6,400 Direct Attack

"When you're poor, use tactical maneuvers. When you're rich, blanket the battlefield with firepower. If I can carpet-bomb the place, why fight up close?"

Without a shred of a true powerhouse's pride, Sephiroth intensely scanned the entire island with Mantra while controlling the thunderclouds overhead to keep striking anything that moved within the walls.

How much stamina did a Logia consume? After nearly two and a half years of practice, using his ability took even less stamina than it had during his high-altitude tests when he first acquired it. It was like using a longer lever to move the electrical charges that already existed in nature.

Enel's stamina in the original story was nothing special, yet he could still launch island-destroying attacks without much exertion. Even after being beaten so badly that he needed to restart his heart with electricity, he could use his power on an enormous scale the moment he woke up.

From Sephiroth's own experience, the stamina consumed by a Logia was about the same as ordinary physical activity. Even without relying on natural electrical charges, discharging at his absolute limit using only his own stamina was no more strenuous than throwing a shot put with all his strength.

Guiding natural electrical charges barely consumed any stamina at all.

"...Brook, watch out and dodge."

Sephiroth, whose entire body had become energy, raised his head of black ball lightning. His "eyes" beneath his hood emitted blue electrical sparks.

"Hm?"

After Sephiroth spoke, Brook still noticed nothing wrong and turned his head to look around.

"It's that Ghost Princess's Negative Hollows. They'll be here in about seven minutes."

Sephiroth had detected the hollows the moment Perona released them.

"...Yo...yohoho-"

Brook knew nothing about Haki at this point. Faced with Sephiroth's miraculous display, he could only assume that perhaps Logias were simply like that.

Even after wiping out every zombie inside the walls but outside the castle, Sephiroth still skulked around rather than taking the initiative to advance.

A sweet, fresh scent now permeated all of Thriller Bark, like an air freshener, making it feel like a forest after the rain.

Whether it smelled like freedom was another matter. For all anyone knew, it smelled like working nine to six, four days a week, all year round.

The air brimmed with electrical charges, and the atmospheric electric field reached its threshold. The zombies hiding inside the castle were soon scrambling about, pursued by ball lightning that condensed out of the atmosphere.

Though called ball lightning, it looked more like Lightning Elemental Slimes. Their overall shape was spherical, yes, but like a non-Newtonian fluid, they were not perfectly stable spheres. They twisted and deformed, drifting freely through the air near the ground or moving against the wind.

They began slipping indoors through every available gap, sliding along metal surfaces. Sometimes they hovered; sometimes they vanished silently. The instant they touched a target, they discharged electricity and produced a physical explosion.

Balls of lightning in orange, red, yellow, purple, blue, brilliant white, and eerie green, in all sorts of sizes and shapes, met the miniature hollows pouring in from every direction. Both sides leaped and spun through the air, tracing strange arcs.

Then...nothing happened.

They touched one another as they passed back and forth, yet seemed to have no collision hitboxes at all. Neither could affect the other.

"...I thought high-energy entities would be able to counter Negative Hollows."

Those unreasonable Devil Fruits had taught him another lesson. WAAAGH really was terrifying.

"So, Mr. Shining, what does that mean?"

Brook turned his skeletal face toward Sephiroth.

"Hmm...it means I'll be leaving first."

Watching the Negative Hollows rush in from every direction, Sephiroth let an invisible ripple flicker across his silver mechanical gauntlet.

Some of the pirates with bounties over a hundred million he had dealt with in the New World had known Armament Haki. He had forcibly extracted their memories using the Memory Crystal and learned Armament Haki that way.

In fact, he also intended to do the same to that corpse-loving Doctor Hogback and seize his medical knowledge.

Sephiroth had never concealed his extreme caution...or, if someone called it cowardice, he was perfectly happy to admit that too.

His current Armament Haki was weak. Apart from the way he had acquired it, his own physical capabilities were nothing special either.

By his own estimate, he was probably only on the level of the Kuja Warriors. Since he did not know whether Haki could strike Negative Hollows, he decided against courting death.

"Huh-huh-!!"

Brook's skeletal jaw stretched longer than his head as he watched his good friend Mr. Shining turn into lightning and vanish in an instant.

With his teammate in trouble, he had not stood firm as a mountain. He had retreated as swiftly as the wind.

Faced with mobility that was practically Teleportation, the Negative Hollows could only redirect their attention to Brook.

"If I get another life, I only want to be a girl's panties. I'm so pathetic. If there were a hole, I'd crawl right into it."

After the hollows passed through him, he collapsed into an OTZ pose on the ground and once again uttered those humiliating words.

Sephiroth, meanwhile, had long since fled without a shred of sportsmanship. In terms of fleeing alone, probably only the Door-Door Fruit, Glint-Glint Fruit, and Teleportation Fruit could rival him.

Even Enel could move almost instantaneously across the entirety of Sky Island. For Sephiroth, whose Mantra had a much greater range, it was even easier.

Essentially, he traveled by piercing the atmosphere as lightning. With the Rumble-Rumble Fruit's absurd power output, he could teleport to almost anywhere within reach of his Mantra.

