Uchiha Puppet Master, Starting from One Piece

Chapter 234 Nighogg

Jabba's axe blade was less than three meters from Loki's left knee.

For a warrior of Jabba's caliber, this distance is no different from already hitting him.

The Armament Haki wrapped around the axe blade left a black afterimage in the air. The edges of that afterimage produced dark red sparks due to the high-speed friction with the air, like some kind of judgmental light from hell.

Then Loki changed.

It wasn't a change in movement or an adjustment in posture, but rather that the very essence of existence was completely replaced in an instant.

Jabba's axe blade struck not Loki's back of the knee, but a wall that appeared out of nowhere, made of pure darkness.

That wall wasn't a barrier or a screen, but something real, tangible, like something compressed from trillions of tons of void.

The moment the axe blade struck, it didn't produce the booming sound of metal clashing against metal, but rather a low, muffled thud, like the groan of the entire earth. Jabba felt his hand explode in an instant, blood gushing from the wound. He almost dropped both battle axes, and the Armament Haki wrapped around the axe blades seemed to be swallowed up by something, melting, peeling away, and disappearing at a visible speed.

He was thrown into the air by the recoil, tumbling more than a dozen times before finally coming to a stop, his feet carving two long trenches a hundred meters long in the ground.

His hands were trembling.

It wasn't out of fear, but because the muscles and bones had just endured a reaction force far exceeding their limits in that instant.

He glanced down at the web between his thumb and forefinger; the deep, gaping wound revealed the bone. Bright red muscle fibers and white fascia twitched slightly in the air. Blood dripped from his wrist onto the black, vitrified ground beneath his feet, making a soft hissing sound. The blood evaporated into a pale red mist in the high temperature of the ground.

Jabba raised his head, his pupils suddenly contracting.

Loki is missing.

The sixty-meter-tall giant figure that had stood where Loki stood disappeared, replaced by something that was expanding and growing, as if the world itself was being torn apart by some indescribable force.

First, there's the color.

It is a blackness that the human eye was never designed to receive and the brain was never designed to process.

The moment that color appears in one's field of vision, everyone who sees it experiences a strong, almost physiological discomfort, as if something is attacking the deepest part of the visual nerves, bypassing all cognitive filtering mechanisms and directly triggering the brain's deepest alarm system.

This is because the optic nerve becomes overloaded when trying to process that color, and the brain's protective mechanism tries to flush out the visual signals that shouldn't be there by increasing tear production.

Then comes the form.

The expanding form was changing every millisecond, with countless possibilities existing, annihilating, and being reborn simultaneously in different parts of the same entity.

Its surface was covered with huge, boiling magma-like bubbles, and each bubble bursting released a low tremor, as if the gravity field of the entire world had been disturbed.

Finally, there's the volume.

It is getting bigger.

It doesn't get bigger, it expands.

It expands at a speed and magnitude that completely disregards the laws of physics.

From tens of meters to hundreds of meters, from hundreds of meters to thousands of meters, from thousands of meters to nearly ten thousand meters.

Million meters.

What does 10,000 meters mean?

It is a mountain with an altitude exceeding that of the world's highest peak, rising vertically from the sea level. It is so enormous that a human being standing in front of it is not even worthy to be a single cell on its skin.

Loki's Devil Fruit, Mythical Zoan Type: Black Dragon Mode - Nighoggi.

In Norse mythology, the World Dragon, which gnawed at the roots of the World Tree, existed from the beginning of time to its end. During Ragnarok, it bit off the last root of the World Tree, causing the complete collapse of the order of the nine realms.

Now, the end of the world has come to this land.

The Dragon of the World.

Shanks foresaw everything that was about to happen using his Observation Haki before the incident occurred, but his body couldn't keep up with his foresight.

The moment the complete form of the black dragon he saw flashed through his mind, his pupils dilated to their limit, and the expression on his face was no longer one of surprise or apprehension, but something he had never seen before, something that even he himself found unfamiliar.

