"Sage Art… Wood Release: Wood Dragon Technique!"
As Link's hand seal fell, the ground split again, and a colossal wooden dragon burst from the fissure, winding like a rope around the black giant wolf.
Then Link clapped his hands once more: "Wood Release: Flower-Tree World Coming!"
Rumble…
Amid violent tremors, the barren island sprouted a dense forest, with vast crimson blossoms shedding a gray, misty pollen.
Even so, no matter how the forest spread, it reached only the black giant wolf's height, about the Wood Human's knees.
But it was enough!
The instant the woods formed, the trees under the giant wolf's feet seemed to gain a will of their own. Branches that could extend without limit kept growing, binding its legs and pinning them hard to the earth.
No matter how Douglas Barrett directed it, the giant wolf could not tear free of those bindings, and its terrifying strength could not rip those branches apart.
Just as Barrett prepared to use his awakened fruit to liquefy and fuse the forest beneath, his face changed sharply, and he immediately abandoned the idea.
That reaction was the same as the Golden Lion's when trying to wrest control from Link's Wood Release.
Unlike the wooden sailing ships Link shaped, the forest grown upon the land pulsed with an oceanic reservoir of power.
To neutralize that power and liquefy the grove into the giant wolf's body would cost Barrett a sea's worth of stamina as well.
Having scoured the island's surface through his awakening to forge the black giant wolf, Barrett did not have that kind of stamina to spare.
Before he could reach for another counter, his expression shifted again. "Impossible?!"
The moment the Wood Dragon and branches coiled around the giant wolf, Barrett clearly felt the Haki inside it draining at high speed.
Rather than merely "draining," it was being sucked away by a terrifying pull.
The thieves stealing that Haki were the Wood Dragon on its body and the branches around its feet.
"The developed realm of the Logia Woods-Woods Fruit?!"
Barrett had never imagined that Haki—sovereign over all and able to nullify any Devil Fruit—could be siphoned away by a Devil Fruit.
Link's development of the Woods-Woods Fruit shattered his worldview.
He once more felt the gulf between himself and the World's Strongest.
After the Wood Dragon and Flower-Tree World Coming rapidly sucked the Haki from the giant wolf, the Wood Human suddenly brought its palm down.
With its feet bound tight, the wolf could not dodge. Barrett's shock made its reactions a beat late, and the palm strike landed flush.
Boom—
Armament Haki, both external emission and internal destruction, became a pillar of force—Elbaf's Spear and the Prodence Kingdom's King Punch in one—howling out through the giant wolf's back.
From that point of impact, the wolf began to shatter from within.
Though the damage to the wolf didn't directly wound Barrett in the control core, it was enough for Link.
This battle of giants—indeed, the entire fight—had already tipped.
Link murmured, "Sage Art… Wood Release: Cutting Technique."
Great, branching wooden spikes, each like a Wood Dragon, burst from within the black giant wolf.
With its Haki siphoned and defenses gutted, the wolf—now as brittle as the Golden Lion's "Island Eaters"—was dismembered in an instant.
As the giant wolf fell away in a dozen chunks, the Wood Human raised its hand and slammed down again.
A sky-blotting palm, sheathed in a layer of red aura and crackling dark-red lightning, descended like the hand of a demon god.
Unable to escape fast enough from the wolf's head, Barrett stared through the beast's eye at the oncoming blow, dazed.
For a heartbeat, he was young again—facing Roger—feeling a powerlessness and insignificance he had never known.
So far… he was so far from the World's Strongest.
In truth, he was already tremendously strong, only a single step—Conqueror's Haki infusion—short of the summit.
Even without the infusion, Barrett was a top-tier powerhouse.
Against Shanks, Charlotte Linlin, even Teach and Kaidō, Barrett—whose martial arts and Armament Haki were polished to the peak—could battle for a long time.
When he invoked awakening, only Kaidō's Great Flame Dragon Torch and Teach's quake that ruptures from within could firmly suppress him.
Even Linlin's Ikoku Sovereignty and Shanks's Divine Departure would not have it this easy.
Unfortunately, his opponent was Link—the nemesis of giants.
Before Link's "three axe strokes," Barrett fell even more cleanly than Linlin had.
Just as Uchiha Madara, before gaining the Rinnegan, saw his Complete Body Susanoo beaten down every time by Hashirama's "three axe strokes."
With the Nine-Tails as a booster, Madara's Armored Susanoo could only barely fight Hashirama's three strokes to a draw.
Because the Nine-Tails' bottomless chakra made that armor far more resistant to being drained than Complete Body Susanoo alone.
Were the Nine-Tails not so drain-resistant, Madara would have lost quickly all the same.
Once the black giant wolf lost its Haki and that mighty defense, it was as fragile as the Golden Lion's constructs before Link.
In terms of realm, it wasn't even worthy to carry Complete Body Susanoo's shoes.
Naturally, it could not withstand a single blow.
Boom——
That palm, laden with extradimensional force, shattered the wolf's head—already severed by branches—and drove Douglas Barrett into the tree-grown earth.
The colossal force spidered cracks across the island, a vast vortex billowed out beyond the shores, and the sea heaved in towering waves.
A giant mushroom cloud rose.
The whole island seemed to sink a little.
A perfect kill.
With that single palm, Link held nothing back; he hadn't aimed to seal.
When all fell quiet, a system chime sounded in Link's mind.
"Ding! You have slain an enemy, gaining 4.02% experience!"
[Host: Link]
[Inheritance Template: Senju Hashirama]
[Unlock Progress: 100%]
[Experience: 0.7%]
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