Cutting Ties

All kinetic energy, energy itself, even the leaping black-red lightning, completely froze! The scene was bizarre and shocking!

Imu's figure vanished from the wicker chair like a phantom.

In the next instant, he had silently appeared directly above the frozen Luffy, hovering in midair.

He looked down at the "Sun God," like an insect trapped in amber. His gaze remained indifferent, as though he were merely brushing away a speck of dust.

Then he raised his right foot, clad in an exquisite white boot, and casually, gently... tapped Luffy's face, which was still frozen in a foolish grin.

"Bang!!!!!!"

There was no earth-shattering explosion, only an extremely muffled Loud Noise!

An irresistible, terrifying force erupted in an instant!

Luffy, along with his enormous "cauliflower fist," shot away like a baseball hit by a home run, turning into a blurry white streak that blasted toward the edge of the Flower Chamber's dome at supersonic speed!

"Boom! Crack!"

The incomparably sturdy dome, flowing with aurora energy, was smashed open with a massive hole!

Luffy vanished into the sunlight beyond the opening, leaving behind only an ever-shrinking black dot and a stretched, distorted cry full of disbelief: "Ehh----------???!!!"

Several charred fragments of rubber and a few ravaged flower petals slowly drifted down from the hole.

The Flower Chamber returned to silence, leaving only the breeze pouring in through the breach in the dome and the enormous, frozen base of the "cauliflower fist" on the ground.

The air was filled with the strange smell of burnt rubber and soil, along with a lingering trace of awkwardness.

Allen maintained his hand-over-his-forehead pose for a moment before slowly lowering it. He walked beneath the hole and looked up toward the direction Luffy had vanished.

He stayed silent for a full three seconds, as though confirming whether that "Sun God" had truly been kicked into outer space.

Then...

Allen spat viciously toward the hole, his face full of undisguised contempt and disgust. "Pah! Useless trash!" His voice rang exceptionally clearly through the empty Flower Chamber.

"What a waste of such a good Nika Fruit! What a waste of such powerful Conqueror's Haki! You got kicked around like a ball before you even touched the guy's clothes?! And I was counting on you to help? I must've been blind!"

The more he spoke, the angrier he became. Pointing at the hole, he cursed, "This is it? The Warrior of Liberation? Joy Boy? If Joy Boy knew his successor was such a thing, he'd probably crawl out of his grave and die all over again from anger! What a waste of my feelings! What a waste of my time!"

Damn it, I got completely screwed! If I'd known this idiot was this useless, I never would've gone through the trouble of helping him awaken! And I even owed someone a favor for it! Next time I see Dragon, I'm making him pay! Mental Damage Fee, lost work compensation, and an IQ tax for having this moron drag down my intelligence!

After venting his anger, Allen took a deep breath, forced out an exceedingly sincere yet extremely awkward smile, and turned toward Imu, who sat in the wicker chair as though nothing had happened. "Ahem... well... Lord Imu, you see... this is purely a misunderstanding! A huge misunderstanding!"

He spread his hands, looking utterly innocent. "I definitely didn't bring this brat here! He's just a wild monkey! Who knows which mountain ravine he ran out of! I was originally planning to properly walk... ah, properly discipline him! But I looked away for a moment, and the rope... uh, the reins slipped from my hand! That's how he ended up offending you! You're magnanimous, so please don't lower yourself to the level of this brainless idiot!"

Imu quietly listened to Allen's apology, which was riddled with holes and forced explanations. The face beneath the halo seemed unchanged.

He merely tilted his head slightly and said in that ethereal voice, with a faint tone as though he had discovered a new toy, "Interesting brat... you have more tricks than him."

Before his words had even faded, Imu's figure vanished like a ghost once more! Allen's pupils abruptly constricted, and every hair on his body stood on end!

A lethal sense of crisis instantly engulfed him!

"Not good!" Allen's Observation Haki screamed warnings! He instinctively tried to use his Space Ability to evade!

But he was still half a beat too slow!

Imu appeared in front of Allen as if by Teleport, Without Warning, right within arm's reach! That indifferent gaze seemed to pierce through space itself and stare directly into the depths of Allen's soul.

He raised that seemingly slender hand again, the hand that contained the power to freeze time and space, and lightly pointed at Allen.

"Freeze."

Imu's indifferent "Freeze" was like the whisper of the god of death. An incomparably immense force of Space Imprisonment, like an invisible ocean of ice, instantly swallowed Allen!

The space around him visibly became viscous and solidified, as though it were about to seal him within a piece of invisible amber! Even his thoughts seemed on the verge of freezing!

Just as that freezing power was about to lock Allen down completely, an unimaginable will erupted from the depths of his soul!

It was not merely Conqueror's Haki, but a fusion of the power of time and space he controlled and his absolute refusal to accept the outcome of being "frozen"!

"Break for me--!!!"

Allen's roar did not pass through his vocal cords. It reverberated directly through the frozen space!

Like the first thunderclap at the dawn of chaos!

"Rumble rumble rumble--!!!"

Centered on Allen, a torrent of dark golden Conqueror's Haki, Wrapped in countless fine cracks of time and space, surged into the heavens!

Carrying the violent power to tear apart dimensions and disrupt the flow of time, this Haki no longer struck the mind—it directly shook reality!

Under the impact of this Conqueror's Haki fused with the power of time and space, the invisible amber of space let out overloaded "Crack! Crack!" sounds! Spiderweb-like fractures instantly spread across the frozen region of space! Then, in the next second!

"Bang--crash!!"

Like hundreds of millions of panes of glass shattering at once!

The frozen space was forcibly shattered into countless glittering spatial fragments, like diamond stars filling the sky!

The imprisoning force vanished without a trace!

For the first time, an emotional fluctuation that could be called surprise appeared on Imu's face beneath the halo as he sat on the wicker chair.

His ethereal voice let out an extremely soft, intrigued, "Hm?" Clearly, Allen's ability to break free from the freeze so violently had completely exceeded his expectations.

This was no trick—it was simply breaking the technique through sheer force!

Having broken free of his restraints, Allen's eyes burned with blazing Fighting Spirit and the radiance of time and space.

He no longer held back. His low shout echoed through the Flower Chamber: "Divine Gear: Susanoo!"

It was not physical metal, but something woven from the purest, most condensed Top Tier Armament Haki, possessing a deep obsidian texture like the void of the cosmos. Silver streaks of light like stardust flowed across its surface.

Its lines were sharp yet fluid, covering every vital point of his body.

The shoulder armor bore reliefs of twisted vortices of time and space, while at the center of the breastplate was a slowly rotating miniature hourglass core formed from black-red lightning.