This novel is finished, and I have posted all the advanced chapters on my Patreon https://www.patreon.com/darkshadow6395
Kurozumi Orochi truly thought that way. Whether it was Kaido or Rowen, as long as the circumstances allowed, he would side with either one.
But what he never realized was, Rowen had never believed him from the very beginning.
This wasn't a matter of trust. It was about whether belief even existed at all.
"You… what are you saying? I don't understand a word!" Kurozumi Orochi forced a stiff smile, making one last desperate attempt to gain sympathy.
"Right now, Kaido and Orrick are both gone, and in all of Wano, it's just me. I'm no match for you. What good would lying to you do?"
"No, no, no, General Kurozumi. I know you far better than you imagine," Rowen said, shaking his head, the corners of his mouth curling as if amused.
"You're a merchant. And merchants love one thing above all else… taking risks."
"This taste, the instinct to gamble for profit, it's not something I believe you could cast aside. Tell me, which is the bigger gamble? Rebelling with Kaido and Orrick, or siding with the Marines? The difference between the two is as clear as day."
"The benefit? Isn't it obvious? One guarantees survival now. The other guarantees survival later, while letting you keep playing your little 'local emperor' act."
Cold sweat poured down Orochi's body. Rowen had hit him with precision, cutting straight to the core.
"So from the very beginning, I never thought you'd surrender sincerely. I just wanted to hear your bargaining chips, maybe hear you slip out some information…"
Rowen's smile vanished, turning cold.
"But if you insist on playing dumb, even violating your own merchant's nature on such a fundamental issue, then there's nothing left between us to discuss."
"You… You tricked me?!" Orochi's face paled as his stomach dropped.
Kaido's stationed forces… Orrick's hidden secrets… Just those two pieces of information alone were more than enough to doom him. Even if Rowen wasn't allied with them, this slip could cost him his life!
In fact, he might not even live to wait for Kaido or Orrick's reaction. He could die right here… at Rowen's hands.
"Despicable!!"
"Despicable? Coming from you? Don't make me laugh."
Rowen sneered, his figure fading, retreating once more into the darkness.
"The fifth one…"
"What?!!"
Orochi's expression froze as one of his heads suddenly went numb. His remaining heads snapped up just in time to catch a flash of blue lightning, arcing out from the void and slicing clean across another neck.
Rowen had proven, through action rather than words, that he had never trusted him. This hidden yet merciless strike was not one just anyone could execute.
Now, only three heads remained.
Rowen's faint, mocking voice echoed from every direction.
"Another one gone. Why does this feel like dismemberment? I'm not some kind of pervert… How about you return to your full form and we finish this quickly?"
"Finish quickly, my ass!!"
Driven half-mad, Kurozumi Orochi burst into furious laughter. This entire clash had been humiliation after humiliation, he had been outmaneuvered by Rowen's wit from the very beginning.
And now, standing at the edge of life and death, he realized his enemy had barely even revealed himself. Rowen had remained calm, almost casual, never once fighting him directly.
"Don't get too smug, it's not over yet!"
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Suddenly, sharp metallic cries pierced the darkness. From the three surviving heads, long gleaming blades pushed their way out, gripped savagely between Orochi's jaws.
That wasn't all. In one smooth motion, Orochi drew a hidden blade from within his robes, while three more coiled into his serpentine tail.
"Yamata no Hattōryū!!"
Kacha, kacha…
The grinding sound of steel locking into place reverberated through the void. Eight swords, all aimed forward from every angle, radiated killing intent. A torrent of overwhelming sword energy erupted skyward, as though it would shred the very darkness into ribbons.
As the Shogun of Wano Country, the usurper of the Kozuki clan's rightful rule, Kurozumi Orochi was no mere meddler. His sword style was deadly.
In human form, he specialized in dual-wielding. But in this monstrous state, his ultimate technique revealed itself, the Eight-Headed Sword Style.
'Yet still… what use would it be?'
From the void, Rowen's calm disappointment drifted out. "You can't even find where I am. What meaning is there in waving your blades around?"
Orochi said nothing. He didn't dare waste words, this might simply be another of Rowen's traps.
Then, with a grim resolve, he dragged his blades through the air.
Shaa!
Before Rowen's skeptical gaze, countless slashing waves materialized, exploding outward from every direction. The force behind them was terrifying.
Rowen's eyes narrowed sharply. "This is… Seastone?!"
Everywhere the sword energy carved through the darkness, white scars were left behind, like a brush streaking violently across a black canvas. The source was unmistakable: the swords themselves.
These were no ordinary weapons. Each blade was forged entirely of Seastone!
That kind of craftsmanship could only exist in Wano.
Rowen's mind worked in an instant. The third stage fusion of his powers allowed him to assimilate all substances, given enough time. But there was one exception, the one material that interfered with Devil Fruit wavelengths. Seastone!
It could not erase lightning itself, just as a Seastone block would not melt an iceberg born from Aokiji's fruit, but it suppressed the essence of an awakened fruit's influence, nullifying the space Rowen had saturated with thunderclouds and destruction.
The energy eating away at the battlefield, those corrosive powers were extensions of the Goro Goro no Mi, born from its full awakening.
And Orochi had just cracked them.
Lightning itself was only another derivative of his power.
By using Seastone at the root to erase it, Orochi couldn't completely shatter Rowen's Black Prison of Thunder, but he could carve out just enough space to breathe.
"Madman!"
Rowen's expression darkened, his teeth flashing in a cold grin. "You actually shoved Seastone blades into your own throats. Aren't you afraid of stabbing yourself to death?"
Now things were getting interesting.
"So I was right after all!" Kurozumi Orochi's bloodied face twisted with unrestrained joy.
