"The guests have all been evacuated from this area, but if the island sinks, where the hell are we supposed to live, Katakuri?!"
Perospero hopped anxiously from foot to foot as he ran over to his brother. Faced with a clash between beings of this level, even the so-called strategist of the Charlotte Family was utterly at a loss.
Katakuri clenched his fists tightly. How could he not want to stop this?
They had clearly used Mama's power to lock down the terrain and neutralize the Float-Float Fruit's aerial advantage. Who could have imagined that this guy would still force Mama into such a berserk state relying on nothing but swordsmanship and Haki?
This man had only been roaming the seas for a few short years. Had all of them seriously underestimated the terrifying potential he possessed?!
"At this point, all we can do is pray Mama defeats Tenma as soon as possible," Katakuri said through gritted teeth, eyes fixed on the battlefield. "At worst, we'll use Wano's resources afterward to make up for the island's losses!"
—BOOM!
Another merciless Ikoku Sovereignty blasted out. The fragile ground simply couldn't withstand that level of devastation, exploding into powder in an instant.
Amid the swirling dust, Charlotte Linlin glared with bulging eyes.
"Tenma! Aren't you capable? Then why are you scurrying around like a rat, dodging everywhere?!"
Tenma couldn't be bothered to respond to such low-level provocation.
Hard-blocking a terrifying giant-tribe technique like this was pointless and would only waste stamina. He wasn't an idiot—there was no reason to clash head-on under these conditions.
Since the island's land was soul-locked and couldn't be controlled, then he'd simply change his approach.
With a thought, Tenma shot straight up into the sky.
"Trying to run? Not a chance!"
Seeing this, Charlotte Linlin roared. The thundercloud Zeus beneath her feet rapidly expanded until it could support her massive body, then carried her in hot pursuit toward the heavens.
"Run? I have no such intention."
Tenma slashed apart the howling lightning with a backhand stroke and said calmly,
"I'll admit it—your soul infusion really did catch me by surprise. But since I dared to come alone, my trump cards were never limited to just that."
Wooooong!
In the next instant, the violently surging sea beneath him suddenly rose in an eerie manner.
—RUMBLE!
Billions of tons of seawater seemed to answer a mysterious summons, tearing free of the seabed and floating up into the sky.
Like a world-ending deluge descending from the heavens, the water rapidly gathered and transformed, eventually forming a colossal liquid dragon-headed beast that coiled beside Tenma, eyeing Charlotte Linlin with savage intent.
Despite her rage, Charlotte Linlin hadn't completely lost her reason like she did during hunger pangs.
She had seen similar liquid manipulation techniques before—from that "Golden Lion," Shiki.
But this wasn't mere control. At this scale and with this level of transformation, there was no doubt about it—
Tenma had crossed the threshold countless Devil Fruit users dreamed of.
Devil Fruit Awakening.
Great Swordmaster–level swordsmanship.
Conqueror's Haki coating.
Top-tier Armament and Observation Haki.
And now… awakened Devil Fruit power.
That meant this young man truly stood on the same tier of top-level power as her.
How many years had it been since he acquired Golden Lion's ability?
Just a few short years!!
Though shock surged through her heart, her hands didn't dare slow even for a moment.
Lightning, flame, and greatsword combined in an instant. The radiant Narumigiri was once again firmly gripped in Charlotte Linlin's hand.
"Die for me already!!!"
A white orb of light flew out from her body and instantly fused into Narumigiri.
This time, she was truly going all out—directly burning a massive reserve of souls from Totto Land as fuel for amplification.
Narumigiri's size expanded severalfold as berserk flames and lightning wrapped madly around the blade.
Then, an enhanced Ikoku Sovereignty was unleashed.
Under the dual blessing of thunder and fire, the terrifying slash blasted apart the thousands-of-meters-long ocean-dragon construct, shattering it completely—
Boiling steam instantly filled the sky, and that once sky-covering torrent of seawater was forcibly evaporated by more than half.
But in this world, the sea was an inexhaustible ammunition depot.
Tenma merely raised his hand casually, and endless seawater once again responded to his will, streaming continuously into the sky.
—Mother Visit Cannon: Three Thousand Miles!
Charlotte Linlin swung Narumigiri, cleaving forward several grotesque, gigantic female soul apparitions that lunged toward Tenma from four blind spots—front, back, left, and right.
Unfazed, Tenma raised Shidarezura. At the sword's tip, streams of extremely compressed high-pressure water instantly formed.
With a powerful swing, the water jets fired like high-energy laser cannons.
What had been only a few meters thick expanded explosively upon release—like a trickle turning into an ocean—transforming into a waterfall hundreds of meters wide that surged back toward Charlotte Linlin with overwhelming force.
Under the terrifying physical impact of the torrent, the four soul entities were drowned before they could even get close, dispersing into points of light.
Charlotte Linlin's pupils shrank sharply. In desperation, she directly burned her own lifespan.
