Staring at the box-shaped mass of cloud, Kaido's face tightened. He couldn't see inside, couldn't even sense what was happening in that sealed space only his gut screamed that it was deadly.
Cloud's overwhelming power pressed so hard Kaido could barely breathe. He could hardly imagine the pressure Ares was under, facing that monster head-on. As a bystander, Kaido knew that if he had learned beforehand just how strong Cloud was, he might not even have had the courage to stand his ground.
It was enough to freeze the blood.
Even so, fear or no fear, his faith in Ares never wavered. Inwardly, he kept shouting: Big Bro Ares, come on. You can do this!
Cheering didn't steady his hands. His fists were clenched so tight his palms ran slick with sweat. Cloud wasn't just strong his techniques shifted like a storm. In Kaido's mind, even Whitebeard or the Golden Lion would struggle to gain the upper hand against such a foe.
Where Kaido trembled, the bald swordsman Saint Khristin remained cool, as if he were not watching a top-tier duel but glimpsing a piece of the future. He knew Cloud's level; even he, facing Cloud, had no guarantee of victory. In truth, his own odds might be low.
Fixing on the battle, he recalculated his plans for the Rocks Pirates. I had intended to smuggle Cloud into Rocks' crew in deep cover. That's out. Time for a new plan.
Ares had smashed Cloud's mask and seen the face beneath; with Cloud's powers now fully on display, infiltration into Rocks' crew had become far too risky. The World Government had to ensure success Rocks' crew was the fault line tearing the world order.
Their wars were already eroding the Government's grip on the seas.
Even this ambush is being derailed by that Bloodhand brat. Who knows if Wang Zhi will still come for the Heavenly Tribute on this ship? His gaze hardened. We can't drag this out.
A cold glint slid through Khristin's eyes. He barked into the sky, the words more command than suggestion: "Cloud, end him quickly. I don't want any… surprises."
Cloud's face bulged on the cloud-ceiling, grinning. "Relax. He won't last much longer. It'll be over soon."
His features sank back into the overcast. Inside the Cloud Domain, he addressed Ares like a judge passing sentence. "In a space with zero oxygen, an ordinary human lasts what one or two minutes? Your strikes will be neutralized by my cloud-bombs. You can't break my death chamber. Escape is impossible."
He watched from everywhere at once, playing god savoring the helplessness of prey caught in his cage, savoring the moment life winked out.
Sweat streamed down Ares' temples. Those "cloud bubbles" were vacuum-compressed air, a string of giant bombs that detonated at a touch, cancelling his slashes and shockwaves before they could bite through the wall. Fire died the instant it bloomed; Dragonflame had nowhere to breathe. Even wind was shackled here.
To Ares, CP0 Director Cloud was a terror beyond the Rayleigh he'd fought a foe who might even edge out, in certain ways, the three Admirals he remembered from decades hence: Akainu, Kizaru, Aokiji.
He'd never met those men this was instinct talking.
But his instinct wasn't wrong. Animation could never convey the raw dread of reality. From the couch, a "Marine Admiral–class" monster was a spectacle. Face-to-face, it was despair.
A walking nuclear arsenal on the open sea.
Drop a few dozen giants into this prison give it minutes, and they'd all suffocate. Giants, nine-digit bounty pirates, tens of thousands of soldiers against someone like Cloud, they were gnats beneath a thumb.
That's Admiral-class. That's the caliber that, decades from now, would be called Emperor-level.
The scale of destruction was beyond ordinary imagination.
Seconds bled away. Ares' eyes sharpened. He growled, "Azure Dragon Form!"
His body warped and surged becoming a vast cobalt dragon, serpentine frame snapping into a ruler-straight line.
"Swordless Style, Divine Dragon, Become the Blade!"
He turned himself into a blade hundreds of meters long. "A forty-meter greatsword?" laughable. His dragon-sword made it look like a toy.
Dragon head for a tip, dragon body for a blade, he drove straight at the cloud wall.
The vacuum bubbles popped in chains under the impact bang, bang, bang and Ares burrowed through, tanking detonation after detonation with his own flesh. He punched through a hundred-meter thickness of cloud and shattered the Cloud Domain that had stripped the air.
"AOOO!"
His roar pounded eardrums as fresh air flooded his lungs. Inside him, organs rejoiced like fields after a drought, surging past their normal output everything running hotter, faster.
He wheeled in the open sky and glanced back at the prison. No wonder his techniques hadn't bitten through each wall had been a hundred meters thick, seeded with explosive cloud-bombs to devour his attacks.
On the deck, Kaido's worry evaporated in a heartbeat. Joy split his face. "Big Bro Ares is out!"
"I knew it! That trick couldn't hold him. My gut's never wrong!"
Not far off, Saint Khristin lowered his lids, his expression turning stormy. He snapped at the sky, "This is what you call 'ending it soon'?"
"Why does he look as lively as ever?"
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