As for just how shameless Sephiroth could be, he was practically more despicable than the legendary Homecoming Water Gate, lower than frog piss, and more brazen than a gentleman bearing the name of pervert.

His Mantra could cover roughly a hundred kilometers at its highest precision. The lower his precision requirements, the more its range increased geometrically. (Note 1)

When faced with a troublesome opponent, he would simply use the Maglev Satellite Launch Tower to strike from beyond visual range, over a hundred kilometers away, then flee and repeat the process. If necessary, he could hide on the other side of the planet, recover, and set out again. He could attack or leave whenever he pleased, adamantly refusing to meet his opponent and keeping at least fifty kilometers away until he wore them to death.

For now, he had not gone quite that far off the deep end. He merely launched himself ten kilometers into the sky at lightning speed and pinpointed Perona, whose soul was currently outside her body, with Mantra.

"What is going on here?! Where is the enemy?!"

With her soul outside her body, she moved lightly, like an elegant butterfly, freely navigating the surrounding ball lightning. Honestly, she was beginning to like those colorful, oddly shaped balls of lightning. They suited her tastes perfectly.

"We don't know, Lady Perona-ah! Help! Pero..."

The zombies were not so fortunate. The ball lightning was extremely unstable, even in form, appearing and disappearing without warning and making it impossible to predict.

What frightened her most was the news from the zombies: apparently, even Lord Moria was helpless. How were they supposed to fight an enemy they could not even meet?!

"...Damn it. At this rate, is running away my only option?"

Perona's soul returned to her body, and she ordered the zombies under her command to help pack her belongings.

"You've got to be kidding! I only helped Lord Moria because I thought it would be fun. If my life is actually in danger, I can't stay here anymore!" (Note 2)

As she frantically packed, a tiny ball of lightning under Sephiroth's control crawled along a metal pipe like a slime, then raced along the metal bed frame and struck Perona.

"...Gah-"

The shock was not particularly strong. Sephiroth's finely controlled current put her to sleep without causing much direct harm.

As Perona fell headfirst onto the bed, the Negative Hollows inside the castle instantly vanished.

The ball lightning spread unchecked throughout the castle, attacking its targets. Even Dragon-Slaying Swordsman Ryuma could not resist it. Though his body belonged to a master swordsman, the shadow controlling it belonged to Brook.

Never mind being unable to wield his full strength-even if he could, the range of his Flying Slashes fell far short of reaching Sephiroth.

Endless ball lightning caught up with him and engulfed him. His shadow then returned to its original owner, while Wano Country's national treasure-the Black Blade Shusui-flew into the sky under the influence of magnetism.

Apart from Doctor Hogback, who had been deliberately spared and was trembling in a corner of the operating room, nothing capable of moving remained inside the castle.

Even now, Sephiroth stayed high in the sky, scanning the ground with Mantra-Moria had disappeared.

A pair of gloomy, hate-filled eyes peered out from a shadow somewhere in the castle.

That was why Devil Fruits were so dependent on imagination, and so absurd.

Sephiroth had not expected Moria to be existing in a two-dimensional form, remaining inside a shadow the entire time. Until he turned himself three-dimensional again, even Sephiroth's Mantra could not accurately detect him.

Moria kept waiting. In his mind, whatever the enemy's motives were, they would eventually show themselves to search for loot. Then it would be his turn to launch a surprise attack.

He had never dreamed that the bastard Sephiroth would loot the place as if he were shopping at a supermarket. He meticulously scanned every inch of shadow inside the castle, finally finding a faint trace of interference.

Taking the attitude that there was no harm in trying his luck, he sent a colossal bolt of lightning down from the sky and completely destroyed the area.

Exposed to the open air and deprived of natural shadows, Moria's enormous, 692-centimeter body clumsily returned from two dimensions to three.

His shirt with its bat-shaped collar and his Gothic outfit were now in tatters. His shallot-like hairstyle had curled from the electric shock, and his demonic face, with two horns growing from the sides of his forehead, twisted into a savage expression.

"A Rumble-Rumble Fruit User, huh?! Who the hell are you-?!"

Normally, the villain would appear at this point and run their mouth for a while. But Sephiroth was a king of survival whose shamelessness went beyond this world's usual notions of fair play.

Ten kilometers up in the sky, he had no intention of descending. If he could wage asymmetric warfare, why give his opponent a chance to fight back?

All one could say was that the absence of ordinary civilians in Moria's territory was, at least right now, a major mistake.

Within the rumbling clouds, two satellites moved slowly past, their surfaces shimmering with cold blue light. Suddenly, they broke apart into mechanical components, scattering sparks and fragments like exploding stars.

Light blossomed in the darkness. In the Florian Triangle, where sunlight was rarely seen, it was as though a cold blue sun had risen.

Overlay two Level 2 monsters-overlay! Xyz Summon-Giant Trunade!

Blue lightning thundered across the heavens, and a lightning giant clad in heavy steel armor appeared in the sky-the Giant Trunade Spirit.

As the giant brought both fists crashing down, a dazzling blue-white bolt of colossal lightning plunged straight toward Moria.

"6,400 direct attack-welcome to the Official Card Game!"

(The protagonist's Thunder God Form is pictured in the author's note. Perona's picture in the previous chapter was approved.)