Even Imu had not expected to gain something like this.
At first, she had only sensed some of Kaido's thoughts.
Since she could not fully control him, she paid a certain price to briefly take over his body, which also allowed her to understand what Cyrus intended to use Kaido for.
That had made Imu's heart tighten.
But what happened next went completely beyond her expectations.
After learning Cyrus's plan, Imu had intended to control Kaido and fight him.
Then, before she lost control, she would either take Kaido's life or severely damage his body, forcing his lifespan to burn away faster.
Yes.
That terrifying recovery ability was consuming Kaido's own lifespan.
Overall, even though Imu knew Cyrus's plan would be extremely difficult to carry out, she still intended to crush even the slightest possibility before it could grow.
But now, an opportunity had been placed before her.
An opportunity so rare that even Imu could not resist it.
Cyrus was the most gifted human she had seen in her thousand years of life. There had to be an enormous secret hidden within him.
And so, she acted.
Even knowing this might allow Cyrus to grasp that power and use it to wipe out her vessels completely, she still could not refuse.
Endless black mist surged out of Kaido's body.
Kaido, who had been in his prime, began aging rapidly in appearance.
Imu squeezed every last bit of potential out of this body. She was going all in.
The black mist gathered as if it were alive, clumping together until it completely enveloped Cyrus.
And this time, Cyrus truly did as he had said. He offered no resistance at all.
The cheat within him had clearly already surpassed the rules of this world.
No matter how strange Imu's methods were, compared with a rule-like power such as his cheat, they were still far too weak.
That was why Cyrus wanted to try it.
At the same time, he was using himself as bait.
Even in the worst-case scenario, he should at least be able to leave behind a portion of this demonic power.
"This is impossible!"
Cyrus, standing completely still, suddenly heard Imu's shocked voice.
Her voice rang out from within the black mist, but there was no way to determine her location.
"Why? What exactly is your body?"
Imu's horrified voice sounded again. Even without seeing her face, anyone could hear how shaken she was.
Cyrus lowered his head slightly and looked at the mist, which seemed alive as it turned into sharp tendrils that tried to pierce into his body.
But the instant those tendrils touched him, they shattered and scattered.
"You are not human at all. No human could possibly have a body like this…"
Imu's voice grew faint.
The corner of Cyrus's mouth lifted when he heard that.
"I really am human," Cyrus said with a smile.
Just not a human from this world.
'I'm an observer from a higher dimension, thank you very much.'
"Trying to run? Too late."
Cyrus suddenly raised his left hand, and black power spread in an instant.
His palm turned into a tiny black hole, unleashing a powerful suction that completely seized the black mist trying to disperse around him.
"This is…?"
Imu's voice rang out again, this time carrying suspicion and surprise.
"That man's ability."
"Rocks! You're connected to him?"
"Well…"
Cyrus smiled, then abruptly clenched his left hand. The black mist filling the area seemed to be caught and crushed by an invisible giant hand.
The formless black fog surged left and right under that force, but no matter how it struggled, it could not break free.
"It's useless. Even with that man's power, you cannot trap—"
Before Imu could finish, Cyrus laughed.
"I never planned to finish you off here, you monster."
"Monster? Which one of us looks more like a monster? Cyrus, compared to me, you look even less human. Someone like you could not possibly appear out of nowhere."
After being caught by Cyrus, Imu seemed to give up on leaving immediately.
"Your body is abnormal. Although it looks human, that's all it has in common with the people of this world."
"That's enough. Compared with me, to outsiders, you're the one who looks more like the villain, aren't you, King of the World, Imu?"
"King of the World? If you care about that title, my previous offer still stands. Cooperate with me, and we can become the Kings of the World together."
Imu actually extended the invitation again, but Cyrus shook his head directly.
His left hand clenched harder.
The black mist, which had still been struggling, rapidly contracted in an extremely short time and finally condensed into a black sphere in Cyrus's palm.
Cyrus could clearly sense Imu's consciousness leaving with it.
The black mist, which had seemed alive moments ago, turned into pure power once that consciousness departed.
The power of darkness.
"Hm?"
The black sphere vanished into Cyrus's palm.
Cyrus, who had originally intended to examine what kind of power it was, suddenly froze and looked toward Kaido not far away.
Compared with earlier, Kaido had shrunk a great deal.
His skin had become dry and aged, his muscles were no longer obvious, and his face had turned old and withered.
"The power of the Fish-Fish Fruit, Model: Azure Dragon?"
Cyrus murmured softly.
When he had gathered that black mist just now, he had also taken the power of that Devil Fruit along with it.
As for Kaido, the previous host of the Fish-Fish Fruit, he was naturally dead.
...
Imu's power really was strange.
Cyrus narrowed his eyes as he studied Kaido's corpse.
