Void Annihilation

"Kid, speed is power. Your strength doesn't seem all that impressive!"

Without hesitation, Norse reached one hand into the air, as if an invisible wall had formed there, effortlessly stopping every explosive ball Gladius had thrown in midair.

This was naturally Norse's Solar Gravity. It could block explosive balls thrown by hand, but if he encountered cannonballs thrown barehanded by someone like Garp of Marine Headquarters, Norse knew this move would be completely unable to stop them.

Gladius was instantly dumbfounded, his movements turning stiff. When he looked up, he indeed saw that all the explosive balls had been blocked by an invisible force.

"Hmph!"

Gladius's mouth twitched. The next moment, he snorted coldly and said with arrogant disdain, "So what? My explosions will consume the very air blocking them. Don't tell me you can stop my ability to explode freely?"

Boom!!

Gladius was somewhat insane. With a snap of his fingers, the eight explosive balls suspended in the air detonated.

Unfortunately, their power only barely broke through Norse's gravity wall. The remaining shockwave and heat blast struck the two ships, making both hulls shudder violently on the spot.

"This is your explosion and your art? Then why don't you have a taste of my blast?"

Norse stood upright at the bow, his index finger raised toward the sky. Suddenly, a burning fireball spun into existence above it, continuously growing larger.

Norse gave his opponent no time to react. In the next instant, he turned into a phantom and vanished from where he stood, reappearing directly before Gladius.

At that moment, the fireball floating above his raised hand had already grown as large as a basketball.

All the pirates aboard the merchant ship were suddenly seized by fear. They had no idea how Norse had gotten there.

Moreover, the fireball suspended in the air seemed far too terrifying. The air around it warped from the scorching heat, and sweat immediately poured from their bodies as if they were about to burst into flames.

Gladius suffered even more terribly than the others. It was as though he had been thrown into a pit of fire.

Of course, Norse, who had suddenly appeared before him, had already been labeled a monster in Gladius's mind. Norse's expression of utter confidence and invincibility made him feel insignificant, as though with a single word from himself, he would be effortlessly erased by the other man in the next instant.

It was too terrifying.

"I'll ask you one more time. Do you want to try my explosive art?" Norse still carried himself like an invincible being, utterly unafraid of everyone aboard the ship.

Gladius broke down at that moment.

He dropped to his knees at Norse's feet without saying a word. Sweat streamed down his face, his eyes filled with dread and endless terror, while his body trembled.

The sense of danger Norse gave him was simply too real, too chilling, too overwhelming.

To him, Norse was like an insurmountable volcano, one that could erupt with absolute destructive force at any moment and wipe them all out.

"That's more like it. The Kuja Pirates will take half the goods on your ship."

Norse withdrew the spinning sun ball from the air, stepped on Gladius, and looked at the trembling men nearby. "You'll carry them onto my ship yourselves. That's not too much to ask, is it?"

"Not at all, not at all. It's only right..."

The group was terrified. How could they dare resist?

Even Gladius, the strongest person on their ship, had completely broken down and lost the will to fight after merely facing Norse at close range.

"You're not going to resist either?" Norse looked toward Baby 5.

"Why would I resist? I still want to live." Baby 5 had a lollipop in her mouth.

In truth, even the hand holding her weapon, a Desert Eagle pistol, was still trembling. One could only imagine how much courage it had taken for her to speak to Norse just then.

Norse said nothing. He simply kicked Gladius beneath his foot away, sending him crashing brutally into the cabin, then waited for the others to move the cargo onto his ship.

But unknown to him, Gladius, who had been kicked into the cabin by Norse, erupted.

Perhaps the pain surging through his body jolted him awake from his breakdown. Unable to endure such humiliation and degradation, he snapped. After all, he had always been hot-tempered, just like the power of the Pop-Pop Fruit.

His temper was prone to exploding.

"Ahhh!!! I'll take you down with me!"

In the next moment, Gladius's body swelled enormously, as though Norse's kick had swollen his entire body. Like a giant ball of flesh, he rolled out from the wrecked cabin.

"Then I'll grant your wish." Norse suddenly vanished from the spot.

As the possessor of the Sun-Sun Fruit's sun power, his movement speed had already reached half the speed of light.

At the same time, Norse activated the power of his Demon Back in an instant. The muscles he had long suppressed through the sun's benevolent power all returned at that moment.

In the blink of an eye, Norse seemed to transform into a tall, muscular man, radiating a dense bloody aura that instantly filled every corner of the merchant ship.

His upper body was further covered in Armament Haki.

When Norse reappeared, he had already seized the rolling Gladius by the throat and lifted him into the air, squeezing his neck with all his strength to crush it.

"Urgh... Aah!!"

Gladius, who had not yet managed to self-destruct, immediately cried out in gut-wrenching agony. His hands clawed frantically as he struggled, but suspended in the air by Norse, everything he did was futile resistance.

"You won't self-destruct? Then I'll help you!" Norse said coldly and mercilessly.

Norse had no intention of letting someone so sinister, someone who hid daggers behind his smile, return alive and grow stronger. Though Gladius would never reach Norse's level, he had angered him—and if he didn't die, Norse would still send him to his death.

"Let him go! I'm telling you to let him go right now!"

Baby 5 finally resisted from behind Norse. Holding Desert Eagle pistols in both hands, she said tremblingly, "If you don't let him go immediately, do you believe I can turn you into a sieve within seconds?"

"Relying on unlimited bullets? Too bad—even a few seconds is more than enough for me! Go ahead and try!"

Norse gave her the chance and courage to act. She could strike now, and he would not resist, but nothing could stop his determination to kill Gladius.

"Bang, bang, bang..."

Baby 5 fired without the slightest hesitation, unleashing a rapid barrage of bullets in an instant.

He had not resisted before because Gladius would not have been in mortal danger as long as he did not fight back. But now that this idiot had resisted, as a fellow officer of the Donquixote Family, she had to try to save him.

Norse ignored the bullets coming from behind him. His body immediately entered a half-light state; with a fifty percent chance of ignoring physical attacks, ordinary bullets simply passed through his body.

As for the other fifty percent, he did not fear it. With his powerful body, he could easily withstand firearms of this level. Even if his flesh was injured, he could rapidly heal.

Just like that, Norse flung Gladius hundreds of meters into the air with one hand, transforming into a sun as he pursued him upward.

But Norse also had a burning sun sphere in his hand, and the next second, he blasted it directly at Gladius, who was still rising.

"Boom!!"

The void fell silent.

A mushroom cloud appeared at nearly a thousand meters in the sky, its lingering destructive force sweeping away every gust of wind and cloud in the void.

Gladius had vanished without a trace. Only Norse remained standing safely in the air, arms crossed over his chest as he looked down at everything below with invincible confidence.

PS: ...Ten people were tested in the same batch, and I ranked sixth. Am I done for?