"God Enel, huh?"
Karl grinned again. "I'll remember that name. Next, I'm going all out to take you down."
He raised his right hand.
Unlike the silvery glow of the Gale Burst Cannon, a bandage-wrapped long spear appeared in midair as if conjured from nothing.
"Creation from nothing—similar to this god's power?"
Enel thought to himself.
To him, Karl looked just like another Devil Fruit user.
He didn't know Karl wasn't a user at all.
Nor did he understand what Karl meant by "going all out."
When bored, Karl had once "stat-sheeted" himself.
Since age nine, he hadn't used more than eighty percent of his strength.
Not even against Rayleigh.
He wasn't a Devil Fruit user, but he had an arsenal of techniques—especially after contracting the Blue-Eyes White Dragon and gaining Absolute Comprehension, which multiplied his tools and trump cards.
Armament and Observation Haki, Gale Burst Cannon, Rokushiki, extended Six Powers, the Six Kings Gun, Life Return, advanced and highest-grade Armament applications, "cutting steel"…
Add in overwhelming speed and strength, a steel body, and those two innate traits, and Karl already sat in the top tier among the Warlords of the Sea.
But aside from Karina and Nami, no one knew he had something stronger than all of that—a trump card that even in his weaker years could push him into first-rate leagues.
The Mystic Spear—Light Spear.
It was the second weapon he'd drawn from the gacha.
It was also the first thing he soul-bound.
Unlike his evolving monster physique and the Blue-Eyes, the spear gave him no name upon binding—only how to use it.
It currently had three abilities: two tied to the soul-bond, and one intrinsic.
Like his bond with the Blue-Eyes, the spear's soul-bond gave him Auto Recall—no matter where it was, a thought brought it back.
Its innate trait was Indestructible, akin to Karl's "never-overfull" devouring quirk. He'd tested it—highest-grade Armament couldn't snap it; lava couldn't scorch it; even the white bandages wouldn't burn. When hurled as a Light Spear and detonated with world-ending force, the spear remained pristine.
More than that, the Light Spear converts his stamina directly into light.
The more stamina he pours in, the more devastating the light.
After his first evolution, one throw could level a city.
Now, after his second, he hadn't yet tried it—but he was sure: at full output, one cast could erase a kingdom.
Maybe even a small island.
A true nation-buster, on par with Enel's Raigo.
Beyond the spear, Karl had a technique he'd never shown. In the East Blue, a few days at a small kingdom's knight camp had stunned their entire order—and got him dismissed by a reluctant captain.
Like prodigy swordsmen with freakish insights, he had a talent that soared in one discipline.
He figured his lousy swordsmanship—needing Absolute Comprehension to even reach "swordsman"—was proof enough.
Because the technique more lethal than his fists or blade wasn't hand-to-hand at all.
It was spearwork.
He'd never needed it. Against every foe, fists and a half-baked sword sufficed.
But the moment he drew the spear and set his feet for spearwork, it meant he would use one hundred percent.
Karl—Full-Power Mode.
Flick.
He gave the bandaged shaft a shake; a silver-white spearhead peeked from the wraps.
Karl blurred like a streak toward Enel.
In a blink, a sliver of silver flared wide in Enel's eyes.
"Mantra."
Trusting his Mantra absolutely, Enel didn't teleport. He tilted his head and let the lightning-swift thrust skim past.
The silver flash scraped his temple, revealing the spear's true form.
A heartbeat later, hubris caught up—and decided the exchange.
The spear halted beside his head—then coiled like a serpent. With a whiplash of the shaft, a torrent of force, wreathed in flowing golden Armament, smashed into his shoulder.
Boom—
A simple cross-check—monster strength refined into technique, plus outward-flowing Armament—erupted into a shockwave that flung Enel, too stunned for his lightning to respond, into a triple-tomoe wall.
To Enel, elementalization and Mantra were invincible.
He accepted Karl could touch his body—but didn't believe the man's Mantra could surpass his own.
Against his first true opponent, he'd failed to imagine how Karl's strikes could morph mid-beat.
That bizarre power that cracked elementalization… was this strong.
As Enel cratered the carved wall, Karl pressed the attack.
He didn't charge with the spear. He poured his will into his flesh—Life Return—and rammed stamina into the weapon, charging it to the brim in the shortest span.