He didn't understand the concept of awakenings. Zoan abilities were direct and physical, nothing like the bizarre transformations of Paramecia or Logia fruits, leaving him baffled in the face of Rowen's powers.
But there was one thing he understood all too well, Seastone was the eternal nemesis of Devil Fruits.
The Cutting-Cutting Fruit couldn't slice through it, the Soft-Soft Fruit couldn't weaken it. And if that was true, then naturally, Logia users were no exception.
As the blades tore away chunks of darkness, Orochi spun them faster and faster, his movements growing desperate, mad. A wild tornado of sword energy burst outward in all directions.
Boom!!
From afar, the massive black sphere that had blanketed several kilometers suddenly cracked open. A blinding white light pierced through it like a drill forcing its way out of iron, revealing the distant starry heavens above.
Air howled inward with a deafening roar, filling the vacuum. Orochi inhaled greedily, savoring his regained breath, before sneering:
"I should thank you, Soryu. It was your Seastone dust that reminded me, this space of yours isn't unbreakable!"
Indeed, Seastone had no natural glow. It could never serve as a light source.
And yet just moments ago, the dust of Seastone suspended around Rowen had begun to glimmer faintly, almost like starlight.
Why? Orochi's eyes gleamed with manic triumph. Because the overwhelming density of awakening energy clashed against the Seastone, which wiped it out, only for new energy to surge in instantly, colliding again and again, creating a fierce discharge reaction.
"That was your mistake. Your move, I've already seen through it!", With three heads from eight and six tails from eight, the Shogun of Wano stood battered, blood-soaked, yet still defiant. Orochi grinned hideously within the lone patch of light he had torn into the suffocating darkness.
Clap, clap, clap.
Crisp applause echoed through the shattered void. Orochi turned, eyes twitching, as Rowen stepped calmly out of the darkness, his weapon hanging loose in one hand.
"Not bad," Rowen said, a faint smile tugging at his lips. "You're not quite as stupid as I thought, Kurozumi Orochi."
"Zephyr-sensei once told me: the first lesson of battle training isn't just learning to take a hit without flinching. It's observing. Summarizing. Adapting on the fly. And in that… you've done well."
"To grow stronger in combat, that is the most basic of basics. If it were only about raw muscle and brute force, lifting stones or running laps would be far more effective than fighting."
"Hmph! Still spouting nonsense, trying to stall for time and lay your traps?" Orochi snapped. His sneer twisted into rage as he swung his blades, unleashing a heaven-rending strike.
Clang!
The ground tore open, a deep gorge splitting across the blackened space. Orochi pointed toward the scar and barked coldly:
"Afraid you won't get the chance. Creation is hard… but destruction? That's always easier."
Rowen only glanced at the wound carved into his domain and gave a careless shrug.
"No. I just wanted to tell you what my second lesson is."
Orochi stiffened. Unease began to crawl into his chest.
"What?"
"Doubt yourself." Rowen's smile was faint, but his words cut like steel. "Adapting on the fly can help you solve problems in a single moment. But to control the entire timeline of a battle, you must constantly doubt yourself."
"Ask yourself, was that opening a trap? Should I take that action… and if I do, what are the consequences?"
"Enough!!" Orochi roared, his fury bursting forth as he cut Rowen off. "When I was earning my name on the battlefield, carving it in blood and iron, you were still sucking at your mother's breast!"
His remaining heads lunged forward, eyes blazing with madness.
"Don't lecture me, Soryu! Your tricks won't work on me! I'll cut you into pieces!!"
But Rowen wasn't angered. Only regret filled his eyes.
"I haven't even finished teaching the third and fourth lessons yet… Why are you in such a hurry to die? Are you so eager to go without even understanding?"
"Ridiculous!" Orochi snarled. His twisted cold smile returned, baring his teeth as he spat venom. "You should know better than anyone, unless every head is destroyed, all your efforts are meaningless!"
"The me standing here now is no different than my prime… save for the powers tied to my heads!"
"…I see. Fine, then."
Rowen gave a quiet sigh, shaking his head. His smile faded. His gaze turned glacial, filled with the detached dismissal one might grant an insect.
"Then go die."
Tiny pink motes of light suddenly scattered through the Black Prison, drifting like stars across the sky. A sickly acrid smell bled into the air as liquid droplets sizzled and glimmered closer to the inner core.
Orochi's eyes widened. His pupils shrank to pinpricks of raw terror.
"This is… Explo, Dyna Stones!!!"
Rowen's voice floated out, calm as ever.
"The third lesson is information and preparation. The fourth is planning and stratagems. Only the fifth is combat itself, measuring your strength, predicting the outcome, and carrying it through."
He lowered his head toward the Black Prison's core, where the drifting lightning danced. The sparks ignited the volatile stones instantly. Smoke rose, curling around his lips as he inhaled leisurely.
"You should've found yourself a sensei, Kurozumi Orochi."
BOOM!!!
The night split open.
A deafening chain of explosions tore through the land as hundreds of kilograms of Dyna Stones detonated together, an earth-shattering barrage.
The forest below disintegrated in an instant, vaporized into nothing. Shockwaves rippled outward like doomsday itself, tearing across the skies and racing toward the Flower Capital. The city walls crumbled beneath the assault, entire districts flattening in the sudden storm.
The mountain where Oden's city once stood groaned and split apart with a thunderous roar, collapsing as a yawning chasm sheared the land in two.
Rowen rose ten thousand meters above the earth, suspended in the howling winds. His cloak of Justice snapped violently behind him, a lone banner against the moonlit sky.
He exhaled a smoke ring, tilting his gaze toward the silver radiance overhead.
"And now you see… just how foolish it was to break open the Black Prison. Those little things…" His hand gestured to the inferno raging below. "…wanted out even more than you did."
(End of Chapter)