CHAPTER 73: CHAPTER 73: PULL THE HELM—THE LION AWAKENS! CONQUEROR’S HAKI IGNITES, A PEAK SHOWDOWN!

"Kid, I like those eyes."

Floating out from the shattered building, the Golden Lion studied the battle-hungry glint in Karl’s gaze and asked with interest, "I can feel a domineering aura on you—something different from thunder’s ferocity. You’ve mastered Haki, haven’t you?"

"Do you also have the quality of a king?"

"I don’t know. Maybe. I haven’t awakened it yet."

Karl answered honestly, sheathing his knight’s sword. He clenched both fists; flowing golden Armament slid over them. "Senior Shiki, I’m going to get serious."

"Come, then!"

At the sight of that flowing Armament, Shiki’s face finally grew solemn. He faced Karl not as a lucky junior blessed with the Rumble-Rumble Fruit, but as a true opponent. "At your age, to handle Armament at that level..."

"Thanks for the compliment."

Karl’s voice sounded at Shiki’s ear with no sense of approach.

One heartbeat he was on the ground; the next, he was in Shiki’s face, his fist blazing with lightning, Haki, and brute force enough to pulverize a mountain, driving straight for the Golden Lion’s jaw.

"Slash Wave!"

Getting his first taste of Karl’s godlike speed, Shiki’s expression tightened. Instinct hurled him backward; his right-leg named blade swept out a colossal flying slash.

Boom—crack!

For the first time, a great-swordsman-level slash failed to blow Karl away.

The moment it met Karl’s fist, it was like a time bomb went off.

A massive blue-white pillar—thunder, Haki, and raw power fused—roared from Karl’s knuckles, part lightning column, part air cannon.

In an instant it shattered Shiki’s sea-cleaving slash and surged on to swallow him whole.

Shiki had read it. He escaped by a hair.

KABOOOOOM!

The pillar carved across the sky and slammed into the central mountain of STRONG WORLD, the floating isle.

Like Elbaf’s "Hakoku" or "Bakoku," half the massif disintegrated in a blink.

What the pillar touched was smashed by air-pressure, pulverized by Haki’s shock, or burned to ash by electric heat.

Only a few rocks, heated red and wreathed in flame, fell like meteors.

"Power like that..."

Watching the mountain crumble, Shiki saw, for a breath, reflections of old rivals in the youth before him.

"Jyeh-hahahaha... every era breeds its natural monsters."

He laughed, moved. "Roger, you really did open a golden age of piracy."

"Senior Shiki, now isn’t the time for nostalgia."

Karl’s first blow missed. Instead of blinking through his field, he used the Rumble-empowered extension of Soru—Thunder Step—leaving a smear of crackling afterimages as he blitzed Shiki again.

Using the sky-walk’s momentum, he drove another lightning-fast, maiming punch toward Shiki.

"Kid—who do you think you’re talking to?"

The mourning passed. Shiki’s face twisted into the ferocity that once made the great pirates of the last era tremble.

He chose not to evade. He met fist with fist.

BOOOOM!

The explosion rattled the entire archipelago; even neighboring islands heard it.

Twin shockwaves collided, forming a vast, transparent ring that blasted both men apart.

"Haha! As expected of a legend—meeting you early is a blessing!"

Karl, flung back at extreme speed, bled a thin line at the lip—and laughed from the gut.

The pinnacle of Armament is internal destruction.

On that clash, Shiki had used it—external emission and internal damage. Karl, relying only on flowing emission, had taken a sliver of internal injury when the waves met.

That nick thrilled him more than it hurt.

In that moment, his respect and fighting spirit for the old legend soared.

To strike Karl’s body, to teach a lesson about the old era’s might, Shiki had dredged up Haki that should have faded—or been sealed by the helm in his skull.

The price for hurting Karl: as Shiki tumbled, cords stood out on his brow in throbbing veins.

But his aura only grew more terrible.

"Will—made manifest."

Halting his flight, Karl looked at Shiki with sincere gratitude. "Thank you for the lesson, Senior Shiki. Worthy of being one of the three great legends of the last era."

Those three weren’t merely "blessed physiques." They were true monsters—because they wielded true power.

That power was called will.

Gol D. Roger, dying of illness, used will to face countless foes and reach the final island.

Whitebeard, half his face burned away, his body riddled with holes, used will to counterattack Marshall D. Teach with a sliver of life.

Shiki, helm in his head and swords for legs, used will to seize back lost strength.

He stood with the Pirate King and the world’s strongest man—the flying great pirate, Golden Lion Shiki.

"Senior Shiki, from here on I’ll go all out—and kill you."

Out of respect for a great pirate—or for the bygone age—Karl summoned the Mysterious Spear and opened his full-power state, eyes hard on Shiki.

"Jyeh-hahahaha..."

