At the center of the explosion, Lü Bu and Akainu were both sent flying backward. Lü Bu flipped nimbly through the air, planted the Sky Piercer against a huge chunk of flying ice, and landed steadily. The netherworld aura around him remained at full strength, though his gaze had grown sharper. Akainu used Elementalization to shed most of the impact and landed on an enormous ice floe. Several purple-black wounds marked his magma body; clearly, the collision had injured him to some extent as well.
"To think you could meet such a powerful attack of mine head-on. No wonder you dared act so arrogantly." Akainu slowly straightened, his magma-like gaze fixed on Lü Bu. "But that was only a warm-up!"
"Red dog! The warm-up is over!" Lü Bu roared, unleashing the power of the Giratina Fruit as he transformed into a terrifying demon god. His head was completely encased in a savage helmet shaped like an incomplete dragon skull. Several sharp horns extended from it, twisting backward as though they could pierce space itself. Beneath the faceplate, only a pair of slit pupils flickered, burning with murky gold-red flames. Those flames held no warmth, only endless savagery, greed, and the denial of existence.
His body was covered in ferocious black-and-red armor resembling Giratina's exoskeleton, with golden spikes at the joints. His hands became claws covered in shadow energy, their fingertips as sharp as sickles, wreathed in strands of unstable shadow energy. Even a slight flex of his claws sent water-like ripples through the surrounding space.
He still held the Sky Piercer, but its shaft had been assimilated, wrapped in shadow energy of the same origin as his carapace. Space collapsed slightly along its blade. Three pairs of broken dragon wings formed from shadows and red energy spread behind him, while