The spear blazed gold—Light Spear—and Karl hurled it into the churning dust.
Whine—BOOM!!!
Gold flared and a blast roared far beyond their earlier beam clash. The thunderhead of an explosion bulged up over the shrine, shockwave and sun-hot light reducing the complex to rubble. Even Karl almost blew back—but with Life Return and full-body Armament he leaned into the gale and fire.
Recalling the spear to his hand, he read Enel through his Observation—his aura savaged.
Full-Power Karl excelled at one thing: change.
No more straight-line punches with long windups. With the second evolution's deep stamina pool and Life Return, even charging the Light Spear had no tell.
What looked like a basic strike could, in the next instant, bloom into a kill.
Enel's arms—one crushed by Armament shock, the other seared away by the light—throbbed with pain. His Mantra sputtered.
In that gap, he failed to foresee. He failed to fully elementalize before the light washed over him. If he'd been a second later, without monster physique and Armament guarding him, he'd have burned to ash.
Even so—
When Karl closed in, the "god" of Skypiea was no longer lofty.
His right arm, the one that had held the golden staff, was dust. His bare torso was tattooed with burns. The towel-wrapped topknot was now a true bald pate.
Worse—his one "good" arm was the crushed one.
He was effectively armless.
For a Logia more versatile than light, this sight was an insult to the fruit itself.
To Karl, it was perfect.
He'd gone nuclear from the start to avoid a drawn-out fight—before Enel felt the gap and fled. If the man slipped away, lightning speed and superior Mantra would mean endless, long-range harassment. Karina's Barrier could not be held up forever.
Force Karl to Full-Power Mode—that was the only way to crack such a slippery power.
Strip away the Rumble-Rumble Fruit, and Enel was just another Mantra user.
And those, Karl crushed like ants.
Now, maimed and scorched, Enel's fate was sealed.
Schlk!
Still, to prevent a teleport getaway, Karl didn't relent. He flashed in and drove the spear clean through him.
His palm on the shaft, he poured in the highest Armament application—Internal Destruction—shattering Enel's organs, then fed stamina as light, burning the ruined viscera to nothing.
A simple thrust—grim as a reaper's scythe.
Mantra isn't like elementalization; it's tied to the mind. To use it, you must be calm. Lose that calm and even island-spanning seers can't hear the future.
So it was for Enel—and for Katakuri.
Since biting the fruit, Enel had lived as "invincible." He lacked the heart of a true warrior.
Rattled by Karl's Armament shock and Light Spear—one arm crushed, the other gone—and wracked by pain, his head never cleared. The mushroom cloud blocked the sky. Only elementalization felt "safe."
He forgot Karl could pierce it.
He didn't run at once. He couldn't keep up.
A spear like a meteor, cloaked in golden flow and light, pinned him to the air.
"Little White!"
Feeling Enel's aura ebb, Karl shouted to the sky.
The Blue-Eyes answered with a roar, shredded part of the dust, and dove with the stone coffin.
Karl kicked the lid free, flicked the spear, and dropped Enel's dying body inside.
He sealed it, sat on the coffin, watched the life inside drain away—and murmured, hopeful:
"Please be on my side for once, Lady Luck. Otherwise I'm tearing this whole sky apart."
"If that king lied to me… pray I don't have time to go back to Alabasta. I'll lose my temper for no reason."
The Rumble-Rumble Fruit was nonnegotiable.
For it, he'd triggered Full-Power Mode and finished Enel in a flash.
A single fruit linked to a single hypothesis.
One which, if true, would produce a 1+1>2 effect.
That's why he hadn't let the Blue-Eyes ferry them up.
Why he'd waited months for Knock-Up Stream.
Why he'd gone to Alabasta for Robin.
All for Enel's fruit.
A Devil Fruit can sometimes be reborn in a nearby fruit when its user dies.
"Sometimes" wasn't enough.
The coffin's boosted odds—and the fixed rebirth region—were what mattered.
Assuming Cobra hadn't lied.
At last, the aura inside went out.
The god of Skypiea, wielder of nature's thunder—a man who, while weaker overall than Kizaru, could stalemate a Marine Admiral for a time and always flee, who could've carved a kingdom in the New World—was dead.
He died by hubris—and by narrow horizons.
Like CP9's eternal faith in Tekkai—
Enel died believing forever in Mantra.
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