Regaining his Haki felt like knives carving his brain. Blood veined Shiki’s eyes. Sensing the oceanic power in Karl’s body and the gaze only true titans carried, he paused—then laughed as if he understood something.

Then he did something Karl hadn’t foreseen.

He raised a hand to the helm he had worn for twenty-four years.

Veins bulged again, savage lines crawling across his forehead.

Crack... crack...

"This damned thing..."

With a guttural snarl, "I should have ripped you out long ago!"

Rip—

With the sound of tearing cloth, Shiki yanked the helm from his skull.

Blood surged—but invisible Haki stanched it for the moment.

Staring at the helm, tacky with darkened blood, agony lancing his skull yet a clarity he hadn’t felt in years flooding in, Shiki’s expression turned complicated. "Have you... blocked my path all this time?"

A mere helm—but day by day it had sapped him.

A reminder that he had lost to a man named Roger.

"I’d rather die than carry a symbol of defeat into the grave."

"I am the Golden Lion!"

He crushed the helm to fragments. A true pirate’s cruel grin split his face.

"Kid—no, Karl—then I’ll go all out too, and kill you!"

BOOM—

Like a proclamation that the lion who once roared over the seas had returned, an overwhelming aura exploded from Shiki.

Conqueror’s Haki tore across the island.

Even the White-White Sea three thousand meters above churned; a vast vortex darkened the spotless sky.

Had this been the Blue Sea, day would have turned to night.

"My chest... feels tight..."

Not wind, not shockwave, not Armament—the "storm" of spirit pressed on Karl’s lungs. One hand gripped his spear; the other clutched his chest as his heartbeat thundered like war drums.

Something long buried inside him—power he’d never been able to draw out—surged as if provoked.

KRAKOOOOOM—

A peerless will, identical in nature to Shiki’s Conqueror’s Haki, erupted from Karl.

The two auras collided and formed a special field.

Overhead, the White-White Sea blackened, ink spilled across the heavens.

Zzzzzzt—

Black-red lightning appeared from nothing.

STRONG WORLD descended into doomsday dusk.

"Jyeh-hahahaha... so you did have a king’s qualities."

Seeing Karl awaken Conqueror’s Haki, Shiki laughed from the heart. "Could a man with eyes like that lack a king’s spirit?"

"I’m coming, Senior Shiki."

Feeling the new power, Karl reined it in—he could control his Conqueror’s at will.

He leveled the long spear and hurtled forward.

Lightning flashed. Karl and the Mysterious Spear became a blue-white meteor swelling in Shiki’s eyes.

"Shishi Senjūrō!"

"Shishi Odokemono!"

His sword-legs kicked out layered giant slashes. Mind razor-sharp, Shiki spread the Float-Float across the entire island.

Ruuumble—

The island itself shuddered.

Like its master, the land woke as a raging lion and rolled.

Untold tons of earth heaved into a sky-darkening lion. Its jaws—like a tsunami—opened to swallow both men.

Karl’s spear, cloaked in Armament, flooded with light-and-thunder as he converted stamina into power. He shattered several slashes with deflecting technique, then—without hesitation—used Life Return to finish charging the Lightlance and hurled it at Shiki.

Sensing the energy within the lance, Shiki flung himself back. The earth-lion behind him opened a tunnel; he darted inside, and the "flesh" sealed up to a mountain’s thickness, meeting the streaking lance head-on.

KABOOOOOOOM!

The blast dwarfed every previous detonation, rattling STRONG WORLD and the whole archipelago.

A mushroom cloud blotted the sky.

"...Was that Karl’s Lightlance?"

Though they were on another island, though kilometers away, Karina and the others felt that bloom in their faces—and the gale racing toward them.

"Wraaaah!"

As the wind hit and Karina raised a barrier, a familiar dragon’s roar cut through it.

The Blue-Eyes—supposed to be watching the ship—soared up from the Blue Sea and swooped down.

"Little White... you want me to get on?"

The dragon crouched against the wind before her.

It dipped its head.

Ruuumble—

With the four women heaving the sarcophagus onto the dragon’s back, Little White clawed for height.

Then the island they’d left—and the surrounding archipelago—began to quake as if giant hands gripped them.

The islands lifted, wheeling around STRONG WORLD.

With every rotation, a sky-blotting earth-lion sprang from an isle and took wing.

In under a minute, pride after pride—each the size of a small island—circled above STRONG WORLD, glaring down at Karl’s figure as the mushroom cloud collapsed.

One word, and they would dive to tear the central isle to pieces.

"You’ve got to be kidding..."

"Can a human even do that?"

"Karl... please be okay..."

Read Advanced Chapters on : patreon.com/Kaizo247

~ Every 150 PS = Bonus Chapter!

~ Push the Story forward with your [Power Stones]