"Huh? Where did that yell come from?" Rakuya frowned and glanced around. The earth itself seemed to heave. He looked down and realized he was sitting on someone's head.
The body beneath him was massive. The head alone could have balanced three of him.
When Rakuya finally got a clear look at the face, he could only roll his eyes, exasperation washing over him.
"You have got to be kidding me. Why is it this guy?"
Leaping from a Sky Island ten thousand meters up was already an outrageous stunt, one that outclassed even the antics of the so-called strongest creature in the world, Kaido of the Beasts.
Rakuya had not only multiplied gravity twentyfold, he had also transferred all the momentum from Momousagi's body onto himself. In other words, he had shouldered two people's worth of twentyfold gravity. Add impact velocity on top of that and you had a force no one should ignore.
Compared with Kaido's usual death-wish leaps, Rakuya's version was on a whole different level.
He glanced at the figure sprawled in the pit. Who was it?
It was Kaido of the Beasts.
The same impossible monster who treated suicide like a hobby and whose existence broke every rule.
Four times sentenced to death and still alive. Raided Marine Headquarters more than once, captured repeatedly, and came out intact each time. The Marines had tried everything and still could not kill him.
And Rakuya, with one meteor dive from the sky, had knocked Kaido out.
Even he was a little stunned at how that turned out.
"Hey, perv, are you alive or not?" Under the buffer of Rakuya's repulsive field, Momousagi drifted gently to the ground and sprinted for the crater, her heart a mess.
Half of her prayed the man would be a splatter. The other half dreaded being stranded in this hellish place without him. She knew better than most how dangerous this world was.
So while she muttered curses about him dying miserably, she was also desperately hoping he had not.
"Dead or not, perv?" she shouted from the rim. Her voice echoed down and back up.
"Takes one to know one. Your whole family are pervs."
Momousagi's temple throbbed. The man left her speechless.
"You did not die? You really are a freak."
Rakuya vaulted up out of the pit, not sparing the unconscious Kaido so much as a glance. A brute with that much life-force was not going to die from a head-first hello. If he did, it would only prove he had no business living in this world.
After Rakuya left, the horned head below him swelled with a massive lump, its outline comically human-shaped.
Back on the surface, Momousagi grabbed Rakuya and hauled him aside.
"Let me see. Are you hurt? Falling from that height... did you break an arm, a leg? Are you paralyzed? Brain-damaged?"
She buzzed around him like a nosy sparrow, and Rakuya could only sigh.
"It was ten thousand meters. Is that really so scary?"
"Did your brain break? Of course it is." She scrutinized him as if diagnosing a simpleton.
"You are the one not thinking straight." He rolled his eyes.
"Please. A fall like that and you want to pretend it is fine? That is textbook brain damage."
"Believe what you want."
No matter how many times she checked, she found nothing wrong with him.
Inside, though, everything in her was being rewritten. Shock, awe, confusion, a growing, wordless dread... until numbness finally settled in.
At this point, she refused to categorize Rakuya as human at all. Monster felt closer to the mark.
Meanwhile, pirates from all over the island flocked to the landing site. In no time the crater was ringed with bodies, a buzzing crowd from a few million up to hundreds of millions on their bounties. All of them stared, dumbstruck.
"Cap... Captain, that crater is from the guy who fell, right?"
"Good grief, how high do you have to jump to punch a hole like that?"
"He must be dead. With a hit that hard, how could he not be?"
"Do we even need to say it? He is definitely paste."
The ground suddenly shuddered as if an earthquake had struck.
"What was that?"
Eyes darted. Throats bobbed.
"Boss, it came from inside the pit."
"What? Inside?"
As the chatter rose, a blackened hand gripped the crater's lip and heaved. A giant vaulted out.
Boom.
Earth trembled. Dust billowed.
The newcomer loomed over the crowd, shoulders like boulders, hair spilling to his back, a pair of horns jutting from his skull. His beard hung long, a blood-red tattoo coiled down his left arm. Bare-chested, he was all explosive muscle and coiled menace.
He radiated ferocity. His eyes were bronze bells. His presence crushed the air.
Only one thing ruined the terror of that image. A gigantic goose egg bulged atop his head, hilariously obvious.
"Holy... who is that?"
"Ka... Kaido of the Beasts?"
"The guy always picking fights?"
"I heard the Marines have nabbed him a bunch of times. No matter what they try, he does not die."
"Did he jump again? Is that how the crater happened?"
"No way. I saw it. The person who fell was way smaller than Kaido."
"Then why is Kaido here?"
Faces blanched. Cold sweat ran down necks.
Kaido.
The madman himself.
Even legends like Roger and Whitebeard got headaches when he locked onto them. He could not beat them, and they could not kill him. Even Marine Headquarters had to respect that reality.
For small fry pirates, just seeing him was enough to make knees wobble.
"Who," Kaido roared, voice like a storm breaking, "who knocked me out? Get out here, now!"
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