"One-Sword Style: Lion Song!"

With Zoro's terrifying, battlefield-clearing efficiency, more than a dozen indestructible Rock Golems were all chopped to pieces within mere minutes, leaving rubble scattered across the ground.

The entire cavern fell silent once more.

Erza, Gray, and Lucy stood off to the side, slightly out of breath as they watched the man who did not even have a speck of dust on him. Their eyes were filled with complicated emotions.

Shock, admiration, and a faint sense of... helplessness.

Enemies they could barely handle even when working together with all their strength were as easy as chopping vegetables before this man. The absolute gap in strength dealt no small blow to these mages who had always considered themselves "geniuses."

"Alright, the small fry are cleaned up." Zoro sheathed his two swords and dusted off his hands, turning his gaze toward the Cursed Necklace at the center of the cavern, which still emitted an ominous purple glow. "Now, only the real culprit remains."

He strode toward the altar.

"Wait! Zoro, be careful!" Erza hurriedly warned him. "That thing is strange. Don't touch it carelessly!"

Zoro ignored her. He leaped onto the altar and reached out, intending to rip the necklace off directly.

However, just before his hand touched the necklace, a force of "weakening" ten times stronger than before suddenly erupted from it, forming a purple energy barrier that knocked his hand away.

"Oh?" Zoro was somewhat surprised.

He tried again. This time, his hand was coated in jet-black Armament Haki.

Bang!

His hand passed through the energy barrier, but the curse power that directly affected life force surged madly into his body through his arm. Zoro let out a muffled grunt, feeling a long-forgotten weakness, as though all his strength had been drained away.

He immediately pulled back his hand and took two steps back, his expression turning solemn.

"This thing... has some tricks."

Erza and Gray stepped forward as well. They also tried using their own magic to attack the necklace.

When Erza's Heaven's Wheel Sword approached the necklace, the magic power on its blade rapidly drained away. It became dim and lifeless before finally falling weakly to the ground.

The ice projectile fired by Gray's Ice Make: Cannon was also dissolved by the curse power in midair, vanishing into nothingness.

"No!" Gray gritted his teeth. "Any form of energy attack gets neutralized by that law of 'weakening' when it approaches! Physical attacks get blocked by the energy barrier!"

An unsolvable problem stood before them all.

This Curse Core was like a hedgehog—immune to physical attacks and immune to magic. There was simply no way to begin.

Just as everyone was at a loss, Zoro slowly drew his three swords.

Wado Ichimonji.

Sandai Kitetsu.

Enma.

He stared at the necklace before him, his gaze becoming incomparably focused.

"It can't be destroyed by physical attacks... nor by energy attacks..." he murmured. The life-and-death battle with Mr. 1 and his master Koushirou's teachings resurfaced vividly in his mind.

"In this world, there are swordsmen who cannot cut anything, but there are also swordsmen who can cut steel and even things harder than steel..."

"The difference between a sword that can cut everything and one that cannot cut everything lies right there..."

"Breathing..."

Zoro slowly closed his one eye.

He gave up using his physical sight to "see" the necklace. Instead, he raised all of his Observation Haki to its limit.

In his world of perception, everything before him disappeared. There was no cavern, no altar, not even the physical form of the necklace.

There was only a pure conceptual core constantly radiating the aura of "weakening," "withering," and "death."

He could "hear" the flow of that concept, its pulse, its "breathing."

He could "see" an extremely tiny yet incomparably fatal weakest point within the structure of that concept.

That was... its core!

"So that's how it is..."

A knowing smile curved Zoro's lips.

He suddenly opened his eye, and an unprecedented, dazzling brilliance burst forth from it!

He clenched Wado Ichimonji between his teeth!

"Here I go!" he growled, lowering his body slightly as he assumed the opening stance of One-Sword Style.

This time, he used no flashy technique and did not even unleash any astonishing demonic aura.

He merely poured all his will, all his Sword Intent, and his resolve to sever everything into the sword in his hand without reservation.

He swung what appeared to be an utterly ordinary slash.

"One-Sword Style: Lion Song!"