On the western side of the skull dome battlefield, Ace and Big Mom continued their ferocious combat with relentless intensity.
After an extended period of all-out warfare, both combatants were thoroughly covered in grievous wounds.
Big Mom's massive frame was predominantly marked with severe burn scars—the direct result of Ace's continuous, moth-to-flame assault strategy that had given her absolutely no opportunity to utilize her mysterious recovery abilities.
In stark contrast, Ace had adhered to the brutal philosophy of trading blows at a ratio of inflicting a thousand wounds while accepting eight hundred in return. His entire body was now painted crimson with his own blood.
His fists—his primary weapons throughout this extended battle—bore the worst damage of all. Even with advanced Armament Haki reinforcement, they couldn't completely resist Big Mom's overwhelming Conqueror's Haki and unprecedented brute force. Multiple wounds of varying lengths had burst open across his knuckles and hands, while the internal muscles and bones strained under tremendous accumulated stress.
"Mamamama! Prometheus, have you finally discovered a method to absorb his flames?" Big Mom's wild laughter suddenly echoed across the battlefield with renewed confidence.
Hearing this question, Prometheus quietly materialized on Big Mom's shoulder. A trace of confusion and obvious hesitation flashed through his fiery features, but he ultimately responded with forced courage: "Ah, yes... yes, Mama."
"That's wonderful news! Mamamama!" Big Mom knocked Ace backward with a devastating punch. Feeling that the point of impact wasn't nearly as painful as her previous strikes, she couldn't help but laugh with triumphant glee.
She stared directly at Ace as he charged toward her with characteristic relentlessness, her expression filled with renewed contempt. "Kid! Your pathetic fire is completely useless against me now! Let's see what other tricks you've got left!"
A hidden gleam flashed through Ace's eyes as he roared with apparent shock and dismay: "What?! That's impossible!"
Before finishing his exclamation, he raised his fist and launched another attack enhanced with violent Conqueror's Haki and swirling flames.
"Even if my flames are useless, I've still got my Haki!"
Hearing this declaration and sensing the powerful Conqueror's Haki wrapped around Ace's incoming strike, Big Mom's confident smile faded slightly. She retaliated with a lightning-fast sword slash from Napoleon.
She understood perfectly well that the young pirate's reasoning was sound. Throughout their fierce extended battle, in addition to those seemingly all-consuming white flames, this persistent brat's advanced Haki techniques had also inflicted considerable damage on her massive frame.
"Conqueror's Haki?! Then let me test whether you have sufficient endurance to back up that arrogance!" Big Mom brought her enhanced blade down in a devastating arc, but Ace dodged the strike by cleverly twisting his body mid-air like a graceful bird.
"Hey, just wait and see what I can really do!" Without waiting for his body to fully stabilize, Ace immediately launched another punch toward Big Mom's position.
Fierce winds gusted violently around his attack. Pure white flames swept forward like wildfire while his Conqueror's Haki twisted and coiled around his fist like a demonic serpent.
Big Mom raised her left elbow and blocked the shocking punch head-on with practiced ease.
The air exploded into invisible ripples, blowing away surrounding sand and debris in all directions.
Seeing Big Mom maintain her defensive stance while sliding backward more than ten meters across the ground, Ace immediately dodged sideways and launched a fresh pursuit.
Big Mom carefully assessed the impact and realized that defending against these attacks wasn't particularly challenging for her anymore. There was no longer that agonizing burning sensation from before. A smug smile spread across her scarred features.
"Get lost, you persistent little pest!" With a tremendous impact, Big Mom's counterpunch sent Ace flying backward. She gripped Napoleon tightly in both hands and spoke with malicious intent: "Next, I'm going to cripple you completely, so that old man Whitebeard will understand the price of sending people to obstruct me!"
Her voice took on a particularly cruel tone. "Oh wait, I heard that old fossil is seriously ill these days. I'm afraid he'll probably die soon anyway..."
Ace's expression darkened considerably as he flew forward through the air. He gritted his teeth and roared with genuine fury: "You fat old hag, you'd better worry about yourself first!"
His battle cry resonated across the entire battlefield as the pure white flames that had been quietly surrounding his body suddenly became extraordinarily violent and intense.
In the palm of his outstretched right hand, a compact flame radiating astonishing energy began gathering and taking definitive shape.
As he charged forward at tremendous speed, the flame's tail cut through the air—yet strangely, it seemed to possess no temperature whatsoever and caused no visible heat distortions.
When the distance between the two fighters had closed to mere meters, Ace raised his hand and hurled the brilliantly white flame that had been leaping violently in his palm.
"Flame Commandment: White Serpent!"
"How stupid! I already told you—fire is completely useless against me!" Big Mom roared with contemptuous confidence. She stepped forward fearlessly, raising the greatsword wrapped in explosive Conqueror's Haki, preparing to cleave the attack in half.
"Mama, be careful!" Prometheus's anxious warning suddenly echoed in Big Mom's ears, causing her to hesitate momentarily.
Before the Emperor could fully process this unexpected caution, the pure white flame that had originated in Ace's palm suddenly expanded and spread dramatically after leaving his hand, pouncing directly toward Big Mom's massive form.
"What?! AGHHH! It's burning! It's burning me alive!" Surrounded by the expanding flames, the tremendous shockwave forced Big Mom backward several steps while making her experience that agonizing burning sensation once again.
This time, the white flames clung to her body like parasitic organisms. No matter how frantically she rolled back and forth across the ground, she couldn't escape the extremely intense heat of the divine-like fire.
