CHAPTER 625: CHAPTER 144: HE’S... GETTING BIGGER?!

Dorry and Brogy burst into thunderous laughter at the "little runt’s" audacity. If they ignored the fact he was human, Darren—his fighting spirit, durability, and sheer nerve—was every inch an Elbaf warrior.

"Then come at me!" Dorry, the Blue Ogre, planted a step that shook the ground. His wild hair and beard flared like a demon’s mane, his face darkening to a fierce blue-black.

"Don’t die too easily!" Brogy, the Red Ogre, mirrored him, battleaxe cocked, rugged features flushing crimson with anticipation.

They spread apart, weapons kissing the air with a light clang, bodies coiled to unleash everything.

In that instant, a tyrannical pressure slammed into Darren, locking every muscle as if the challenge itself had seized him.

"What intensity..."

He thrilled instead of balking. A hot, bright light snapped to life in his eyes.

In the original tale, the pair had looked underwhelming—hardly worthy of century-old bounties or Elbaf’s name as the "World’s Strongest Nation." But here and now, the suffocating weight of their intent, the primal threat that made his cells ring like struck steel—he found it intoxicating.

"Hahahaha! Come on, Elbaf warriors!"

He inhaled hard.

Hiss—

Air visibly whirled before his nostrils. A torrent of memories flashed—life-or-death battles, nights of hellish training—coalescing into a single, wordless realization.

"Life Return."

He breathed it to his core, and something in him shifted.

Crack... crack...

Muscle stacked and rippled, angles sharpening, power surging. His upper uniform tore apart, baring a scar-laced torso built for war.

Rip.

He yanked the remnants free. Black hair whipped in the wind as a feral grin split his face. He raised his fists in a boxer’s guard, one high, one low, and roared:

"I, Rogers Darren, will stand and take your strongest strike!"

"Overpower me. Break me. Even—kill me!!"

The earth answered with a deep, rolling tremor, as if the island itself had heard him.

Then he charged. Not back—forward. Straight into the teeth of Elbaf’s ultimate technique.

"Good!!"

Their grins turned savage. Only a man like this deserved their combined might.

"Everything, Brogy. Don’t hold back!" Dorry bellowed.

"You either! Don’t tell me you’ve softened with age! Hahahaha!!" Brogy howled.

They didn’t need another word. Their eyes flashed; intent locked.

Wind erupted.

Steel fell.

Their power collapsed the air ahead into a vacuum, then detonated outward in a spiraling vortex of wind and steel that ripped the land bare.

Hundreds of towering trees atomized into splinters. Stone, brush, even rolling hills flattened to dust. A barren swath opened where the world had been.

BOOM!!

Elbaf Cannon: Hakoku.

Before that nation-crushing shockwave, nothing stood.

It swallowed the small figure of the Marine Vice Admiral and thundered on toward the horizon.

BOOM.

A mountain dozens of meters high opened like a pierced drum, a yawning hole punched clean through. The flanking ranges sagged and crumbled.

Far beyond, a trench more than a kilometer long and tens of meters wide tore across the sea’s surface, setting off heaving walls of water.

Wave-roar and mountain-collapse braided into a single, deafening dirge, as if heaven split and earth came undone.

---

Dust rolled over a land flayed to the bone. From above, the sundered jungle looked like a god’s sword stroke—an ocher wound cleaving green in two.

"H-He’s not dead, is he?" Brogy panted, sweat beading as he stared into the smoke.

Crack. Crackle.

Fissures spiderwebbed along his battleaxe; it shattered into glittering fragments. Dorry’s massive, scarred blade followed, collapsing to scrap. Weapons forged through decades of duels, finally spent by the weight of their own technique.

"I... I don’t know," Dorry wheezed, face chalk-pale. Even for giants, Hakoku exacted a merciless toll.

"Truly... a remarkable technique..."

The rasp came from within the smoke. Hope flared in their eyes.

He was alive.

Relief died to awe, then disbelief.

He was alive.

Through the haze, a silhouette rose from the torn earth and straightened.

"Thanks, big guys," came the voice, edged with a strange amusement.

Then they saw it—saw the thing that would revisit their dreams forever.

The silhouette changed, bones popping like knuckles of thunder.

With the wet crackle of knitting muscle and shifting frame, the small figure in the smoke—

Visibly—

Began to rise, swelling like a mountain shouldering up from the plain.

"H-He’s... he’s getting bigger?!" Brogy choked, eyes bulging.

To be continued...