"I understand, Master."
After hearing Yami's words, Nami nodded with a serious look.
Before defeating Gecko Moria, just hearing the words "great pirate" made Nami feel unsure and anxious.
But after defeating Moria, learning of the World Government and Marine Headquarters' scheme, and now about to face a legendary pirate like the Golden Lion, she felt no trace of fear.
So Nami truly understood that feeling.
Seeing that Nami had taken everything to heart, Yami nodded in satisfaction.
Then the two flew toward the Golden Lion's base, STRONG WORLD.
Before long, Yami and Nami hovered above an island that looked like a paradise cut off from the world.
"Nami, give the legendary pirate a greeting."
Yami didn't use clairvoyance or x-ray vision to locate the Golden Lion. He simply smiled at Nami.
"Got it, Master."
Nami smiled and dipped her head, and her right hand instantly turned into blue-white lightning.
Stamina poured into thunder, compressed until the air itself warped under the voltage.
This time she charged longer than when she "greeted" Gecko Moria.
At last, her entire right arm became current and vanished in a flash.
Rumble…
A heavy peal of thunder rolled over STRONG WORLD.
Blinding blue-white light bloomed from nothing, spreading into a vast curtain.
Then a colossal pillar of lightning fell toward the island's highest peak.
From crown to root, the mountain's summit sank into the beam. Bathed in the light, the rock shattered almost instantly like a dropped mirror and then, at a speed visible to the naked eye, crumbled to dust.
The buildings on the mountaintop flared to tinder in a heartbeat, and steel ran like liquid.
In the research rooms, many creatures were seared black and knocked senseless, eyes rolled white.
But the thunder pillar did not finish normally.
Before it could inflict maximal damage on the mountain, a massive green slash cut the bolt apart into a sky full of arcs, its aftershock punching straight upward.
With her top-tier Observation, Nami clearly tracked the slash as it slammed into the White-White Sea three thousand meters above.
Gulp…
"A greatsword slash? Without eating a Devil Fruit, a human can do that? Isn't that a bit much?"
Nami had considered God's Judgement terrifying enough in scope.
Aside from Master's gravity cataclysm and dark abyss, even Railgun didn't match God's Judgement for sheer area.
But that titanic slash showed her just the tip of a legendary pirate's power.
She had no doubt that if the slash hadn't gone skyward but had been leveled at the island below, it would have carved a gorge-straight line across a small island.
"Normal. At his peak, his slashes were even scarier."
Yami wasn't surprised.
A super-strong fighter with advanced Haki coating can, with a single greeting, reshape the surface of a small island, even call up tsunamis and rend the sky.
A greatsword master who has pushed swordplay and Haki to the limit is also island-level in destruction.
Roger and the Red Count were such existences.
The Golden Lion and Whitebeard, by comparison, gained advantages from their Devil Fruits.
But an extra Fruit doesn't mean the Golden Lion or Whitebeard were overall stronger than Roger or the Red Count.
Time and energy are finite.
An extra Fruit demands vast time to develop. Unless one is a genius among geniuses, few can simultaneously attain Fruit awakening, world-top swordsmanship, world-top martial skill, and the highest forms of all three Haki.
Roger and the Red Count had no Fruits, so they could focus on sword and Haki, and their body techniques were fearsome besides.
They were both chosen by fate, each with a one-in-a-hundred-million gift—one could hear the voice of all things, the other could read the heart.
So among the four legendary pirates, one-on-ones were hard to decide. Draws were common.
Even when one won, it wasn't absolute; next time the result might flip.
Yami can go without sleep and live twice another's hours, yet his energy is still limited.
That is why he does not train in swordplay.
He walks the path of Devil Fruits and Haki-based martial arts, using the Dark-Dark Fruit and the More-More Fruit as core powers, then taking various strategic and "unanswerable" Fruits to cover every weakness, forging himself into an all-aspect, unanswerable existence.
In Yami's plan are several crucial Fruits.
With each one he obtains, he undergoes an evolution.
By acquiring the remaining Fruits and completing his final evolution, his combat power will leap across dimensions, like a god among men.
"Damn it. Who's the bastard ambushing me?"
The roar snapped Yami back to the moment.
Watching the figure shoot skyward from the shattered mountaintop, Yami said to Nami, "Nami, go watch from elsewhere. Unless I order it, no matter what you see, do not interfere."
"Yes, Master."
Nami nodded sweetly and vanished in a streak of lightning.
"Shiki the Golden Lion, legendary pirate. I've long admired you."
Yami tapped Moonwalk, stopping not far before Shiki, and offered a courteous line that could kill by politeness. "Did you like the junior's gift, Senior Shiki?"
"Moonwalk? World Government CP?"
Shiki frowned at the little clouds blooming under Yami's soles, then shook his head at once. "No. Those dogs don't talk like that. Who are you, brat?"
"Doesn't matter who. Die for me."
In his rage, Shiki's head wasn't clear. He snapped a kick and launched a massive slash at Yami.
Sensing Shiki's off state, Yami remained unfazed.
He kicked as well. A green slash sheathed in a transparent aura burst from his foot.
Under that transparent halo, the three-meter slash swelled like an inflatable, ballooning to around a hundred fifty meters. It smashed into Shiki's slash head on.
A Tempest Kick amplified fiftyfold.
In an instant, residents on the neighboring floating island could see a vast green cross bloom in the sky above STRONG WORLD.
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