Giant Torrent

"What's going on? The way this tiny creature is looking at us... no, that's not right."

The Frog Sea King sensed the look in Dawn's eyes—the same look one gave food—and spoke to its companion in its unique language.

Sea Kings were creatures with advanced intelligence and language abilities, but ordinary humans, and even fish-men and merfolk, could neither hear nor understand their language.

"It feels... like the look we have when we hunt. He actually sees us as food? How arrogant!"

The Parrot Sea King replied. These two higher beings, each possessing intelligence no less than that of humans, fell into a brief discussion because of Dawn's unusual reaction.

Dawn wiped the corner of his mouth, a hunter's excitement appearing on his face. He stretched his powerful limbs, his joints cracking sharply. He walked to the bow, then gave a light leap onto the bow gun platform, already covered in spiderweb-like cracks from being used as his "launch pad" so many times.

He crouched low, the muscles in his calves instantly tensing and bulging like steel bars, swelling his loose trouser legs until they seemed ready to burst. Then he exerted force!

Boom!!!

His figure shot through the air like an arrow loosed from its bow, moving too fast for the naked eye to follow. The sea beneath him was even briefly forced apart to either side by his tremendous speed.

The battered gun platform beneath his feet finally reached its limit and shattered into countless chunks of metal. The entire steamship lurched under the immense recoil, its stern suddenly rising while its bow plunged down, icy seawater nearly flooding the deck.

"Dawn! You destructive maniac! Again?! How many times have I told you?! What are we supposed to do if the ship sinks?!"

Inside the cabin, Stella, who had only just calmed down, was startled again. She transformed back into the Nine-Tailed White Fox and rushed outside. Seeing Dawn streaking through the air toward the Sea Kings and the wreckage at the bow, she stomped her feet in fury and loudly protested.

Even though this had happened many times during their voyage, she had already eaten a Devil Fruit and held an instinctive fear of seawater. Besides, getting her beautiful fur wet felt awful.

It made her feel terrible, especially since she was used to staying in beast form.

But her protests were doomed to be swallowed by the sea wind and the roaring battle that followed.

Dawn, flying at high speed, naturally could not hear the complaints behind him. His eyes held only the two enormous moving ingredients.

He targeted the nearer Frog Sea King. His fist, as large as a cooking pot and carrying the force of his full-speed charge, smashed down on its massive head like a meteor!

Bang!!!

A visible white ring of air exploded from the point of impact, sweeping up the surrounding seawater and creating a brief vacuum.

The Frog Sea King's colossal body was blasted backward by that unparalleled force. Like a whip being flung out, it carved a deep trail across the sea's surface and let out a pained wail.

Seeing its companion grievously injured in an instant, the Parrot Sea King was shocked and enraged. Instinctively, it used its strongest weapon—its huge, hard beak—to peck at Dawn like lightning as Gravity began pulling him downward!

Dawn remained calm in the face of danger. With a thought, darkness surged around him and instantly absorbed the downward pull of Gravity acting on him, causing him to hover eerily in midair for a moment.

That instant was enough for him to shift lightly to the side, narrowly evading the lethal peck that could have pierced a warship. The beak missed, striking only the sea and blasting up a towering column of water.

Dawn skillfully controlled his posture in midair. As though invisible footholds lay beneath his feet, he made several precise aerial shifts in rapid succession and instantly arrived beside the Parrot Sea King's thick neck.

"Ha!"

With a sharp exhalation, he threw another heavy punch!

This time, without the enormous momentum from his high-speed charge, the Parrot Sea King merely had its head knocked aside. Its huge body swayed, but it suffered no substantial injury. Instead, its ferocity was further provoked.

"Croak—!!!"

In the distance, the recovered Frog Sea King let out an earthshaking roar, the immense sound waves making even the sea surface tremble.

It opened its huge mouth, and rings of nearly tangible circular sound waves suddenly formed. Parting the waves along their path, they rushed at astonishing speed toward both Dawn and the Parrot Sea King beside him. That previous punch had clearly driven it completely mad—it no longer cared about hitting its companion.