In awe.

It wasn't reverence for the strong; Shanks never showed that to anyone. He treated all opponents with equality and respect, even if they were Yonko, Marine Admirals, or the highest authority in the World Government. He never felt inferior to them, nor did he ever feel any sense of awe because of their strength.

But this time is different.

He didn't revere Loki.

What he revered was the power of that fruit, the legendary ancient being that had lingered at the roots of the World Tree for countless eras, witnessed the birth and destruction of countless civilizations, and appeared and disappeared in the shadows of all myths.

Nighold is a phenomenon, an existence written into the underlying logic of the pirate world, representing the end and decay itself.

Shanks moved before the black dragon's expansion was fully unfurled. Griffin slashed out a brighter, almost blinding white crescent moon in the air, a crescent moon imbued with Conqueror's Haki and Armament Haki powerful enough to slice through an island, and struck at the neck of the expanding black dragon.

"Gods, beware!"

This is what Captain Roger taught him.

The moment Griffin's sword energy struck the black dragon's neck, Shanks felt an unprecedented and absurd sense of powerlessness.

When the sword energy pressed down, the darkness of the massive black dragon's body absorbed it.

It's not about resisting, blocking, or dodging, but about absorbing. It's like dropping a drop of water into the ocean, throwing a match into the sun, or punching something that doesn't exist. Your power encounters no resistance, but it also has no effect on the target, because the target isn't even in the place you're hitting.

The moment the black dragon completed its expansion, the air within a radius of several thousand kilometers seemed to collapse.

It's because of the weight.

A black dragon ten thousand meters long landed on the ground. If its weight were calculated according to normal physical laws, it would be enough to cause irreversible structural damage to the earth's crust within a radius of hundreds of kilometers. The very existence of this black dragon distorted the surrounding physical rules. The collapse it caused was caused by gravity; space itself was bent in the face of its presence.

The density of the air increases several times in the time it takes to breathe. Each breath requires more force than lifting a heavy object to expand the chest cavity. The exhaled air forms a visible white column of mist the moment it leaves the trachea due to the change in air pressure, as if every breath is in winter. But this is not winter; it is an aerodynamic anomaly caused by the distortion of space.

Bai Yu stood at a distance, and everything in his Samsara Eyes seemed a bit off.

His Rinnegan can see the flow of energy and the folds of space; no one expected Loki in this form to be so terrifying.

He could see what was inside the black dragon.

He could see Loki, including his body, his soul, his domineering aura, and his consciousness, all of which were being subtly devoured, replaced, and rewritten by Nighold's presence.

This is similar to chakra reincarnation in the Naruto world; Ashura's chakra can influence the person he possesses.

It can be said that Loki is Nighold's vessel in this world. Nighold gained physical form through Loki's existence, and Loki and this Devil Fruit complement each other.

The moment the black dragon failed to reappear, it launched a devastating attack.

It is perceiving.

Adapting.

Adjustments are being made.

Its enormous head slowly turned, and its two eyes—no, not eyes, but two bottomless masses of darkness—each had a tiny, dark red point of light in its center, like the last rays of light before an ancient star collapsed, slowly pulsating and sweeping across every being on the battlefield.

The moment that gaze swept over him, Shanks felt his Observation Haki spiraling out of control.

His ability to foresee the future failed the moment that gaze swept over him. It wasn't because the black dragon blocked his Observation Haki, but because the black dragon's very existence distorted the flow of time. In his Observation Haki, what he saw in his foresight was not a definite scene, but a chaotic flow of information where countless possibilities existed, disappeared, and reappeared at the same time. The density and quantity of that information flow far exceeded the processing limits of any human brain.

He saw a thousand ways he could die in those information streams.

