63
Giant blood granted not only a rock-solid physique, but also bottomless endurance.
What was more, Taran was a warrior tempered by years amid raging seas, hardly an opponent who would tire easily.
Rossi stopped abruptly.
He drove the momentum of his charge into the ground, his soles scraping against the paving stones with a piercing screech.
Facing the three figures racing toward him, he gripped his sword hilt with both hands and plunged the long blade into a fissure beneath his feet.
The instant the blade sank in, something exploded.
It was not a sound, but a more primal tremor.
The air froze for an instant, then surged outward in all directions in a black-red tide.
The training ground seemed to be clenched and released by an invisible hand, fine cracks bursting across every inch of its paving stones.
The clouds were torn apart, and light twisted and refracted through the ** currents of Haki.
Conqueror's Haki and Armament Haki erupted together, intertwining into a tangible field of pressure.
Time within that region grew thick and sluggish, as though submerged in heavy syrup.
All three Tarans froze at once.
Their movements slowed, slower and slower, as though every step required them to break free of an invisible web.
The illusions sustained by high-speed movement began to waver under the wash of Haki, overlapping until they blurred into two swaying outlines, then collapsed into one.
The five-meter-tall figure came to a complete stop.
Taran shook his head, resignation mingling with his heavy sigh.
"That ** method really is direct."
He stood ** the cracked training ground, his muscles like a sculpture cast in bronze.
Yet back in his homeland of Elbaf, a body like his had once marked him as a dwarf.
Precisely because he could not win in contests