One grab, refined in an instant

Faced with the superbolt descending from the sky, Moria had no chance to resist. Sephiroth kept drawing on the charges in the clouds to bombard him, stopping only when his Mantra detected that Moria's biological signals had vanished completely.

-Koo-koo ka-ka, koo-koo ka.

A sound effect like an Autobot transforming rang out as Sephiroth reverted from his gigantic Jetstream form to [Satellite Shining · Jetstream]. The disengaged mechanical components reassembled in midair into two satellites, which remained floating overhead.

Of course, the sound itself served no purpose. It came from a sound-array device Sephiroth had installed purely for his own amusement.

Only after carefully probing with Mantra did Sephiroth turn into a bolt of lightning and strike the ground.

In the castle courtyard, where the heat from the electricity had yet to dissipate, thunderous flames had plowed through the scorched earth, and blue fire burned in many of the windows.

Sephiroth paced over the still-smoking rubble, blue-violet sparks occasionally bursting beneath his feet. Electrons in the surrounding air crackled against his body, which he was actively keeping in elemental form.

Reaching the center of the lightning strike, he saw what had become of Moria. Rather than carbonized, he looked as though he had partially melted into the earth and then cooled again. Nearly the entire area had become a field of fulgurite formed by lightning piercing the ground.

Under Sephiroth's guidance, the thick clouds of the Florian Triangle had unleashed a superbolt with hundreds of billions of watts of power and roughly six hundred million volts. By the standards of superbolts in nature, that was relatively small.

Gecko Moria ranked at the bottom of the Shichibukai. Even if Sephiroth had fought him fair and square, he would not have lost. At the very least, the current Moria could not even use Armament Haki.

Yet Sephiroth's reason for choosing beyond-visual-range, asymmetric warfare was rather embarrassing-he worried that Moria, as a member of the Shichibukai, might have Seastone.

He did not want to risk even the slightest chance of disaster. Whenever an opponent had any "weight" to them, his combat routine was to prepare before the fight to leave the battlefield instantly, open up a gap of over ten kilometers, and begin an asymmetric engagement.

If necessary, he would not consider it embarrassing to use consecutive lightning-strike Teleportations to flee to the other side of the planet in a dozen seconds or so. His guiding principle was to listen to his fear.

After all, compared with T0 powerhouses, Sephiroth was a highly mobile glass cannon.

By cheating with Memory Crystal technology, he possessed the combat theory and experience of every Holy Knight when it came to close-quarters skills. He had also cheated with bioelectric stimulation to bring his physical abilities slightly above those of an average Holy Knight.

Across the six attributes of attack, defense, mobility, endurance, reaction, and range, T0 powerhouses might have their specialties, but overall, they were well-rounded fighters with all six stats maxed out.

Sephiroth, on the other hand, was a catastrophically lopsided fighter whose off-the-charts stat chart looked like a pair of boxer briefs leaving half his ass exposed.

His defense, based on his Fruit ability, was T2, and his endurance was T3. Even a basic attack from a T0 expert would kill Sephiroth on the spot if it landed.

Attack: the Rumble-Rumble Fruit normally put him in the middle of T0, with the potential to exceed the scale depending on external conditions.

Mobility: lightning-based, ultra-long-distance Teleportation, which was possible even in the original story. Off the charts.

Reaction: emotional detection for early warning, radio waves that interfered with Observation Haki, and Mantra spanning hundreds of kilometers. Off the charts.

Range: normally at the very top of T0, with the potential to exceed the scale through satellite support.

...A member of the Shichibukai, huh.

A silent reflection, mingled with the static of electric currents.

He was not someone who liked talking to himself aloud. It was just that...disposing of a "named character" for the second time had stirred a few thoughts.

Azure arcs danced at Sephiroth's fingertips as metal gradually gathered from the surrounding wreckage. Rusty knights' swords, twisted fragments of bronze statues, and even gears from the castle's great clock floated into a metallic vortex under the pull of a magnetic field.

The instant brilliant blue lightning burst from his face of black electricity, a stream of ultrahigh-temperature plasma melted the entire vortex into a red-gold liquid.

When presenting himself as "Satellite Shining, a Logia Rumble-Rumble Fruit user," he never stopped actively maintaining his elemental form. To him, it felt like breathing manually all the time-not particularly difficult.

The liquid metal reshaped itself into a coffin, encased Moria's remains, and sank underground. More metal gathered into an obelisk on the surface.

This grave would grant him one final measure of dignity.

Sephiroth had considered capturing Moria alive, then looking for an opportunity to acquire technology for extracting Devil Fruits or manipulating the Lineage Factor.

But whatever else he was, Moria was still a member of the Shichibukai. It was not some pretense of respect; Sephiroth simply would not feel safe even with him locked up. As for sparing his life...that would only be making trouble for himself.

After burying Moria, Sephiroth vanished in a bolt of lightning. The next time he appeared, he crashed down as a lightning strike in front of Doctor Hogback, who was trying to escape.

"Wait, I surrender-"

Faced with the "humanoid lightning elemental" that had suddenly appeared before him, Hogback immediately begged for mercy. After all, the world called him a genius surgeon-even Chopper admired his medical skills-and his expertise was world-class. As long as he dropped to his knees and surrendered at light speed, surely this man would need someone with his talents.

"I'm a-gaaah..."

Sephiroth had no intention of dealing with this fellow whose sexual proclivities were far too accommodating. Holding a lunar soldier's Logic Module in his left hand, he pressed his right directly onto Hogback's bald head. Electricity erupted from his silver metal gauntlet, making Hogback scream in agony.

"Well said. Your medical skills are destined for me, and mine they shall be."

One grab, refined in an instant.

Hogback's medical knowledge streamed continuously into the blank lunar soldier Logic Module until the transfer was complete, turning it into a medical Memory Crystal.

This brutal method, designed to transfer memories at extreme speed, had also all but fried Hogback into an idiot by the time it finished.

He had only just decided to flee after hearing the noise outside stop, and his laboratory was a short distance down the corridor. Sephiroth walked toward it. As he drew closer, a distinctive stench, repulsive to humans, gradually made itself known.

Inside the iron door, a beautiful zombie in a black evening dress lay off to one side. She was Cindry, the famous singer who had died in an accident six years earlier. Without a shadow controlling her, she had now become an ordinary corpse.

So...why would a corpse cry?

No, Brook could cry even when he was nothing but bones...better not try to make too much sense of this world...

The laboratory contained all sorts of corpses, along with a few living people, but there was essentially no point in trying to treat those survivors anymore.

...People in the same line of work really are rivals.

Human experimentation.

Besides admitting that he lacked the necessary willpower, Sephiroth had two other reasons for not training his body further.

First, the combat strength he could gain through training fell far short of what he could gain by reverse-engineering Lunar Technology to develop his Fruit ability more deeply.

Second, comparisons of data collected from pirates with bounties ranging from fifty million to one hundred and fifty million showed that Sephiroth's physical potential topped out at around the eighty-million level. What a pity. He had no special bloodline.

Lightning flashed, and nothing capable of breathing remained in the laboratory.