CHAPTER 92: CHAPTER 92 THE STRONGEST MODE: DRAGON KNIGHT MODE

"Ice Age—"

Four days later, on the waters of Gran Tesoro.

After three days rushing over and almost a full day of rest, the two Marine Admirals stared from afar at the world’s greatest golden ship.

As if afraid it would vanish in the very next second.

Running across the sea, Aokiji crouched and pressed his palm into the water.

In the next instant, an incomparable chill surged from his hand.

In the blink of an eye the cold spread for over a hundred kilometers, freezing the entire sea around the golden ship.

"...It’s on!"

Inside the Golden City, Karl’s group watched the harbor frost over in an instant.

Karl, eating his meal, rose slowly and smiled at the little white dragon. "Little White, this should be our first time fighting side by side, right?"

"Wuao..."

The little dragon nodded hard, joy flickering in its vertical pupils.

Though the enemies ahead were very powerful, neither Karl nor the little dragon showed any fear.

On the contrary, Karl’s eyes already burned with fighting spirit.

The little dragon felt joy from the heart.

Because...

It would be fighting shoulder to shoulder with Karl for the first time.

No more clearing small fry, only watching its master duel the enemy, no more guarding Karina, no more just holding off some strong foe.

A true fight together!

"Let’s go—let them see our power!"

Karl rubbed the little dragon’s head and smiled.

"Roar..."

A roar that frightened all things burst from the dragon’s throat.

A few seconds later, a colossal white dragon bore a figure clad in knight’s armor into the sky, flying out of Gran Tesoro under the gazes of Karina and the others.

"Rumble..."

At the same time, in the Admirals’ sector.

After freezing hundreds of kilometers of ocean into an ice field and before the two could advance on Gran Tesoro, deafening thunder cracked above their heads.

Blinding blue-white light appeared out of thin air.

After charging, two colossal pillars of lightning crashed down.

Neither Aokiji nor Kizaru chose to rely on elementalization; with a Soru step and an instant blink they dodged the bolts.

Boom—!

A twin detonation erupted.

The two lightning pillars punched through the ice, blasting open a vast hole as seawater surged up from below.

It was clear that if they hadn’t dodged that strike—

Even in elemental form they would have been driven into the sea.

Aokiji could freeze the sea beneath, but those seconds with his true body soaking would still make him feel weak.

Kizaru would have it worse; once he fell in, even the Glint-Glint Fruit would struggle to get him airborne.

The sea is the absolute nemesis of ninety-nine percent of Devil Fruit users.

"Roar..."

The instant the pillars missed, before Aokiji and Kizaru could push forward, a familiar bellow rolled in from ahead.

A blue-white beam streaked in at a speed second only to Kizaru’s.

Unlike Kizaru’s straight-line movement, the beam seemed to skip frames.

One second it was flying hundreds of meters per second, and the next it suddenly appeared hundreds of meters farther on, as if the seconds between had been skipped.

Using electric-field teleportation, the Blue-Eyes White Dragon flashed into position ahead of Aokiji and Kizaru.

"We meet again, old man..."

As the Blue-Eyes White Dragon landed, Karl did not dismount.

Seated on its back, he called out to Kizaru.

"Karl-kun, you really toyed with everyone."

Kizaru’s tone toward Karl seemed unchanged, his expression theatrically exaggerated. "You even factored me in. So efficient, so scary..."

"No helping it. Of the three, the one I least want to provoke right now is that mad dog," Karl said with a helpless shrug.

"Borsalino, quit the chatter."

Before Kizaru and Karl could trade more words after days apart, the guilt-ridden and furious Aokiji, now cold-faced like Akainu, cut in.

Hoo...

At almost the same instant, a gale of freezing shockwaves howled toward Karl and the Blue-Eyes White Dragon.

Whoosh—

Seeing Aokiji move, Kizaru wasted no words. He raised a forefinger and fired a laser at Karl.

Boom—!

Facing one visible and one invisible killing strike, Karl poured will into his body and invoked Life Return.

In the next second he threw a punch with no visible windup.

A colossal air cannon erupted like a divine decree, turning into a transparent white pillar that blocked the freezing shockwave and the laser.

They deadlocked for only a few seconds before raw physical force won out.

The white pillar drowned the explosive laser and ripped apart the freezing wave, roaring on toward Aokiji and Kizaru.

Aokiji slipped aside with a sideways Soru.

Kizaru broke into countless photons and reappeared above the white pillar, pinching a knot of golden light in both hands. He rained luminous orbs down on man and dragon below. "Yasakani no Magatama!"

"Roar..."

Kizaru’s movements and attacks were all within the Blue-Eyes White Dragon’s Observation Haki.

Linked heart-to-heart with Karl, the dragon needed no spoken command; dazzling white light pooled in its jaws.

A single Gale Burst shot skyward, swallowing a swath of the light orbs.

At that moment a figure emanating cold, half his body iced over, appeared beside the dragon.

After dodging the white pillar with Soru, Aokiji seized the opening while dragon and light traded blows, instant-shifting to the dragon’s flank. His frozen palm exuded the chill that freezes all things and was wrapped in emission-level Armament Haki as it chopped toward the Blue-Eyes White Dragon.

If that palm touched the dragon’s true body, the cold would flash-freeze it, and the Haki around his hand would turn into internal destruction, wreaking havoc within.

Boom—!

Before Aokiji could touch the dragon, his palm slammed into another palm.

Karl vanished from the dragon’s back and appeared from thin air in front of Aokiji.

Buoyed by his electric field, Karl hovered in midair and met Aokiji’s two-meter-ninety-eight frame palm to palm.

