscathed—with keen interest, clearly a little surprised.
"You really are a strange one. Your presence only drops for a while, then returns to normal?
You're even harder to deal with than King. At most, he's freakishly tough. But you—you're freakishly tough and ridiculously hard to kill.
But—aren't you planning to surrender?
You won't be so lucky next time. I'm starting to get genuinely excited, you know?"
It sounded like mockery.
But in truth, it was a sincere warning.
There was no need to continue, was there?
This was your level.
If this keeps going, I might accidentally kill you.
That was the sort of meaning behind it.
"…Drunkenness. That's your method?"
Ren looked at Kaido, who was clearly getting even more drunk, and his expression grew grave.
Shuron Hakke?
"Wororororo! Sharp brat. This is Shuron Hakke. Ordinary people never get to see this state.
In this state, my Haki gets stronger, and I've got eight different moods—some good, some bad.
A few of them will definitely work in your favor, but whether you can seize the chance is up to you."
Kaido laughed loudly, tossed aside the barrel, and entered his human-beast form once again. But this time, his transformation was clearly different.
His body grew even larger, almost shooting up to around ten meters tall.
More and more of his body was covered in azure scales. Aside from his exposed chest, nearly every other part was clad in them.
They spread across him like armor.
His originally blue skin deepened further, taking on an almost purple hue.
At the same time, subtle changes appeared in his face, and his overall aura continued to rise.
"Brat, you're strong. You've taken so many of my Thunder Baguas and stayed standing. Even King would've gone down by now.
But you're still keeping yourself whole. So you're definitely not some shallow little actor playing children's games.
I don't know why you came to Dressrosa. I don't know what you want to do.
I don't know what powers you have, or what gives you the confidence to stand here.
And I've got no interest in learning any of that boring crap.
Right now, I only have one thought. One goal."
The giant dragon-man beast, his body color now edging closer and closer to violet, pointed at Ren and revealed a savage grin.
"Beat you down. Beat you until you admit you've lost.
Until you tell me everything about the artificial Devil Fruits, and explain just what the hell that pink dragon is.
But don't worry. I like talent more than anything. A punching bag as durable as you is hard to find.
Even if you lose, I won't kill you. At most, I'll take you back to Wano and lock you up.
All right, I've said my piece. Got any objections?"
"…"
Ren took a deep breath and tightened his grip on the Thunderflame Greatblade.
He gave no answer—
and that itself was the answer!
"Good! Don't die!"
Kaido stomped on the ground, and his entire body transformed into violently surging lightning.
This was not a technique.
He was simply injecting lightning into his body to stimulate his muscles, thereby raising the power of his physique.
His speed, strength, defense, and even reaction speed all underwent another qualitative leap!
And what that displayed externally was combat speed that was nearly as fast as lightning itself!
Shuron Hakke · Drunken Wheel Lightning!
"Descending Third World · Ragnaraku!"
Rumble—!!
A gigantic bolt of lightning crashed down from the heavens, striking the raised Hassaikai.
Kaido combined that lightning with Conqueror's Haki and wrapped both around his weapon before swinging down a club strike that seemed slow, yet was actually impossibly fast!
Too late.
Ren's crimson eyes caught only the blurred trajectory of the attack.
But even with the boost of the Meridian Network, he still could not control his body well enough to dodge.
Because he simply could not react in time.
All he could do was spread his six wings in front of himself to block—
and then he felt a power so terrifying it bordered on despair.
From the outside, a burst of blinding light erupted before the collapsed King's Plateau.