He Won't Die, Will He?
"You were standing too tall." Kaya moved his eyelids.
The many pirates present were terrified by his swift and ruthless actions, each of them trembling.
None of them had expected Boss Red Eye, an old-guard powerhouse who had spent nearly ten years on Pirate Island and was renowned for both his name and strength, to be killed by two slashes from Kaya.
No, to be precise, Red Eye had been too tall. Kaya's first slash had deprived him of his lower body, and when he fell, he had put his own neck within Kaya's reach. Then Kaya had given him one more slash to send him to his grave.
Kaya glanced down at Red Eye's corpse and felt how calm his own heart was.
...Killing really doesn't feel like much.
The atmosphere abruptly froze and grew heavy, carrying a suffocating pressure that made people afraid to breathe too hard.
"Aah! Aaaaaah~~"
The pirates suddenly screamed. Their bodies were crushed out of thin air, limbs flying in every direction as blood and mangled flesh fell to the ground!
In the blink of an eye, the entire gang of pirates, leader and underlings alike, had been wiped out, their corpses scattered in a circle.
"I didn't quite control it properly, using Reishi to crush humans directly," Kaya muttered to himself.
A bead of cold sweat the size of a bean hung on Kaido's forehead. As he looked at the man who was shorter than him and also appeared younger, towering waves quietly surged in his heart.
He hadn't seen anything, only sensed a tiny bit with his Observation Haki.
Just as he noticed it, the surrounding air had turned into an invisible hand and crushed the bodies of all those pirate lackeys.
Of course, he didn't care about those pirates. There were more pirates on the seas than stray dogs by the roadside.
He just looked at Kaya standing before him, unsure of what the other man wanted...
Could he be standing up for me?
At that thought, Kaido no longer knew what expression he ought to put on.
Kaya raised one hand. Turquoise, tree-like patterns flowed across the surface of his arm. He moved his fingers again, then slowly clenched his fist.
As Kaido's pupils contracted sharply, Kaya took a great step forward and drove a punch into his chest!
Bang!
Before Kaido could react, he was sent flying hundreds of meters, smashing through house after house and bringing down swathes of buildings.
After a brief silence, a roar suddenly rang out: "Worororororo!!"
Kaido charged out of the enormous cloud of dust. He wouldn't ask Kaya why he had suddenly attacked. In the world of pirates, most fights needed no reason.
Since they had all gone out to sea, that meant they had put their heads on the line. One day, when their pants came off, their heads would fall right along with them...
He leaped high into the air, becoming a tiny black dot against the sun, then came crashing down like a meteor.
Kaya stood still, not even moving his sword. He simply raised a hand.
With a thunderous crash, Kaido swung his massive spiked club down hard, bringing it against Kaya's hand with the force of a thunderbolt.
But the instant they made contact, Kaido's expression changed drastically, tinged with shock.
It won't budge... I can't move him at all!
Kaya had merely stood there and raised one hand to catch Kaido's fully charged, all-out strike.
Kaido's eyes widened, scarcely able to believe it.
"How is that possible... How can the gap be this huge?! Quit screwing with me!"
His anger instantly hit its peak. Dense, dangerous Armament Haki wrapped around his spiked club as he unleashed several more heavy blows in succession. Each was ferocious enough to split mountains and shatter steel.
At that moment, he seemed to have become a demon, yet the sheer force of his moves also made him look like a wrathful vajra!
Kaya held his sword loosely in one hand and used only his other palm to block. There was no precision or technique to his movements, only the simplest use of brute force to counter brute force.
Kaido didn't know how many times he had swung his club. The surroundings were a mess, the earth cracked, and the place was unrecognizable from before, reduced to ruins.
Throughout it all, Kaido had been looking for an opening in Kaya's defenses, and he had made a keen observation.
A layer of cyan, branch-like patterns had remained on Kaya's skin. Whenever Kaido's attacks landed, the strange patterns clinging to Kaya would light up.
"What is that thing?!" Kaido shouted. "Haki? I've never seen Haki like that. Armament Haki is supposed to be invisible armor!"
"It's Blut," Kaya said calmly.
Kaido visibly froze for a moment. Of course he couldn't understand what Kaya meant, because it was an entirely new and unknown system of power, different from Haki.
Kaya suddenly dodged, shifting his position in an instant to evade the massive spiked club as it fell. He raised his hand and clenched it into a fist, which glowed.
The next moment, Kaido took a devastating blow head-on, his heavily muscled stomach caving in!
He threw back his head and spat out a great mouthful of blood, which fell from the sky like rain.
The blood fell on Kaya... no, it never touched him. An extremely narrow gap separated the two, but that little distance seemed like an eternity.
As though he were draped in a transparent waterproof sheet, the blood slid down the surface of his clothes and fell away, unable even to wet them.
For the first time in his fight with Kaido, Kaya used his longsword. The holy sword of light swept upward, like a stroke drawn across Kaido by a master's brush tip, casting out great spreading blots of indigo ink!
Slash-
At that moment, time seemed to stop.
Kaido's mouth hung open as a thin fissure stretched from the side of his waist all the way to his left shoulder.
Then the wound instantly widened, and a torrent of blood gushed from the horrifying gash, forming a crimson fountain!
The blood seemed to have found an outlet from Kaido's body and crowded to pour out.
That single slash had almost cut Kaido's body open diagonally, and his massive steel spiked club had been severed along with it!
"Kaido..." Kaya moved his lips and said something, but a louder voice immediately drowned him out.
"Kaido!!!!"
A roar filled with anger suddenly rang out, shaking the entire area until it cracked. If one listened closely, a trace of concern could also be heard in it.
The next moment, fire from the heavens rained down upon the earth!
Boom!
Flames and explosions engulfed Kaya. The fierce blaze rivaled thunder, and wave after wave of fire surged like a tide, following one another in an unbroken roar!
"Kaido! You all right, kid?!" Charlotte Linlin pulled Kaido into her arms.
The blood flowing from Kaido's body wasn't as fierce anymore, though it might have been because he had already lost most of it. He lay in Charlotte Linlin's arms, gasping hoarsely.
Charlotte Linlin looked at the horrifying wound across the front of Kaido's body, and her teeth immediately itched with hatred.
She had called Kaido because she needed him for something, but the guy hadn't come even after a long time. She had angrily come out to check, only to see Kaya severely wound him with one slash.
She turned toward the raging sea of flames. With her Observation Haki, she could clearly sense a dark figure deep within the fire, swaying like grass in the wind.
Before long, the flames burned out, revealing the ground beneath, scorched black over a vast area by the intense heat.
A white figure stood at the center of the blackened earth, still looking utterly spotless. He stood tall and proud, holding a dazzling longsword.
"There's no need to be so angry, Linlin." Kaya's expression was indifferent. Facing Charlotte Linlin's furious glare, his expression didn't change in the slightest. "I was just playing around with Kaido."
"Kaya! You bastard!" Charlotte Linlin said through gritted teeth, enunciating every word. "Just you wait. One day, I'll kill you!"
With that, she carried Kaido away at great speed.
Behind them, Kaya watched the two retreating figures, a faint ripple passing through his eyes. Then he sheathed his sword and went back the way he had come.