Slaying

Inside the Obsidian Colosseum, the temperature had already surpassed sixty degrees Celsius and was still climbing.

The air warped severely under the heat, making even breathing a painful ordeal.

Odel's expression turned utterly grim. The human-wave tactics he had been so proud of had been completely shattered by these four unreasonable black walls. He suddenly turned, his Armament Haki-coated fist smashing fiercely into the obsidian wall beside him.

"Clang!"

Sparks flew everywhere. A dent appeared in the wall, but it quickly smoothed over as if nothing had happened. The recoil left his knuckles aching. This wall was far harder than he had imagined; breaking through it by force and escaping was simply impossible in the short term.

He had become a turtle trapped in a jar.

"Don't waste your strength." Rain stepped across the floor, already baked scorching hot, closing in one step at a time. "The density of these four walls was created by forcefully compressing them with more than half my stamina. Even if you're some great pirate who came back from the New World, smashing them will take some effort."

The entire right half of Rain's body had turned a deep crimson. A pitch-black obsidian framework supported him while flowing magma surged across his skin like blood.

"You're going to die here."

Odel turned around and stopped trying to flee. Since there was no way out, he could only kill the monster before him.

The savagery of a New World pirate erupted completely at that moment.

"Don't get too cocky, brat from the West Blue! I'm a man who crawled out of that hell!"

Every muscle in Odel's body tensed, and black Armament Haki covered both arms and calves. He no longer held back, perfectly combining the Suggestion-Suggestion Fruit's sonic attacks with Haki.

"Suggestion: Sound Barrier Kill Formation!"

Odel explosively pushed off with both legs, shooting toward Rain like a black cannonball fired from a barrel. In his desperate state, his speed even broke past its limit. As his fists swung, rings of pale purple sonic ripples visible to the naked eye spread outward. These sound waves possessed not only physical destructive power, but potent neurotoxins as well. Once they touched the skin, they would induce dizzying hallucinations.

Rain sneered.

Inside this "sauna room" he had built with his own hands, any flashy area-of-effect attack was useless.

"Obsidian Meltdown: Rapid Strikes!"

Rather than retreat, Rain advanced, charging directly into the pale purple sound waves filling the air and Odel's Haki-coated fists as he launched the most primitive and brutal form of close-quarters combat!

"Bang bang bang bang bang—!"

Dull impacts exploded through the enclosed colosseum like a string of firecrackers. Every collision of fists unleashed a terrifying blast of air.

Odel's Armament Haki was indeed tough, and Rain's magma could not burn through it completely in a short time. But Rain did not care in the slightest. Relying on the absurd physical defense of his obsidian armor, he completely abandoned dodging, allowing Odel's fists to strike his body before returning every blow with even more violent magma-coated punches.

As for the pale purple sound waves and poisonous gas capable of causing hallucinations, they were instantly vaporized and broken down into useless white smoke before they could even seep through Rain's thousand-degree thermal field.

Within the narrow space, the two men became a black and a red blur, wildly exchanging blows.

The shock waves from their clashing fists continually slammed into the surrounding obsidian walls, only to rebound off the hard surfaces and form a violent shredding storm within the colosseum. The entire space seemed to have become a high-speed flesh grinder.

Five minutes later.

The high-intensity clash and the extremely harsh environment finally tipped the balance.

The temperature inside the Obsidian Colosseum had nearly reached one hundred degrees Celsius. As a Logia user and the source of all this heat, Rain was naturally unaffected. But Odel was flesh and blood.

Odel's breathing became heavy like a broken bellows. The instant sweat appeared, it evaporated. His lungs burned badly from inhaling too much scorching air. Oxygen deprivation and heat drained his stamina like floodwaters bursting through a broken dam, and the Armament Haki maintained over his arms began to flicker unstably.

Rain, on the other hand, had wounds all over his body, but his eyes remained as sharp as those of a lone wolf. The magma heavy punches he threw showed no sign of weakening.

"What's wrong, future 'Pirate King'?" After driving Odel back with a heavy punch, Rain's cold voice pierced the heated air. "Your movements have slowed. Did you use up all your stamina running away in the New World?"

Odel panted heavily, staring fixedly at Rain as a trace of despair flashed through his eyes.