This emperor of the sea, who had rampaged across the ocean for so many years, had been drained of all life and died just like that.
Judging from this, the demons transformed by Imu were indeed under her control. She could even pay some kind of price to fully control the lives she had transformed.
Then again, that made sense.
Across this sea, Devil Fruits with all kinds of bizarre abilities appeared one after another, and many of them were terrifyingly powerful.
If they were talking about extracting life force or lifespan, Big Mom's Soul-Soul Fruit could do something similar.
Perhaps somewhere on the sea, there was even a so-called Parasite Fruit with an ability similar to Imu's.
Cyrus silently stared at Kaido's corpse for a moment, then raised his foot and stomped down hard.
The ground trembled violently, and the force spread outward from beneath his foot. When it reached the sea, rings of ripples surged across the surface.
Firelight shot into the sky, and Cyrus had already left.
Only then did the power of his stomp fully erupt.
A vast stretch of shattered island and the seawater between it exploded. The waves rolled backward, swallowing the island chain completely and dragging it beneath the sea.
A large group of the islands' native residents stared in terror at the earth-shaking disaster before them.
The only place left for them to stand was a tiny strip of land near the shore.
Fortunately, this was an archipelago, and the nearby islands were not too far away.
…
Cyrus did not directly use the Door-Door Fruit to return. Instead, he sensed the power captured by the Dark-Dark Fruit.
Countless black threads faintly connected to that power from every direction.
"So that's how it works? Is this what Kaido sensed earlier? It's definitely obvious, but there are way too many."
Cyrus muttered softly as he hovered in the sky, his brows furrowing.
There were so many that he could not count them. He could not even make a rough estimate.
No wonder Imu had been so calm back in Mary Geoise.
With numbers like this, cleaning them all up would be an enormous pain even for him.
But he could not let anyone else handle it either. If others were infected by this power, then their lives and deaths would fall under Imu's control.
"Looks like I need to make more preparations while carrying out this plan."
He had thought about it too simply.
With such a huge number of hosts spread across the sea, even if he worked without stopping, it would probably take him a very long time to clear them all out.
And by very long, that meant at least several years, perhaps more than ten years, or even longer.
He had no intention of wasting his time on something that stupid.
Moreover, Cyrus still could not tell whether Imu could increase the number of hosts.
If she truly could, then the matter would become even more troublesome.
"What an annoying ability."
The one good thing was that if someone near him had been parasitized by Imu's power, he could now sense it clearly.
That, at least, was useful.
Thinking this, Cyrus opened a green door in the sky and stepped inside.
…
The Holy Land, Mary Geoise.
Compared with before, the Holy Land had become utterly deserted.
Of the Celestial Dragons who had originally lived here, nearly ninety percent were dead.
As for the remaining few, they had only survived because they happened to avoid Cyrus's slash when he attacked.
Of course, the methods by which they avoided it were either lying flat on the ground or simply not being in Mary Geoise at the time.
After Cyrus's attack, however, those Celestial Dragons no longer dared to act recklessly.
In the past, they had gone wherever they pleased, flaunting their power and bullying others at will. Now, they did not dare. Cyrus had thoroughly terrified them.
The World Government did not even dare allow this news to spread.
To prevent that, they had activated spies hidden inside the headquarters of the World Economy News Paper. The moment the newspaper learned the truth, those spies were to stop the news from getting out.
Of course, the headache from all of this belonged to the World Government and the Five Elders.
As for Imu, whose consciousness had only just returned, she was not troubled by such matters.
What troubled her now was the truth she had only just discovered.
Even if Cyrus did nothing at all, her power could not affect him in the slightest.
That realization horrified her.
She absolutely did not want to fight Cyrus directly.
The power he had displayed before was not something she wanted to personally test.
And now, she understood that she no longer had any means of dealing with him.
The only possible method was to gather a large number of powerful fighters to surround Cyrus and wear him down completely.
But that was only a guess.
Whether it could truly be done, even she could not say for certain.
Aside from that, she could not think of any other possibility.
Since her power could not affect Cyrus at all, Cyrus was her natural enemy.
No one in this world had ever been able to do that.
"Should I leave this planet?" Imu murmured softly.
The maid's face behind her was stiff, as if she had not heard Imu's words at all.
"But everyone must have a weakness. I simply haven't found his yet. There is still a chance. As long as I remain undefeated, there will always be a chance."
Imu seemed to be trying to encourage herself.
But no matter how she said it, there was a lack of confidence in her voice.
In the end, Imu, who had hidden behind the world for hundreds of years, was in some sense still someone who had shut herself away and never stepped outside.
After hundreds of years without personally taking action, perhaps she no longer had the mentality a true powerhouse should possess.
Or perhaps, from the beginning, she had simply been a thief and a liar, someone who had used tricks to steal another person's victory.