Her body and aura skyrocketed, and in the blink of an eye she reached a scale rivaling an ancient giant. Narumigiri in her hand grew proportionally massive.
Raising the blade that seemed capable of cleaving heaven and earth, she aimed at the oncoming tidal waterfall.
"Narumigiri Cannon!"
In that moment, the blade became a light-energy cannon. A blinding beam roared forth, colliding violently with Tenma's water attack.
Even power gained by burning lifespan only barely dispersed the multiple tsunami waves.
Still in her colossal giant form, Charlotte Linlin stared at Tenma, shock seeping into her voice.
"You… you're a dual–Devil Fruit user?!"
"What's so surprising about that?" Tenma replied calmly.
"You should've heard already—back in Impel Down, besides taking Golden Lion with me, I also dealt with Bullet, didn't I?"
With a casual wave of his right hand, the Float-Float Fruit activated.
The small floating island hovering in the distance immediately flew toward Tenma like a meteor.
"I haven't awakened the Momo-Momo Fruit yet," he continued, "but dealing with you in your current state should be more than enough."
The moment his palm touched the island, its originally dozens-of-meters-wide landmass began to expand at a geometric rate.
In the blink of an eye, it grew a hundred times larger—becoming a colossal behemoth nearly ten thousand meters wide.
A massive shadow instantly blanketed the core of Cake Island, as though the apocalypse had arrived.
If you've locked the land with souls, then I'll test your limits with a hundred-times-amplified meteor!
Manipulating seawater to form a world-ending tsunami would normally be effortless for Charlotte Linlin—but this time, she was a step too slow.
Not just because of what lay before her, but because the desperate feedback from her Observation Haki stabbed straight into her nerves—
With the Float-Float Fruit seizing control first, her soul particles couldn't even penetrate it. She simply couldn't compete for dominance.
And so, judgment descended.
With a shrill tearing sound of air exploding—
Tenma merely hooked a finger.
The massive island suspended in the heavens instantly lost its buoyant support and came crashing down toward Cake Island with annihilating momentum.
The shadow on the ground expanded rapidly. Island residents' knees buckled as they collapsed en masse, clutching their heads and screaming in despair—the cries like ducks being strangled, filled with apocalyptic terror.
"Don't get cocky!!! Tenma!!!"
Charlotte Linlin's eyes split at the corners as she roared, her voice shaking eardrums. She burned through her soul reserves like a madwoman, her body swelling further as Narumigiri erupted with blinding light.
A jet-black slash wrapped in Conqueror's Haki tore through the air, overtaking the falling island despite being launched later.
"Ikoku Sovereignty!!"
The giant tribe's signature technique, capable of cleaving the sea itself—now amplified by Charlotte Linlin's monstrous strength and soul enhancement, its power multiplied severalfold.
BOOOOOOM!
The ten-thousand-meter island was cleaved apart in midair, split into several massive chunks.
The shattered earth didn't disperse. Instead, like an exploding shotgun, it became a rain of meteors of varying sizes, trailing fire as they rained down upon Cake Castle.
"Souls! Move it! Block them!"
Charlotte Linlin screamed herself hoarse. At the brink of life and death, the Soul-Soul Fruit was pushed to its absolute limit—entering full awakening.
Soul homies attached throughout Cake Island—teaware, flowers, trees, soldiers, even souls extracted from residents—burst free.
Countless white orbs of light surged upward like fireflies swimming against the current.
In an instant, a thick, heart-stopping soul barrier formed in the sky, barely holding back the meteor rain at the critical moment.
This was the advantage of Totto Land's home field. Here, Charlotte Linlin never lacked soul fuel to burn.
Sure enough, an island-level impact spell like this was apocalyptic for ordinary people—but for a Yonko standing at the peak of the seas, it was at most a tougher punching bag.
Tenma narrowed his eyes, calculating silently.
If the Momo-Momo Fruit were awakened, those fragments could have been multiplied in size and kinetic energy instantly—becoming a true meteor swarm for secondary annihilation.
He could even amplify an island to the absurd scale of a continental plate.
At that size, combined with gravity acceleration, even a fortress like Cake Island would be ground into powder like a biscuit.
He refused to believe Charlotte Linlin's soul barrier could withstand continent-level bombardment.
Unfortunately, while his swordsmanship had entered the Great Swordmaster realm, in terms of Devil Fruit development, only the Float-Float Fruit had touched the threshold of awakening.
The Momo-Momo Fruit was stuck at a bottleneck—ten thousand meters was the current limit, no matter how large the base material. That feeling of freely rewriting the rules was still just one step away.
This was the gulf between awakened and unawakened.
Even so, with a single awakened fruit and his overall combat power, Tenma had absolute confidence to challenge Charlotte Linlin head-on.
Midair, the soul barrier barely blocked the meteor rain.
