Kirishima Bupai's right fist slammed squarely into Sakazuki's chest before he could turn it into magma.
"Pfft-!"
Sakazuki's eyes bulged as blood mixed with magma sprayed from his mouth.
Like a cannonball fired from its barrel, his entire body became a streak of crimson light and smashed into the fortress's thick stone wall behind him, embedding itself deep inside.
"Admiral Sakazuki!!!" Countless Marines screamed in utter horror amid the billowing dust.
"Kuzan!" Sengoku roared.
Kuzan reacted extremely quickly. The instant Kirishima attacked Sakazuki, his body transformed into an icicle and stabbed toward Kirishima's back.
The biting cold was enough to freeze the soul, yet Kirishima did not even turn around.
His left hand reached behind him at an anatomically impossible angle, all five fingers spread.
"Royalguard: Perfect Block!"
Humm!
A huge, translucent circular energy shield, swirling with intricate dark-gold runes, instantly formed behind him. The icicle Kuzan had become slammed into it.
Crack-crack-crack-!
The power of ice capable of freezing the sea instantly disintegrated upon touching the shield's surface, as though it had met its nemesis.
Kuzan grunted. His elemental body was forcibly jolted back into its original form, and he staggered backward, a thin line of ice-blue blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.
For the first time, his ever-successful freezing power had been so easily dismantled.
"I Am the Approaching Storm! Admiral Borsalino, have you ever been kicked by a Devil?" Kirishima's icy voice sounded like a ghost beside Borsalino's ear.
Borsalino's pupils shook violently. He had remained in his photon form, moving at high speed, confident that no one could lock onto him.
Yet now, Kirishima's figure seemed to disregard spatial distance, appearing eerily right in front of his photon trajectory.
His foot, clad in Beowulf's greave and wreathed in those same pitch-black fluctuations, seemed to