The raging inferno transformed all the ground it touched into bubbling magma, even scorching the earth several meters away into a blackened, cracked wasteland.
"Mama! I'm so sorry!" Prometheus cried out while flying around in obvious distress. "Actually, I didn't do anything at all! I couldn't absorb his flames whatsoever! I just thought... maybe because of your special physique, you had endured the pain for so long that you'd gotten used to it and could no longer feel the burning!"
Ace took several deep breaths, staring coldly at the panicking Homie as he offered his hurried explanation. A faint but satisfied smile played across his lips.
Then he raised his left hand high with fingers spread wide, turning his intense gaze toward Big Mom, who was still wreathed in white flames but had stopped rolling and was attempting to climb back to her feet.
"My flames are far from being as insignificant as you assumed. The power they contain is more than sufficient to surpass all your expectations and wildest imaginations!"
Hearing this declaration, Big Mom glared at Prometheus with a truly demonic expression of cold fury. Then she turned to stare directly at Ace, her rage seeming to burst through the very sky itself as she roared with pure hatred: "Don't think you can defeat me with such simple tricks!"
"Life or death! I grant you life! Revive my—"
Before Big Mom could complete her recovery technique, Ace grinned with fierce determination. "Do you really think I'll just stand here and let you heal yourself? Go straight to hell!"
In his raised left hand, another pure white flame had silently materialized and was burning with quiet intensity. As he spoke these words, he hurled it directly at Big Mom's feet with tremendous force.
"Flame Commandment: Purgatory!"
The white flame used Big Mom's entire massive body as its detonation point, transforming into a colossal pillar of fire that stretched all the way to the heavens. Simultaneously, it penetrated completely through Onigashima itself, reducing everything it touched to absolute nothingness.
Big Mom felt nothing but the scorching intensity of divine flames as unprecedented agony invaded every fiber of her being, seemingly burning her very soul.
An invisible force seemed to be gripping her within the pillar of fire, making it impossible to execute any movements whatsoever—much less escape from the inferno's range. She could only stare with wide, horrified eyes and release heart-wrenching screams of pure torment.
A sharp gleam flashed through Ace's eyes as the flames covering his entire body suddenly erupted backward like rocket propulsion. Using this tremendous force, he rushed toward Big Mom at a speed almost impossible to track with the naked eye.
With Ace's body serving as the primary projectile, several white flame afterimages—both real and illusory—followed closely behind him as if possessed by spiritual intelligence. They moved in perfect synchronization, plunging into the pillar of fire and swinging their fists with devastating power.
"HAAAA!"
At this crucial moment, Ace focused completely and ignored all pain throughout his own body. His punches fell like torrential rainfall—each strike faster than the last, each blow more violent than the previous one as they connected with Big Mom's form.
Every punch was thrown with his absolute maximum strength, even breaking beyond his normal limits. White flames like alien fire from distant stars continuously exploded around each impact. Ace's fist shadows and the divine flames became intertwined as one, completely submerging Big Mom within this torrent of heat and overwhelming power.
As Ace released a final, earth-shaking roar, all the flame afterimages suddenly gathered together into a single point. With Conqueror's Haki crackling around his form, he delivered one ultimate punch that seemed to pierce through the very fabric of reality itself.
At this climactic moment, the sky and earth changed color entirely. Tremendous energy that seemed capable of causing the heavens to collapse and the earth to split erupted instantaneously, while dazzling light illuminated both sky and ground in brilliant radiance.
Within the area swept by this cataclysmic energy release, everything was reduced to absolute nothingness. A massive hole was carved directly through the skull dome's structure, while even the internal buildings appeared to have been devoured by some invisible beast, leaving behind only dark, empty outlines.
Amid the flames and complete destruction, a single figure broke through the air from the sea of fire, soaring toward the distant sky.
"Ha... ha... it's not over yet," Ace gasped heavily, supporting himself on his knees.
He relied on the eruption of flame energy to barely remain floating in mid-air. His eyes blazed like torches as he stared at the figure flying through the distant sky. With tremendous effort, he raised his right hand—already completely bloodied—and clenched it into a trembling fist.
"Sacred Fire: Starburst!"
At this precise moment, the energy that had been quietly accumulating within Big Mom's body throughout their entire battle suddenly detonated from the dark figure flying through the distant sky like a nuclear explosion.
The deafening blast shook both earth and heaven as flames shot upward into the sky, instantly illuminating the entire night as if it were broad daylight.
Ace clenched both fists tightly, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on the explosion in the distance. He allowed the scorching heat waves to roll toward him, striking his scarred and utterly exhausted body, yet somehow making his sun-bright eyes shine even more brilliantly than before.
A triumphant smile appeared on his lips as he whispered with absolute certainty: "Just as I thought... I won."
Before he could finish speaking, Ace was no longer able to support his eyelids, which felt as heavy as mountains. He slowly closed his eyes as his body—which had been suspended in mid-air—began falling vertically toward the interior of the skull fortress far below.
At the same time, across the front battlefield of Onigashima, Katakuri and the other high-ranking officers of the Big Mom Pirates turned their heads almost simultaneously. Their eyes widened in complete disbelief as they shouted in unison: "MAMA!"
The shockwave from Ace's ultimate victory spread across the entire island, marking a turning point that would echo throughout the New World. The Fire Fist had achieved what many thought impossible—defeating one of the Four Emperors in single combat through sheer determination and the power of his perfected flames.
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