Thunderstorms gathered across the sky, forming a "Raigo" capable of destroying a Sky Island in a single strike. At this moment, it amounted to nothing more than "one round of ammunition."
Sephiroth had not mastered "nuclear energy." He was still far from it-so far that, at this stage, the idea seemed little more than a pipe dream.
Of the four fundamental forces, electromagnetism and gravity were long-range forces, while the weak nuclear force and strong nuclear force were short-range forces.
At his current level, trying to use a "feeble long-range force" to influence a "powerful short-range force" was absolutely impossible. The gap was simply too great.
What he could do for now was pour in enormous quantities of electrical energy, regardless of the cost.
Like firing blindly at birds, he sent ultrahigh-density, high-speed electrons crashing into the nuclei of various atmospheric molecules at random.
Then he used a powerful magnetic field to focus the gamma rays produced by those collisions.
Putting in 1,000 units of electrical energy and getting 1 unit of gamma-ray energy back would already count as highly efficient.
Even that result was only possible by cheating with the Rumble-Rumble Fruit. Natural superstorms were nowhere near that efficient.
The invisible acceleration track confined within the immensely powerful magnetic field was undergoing Larmor precession in response to the planet's magnetic field.
An ominous blue glow illuminated the sea beneath the thunderclouds. It was Cherenkov radiation, generated as high-speed charged particles traveled through a medium.
-Correcting geomagnetic deflection rate...
-Predicting geomagnetic disturbance model...
-Planetary rotational linear velocity...
-Ionospheric plasma concentration...
Sephiroth's five senses formed a synesthetic link with his electromagnetic perception, feeding all kinds of information into his brain-multidimensional, three-dimensional information.
Three layers of targeting sights sprang into view, projected onto his retinas like a VR display.
The first layer showed the constantly shifting geomagnetic equipotential surfaces. The second displayed the ripples of Admiral Kizaru's biological field...
The background grid on the outermost layer was an error-compensation model generated from previous firing data gathered during live-fire tests on the lunar surface.
A shot over an extreme distance of 1,400 kilometers required data relayed through numerous satellites to correct its aim.
A full three minutes passed between gathering the thunderstorms and calibrating the shot.
Now, everything was ready.
Sephiroth almost seemed to hear a voice beside his ear...
"You can do it, big brother with the spaceship!"
It was an auditory hallucination.
"Star-Crushing Roar Cannon-!"
As the brilliant blue spear of light pierced the sky, the air ionized into multiple rings of rainbows.
-The waters of the Calm Belt, 1,400 kilometers away.
"-!"
After Admiral Kizaru heard Sephiroth's "Telepathy," his Observation Haki began screaming warnings. It was less a perception of something tangible than a sixth sense.
After clashing with Satellite Shining, an unprecedented kind of opponent, Kizaru had learned his lesson and made a habit of keeping his body actively transformed into his element.
-His entire body shone gold, like a little golden statue.
Sephiroth's extremely long-range Mantra had detected this, which was why he had decided to launch this attack.
After all, his objective was to intimidate the Marines and the World Government. It was a matter of throwing one punch to keep a hundred more from coming.
He was not trying to kill Kizaru and thoroughly enrage the Marines. Nor was this shot intended to hit him...
Within Kizaru's "field of vision"-
A dazzling beam of blue light appeared first, lasting only about two seconds, immediately followed by a deafening explosion.
The column-shaped shock wave from the explosion severely distorted Kizaru's elemental body.
The beam had not struck him directly-
The ray, less than a meter in diameter, had merely swept past roughly thirty meters from his side.
Then, as though it had "weight," it followed a trajectory resembling a ballistic arc and "fell" onto the sea farther away.
Along with the shock wave came a terrifying emission of energy.
Beyond the physical impact, Kizaru felt a strange, destructive energy invade his body.
Even in his elemental form, his stamina was dropping at an astonishing rate.
That made him realize he would most likely die if he stopped actively maintaining his elemental form now.
The destructive ray had lasted only two or three seconds. But the ionized flames that followed burned a hole twenty kilometers across through the sea of clouds.
Where the ray fell, the shock wave raised waves a thousand meters high. Seawater evaporated and broke down into hydrogen and oxygen, triggering a massive hydrogen explosion.
As the user of the Glint-Glint Fruit, he quickly escaped the area affected by the strange energy.
Then he wrapped the invading energy inside his body in light and fired all of it out as light bullets.
Only once every trace of foreign energy had been cleared from his body did the floodgate-like drain on his stamina finally stop.
Out of caution, he still did not dare end his active elemental transformation, remaining a figure of gleaming gold.
"..."
Kizaru, who had always been so nonchalant, now wore a grave, solemn expression.
He hadn't intended to hit me...
What if he had... what would happen if that thing struck me directly!?
He expanded his Observation Haki to its limit. Several minutes passed without anything unusual happening. It seemed that this really had been the so-called "final attack."
But then, within the range of Kizaru's Observation Haki, marine life began dying throughout a radius of more than ten kilometers around the beam's point of impact.
Most of the ordinary aquatic creatures had literally melted.
"..."
Now he knew what happened when living creatures were hit.
In truth, those vaporized at the center of the impact zone had been the luckiest. Those killed instantly in the hydrogen explosion had not fared badly either.
The creatures nearby that melted quickly had gotten off relatively lightly, too.
Worst off were the large Sea Kings close to the blast. Their bodies underwent a horrific transformation, as though they were "melting."
Huge patches of skin peeled away, exposing mangled flesh.
Their massive bodies did not die immediately. Instead, they fled frantically in every direction.
Some of the smaller ones closer to the center turned into fluorescent skeletons as they fled, sinking into the deep sea.
Like brain cells, nerve cells and heart muscle cells did not divide once they had fully formed.
So even if the DNA in every cell in their bodies fractured, the function of those cells would remain unaffected. In other words, their nerve cells would keep working, transmitting signals of agony until death.
This was death by a thousand cuts at the level of DNA...
The Sea Kings' frenzied "wails" traveled far... so very far through the deep sea...
In the Calm Belt, there was no wind, and the water did not flow either.
Within Kizaru's Observation Haki, the total amount of that extremely dangerous energy was not particularly large.
It spread underwater into an elliptical area spanning roughly thirty kilometers, then simply remained motionless. The water gave off a faint fluorescent glow.
A golden light flashed.
Kizaru instantly evacuated the area. Since he had not used the Yata Mirror, he found himself in the West Blue when he came to his senses.
Letting out a deep breath, he used the Yata Mirror to head toward the nearest Marine Base.
-The World Government needed to approach the matter of Satellite Shining with greater caution.
(I added a picture of Conis's design to the paragraph comments in Chapter 5. It's also in this chapter's discussion.)
Before you continue