"You piece of trash who deceives yourself don't understand what true conviction is." Rain pressed forward step by step, his words like sharp blades mercilessly slicing apart Odel's last mental defenses. "That so-called laughing fortune you keep talking about is nothing more than a shell cowards use to hide their weakness. That legendary figure existed to make slaves rise up and laugh, to bring real freedom and joy to the world—not to make living people smile falsely like puppets."

Rain vanished from where he stood. The next second, he appeared directly above Odel. His right fist carried a terrifying crimson glow that nearly burned through the air as it smashed down.

"Clang—crack!"

Odel barely raised his arms to block. But this time, the thinning Armament Haki weakened by his exhausted stamina could no longer stop the fury of the Earth Core Furnace.

With a crisp shattering sound, the Haki around Odel's arms was blown apart. Scorching magma instantly ignited his sleeves and burned through his flesh.

"Aaaaargh—!"

The agonizing pain drew a miserable scream from Odel. The rationality he had always prided himself on and the dignity of a New World pirate completely collapsed at that moment.

"You don't even dare admit that you're just afraid of the New World that crippled you!"

Rain's judgment arrived as promised.

Odel's defenses completely collapsed, and his movements came to a fatal halt. Seizing this fleeting opportunity, Rain frantically compressed all the magma in his right arm into a single point at his fist, combining it with the unstoppable impact of High-Pressure Obsidian.

Because they were in a completely sealed space, the air had nowhere to disperse, multiplying the pressure and heat generated by this punch.

"Obsidian Meltdown: Meteor Pulse!"

A dazzling dark-red meteor streaked through the obsidian cage.

"Splurt—!"

There was no suspense, no miracle.

Carrying pure physical destructive force, that punch directly shattered the final thread of Armament Haki Odel had desperately gathered over his chest and pierced straight through him without resistance.

The extreme temperature of over a thousand degrees instantly vaporized his heart, lungs, and more than half his spine.

Odel's body suddenly stiffened. He lowered his head and looked at the huge hole burned through his chest. The flesh around its edges had turned to charcoal, and not even a drop of blood flowed out.

The light rapidly faded from his eyes, which had long been covered in pale purple ripples from his repeated use of the Suggestion-Suggestion Fruit.

In the final moment of his life, what surfaced in his mind was not the empty fantasy of becoming the Pirate King, but the terror he had felt in the New World when true monsters had crushed him as easily as one would crush an ant.

So running away really could not save his life.

The light completely left Odel's eyes. Filled with endless regret and unwillingness, he fell backward onto the scorching Marble floor and breathed his last.

Dead silence.

Inside the Obsidian Colosseum, only Rain's heavy breathing remained, along with the faint sizzling of magma dripping from his right arm.

With the death of Odel, the Suggestion-Suggestion Fruit field that had blanketed all of Sisval Island for months collapsed instantly like snow melting beneath the sun.

Outside the colosseum.

The movements of the hundreds of thousands of citizens frantically scratching at the obsidian walls abruptly froze.

The fixed smiles on their faces, like masks, quickly faded away like a receding tide. In their place came the extreme exhaustion, confusion, and agonizing pain from old injuries erupting throughout their bodies, all of which had long been suppressed deep within their nerves.

No one screamed, and no one spoke. Hundreds of thousands of people collapsed in unison like machines whose power had been drained all at once. In an instant, the entire nation fell into a strange yet genuinely peaceful slumber.

It was the exhaustion of the living.

Inside the colosseum.

Rain slowly withdrew his right hand from Odel's chest. He took a deep breath and deactivated his Fruit ability. The obsidian armor covering his body peeled away in flakes like weathered sand, revealing an arm still emitting white smoke, its skin flushed red from overusing high temperatures.

This battle had not been easy, but in the end, he was the one who had survived.

Rain glanced at the charred corpse on the ground, his eyes calm and unruffled. He walked to the towering obsidian wall and pressed his intact left hand against it.

"Release."

Accompanied by a low rumble, the four indestructible obsidian walls turned into gray-white stone dust that scattered into the wind.

The long-lost night breeze brushed Rain's face, streaked with sweat and blood. Stepping through the stone dust and over Odel's corpse, he headed toward the underground treasury deep within the royal palace.

The hunter had completed his hunt. Now, it was time to collect his reward.