CHAPTER 626: CHAPTER 145: THE GIANT’S BODY!

Three meters...

Five...

Ten...

Brogy and Dorry could only gape as the "little Marine" kept rising, bursting through the roiling smoke in a body no longer small at all.

A figure nearly thirty meters tall stood on the scoured rock, looming like a god.

His bare torso was a lattice of corded muscle—dense as steel, yet free of the lumbering bulk that weighed most giants. There was a predator’s sleekness to him, the coiled grace of a cheetah writ titanic.

"Y-y-you... you turned into a giant?!" Brogy blurted, pointing with a trembling finger. Even Dorry, usually imperturbable, sucked in a sharp breath, jaw slack at the absurd sight.

Wasn’t he human? How had he "become" a giant?

"I didn’t imagine... it would feel like this." Steam rolled off Darren’s frame in thick sheets. His voice came rough, his movements a shade sluggish, as if he were still learning the edges of his new body.

The world had changed scale. Trees and hills once daunting now barely brushed his waist, as though the island itself had shrunk.

He lowered his gaze to his hands—broad palms spanning two, nearly three meters—feeling an inexhaustible flood of power coursing through him. Even a lazy curl of his fingers tugged the air into visible eddies.

An outrageous notion flashed through him: lifting a Buster Call battleship—one bearing thousands—felt laughably easy.

He clenched, whirled, and drove a fist into a nearby peak twenty meters high.

BOOM!

Stone burst like shattered pottery. The mountaintop disintegrated into a rain of rubble.

Dorry and Brogy’s eyelids twitched.

His raw force... it already eclipsed theirs.

A cold memory stirred in Darren—Oars, the "Demon Giant," and the primal dread he’d once inspired.

He held still, breathing through the surge. The strength of this form had blown past his expectations; that punch told him he wasn’t merely in "lift-a-warship" territory. This was "drag-the-mountain" territory. Beyond human, beyond reason.

He smothered the thrill and took stock. Power was not the whole of a fight. For all this form’s lean build, his reflex and burst speed had dulled a fraction.

He checked his body, the way only he could:

Physique: 96.066 (Indestructible Body)

Strength: 90.011 (Giant’s Body)

Speed: 86.768 (Soru’s Divine Speed)

Devil Fruit: 86.210 (Island-Covering)

Armament Haki: 74.799 (Internal Destruction, Demon Form)

Observation Haki: 76.588 (Magnetic Field Sensing)

Conqueror’s Haki: 81.489 (Manifesting Influence)

The "baptism" of two giant captains—and taking Hakoku head-on—had finally pushed his Strength past ninety.

And with it, an evolution: Giant’s Strength had become Giant’s Body.

He had forced the threshold into a technique of his own—melding the ultimate Rokushiki control of Life Return with his talent for reshaping himself—so he could not only assume a full giant’s form but swell limbs and frame in pieces, channeling that mass where he needed it most.

Fully transformed, he reckoned, the sheer increase in mass and leverage added near a third again to his brute force.

Across the churned ground, Brogy and Dorry realized he was still settling into the new shape. They waited, uncharacteristically patient.

Then Brogy jerked, eyes bulging. "H-hey—look! That... that got huge too!"

Dorry scowled. "He’s bigger all over, of course everything—" He stopped dead, eyes going wide as platters. The two giants rocked back a step like they’d glimpsed a sea king in a teacup.

"This is... too much!"

"Oi, that’s rude," Darren snapped, blinking out of his reverie. He glanced down, couldn’t help a bark of laughter.

Well now.

So this is what it’s like not to see your feet.

He coughed into his knuckles, failed to hide a grin, then crooked a finger.

From beneath the island and the volcanic spine, ore veins tore free with a thunderous groan. Raw metal rose in a glittering storm, twisted in the air, then settled into overlapping scales that locked together into a sleek armored mantle below his waist—discreet and battle-ready.

He lifted his gaze to the dumbstruck giants and flashed a wolfish smile. "Now then—how about that drink?"

He swept a hand, and a dozen colossal crates drifted down, lids yawning to reveal an arsenal of strong spirits.

---

"Cheers!"

Three huge wooden goblets collided midair, amber liquor rolling like captured sunlight.

On the island’s torn face, three giants sat cross-legged, grinning as they raised their cups.

"Gegyagyagya! Who would’ve thought—Darren, brother! You can turn into a giant!" Dorry, red-cheeked with drink, slung an arm the size of a mast around his shoulder.

"Gababababa! Right! Brother Darren! How’d you do it? Got Elbaf blood after all?" Brogy crowed, eyes bright with nosy delight.

They’d already taken him to heart for his grit and honor; now, with this trick, their voices warmed further. "Little runt" had become "Brother Darren."

"Who knows how this stuff works?" Darren tilted back a swallow and laughed.

He had to admit—fighting and drinking with these two was a clean wind through the skull.

No hidden knives. No twisting schemes.

Clear your head. Sleep when you’re tired. Eat meat, drink hard, fight harder. Maybe that, at its core, was all it meant to be a giant.

"And even if I’m not one," he said, setting his goblet down with a thud, "it doesn’t stop me from being a real man."

"Damn right!"

"You got it!"

They roared together.

If something’s too complicated, toss it aside.

Meat and booze—that’s what matters.

To be continued...