When people came up with battle settings, gag comics were invincible, especially when they could crush science fiction—but only so long as no one talked about logic or plausibility.
Luo Xia had talked Steve into using Gum-Gum Fruit combat techniques partly to satisfy his own twisted sense of humor, and partly because of Ego's unique nature.
When it came to understanding higher energies, Luo Xia ranked among the very best in the universe. Ego's Celestial body was practically a pure energy form, a "flesh-and-blood body" created by converting energy into matter.
Physical attacks that destroyed its form were not particularly useful against this thing. It was like smashing water with a hammer—one could exhaust oneself to death and still achieve nothing. The only way to deal with energy that could freely separate, recombine, and shape itself was through attrition.
Just as hammering water was meaningless, but putting a red-hot hammer into water could evaporate a great deal of it into steam.
For anyone else, attacks from the Gum-Gum Fruit would have been meaningless against Ego. Shattering his body would only delay his reshaping process. But Steve himself possessed Celestial energy, so the collision of their bodies was, in truth, a collision of energies.
Their energies came from the same source, yet were now controlled by different wills. They could not merge and could only cancel each other out.
Therefore, Steve did not need any special attack techniques. He needed speed, range, and the ability to create repeated, massive energy contact in the shortest time possible, draining Ego's energy. Ego was now a tree without roots, water without a source—every bit he used was one bit less. Steve, meanwhile, had gained the support of the planet's core because of Mantis's hypnotic ability.
Although the soul of the planetary core had only