Just as Charlotte Linlin, maintaining her awakened ability, let out a breath of relief—
Her pupils suddenly shrank to pinpoints.
Every hair on her body stood on end as she whipped her head toward Tenma.
"I figured something like that—clumsy physical attacks are just warm-ups for old monsters like you."
"You think there was a reason I didn't coat that island with Haki?"
Hovering in the sky like a war god, Tenma now held Shidarezura—somehow expanded into a colossal sword hundreds of meters long.
Dark-red lightning of Conqueror's Haki crackled around the blade as it pointed skyward, then came crashing down toward Charlotte Linlin with world-ending force.
That island had merely been a smokescreen.
Charlotte Linlin's heart skipped violently in sheer terror.
Under the Momo-Momo Fruit's rule amplification, Shidarezura's size had increased a hundredfold—yet its swing speed was completely unaffected by inertia, moving like a crimson lightning bolt.
In the blink of an eye, the slash capable of cleaving heaven and earth was already at Charlotte Linlin's nose.
"Tenma!!!"
No room to retreat!
She knew all too well that against a top-tier Haki-coated attack like this, a soul barrier was no sturdier than paper. If she dodged, Cake Island behind her would be split clean in two.
That was decades of her life's work!
With a shrill scream, Charlotte Linlin gripped Narumigiri with both hands, pouring Armament Haki into it like water. Black lightning danced wildly as even the flames on the blade seemed enraged, exploding outward.
At the same time, a savage, primordial aura erupted from her body. Countless wandering souls rushed into her as if summoned, forming a layer of soul armor around her.
This wasn't just her own soul—it was a direct extraction of Totto Land's massive soul reserves.
"Hakai!!!"
Her face twisted as she swung.
This was the true giant-tribe secret art—far beyond Ikoku Sovereignty in both destructive power and range.
BOOOOOOOM!!!
Two world-ending forces collided violently in midair.
Time seemed to freeze.
Then, a typhoon-eye-level shockwave exploded outward. The sea below was pressed down by an invisible hand, water surging backward violently.
Even at a distance, Cake Island's buildings were blown apart like toy blocks.
The shriek of torn air made ears bleed as the blood-red greatsword and the lightning-and-flame-wreathed blade clashed and ground against each other.
It was a vision of the apocalypse—earth shattering, sky wailing, even the sea trembling as it fled.
Tenma held his breath, gripping the hilt with both hands, muscles bulging. This was the first time he had poured his Haki out without restraint. The backlash from Hakai numbed his hands.
The clash reached a brief but violent stalemate.
If it were any other contest, Charlotte Linlin might have held an edge—but in a pure contest of sword momentum, Tenma, newly advanced to Great Swordmaster, was clearly superior.
Combined with the Momo-Momo Fruit's amplification, the gap in physical talent between him and the "born destroyer" was completely erased.
Gradually, Charlotte Linlin's body was forced to bend backward. Zeus beneath her feet shrank under the pressure, and she still had to divide her focus to control the seawater threatening the island.
Sensing defeat, her hands trembled violently as Narumigiri emitted a mournful cry under the strain.
Finally—
Shidarezura broke through Narumigiri's defense!
The terrifying slash detonated. Tenma himself was thrown back by the blast, veins bulging as blood mist exploded from his skin. His stamina drained wildly as he was sent flying, barely stabilizing himself with the Momo-Momo Fruit.
Charlotte Linlin fared far worse.
Though she defended with everything she had, she was blasted back onto Cake Island like a cannonball.
The impact was like a meteor strike. Half a town was instantly reduced to rubble, dust blotting out the sky.
"Looks like I'll need to find something like senzu beans for recovery," Tenma muttered, floating midair and gasping heavily as he deactivated his abilities.
This was his most exhausting battle since his deathmatch with Kaido.
Though he'd been suppressing his opponent the whole time, maintaining that dominance cost far more effort than it did for Charlotte Linlin, whose very body was monstrous.
Shidarezura returned to normal size. Tenma immediately extended his Observation Haki downward.
As expected—the old hag's presence was chaotic, but stubborn as a cockroach.
That level of impact wasn't enough to kill a Yonko.
As the dust settled, at the center of the ruins—
Charlotte Linlin staggered upright, black-red blood hanging from the corner of her mouth. Her giant form had dissipated, but she was madly stuffing residual soul reserves back into herself.
Visibly, the souls produced astonishing healing effects once absorbed.
This method of treating souls like HP packs was even more shameless than a Zoan awakening—especially after the Soul-Soul Fruit's awakening assimilation.
Bones with shattered fractures snapped back into place with sickening cracks, and grotesque wounds healed rapidly as flesh squirmed and regrew.
But the cost was enormous.
In this single battle, more than half of the soul reserves she'd painstakingly accumulated over ten years in Totto Land were burned away—
And she'd even lost five years of her own lifespan.
🌟 The story is already written… waiting to be unleashed.
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