The invisible and intangible web of Observation Haki threads wasn't something the now mindless Inuarashi could perceive.
His midair pounce froze the moment he hit the web—its tension stripped away the force of his impact, then swiftly bound him in place.
Thud! He crashed to the ground, trapped.
He thrashed and rolled, but it was futile. The threads were far too strong to escape from.
With a single thought from Roya, the web began to constrict, digging tighter into Inuarashi's body.
It was like red-hot wire mesh being thrown onto a snowdrift—as it sank into his skin, the searing energy melted down the rampant muscle swelling.
Inuarashi's body began to shrink rapidly.
At just the right moment, the threads dissolved into pure energy, flowing into his body—replenishing what had been overdrawn, keeping him from falling apart.
Less than a minute later, Inuarashi flipped upright with a kip-up, landing back on his feet.
Kneeling on one knee with his hands braced on his sword, he locked his intense gaze directly on Momonosuke.
Momonosuke was stunned that his powerful Sakura Poison had been neutralized—then further shaken by Inuarashi's glare.
Instinctively, he took half a step back—only to catch himself. Realizing his slip, his embarrassment turned into rage. He furiously flung two clouds of visibly pink poison toward Inuarashi.
Inuarashi gave a guttural snort.
His once-calm eyes blazed with fury.
He flipped his blade and slashed the air in front of him, creating a surge of forceful wind that swept away the Sakura Poison with ease.
Momonosuke's eyes narrowed and turned cruel as he stared at Roya.
He knew full well: Sakura Poison couldn't be neutralized by simple gusts of air.
There was only one explanation—the strange energy Roya had left inside Inuarashi had activated again, purging the poison completely with that single slash.
"Very good! You're very good!"
Momonosuke's expression twisted hideously as he pointed at Roya and barked:
"One you can handle, sure! But what about dozens, or hundreds?! Let's see how long you last!"
As he shouted, his stubby little arms crossed in front of his chest, his body squirming like he was straining to push something out.
Poof!
A puff of pink smoke exploded around him—and when it cleared, he had transformed into a small, delicate pink dragon.
The baby dragon lashed its tail, shooting up over ten meters into the air. Its youthful maw opened wide, spewing out a stream of pink, Sakura Poison breath in every direction, scattering it like candy.
But at that very moment—
A massive azure dragon tail swooped in from the side and smashed directly into the pink dragon's body.
There was no way such a tiny dragon could withstand the force of Kaido's brutal Azure Dragon form.
The pink dragon was instantly sent hurtling kilometers away, a pink meteor crashing down with a splash into the sea.
Kaido, now in his colossal dragon form, dived down and landed in front of Roya.
In his enormous left claw, he clutched a violently struggling muscle-bound Kin'emon.
Kaido brought his building-sized head close to Roya and chuckled darkly:
"New Emperor Roya, these little toys—even after being enhanced—are still just too weak. It's no fun at all."
"Why don't we fight instead? Winner gets to deal with Momonosuke. Sound good?"
Before Roya could even respond—
Kaido hurled Kin'emon at him like a projectile, a living missile.
At this range, with the monstrous power of Kaido's dragon form, Kin'emon's body hit with force comparable to a missile strike.
Roya let out a cold snort.
He understood Kaido's true intent—to exploit Roya's unwillingness to harm the Red Scabbards, forcing him into a compromising situation with this lowly, underhanded tactic.
With a wave of his hand, twelve overlapping webs of Observation Haki threads appeared in front of him.
Each web was elastic, expertly calibrated to absorb and disperse kinetic force gradually.
The goal: to dissipate the deadly momentum Kaido had infused into Kin'emon's body, protecting his fragile form from total annihilation.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
A rapid succession of soft impacts followed.
Kin'emon's body, originally moving too fast to track, rapidly decelerated as it passed through the webs.
But Kaido had no intention of sitting still.
As he hurled Kin'emon, his massive dragon tail had already lined up for a stealth attack—thrusting forward like a battering ram.
It looked limp—but struck with the weight of a thunderclap.
It moved faster than lightning, overtaking Kin'emon midair, and slammed forward toward Roya like a siege weapon.
At this moment, Hiyori had just begun to cry out in horror—she had seen Kin'emon thrown like a cannonball, but hadn't yet processed the tail coming in behind.
But Roya had anticipated Kaido's cruelty.
He snorted coldly—and threw a punch to meet the attack.
In that instant, all the genetic data he had gathered from analyzing Kaido's slime form earlier came into play—fused into his strike.
Fist and tail met—
Silently.
There was no shockwave, no shattering sound, none of the usual thunderclap from high-level combat.
It was like two feathers brushing against each other—utterly still.
At that moment, Kin'emon finally passed through the last Haki thread, all his momentum nullified. The Sakura Poison in his body was also expelled.
He flipped midair and landed steadily beside Princess Hiyori, his eyes now clear and focused.
But Kaido's tail—that's when the real effects of Roya's punch began to show.
The dragon's dark blue scales suddenly began to rise and flip, one by one.
A terrifying force had struck from beneath them, causing blasts of compressed air to erupt outward from under each lifted scale, forming a whirlwind vortex around Kaido's massive body.
This was Kaido's last-ditch technique for force dissipation—flipping his own scales, a maneuver he would only use if driven into a corner.
Because as everyone knew, Kaido in his Azure Dragon form was the most defensively durable being in the world.
Aside from a very select few top-tier fighters, no one had ever broken through Kaido's dragon-scale defense.
Even Kozuki Oden, who once fought Kaido to the brink of death, had only managed to leave behind a cross-shaped scar with his strongest technique—Paradise Totsuka.
But now—
Roya's punch had forced Kaido to flip every single scale, from tail to head, just to vent the surging force within.
Just imagine: the pain of having your fingernails peeled back—then multiply that by tens of thousands.
Kaido's entire body was covered in scales numbering in the tens of thousands.
The excruciating pain he now endured was stacked, exponentially amplified by the sheer number of flipped scales, each feeding signals to his pain receptors.
PS: Access the complete chapters/series at