The highly penetrating sound-wave attack passed through the Parrot Sea King's enormous body first. Its colorful feathers were torn away by an invisible force, while even its hard beak cracked from the vibrations, blood seeping out. The sound waves did not lose any momentum as they charged straight at Dawn.

Facing a sound-wave attack powerful enough to shatter steel, Dawn showed no fear. This was far from the first time he had encountered such an attack.

In this world, any giant creature in the ocean whose appearance did not closely resemble a land mammal could be classified as a Sea King.

Among Sea Kings resembling amphibians, frog-shaped ones were the most common. Nearly all of them excelled at sound-wave attacks, and Dawn had encountered plenty during his hunts over the past few months.

Dawn's left arm instantly underwent elementalization, becoming pure darkness. It stretched outward at high speed like rubber, deliberately meeting the terrifying sound-wave rings head-on.

The Dark-Dark Fruit's ability to absorb attacks had its limitations—it could not directly absorb long-range attacks and required close range.

Therefore, Dawn used the malleability of Logia elementalization to extend his arm and artificially create the necessary "close range" for absorption.

(PS: Fun fact: it was never stated that the Dark-Dark Fruit could not undergo elementalization. That was merely a setting invented by some fanfiction writers, which led many people to believe it. The original canon material for the Dark-Dark Fruit consists of only a few manga panels—it isn't complicated.)

The sound-wave rings precisely crashed into the palm of Dawn's extended dark arm. A miniature vortex of darkness suddenly appeared in his palm, like a bottomless abyss, swallowing and absorbing all the sound-wave energy powerful enough to level cities, without even the slightest leakage.

Once the absorption was complete, Dawn immediately canceled his elementalization and restored his arm to normal. This "contact-absorb-cancel" tactic was a combat habit he had developed to compensate for the Dark-Dark Fruit's weakness.

He would never give his enemies the chance to press their advantage.

Seeing its attack vanish so bizarrely, the Frog Sea King's exceptional intelligence made it feel unprecedented shock and a trace of unease.

At that moment, the Parrot Sea King, which had just recovered from its companion's friendly fire, endured the intense pain and flapped its enormous wings.

Whoosh—!!!

The gale swept up seawater, forming a small tsunami dozens of meters high that crashed down toward Dawn in midair. It knew very well that its opponent was a Devil Fruit user—the sea itself was the most effective weapon.

It did not seek revenge against its companion for accidentally injuring it. Intelligent as it was, it understood that with a great enemy before them, this was not the time for infighting.

Dawn raised an eyebrow. His right arm underwent elementalization and rapidly expanded, becoming a gigantic hand of darkness that blotted out the sky.

"[Black Hole: Devour the Waves]!"

The vortex in the palm of the dark giant hand spun at high speed, generating terrifying suction. The tsunami crashing down on him seemed to meet the eye of an abyss. The massive torrent of water was continuously sucked into the dark alternate space, and not even a single drop splashed onto Dawn.

After absorbing the tsunami, Dawn immediately canceled his elementalization as well. Without pausing, he focused his mind and manipulated the laws within the alternate space, frantically compressing the vast amount of seawater again and again, filling it with destructive potential energy.

The instant the compression reached a critical point—

"[Giant Torrent]!"

Darkness surged behind Dawn, as if a gate to another world had opened.

Boom!

The extremely compressed seawater exploded forth, its resulting kinetic energy roaring like a super-heavy cannon being fired.

An immensely condensed high-pressure water jet shot forth irresistibly, striking the chest of the Parrot Sea King just as it was preparing to attack again.

Splat!

Like the sharpest spear, the water jet instantly pierced through its thick feathers, muscles, and bones. A gigantic bloody hole several meters wide appeared in its chest, blood spraying into the sky like a waterfall and rapidly dyeing the nearby sea red.

The Parrot Sea King let out a brief, miserable cry. The light in its eyes instantly faded, and its massive body crashed down onto the sea, throwing up towering waves. It was dead.

The terrifying aftershock caused by the water jet's explosion spread outward like a shockwave, directly tossing away the Frog Sea King, which had been swimming over with all its strength to join the attack, sending it rolling across the sea surface without end.

TO BE CONTINUED