The fully bestial Saturn Saint—or rather, the Ox-Demon—let out a roar that shattered the clouds above. It was no longer human speech, but a purely savage, violent bellow of a primordial beast!
The next instant, that colossal body moved—its speed utterly disproportionate to its mountain-like size.
Like a black mountain wrapped in a storm of destruction, it crashed headlong toward Gern!
The wind pressure alone generated by its movement pulverized every ruin and fragment of debris along its path into fine dust!
Red light flared violently in Gern's eyes. He dared not hesitate—his entire body immediately shifted into elemental form as he retreated at high speed, while the black blade Eight Desolations slashed out in a sweeping arc!
"Heavenquake · Rend!"
A massive vibrating slash, wrapped in crackling Conqueror's Haki lightning, cleaved straight into the Ox-Demon's charge path—
Yet it only produced a shower of blinding sparks and a shallow white mark across the shoulder covered in dark, horned keratin skin. The attack failed to cut even half an inch deep!
"Ridiculously tough!" Gern cursed inwardly. "Complete beastification stacked with Zoan awakening and immortality—his physical strength has jumped an entire dimension!"
At this point, ordinary attacks—without top-tier Haki reinforcement—probably couldn't even break his defenses.
On the other side, the Ox-Demon completely ignored that negligible obstruction. Its pupils locked firmly onto Gern—
And its spider-like limb, shrieking as it tore through the air, slammed down with several times the speed it had shown before!
Gern dodged at full speed!
BOOOOM!!!
The spot where he had just been standing was smashed into a bottomless crater, the shockwave sending his blood and qi surging chaotically.
Before he could stabilize himself, another limb swept in from an extremely tricky angle!
At the same time, the Ox-Demon opened its massive maw. A breath of toxic vapor—reeking of sulfur and corruption—erupted forth, instantly blanketing a vast area!
Gern twisted his body midair to the absolute limit, stomping on the air in rapid succession to propel himself—
He barely avoided the sweeping limb, but the edge of the poisonous breath grazed his arm. His skin instantly turned charred black, searing pain drilling straight into his bones!
"Speed and power have both increased across the board… and the attack patterns are even more brutal now!"
Just as Gern tried to pull away and reorganize his footing—
Another mutation occurred!
The eyes on the Ox-Demon's massive head suddenly flared with an abnormal, blinding brilliance!
Not one light—
But countless lights!
A violent wave of dizziness slammed into Gern as the scenery around him instantly warped and distorted.
He "saw" it—
Centered on the Ox-Demon, countless cold eyes seemed to snap open within the void itself.
Dense. Endless.
They filled every direction—above, below, left, right—completely sealing off all of his possible escape routes!
Each eye radiated soul-shaking mental pressure, locking onto him simultaneously!
"The Malevolent Eye… evolved? The range and mental impact are both—!"Even Gern's thoughts stalled for a split second.
The next instant, an invisible psychic onslaught—over ten times stronger than before—crushed toward Gern's mental world from every possible angle!
"Heh… no matter how many eyes you create, the core of your consciousness is still just one. A wide-area attack like this inevitably disperses single-point intensity!"
"And more importantly—when you use large-scale visual locking, you need me to remain within your line of sight. That means right now… your main body can't move!"
Just as the overwhelming psychic pressure was about to engulf him completely—
Gern activated the most shameless move he had ever developed since awakening the Heavenquake Fruit.
"Shock Flash · Instant Bloom!"
In an instant, Gern's body didn't merely become elemental—
It completely disintegrated into countless pure-white particles vibrating at extreme frequency!
Merging into the flow of air molecules themselves, he forcibly slipped through the gaps in the mental lock created by the innumerable Malevolent Eyes!
"Where did he go?!"
When Gern used Shock Flash, to others it was true disappearance—vanishing out of thin air. Saturn Saint couldn't sense him even with Observation Haki and could only search frantically.
At the very next moment—
High above the Ox-Demon's colossal body, countless vibrating particles surged together like rivers returning to the sea.