Bitten to pieces by the black dragon, shattered by its tail, vaporized by its breath, swallowed by the darkness flowing from its wings, torn to shreds by the storm created by its flapping wings, crushed into a pool of blood and gore by the spatial distortion caused by its very existence, its internal organs shattered by its low roar, its Haki ignited by a single glance, causing it to self-immolate, its Conqueror's Haki reflected from its scales striking its own, causing a backlash, and then—

Each method of death was incredibly clear, incredibly real, and incredibly specific, so specific that he could feel the sound of his bones breaking when he was bitten, the sensation of his internal organs rupturing when he was smashed, the stinging pain of his bodily fluids instantly vaporizing when he was evaporated, and the kind of nothingness that was more terrifying than death as his consciousness gradually disappeared when he was swallowed up.

Shanks gritted his teeth, the stinging pain on his tongue pulling him out of the illusion of a thousand deaths. Griffin stood in front of him, the Conqueror's Haki flowing across its blade like a candle flame flickering in a storm, seemingly about to be extinguished but stubbornly burning on.

"Jabbar! Mihawk!"

Jaba's voice came from about two hundred meters to the left. The old man had finished examining his body and stopped the bleeding from his hand. He tore off the sleeve of his coat, bit one end with his teeth, wrapped the other end with his right hand, and tied a rough but effective knot on his left hand.

"Shanks! Let's move together."

Jabba's voice was loud, louder than an old man's, loud enough to drown out the low-frequency vibrations in space caused by the presence of the black dragon, carrying an almost fanatical excitement reminiscent of his youthful days roaming the seas.

"When I came to Elbaf back then, I didn't cause such a commotion! It seems that your defeat of your father back then was indeed not a coincidence."

The instant Jabba finished speaking, Mihawk moved.

Mihawk hasn't moved since the start of the battle.

He stood about several hundred meters to the right of Bai Yu, his arms crossed in front of his chest, his left hand resting on the scabbard of the Night Blade, and his right palm resting on the back of his left hand, in a casual posture.

But his eyes weren't random.

Those golden, sharp eyes, which seemed to see through everything, hadn't blinked even once since Loki transformed. The world in those eyes wasn't the world that ordinary people saw, but an incredibly complex model composed of multi-dimensional information such as lines, angles, trajectories, distances, speeds, power, and domineering aura.

He kept calculating.

In his 60-meter giant form before transforming, Loki was calculating the giant's center of gravity, point of force exertion, joint rotation radius, and every possible attack angle and corresponding countermeasures.

In Loki's transformed black dragon form, he was calculating something completely different.

He was calculating the pattern.

The patterns governing the existence of this black dragon. How it moves, how it senses, how it attacks, how it defends, and how it maintains a form that shouldn't exist in this physical world—there must be some patterns in these behaviors, some patterns that can be observed, understood, and utilized.

Mihawk seeks order amidst immense chaos.

There is a limit to the speed at which the black dragon's head can turn. That limit is extremely slow relative to the black dragon's body, which is 10,000 meters long. It's not because the black dragon's neck muscles are not strong enough, but because it is too big. It takes a lot of time for nerve signals to be transmitted from the head to the tail. Its body cannot achieve coordinated and rapid movement of the head and tail. This is a physical law that even the black dragon, which has distorted the rules, must abide by.

Each scale of the black dragon breathes on its own.

Those scales are constantly absorbing energy from the surrounding space, and then converting the absorbed energy into energy to maintain their own shape.

This means that fighting alongside the Black Dragon will continuously deplete and weaken anyone's Haki. If the battle drags on for too long, their Haki will be completely drained by the Black Dragon, eventually turning them into someone without Haki.

We must act swiftly, or find another way to attack.

But that area is probably the location of the core organ where the black dragon transforms the Haki it absorbs into energy to maintain its own form, like a human heart or the core of a Devil Fruit.

Attacking there, perhaps, just perhaps, could inflict real damage on the Black Dragon.

Mihawk removed his hand from the hilt of the sword.

It's not about giving up, it's about preparing.

His right hand gripped the hilt of Night's sword, his left hand rested on the scabbard opening, his thumb braced against the guard, and his other four fingers securing the scabbard. The legendary king was about to make his move.