When Enel stepped onto the heavily cratered surface of the moon, he suddenly froze.
The intruders who had come to cause trouble were nowhere to be found. In fact, there wasn't a single soul in sight across the lunar landscape; everything remained perfectly flat and quiet.
He cast his eyes about, scanning the area, until he finally spotted a strange figure floating silently in the vacuum of space not far away. The silhouette hovered motionless, as if waiting for something.
"Ah, the Space Pirates. So they really are here," he muttered under his breath. Utilizing his lightning as a medium to carry his voice, he bellowed toward the distant figure, "Hey, you bastards over there! This is my territory now! If you're looking to stir up trouble, take it somewhere else!"
Zoran tilted his head slightly.
On the lunar surface, a bolt of brilliant blue lightning was rocketing straight toward him.
Zoran shook his head with a sigh. "Young people are always in such a dreadful rush."
As the words left his lips, he extended a secondary arm, casually making contact with the oncoming lightning.
This was Enel's Lightning Dragon, fueled by sixty million volts of electricity. While it wasn't his absolute strongest attack, it was certainly far from his weakest. The lightning dragon exuded a massive, crackling pressure, yet at this very moment, it became as docile as an earthworm, wrapping itself quietly around Zoran's extended hand. It remained completely still, allowing him to examine and admire it at his leisure.
Zoran raised his hand, inspecting the lightning dragon he had forcibly compressed. The electric currents rippled and flowed dynamically between his fingers.
Gradually, a hint of genuine appreciation surfaced in his eyes.
"It seems I've stumbled upon a bit of an unexpected harvest," he murmured smoothly, a trace of pleasure in his voice.
Enel's power came from the Rumble-Rumble Fruit, granting him the ability to freely manipulate lightning. In terms of both versatility and growth potential, it was truly extraordinary among the many Devil Fruits of this world. Granted, it wasn't nearly enough to pose a threat to an entity as overwhelmingly powerful as Zoran, much like Blackbeard's Dark-Dark Fruit.
But that was a standard applied only to the Moon Demon, who currently possessed a level of power that far eclipsed his ancient peak. Just like the Dark-Dark Fruit, the post-prime Moon Demon's assessment of this power was merely "mediocre."
Back home, however, the other Demon Sorcerers were still suffering from severe spiritual erosion, trapped at the absolute nadir of their power due to their time in the Netherworld. Furthermore, while Zoran himself had no interest in the power of lightning and its attribute was entirely incompatible with his own celestial element, his lack of need didn't mean others wouldn't crave it.
After a brief, superficial analysis, Zoran delivered his verdict on this new power.
"Though it cannot serve as a replacement authority for myself, it makes for a thoroughly qualified supplement."
Far away on the lunar surface, Enel couldn't hear Zoran's words, but an inexplicable sense of dread suddenly gripped his heart.
It was bad enough that his sixty-million-volt lightning dragon hadn't inflicted a single scratch on the guy floating in the vacuum of space, but why did it feel like it had triggered some bizarre side effect? After unleashing the attack, he distinctly noticed that the entity's gaze was locked onto him with unadulterated scrutiny and appreciation. It was exactly the look someone gave when they had taken a liking to a prize possession.
"Something feels completely off here," Enel muttered to himself.
Only now did he realize that this individual's demeanor didn't resemble that of the Space Pirates at all. This was a being he had never seen or heard of before. Furthermore... what kind of sane person could stand so casually and elegantly in the freezing vacuum of outer space?
The realization finally clicked.
In an instant, Enel sank into a low stance. The tomoe drums on his back and the golden trishula in his hand erupted with a blinding, deafening glare of electricity. Recognizing that his sixty-million-volt dragon had failed to do any damage, he instantly decided to go all out, unleashing his absolute maximum output.
Over one hundred million volts of pure lightning violently surged toward Zoran. Enel's entire body was enveloped in crackling sheets of his own electricity, truly making him look the part of his self-proclaimed title: the God of Thunder. The blinding lightning tore through the cosmic vacuum in a fraction of a second, arriving directly in front of Zoran.
Yet, Zoran merely shook his head with mild amusement, talking to himself as if Enel weren't even there. "Do all of you who play with lightning share this exact same personality? Throwing tantrums and hurling thunderbolts the moment someone disagrees with you?"
The corners of his mouth curled into a slight smile. "Very well. Looking at it this way, the compatibility is actually quite a perfect match."
