"...Is this Link's true strength?"
Staring at the Thousand-Armed Buddha before them, Karina and Ember the Wildfire both halted their fight.
The latter was too stunned to speak.
Even Karina, who knew Link so well, had her worldview refreshed.
After two years of growth, Karina believed her complete form was not much weaker than Shirahoshi.
Having witnessed Kaidō's azure dragon form, Karina was even more convinced.
Shirahoshi and Kaidō were both over two hundred meters long, but that was only length.
Karina measured by height.
Ordinary giants stood a mere ten to twenty meters tall.
Even a demon's descendant like Little Oars was only thirty-eight meters.
Karina's complete form now stood in the thirties—about Little Oars's size.
Yet that size, before the two-hundred-meter Wooden Arhat, was like a child before an adult.
Now the two-hundred-meter Wooden Arhat sat cross-legged atop the Thousand-Armed Buddha's head, and still looked smaller than a child on an adult's shoulders.
Thus, the sheer scale of the Thousand-Armed Buddha was clear.
From Wano's shores, one could see its outline plainly against the sky.
The over-two-hundred-meter azure dragon, clutched in its hand like a small earthworm, made it no wonder Kaidō looked baffled.
There was no doubt the Thousand-Armed Buddha stood well over a kilometer tall.
In the entire pirate world, perhaps only Zunesha, bearing an island on its back, exceeded that size.
Even the Sea Kings of the abyss might not match it.
"Flaming Drum-Dragon Torch!"
Snapping out of his stupor, Kaidō unleashed his strongest technique without hesitation.
A sea of vitality turned to flame—not a jetting pillar but a backflow that sheathed his whole body, shaping a super-dragon far larger than before.
The terrifying heat slowly melted the wooden giant hand holding him, turning it to magma.
Yet there were nine hundred and ninety-nine such hands on the Thousand-Armed Buddha.
As Kaidō became a super fire dragon, Link—who had spent a vast amount of sage chakra to create the Buddha—poured staggering Haki into it through a lattice of living wood.
"Toppling the Buddha!"
With Link's shout, the Thousand-Armed Buddha beneath the Wooden Arhat moved.
Nine hundred and ninety-nine wooden hands—some drawing in nature energy, some sheathed in Armament Haki, some wreathed in Conqueror's Haki crackling with dark red lightning—punched down toward the super fire dragon below and what remained of Onigashima.
Each arm burned with atmospheric friction, a sky-filling meteor rain, an inescapable world-ending calamity.
Even hovering beside the Buddha, outside the direct line of fire, Karina and Ember felt a choking brush with death.
"This isn't even the same dimension of power..."
The cool-headed Ember wore a rare dazed look beneath his mask.
It felt like the Allied Shinobi Forces facing Uchiha Madara's Heaven-Concealing Meteor.
The awareness of being ants.
"Rising Dragon Flame Bagua!"
Against a strike that couldn't be dodged, Kaidō also used his strongest blow.
He gathered all his Armament and Conqueror's into his head, then charged up into the meteor storm.
Compared to the deluge above, Kaidō was a child waving fire at rain.
In an instant, the super fire dragon was swallowed by the meteors.
At first, with Conqueror's coating he could collide at range, clashing with a handful—even a dozen—of wooden fists.
But as more and more fists crashed down, that vast unseen barrier burst like a balloon.
A transdimensional shockwave altered heaven and earth; halos of lethal turbulence—enough to slay any battle-hardened fighter on contact—bloomed over Onigashima.
The halo was enormous, expanding at an unbelievable speed.
Closest to the Onigashima–Wano waters, people on the island felt a gust blow—and for some reason that wind had color.
Soon they realized it wasn't wind at all, but the lingering arc of an attack, an unknown flow of Ryō.
Rumble—rumble—rumble—
The roar of countless shells exploding in unison rolled into Wano from afar.
For a moment, Wano's strong all turned toward Onigashima—or sprinted to the coast to look.
When they reached the shore, their jaws dropped.
The seas around Wano had turned violently rough; as if affected, the water level had risen a little.
A colossal mushroom cloud climbed into the sky above the ocean.
Zoom in and you'd see the cloud wasn't rising from an island, but from a bottomless chasm.
Closer still, within that pit, currents raged, churning island rubble, pirate corpses, and endless splinters of wood.
Above the chasm, Karina and Ember burst from the mushroom cloud.
The former was wide-eyed with shock; the latter, shocked and lost.
Then Ember gritted his teeth beneath the mask and dove into the chasm heedless of danger, to find Kaidō—even if it was only a body.
Just as he dove, Karina stiffened as if sensing something, then sprinted across the air on flame-clouds toward the distant sea.
After an unknown distance, she found three figures on the surface.
One standing, two lying down—one large, one small.
The one standing was Link; the two down were a man and a woman.
The woman had a blazing figure, white hair, and twin horns of flame.
The man—Kaidō—was barely alive, his life force so faint that even Observation Haki struggled to feel it.
"He's not dead after that?" Karina said, astonished.
"If he dies, I'll take the Devil Fruit," Link said with a smile.
That answered her in passing—he had held back.
Yes, Link held back.
Not all nine hundred and ninety-nine hands of the Thousand-Armed Buddha fell on Kaidō.
Otherwise, Kaidō would have died beyond dead.
If Kaidō's Devil Fruit had been some unimportant Paramecia like the Fusion-Fusion Fruit, an emotional Link wouldn't have minded killing him on the spot.
But the value of the Mythical Zoan Azure Dragon made Link spare him and drop perhaps one and a half hands' worth of force on him—pouring the rest into Onigashima.
Like how Hashirama carved out the so-called Valley of the End, Link's Sage Art Wood Release: True Several Thousand Hands—Toppling the Buddha—smashed Onigashima to countless fragments, erasing it from the sea like the "Mother Flame" erased an island.
Link's one Toppling the Buddha was far stronger than Hashirama's—surpassing even a blow from Truth-Seeking Balls.
Because it held not only nature energy, but external and internal destruction via Armament Haki, and that transdimensional force mastered by only a few top beings—Conqueror's coating.
If a "Super Kage" maps to a Yonko, then Conqueror's coating is the secret art at that tier.
Two ultimate arts fused—not one plus one greater than two, but a true summation of power.
That Link's Sage Art Wood Release: True Several Thousand Hands—Toppling the Buddha eclipsed Hashirama's is beyond dispute.
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