Armament Haki Hardening!

Zephyr's roar, laden with boundless fury, thundered through the enclosed training ground.

"Hiss... old man, yell all you want, but could you check my hand first? It feels like it's broken..."

Lorne shook his right hand frantically, grimacing as he complained. Agonizing pain shot through his finger bones, twisting the face that always wore such an arrogant grin.

"Serves you right!"

Seething with anger, Zephyr strode over and seized his right hand.

Lorne's knuckles were red and swollen, with unnatural bulges at the finger joints. Clearly, in that utterly unskilled collision of brute force, he had knocked his own bones out of alignment.

"I told you to use your 'will'! Did my words go in one ear and out the other?"

Zephyr bellowed, but his hands never stopped working. With a delicate precision utterly at odds with his rugged appearance, his large, callused hand squeezed and pressed Lorne's finger bones.

A sharp crack rang out.

"Awooo!"

Lorne let out another agonized scream, but immediately afterward, the piercing pain swiftly faded, replaced by a sense of relief.

Zephyr had forcibly snapped the displaced finger bones back into place.

"There. You won't die." Zephyr released his hand and said irritably, "With your monstrous recovery, this little injury will heal in under five minutes."

Just as he said, the redness and swelling over Lorne's knuckles were receding at a visible rate. Lorne flexed his fingers, his joints popping and crackling. They were already completely back to normal.

"Heh, thanks, Teacher." Lorne thanked him with a cheeky grin, as though he hadn't been howling in pain a moment ago.

"Don't call me Teacher! I don't have a student as stupid as you!" His anger still simmering, Zephyr pointed at the alloy training post. "Try feeling it properly again! What will is! It doesn't mean smashing harder!"

"I understand the principle." Rubbing his wrist, Lorne spread his hands innocently. "But this stuff is way too mysterious. Will, will... it doesn't have a shape or a color. How am I supposed to know whether that's what I'm using?"

"You..." Lorne's twisted logic left Zephyr almost speechless, the veins on his forehead throbbing.

He took a deep breath and forcibly suppressed his anger.

Trying to reason with this stupid ox was like talking to a brick wall!

He finally understood. For a fighting creature like Lorne, whose physical perception far outstripped his mental perception, any verbal instruction was hopelessly inadequate.

He had to make Lorne's body "understand" in the most direct way possible!

"Fine. Very good." Zephyr was so furious that he laughed, a dangerous gleam flashing in his remaining eye. "You said it has no shape and no color, did you?"

"That's right." Lorne nodded as though it were obvious.

"Then I'll let you see it with your own eyes and experience the 'color' of will for yourself!"

Before his words had faded, Zephyr suddenly stepped forward, his entire presence abruptly changing.

He was no longer the instructor patiently guiding his student, but a primeval beast awakening from its slumber!

"Plant your feet, brat!"

With a thunderous shout, Zephyr threw a straight punch at Lorne's chest, using no Armament Haki, only pure physical strength.

The punch was as fast as lightning, and the wind it stirred even let out a piercing howl!

Lorne's beastlike pupils abruptly contracted, but he did not dodge.

After enduring Garp's hellish beatings, he had long since grown accustomed to attacks of this level.

He drew a deep breath, his chest muscles instantly tightening as Iron Body of the Six Powers activated at a thought!

Bang!

Zephyr's fist struck Lorne squarely in the chest.

After the dull thud, Lorne's body merely swayed slightly, but his feet pressed two shallow footprints into the alloy floor beneath him.

Through sheer muscle strength and body weight, he dispersed the punch's entire force.

"That's it?" Lorne grinned, patted his unscathed chest, and taunted, "Teacher, did you skip a meal? That little strength isn't even enough to tickle me."

His passive "Battlefield Valor" had not even fully activated. It had merely sped up his circulation a little, and even his Grit had barely increased.

"Is that so?"

Zephyr slowly withdrew his fist, his expression entirely unchanged, but the cold gleam in his remaining eye grew even more chilling.

"It seems you won't learn the meaning of 'respect' until I make you suffer for real."

Humm-!

An aura several times more terrifying than before erupted from Zephyr!

This time, before Lorne's eyes, his raised right fist was instantly coated in an ink-black substance in a way that defied the laws of physics!

That blackness was deep and solid, as though condensed from the purest darkness, radiating a heart-stopping aura of unparalleled dominance!

Armament Haki Hardening!

"Open your eyes and look closely, brat!"

"This is the color of 'will'!"

Zephyr's voice seemed to come from the depths of the underworld, carrying an icy, metallic timbre.

The next second, that pitch-black iron fist blasted toward Lorne's chest again, moving more than twice as fast as before!

Too fast!

Even Lorne's motion-tracking vision could only catch an afterimage!

He had no time to react at all. Relying solely on combat instinct, he could only push Iron Body to its utmost limit!

He trusted his iron-hard body, which could withstand even half of Garp's strength head-on!

And yet...

Clang!!!

A metallic crash utterly unlike the previous dull thud suddenly erupted, like a great bell being struck!

The smile on Lorne's face instantly froze.

In its place came unprecedented horror and pain!

He felt as though it wasn't a fist that had struck him.

Instead, it was a red-hot, utterly compressed armor-piercing warhammer, slamming viciously into his soul!

That pitch-black energy was like countless poisoned steel needles, completely ignoring the "Iron Body" defense he took such pride in. It pierced his muscles and fascia with crushing ease, slammed savagely into his breastbone, then penetrated his body and rampaged wildly through his internal organs!

"Pff-!"

A mouthful of blood, mixed with a few fragments of internal organs, sprayed violently from Lorne's mouth.

As though struck head-on by a speeding train, his feet left the ground and his entire body flew backward more than ten meters. With a thunderous boom, he slammed heavily into the alloy wall behind him, then slid to the floor like a puddle of sludge.

"Cough... cough, cough..."