Imu's will had merely "descended" into and "controlled" Saint Nusjuro's body, rather than completely replacing him or merging perfectly with him.
The original owner's highly developed mythical zoan fruit abilities
including the precise transformations of his human-beast form and his great swordsman skills
were clearly beyond Imu's ability to fully inherit or finely control.
Thus, faced with Gern severing the head and making his provocative declaration, Imu could not manifest the mythical zoan's strongest human-beast form.
Instead, Imu chose a cruder, more direct method, one more suited to the nature of that "existence."
"NEEEIGH!!!"
A horse's shrill cry, belonging to no living creature and filled with deathly stillness and ill omen, suddenly erupted from Saint Nusjuro's headless body!
The sound was piercing!
Immediately afterward, the headless body underwent a horrifying transformation!
Its bones swelled, twisted, and multiplied wildly!
In an instant, it abandoned its human shape completely, transforming into the skeletal frame of an enormous horse dozens of meters tall!
But this was not Saint Nusjuro's skeletal horse. Over the pale bones
a layer of black, shriveled skin, with no flesh beneath it, rapidly spread
and clung tightly to the skeleton!
Strange patterns covered the skin, as though woven from countless dead souls.
It looked like a giant horse that had crawled from the depths of hell, radiating a dense aura of death!
At the same time, dark red Rinnegan eyeballs formed in Horse Bones' empty sockets, becoming the only flesh on its skeletal body.
"ROOOAR!!!"
Horse Bones threw back its head and roared, its four enormous bone hooves stomping violently on the ground!
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
The island shook violently!
With its roar, underworld frost even denser and more deathly than before erupted from it like a surging tide!
Wherever the yellow flame clouds passed, rocks cracked, and