The lightning flared and died in an instant, its brilliant blue light flashing briefly before completely vanishing into nothingness.
Standing on the moon, Enel fell completely silent. The arrogant look on his face slowly contorted into absolute horror.
A discharge of over a hundred million volts had yielded the exact same result as the sixty-million-volt dragon from before. The lightning was summoned and dismissed by the entity with a simple, effortless wave of a hand.
What amplified his dread even further was the sudden realization that the strange phenomenon altering the moon earlier had been caused entirely by the entity standing before him. Right now, he was watching with his own eyes as Zoran gestured casually toward the lunar body below. Huge plumes of purplish-black Demon Chi began to steam upward from the crust.
The moon shuddered violently for a brief moment, before returning to a state of absolute stillness.
It looked as though nothing had happened at all, yet in the grander scheme of things, it felt as though the very fabric of reality had been permanently altered.
A terrifying possibility dawned on Enel. It was glaringly obvious that Zoran had done something monumental to the moon, yet he was completely unable to fathom what it was. Could it be that his own level of power was simply too low, rendering him incapable of perceiving exactly what the moon had just undergone under Zoran's influence?
"Alright, playtime is officially over. Your fruit ability is quite remarkable; you have my appreciation."
Enel suddenly found that he could hear Zoran's voice perfectly, echoing directly inside his mind.
In a fraction of a second, the entity's figure materialized right in front of him. A crushing, monumental pressure descended like an avalanche, an aura that felt simultaneously divine and demonic.
"Damn it... what a monster," Enel choked out. The purplish-black Demon Chi surged forward, completely snuffing out his lightning as it closed in around him.
Meanwhile, back on Earth...
Deep within the global ocean, Bai Tza detected a powerful aura rapidly closing in on her position.
It was completely distinct from the waves of Sea Kings that had come to pay homage to the master of the new world; those entities carried emotions of absolute reverence and terror. This new presence, however, radiated nothing but sheer fury and confusion.
An enemy, it seemed.
In an instant, the ocean waters surged violently upward as Bai Tza prepared to meet her challenger.
No one in this world could possibly comprehend the terrifying extent of the power wielded by an entity known as the Water Demon, especially when she was placed in a universe that was nearly ninety-nine percent water, having embraced the global oceans without a single shred of resistance.
Imu, the King of the World, was about to find out the hard way.
In this world, Imu was indeed powerful enough to merit her title. She had repeatedly overwhelmed the wielder of the Nika Fruit and held absolute dominion over the globe as its secret king. But the horror of the situation lay in a simple fact: her enemy was not from this world.
The ocean underwent a cataclysmic transformation. Raging torrents exceeding thousands of meters in height surged almost instantaneously, rocketing toward the sky. The roaring waves locked together, forming an impenetrable, solid fortress of water.
High atop the raging torrents, Bai Tza's colossal form coalesced entirely out of the seawater. The tide she commanded blocked out the sun, far exceeding the scale of a mere tsunami. This was the absolute, primordial force of the world itself, held firmly in the palm of the Water Demon.
If she so desired, she could command the waves to sweep across the globe in an instant, submerging the few remaining continents and countless isolated islands beneath the deep. Furthermore, this power would only continue to multiply over time, growing stronger with every passing second until she fully recovered and became the ocean itself.
By the time Bai Tza had seamlessly arranged her battlefield and displayed her monumental strength in the span of a single breath, Imu had only just managed to teleport to the former site of Marineford.
Consequently, what materialized before her eyes was a crushing, suffocating wall of water that connected the sea to the heavens in every single direction, a literal cage of absolute death.
Not far off, the newly evolved members of the aquatic race were pushed to the crest of the waves by the rising currents. They watched the confrontation in absolute silence.
After taking a quick look at their new biological forms, the question of whose side they should take was no longer a question at all.
Of course, there were some individuals who never bothered to stress over how to contribute to a war effort.
Kizaru drifted lazily along the rushing currents, casting a bored glance at the apocalyptic battlefield. "Oh my... a war is breaking out. How absolutely terrifying~"
With that casual remark, he continued to indifferently chase after a school of swimming fish, completely unbothered by the fate of the world.
————
Want to read ahead of schedule? Head over to my p-atre-on: p-atre-on.c-om/Overgod [Just remove the hyphen to access normally]