Gern's figure abruptly reappeared!
Not only completely uninjured—there was even a cold, cutting edge at the corner of his mouth, the calm confidence of someone who had just broken an enemy's trump card.
Without the slightest pause, he jammed the black blade Eight Desolations back into his waist with his right hand—
Then freed both hands and slammed his palms together before his chest, only to fling them wide open in the next breath!
"Heavenquake · Star Ring!!"
Between his palms, violently humming pure-white vibration particles compressed to the extreme, instantly forming a dazzling white ring no larger than his hands—yet impossibly dense!
Gern's arms bulged with power as he aimed his palms downward at the massive Ox-Demon below—still temporarily rigid from unleashing its large-scale Malevolent Eye and desperately searching for him—
And pressed the white star ring down with brutal force!
The instant the ring left his palms, it expanded violently against the wind!
VROOOOM—RUMBLE!!!
In almost no time at all, the ring expanded as it descended, swelling to a diameter of over a thousand meters!
In that moment—
It was a judgment wheel falling from the heavens.
A gigantic particle-accelerator ring, radiating annihilating vibration waves, casting its shadow over everything below!
The star ring did not fall as a solid object.
The moment it formed, it generated an irresistible, terrifying directional pressure field and vibrational tearing force!
The Ox-Demon, standing dead center beneath it, took the full brunt!
"MOOOOOO—!!!"
A roar of agony and fury erupted as the mountain-sized fully bestial body—
Under the crushing force of the thousand-meter star ring—
Collapsed downward like clay pressed by an invisible giant hand!
Its incomparably sturdy exoskeleton and muscles emitted ear-grinding sounds of twisting and fracture as the enormous body was forcibly flattened by several degrees!
But this was only the beginning.
Because the star ring was not stationary.
It rotated and flowed slowly—like a colossal millstone.
At its very center, the Ox-Demon was like a planet caught in orbit. Not only was its body being crushed, but it was also violently dragged and twisted by an overwhelming tearing force in the direction of the ring's rotation!
At the same time, high-frequency vibration energy penetrated every gap in its hardened hide, rampaging through its flesh, destroying it from the inside!
From afar, the sight was staggering—
A massive white ring suppressing an ancient monstrous beast beneath it, forcibly twisting, stretching, and flattening its body!
Within the area covered by the star ring, the ground itself seemed to be erased by invisible power, instantly sinking into a perfectly smooth, enormous circular pit!
"Your Devil Fruit… awakened too?!"
Saturn Saint wasn't stupid. This level of control and destructive output was absolutely not something an ordinary Logia could achieve!!
But Gern did not answer.
He merely watched in silence…
...…
Meanwhile—
Far away, on the other side of the Holy Land Mary Geoise, at the edge of the Red Line near the upward entrance to the Sabaody Archipelago.
A fish-man wearing a headscarf, with thick curly hair, an enormous mouth, a full beard, and faint stubble on his upper lip—
Ignored the near-vertical cliff face of the Red Line entirely—
And climbed to the top with his bare hands!
He didn't know why the defenses on this side were so thin.
He only knew that beyond lay the "Land of the Gods"—
The core territory where the World Nobles, the Celestial Dragons, resided.
That place had once been hell itself—
Where he, along with countless comrades and innumerable slaves, had suffered endless torment and humiliation.
Tiger didn't dwell on it.
He had always been a man of action.
Taking a deep breath, as if drawing years of pent-up rage and hope into his lungs at once—
He cast his gaze toward that land symbolizing absolute authority and oppression and made a low, powerful vow:
"The road to liberation… begins today!"
With those words, Tiger hesitated no longer.
Like a ferocious tiger descending a mountain, his figure surged forward without hesitation, charging straight toward the lightly defended Land of the Gods!
At this very moment—
For two different reasons,
Driven by actions born of two opposing positions—
The wheels of history, in Holy Land Mary Geoise,
Began to spin faster.