Meanwhile, on the other side—on Sakapachi Island.
Boom! Boom! Boom!Every collision between the two figures detonated with explosive shockwaves.
Kuzan's ice-coated fist and Gern Reginald Sigmar's—his vibration-charged strike—clashed dozens of times within a hundredth of a second, Armament Haki sparks pouring down like a torrential storm.
Frozen waves rose only to be shattered into icy debris by vibration.The chunks of rock Gern stomped apart hadn't even hit the ground before Kuzan flash-froze them into meteor-like ice projectiles and whipped them toward Gern's face with a sweeping kick.
Bang!Gern tilted his head aside. The ice projectile grazed past his ear and exploded behind him, shards slicing a thin line of blood across his neck.
Seizing the instant Kuzan retracted his strike, Gern slashed out with his right palm, vibration coiled tightly around it like a blade.
Kuzan's pupils shrank—there was no time to fully elementalize.
"Ice Mirror—Switch!"
Shhhk!The moment Gern's fingertips pierced the ice statue, Kuzan's true body had already emerged from an ice mirror ten meters away.
The decoy shattered into dust under the vibration, while a thin trickle of blood slipped from the corner of Kuzan's mouth.
At the same time, Gern abruptly spread his five fingers.
Pale energy wrapped in ultra–high-frequency vibrations coiled around his fingertips, tearing the air apart between them.
"Heavenquake—Sever!"
Five parallel spatial rifts appeared instantly, slicing across the battlefield like invisible blades.
Wherever they passed, everything was cut cleanly in two—smooth, mirror-flat cross-sections left behind.
Kuzan immediately dissolved into mist, transforming into drifting ice vapor and retreating at full speed.
Shhk! Shhk! Shhk!The five rifts arrived in an instant. The ground Kuzan had stood on was silently divided into six pieces, lingering vibration aftershocks trembling even through the air itself.
But Gern's assault didn't stop.
He burst into a sprint as eight pure-white vibration spheres condensed around him, their surfaces crawling with spiderweb cracks.
"Heavenquake—Eight Extremes Orbs!"
The eight spheres shot forward, carving eerie arcs through the air. Like living creatures, they locked onto Kuzan's presence and closed in from every angle.
Kuzan's gaze hardened. He crossed his arms as extreme cold surged violently outward.
"Thousandfold Wall!"
Towering icebergs erupted one after another, stacking into a multilayered, airtight absolute defense.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The first orb struck an iceberg, and a spatial shockwave exploded outward, spiderweb cracks instantly spreading across the ice.
The second, the third—chain detonations followed, transforming the entire iceberg zone into a riotous hell of vibration.
Ice crystals whirled wildly within the shockwaves, Kuzan's silhouette flickering in and out at the center of the explosions.
Gern's lips curved into a cold smile as he muttered, almost complaining,"Tracking someone at this level with Observation Haki is seriously a pain."
The very next second—
"Ice River—Burial!"
An eruption of extreme cold blasted out from the explosion's core as Kuzan tore through the smoke, his right arm fully coated in Armament Haki, smashing straight toward Gern's face!
Gern's pupils contracted sharply. He crossed both arms to block.
BOOOOM!!!
A terrifying shockwave swept the battlefield. Both figures were hurled backward, carving trenches hundreds of meters long across the frozen ground.
As the smoke cleared, Kuzan slowly stood up, ice crystals falling from his Marine coat in clattering streams.
Across from him, blood seeped from the corner of Gern's mouth—yet his grin only grew wilder.
"Now that feels right!"
He wiped away the blood as vibration particles once more coiled into his palm, compressing into a pure-white sphere—like a supernova on the verge of detonation.
He hurled it forward.
"Heavenquake—Meteorfall!"
BOOOOM!!
The sphere detonated midair, instantly forming a vibration domain over a hundred meters wide!
Space twisted violently within it. Ice and rock were pulverized into dust, and the sustained, ten-second-long destructive oscillation made it nearly impossible for Kuzan to maintain full elementalization—his icy body repeatedly breaking apart and reforming.
"Not done yet!"
Gern flickered behind him in an instant, his right fist snapping back to his waist.
