Ice Make? Too Fragile.

If Natsu being one-shotted had lit the fuse, then Zoro's casual remark, "That tickled," had undoubtedly tossed a blazing bomb into a powder keg.

This was no longer provocation. This was naked contempt!

"Bastard... How dare you look down on Natsu!"

Gray climbed up from the ground, shaking his head, still dizzy from the impact. The clothes on his upper body had long since vanished in the earlier collision, exposing his lean muscles and the Fairy Tail emblem on his chest.

He had seen it more clearly than anyone else. That green-haired man had not used any magic at all! It was a pure, unheard-of power that acted upon the body. He did not know what it was, but he knew that conventional physical attacks were probably useless against this monster.

"In that case..." Frosty air instantly rose from Gray's hands, and the temperature throughout the guild hall seemed to drop several degrees.

Ice Make

His hands swiftly formed seals before his chest as magic power surged at an unprecedented speed. He did not choose a powerful single-target attack. Instead, he decided to probe his opponent with an unavoidable, wide-area spell!

Lance

With a low shout, dozens of razor-sharp ice lances, each two meters long, condensed out of thin air before him! Every ice spear glimmered with a chilling light, their tips sharp enough to pierce through several layers of steel.

"Go!"

Gray thrust both hands forward, and the dozens of ice lances, like soldiers receiving an order, transformed into a dense, deadly barrage. With shrill whistles through the air, they came from every direction, sealing off all of Zoro's escape routes as they shot toward him!

This dazzling yet deadly sight made the other guild members instinctively retreat several steps. This was Gray's specialty—at such close range, no one could emerge unscathed!

Yet Zoro remained standing in that large crater, not even interested in drawing his swords.

Faced with the rainstorm-like barrage of ice lances, his body finally moved.

He neither retreated nor blocked.

His eyes narrowed slightly, and the invisible perception known as Observation Haki instantly mapped every ice lance's trajectory, speed, and angle into his mind with absolute clarity.

The next second, he moved.

The range of his movements was so small it was outrageous.

A slight turn of his body evaded three ice lances coming straight at him.

A simple tilt of his head let an ice lance aimed directly at his brow skim past his cheek, the gust it created stirring his short green hair.

A casual lift of his foot perfectly avoided the attack aimed at his calf.

Like that, with a posture so inconceivable it could almost be called lazy, he strolled through the impenetrable barrage of ice lances. Every step he took was precise to the extreme, as though he was not avoiding the lances at all, but the deadly lances were actively avoiding him.

The scene was like a master artist dancing an elegant waltz upon the edge of death's blade.

"How is that possible... He dodged... all of them?" Gray's jaw nearly hit the floor. His pride and joy, his wide-area attack, had become a child's plaything before this man!

Just as the final ice lance was about to strike Zoro in the chest, with nowhere left to evade, Zoro finally raised his hand.

Not a fist, nor a palm.

Just two simple fingers—the index and middle fingers.

At a speed too fast for the naked eye to follow, he precisely caught the tip of the rapidly spinning ice lance between them!

"Bzzz—"

The ice lance trembled violently at his fingertips, letting out a mournful cry, yet it could not advance another inch.

"Too fragile," Zoro commented blandly.

Then, he applied the slightest bit of force with his fingers.

Crack!

A crisp sound rang out. That Ice Make lance, condensed from high-density magic power and as hard as steel, was casually crushed into a sky full of glittering ice crystals.

After doing all that, Zoro seemed to find it rather boring.

With a single stride, he leaped out of the crater.

He was so fast that, in Gray's eyes, he left behind only a blurry green afterimage.

Alarm bells blared in Gray's mind. Before he could make any defensive move at all, a sharp pain erupted from his lower abdomen.

Zoro's simple side kick struck him squarely in the stomach.

That kick carried no magical effect whatsoever—only pure physical force, honed and condensed to the absolute extreme.

Gray felt as though he had not been kicked, but violently rammed by a heavily armored Sea King charging at full speed. His internal organs seemed to shift out of place. Unable to catch his breath, his whole body curled up like a cooked shrimp, his eyes rolling back as he flew through the air.

Bang!

He slammed heavily into the wall on the other side of the guild, right beside Natsu's human-shaped crater. He left behind a similarly shaped indentation before sliding helplessly to the floor, completely losing his ability to fight.