One side radiated the chill that freezes all and Armament Haki; the other blazed with thunder that destroys all and Armament Haki.

Ice versus lightning, Haki against Haki...

Their power detonated the instant they met, twin shockwaves rebounding from the backs of their hands and swallowing them both.

Both were flung away. Aokiji skidded back hundreds of meters; Karl crashed into the Blue-Eyes White Dragon, then turned into lightning, threaded the electric field, and instant-shifted a kilometer up to intercept Kizaru, who had been quietly angling toward Gran Tesoro behind the screen of the Gale Burst.

"Old man, that’s a bit low, isn’t it?"

Karl’s right foot blazed with searing blue-white current as he kicked at the golden flash slicing in a straight line. "I didn’t use underhanded tricks to destroy your warships, and you’d take the chance to wreck my territory?"

"...No helping it. It’s my assignment."

Kizaru emerged from the light and raised an arm to block the kick, answering helplessly.

An instant later his form turned back to light as Karl’s kick sent him under the ice.

While moving he would never expose his real body to clash head-on with one of Karl’s charged kicks; that would only court disaster.

He could only harden his arm with Haki to take the blow, then elementalize, letting Karl boot his light-form into the ground to minimize damage.

"As expected, you can’t relax for even a second against you, old man."

Breaking Kizaru’s rush, Karl flashed back to the ice and grinned up at Kizaru, who soared from the ice mist as light, unscathed.

"Could you really not show a little respect for your elders and let me take it easy?" Kizaru scratched his head helplessly. "If you let me sink that ship, my mission would be over."

"No can do. The Golden City is my turf."

"This is my foothold in the New World. No one gets to wreck it—including you, old man," Karl said, shaking his head.

"In that case, let’s see."

Kizaru’s whole body flared with stabbing golden light, lips pursed. "See whether you can keep me pinned, or whether I can slip around to Gran Tesoro."

"Old man, in this situation I’m not playing that game."

Karl didn’t go along this time; he smiled meaningfully. "Just like you, I’m not fighting alone anymore."

Whoosh—

As if in answer to Karl—

After smothering the light barrage and trading a few rounds with Aokiji, the Blue-Eyes White Dragon instant-shifted back to Karl’s side.

Karl vaulted onto its back again. Aokiji appeared beside Kizaru. Fixing on Kizaru, Karl said, "Old man, after crossing blades twice, let me show you a technique I learned from you."

"Thunder Spear—"

He clapped his hands; his palms blazed with searing current as countless arcs gathered between them.

As his hands drew apart, a spear like Kizaru’s Ama no Murakumo, forged from compressed lightning, formed in Karl’s grip.

"Such an energy fluctuation..."

Seeing the spear in Karl’s hand, a rare flicker of surprise crossed Kizaru’s face. He shook his head helplessly. "As expected of the young—such stamina."

"Don’t let that spear touch my body!"

Aokiji seemed to sense it too, his face grave.

Both were techniques of energy compression.

But Kizaru’s Ama no Murakumo could not compare to the Thunder Spear in Karl’s hand.

Because of the element, the Thunder Spear throbbed with a savage, heart-stopping aura.

It was less a spear than a compacted thunderbolt.

Just as Aokiji said—

The Thunder Spear in Karl’s hand was no ordinary lance of lightning, but the spear-form of God’s Verdict.

It could be used as a weapon or hurled to detonate, unleashing hundreds of millions of volts and scorching heat.

Drawing inspiration from Kizaru’s Ama no Murakumo and from his own mysterious spear, Karl developed the Thunder Spear himself.

He did not summon the mysterious spear.

Because the mysterious spear is his strongest trump.

Unless absolutely forced, Karl would never expose that trump to Aokiji, Kizaru, or the News Coo.

A single light-spear is not omnipotent—especially against top-tier Logias; unless you seize an opening, the attack too easily passes through an elementalized body.

Such secrets are best used on foes who cannot become elements.

So if Karl were to throw out his strongest trump now, it would not only fail to achieve maximum effect but also reveal itself early to the world.

No helping it—Logias are shameless; elementalization is inexorable.

On par with the Yonko—

But how are Marine Admirals on par with the Four Emperors?

They don’t have monster physiques nor Conqueror’s coating; what puts them on that level?

Obviously—

The strongest kind among the three Devil Fruit classes: the Logia.

Elementalization and pre-emptive elementalization, plus vast-area elemental devastation, are the capital that lets them contend with pirate emperors.

Haki only lets you tag a flowing elemental body, forcing a Logia to weave Observation into pre-emptive element shifts—an ability layer before elementalization.

Ability counters ability; Haki counters Haki.

The two must never be conflated.

Back to the fight...

With the Thunder Spear condensed, Karl rode the Blue-Eyes White Dragon and opened his strongest Dragon Knight mode. Leveling the spear at Kizaru and Aokiji, he said, "Admirals—next... I’m coming!"

Whoooom—Boom!

The moment the words fell, the Blue-Eyes White Dragon beneath Karl turned into a torrent of current and vanished.

Thanks to same-attribute powers—or perhaps a double use of one fruit—

The Blue-Eyes White Dragon’s instant-shift could carry Karl with it.

Their heart-link made the shared movement seamless.

With a single jump the dragon appeared before the easier target, Aokiji.

Karl hurled the Thunder Spear straight at him.

The lightning lance, crackling with arcs, swelled rapidly in Aokiji’s eyes.

In the next second...

The entire ice field convulsed.

A colossal mushroom cloud rose, its core flickering with lightning like a thunderhead.

Even on Gran Tesoro’s walls, they could see the trace of that cloud.

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