A vortex of vibration condensed at the knuckles. Space collapsed inward under the pressure, emitting a strained, unbearable hum.
The next moment, his straight punch fired like a railgun.
"Blackquake—Star Piercer!"
Where the fist passed, space shattered inch by inch. A kilometer-long cylindrical vibration blast pierced straight through an entire iceberg, ripping Kuzan's ice-wall defense apart like wet paper!
The residual force hurled Kuzan away, forcing him—mid-adjustment—to drag his left hand across the sea's surface, carving out a trench that froze continuously beneath his sliding body.
At the same time, Gern's form blurred.
High-frequency vibration particles pushed him into a molecular transition state, turning him into a pale afterimage that surged forward.
Space twisted and collapsed behind him. The air was torn into a vacuum corridor, and the frozen ground was gouged into a second abyss by the aftershock.
"Wha—?!"
Facing Vibration Flash, Kuzan's Observation Haki—like everyone else's—failed completely!
By the time his pupils shrank in alarm, his vision was flooded with blinding white.
The only thing he could clearly see—
were those crimson eyes.
"Blackquake…"
Gern's fist was wrapped in dark-violet arcs of Conqueror's Haki. Flowing Armament Haki coated it like liquid metal, while the compressed high-frequency quake core within emitted a catastrophic hum.
"Instant… Hell!!!"
But just as Gern's fist was about to land—
An eruption of extreme cold detonated!
"Ice River—Eternal Coffin!"
Kuzan's icy body shattered apart, dispersing into a skyful of frozen mist.
What Gern's punch pierced through was nothing more than an instantly formed ice decoy.
The real Kuzan had already appeared a hundred meters in the air, arms crossed as freezing energy cascaded downward like a waterfall.
In an instant, the sea and the island's entire coastline froze solid. Ice surged toward Gern at visible speed.
Moisture in the air crystallized into countless ice shards, forming a blizzard that sealed every possible escape route.
For a moment, Gern's vibration-flash paths were completely blocked.
Ice crystals wrapped around his limbs like living chains, dragging him toward an eternal frozen hell.
"So you can even interfere at the molecular level now?"
Gern snarled, his entire body boiling with Armament Haki as shockwaves erupted from within.
"Heavenquake—World Collapse!"
BOOOOM!!
The ice coffin exploded apart—but Kuzan had no intention of stopping.
"Ice Thorns—Forest of Divine Spears!"
From the frozen sea, countless ice lances erupted violently, each tip gleaming with eerie blue cold as they stabbed toward Gern from every direction like a spear formation!
Gern slammed his fists together. A spherical shockwave exploded outward, pulverizing most of the lances—but several still broke through.
They tore into his side and shoulder, wounds deep enough to expose bone, the blood freezing solid before it could even flow.
"Tch…"
He shattered the embedded ice and looked up—only to realize Kuzan's figure had vanished.
The next instant, Kuzan appeared behind him, his right arm fully crystallized into a massive ice blade that came crashing down!
"Too slow!!"
The moment the blade was about to strike, Gern's Observation Haki had already predicted everything.
His body spun violently, right fist blasting into the ice blade with high-frequency vibration.
BANG—CRACK!!
The ice blade shattered on contact. Kuzan's pupils contracted sharply.
借着反冲力,Gern leapt back three steps, left fist drawn tight to his waist as every ounce of strength compressed inward.
"This punch—take it head-on!"
Flowing Haki wrapped his left arm like liquid. Vibration particles compressed to their absolute limit at the knuckles.
The air screamed under the pressure. Space itself began to twist and collapse.
"Supreme… Wave Fist!!!"
BOOOOOOM!!!!
The instant the punch was released, the air across the entire island was sucked dry.
A pale vibration beam dozens of meters wide tore through the battlefield, annihilating everything in its path into dust.
After a long moment, the smoke slowly cleared.
Kuzan was kneeling on one knee, blood trailing from his lips. His ice-crystal armor was riddled with cracks—yet his gaze was colder than the polar wind itself.
"…Ha."
He slowly rose to his feet as freezing energy condensed beneath him into a new glacier.
"Now that," he said calmly,"is what a monster should look like."
..
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