Chapter 174: VS Loki II
"Feel honored. This is the first time I've used this form outside Elbaf."
Loki's voice rumbled like molten rock, dripping with absolute confidence.
He raised his warhammer high. Flames surged up its length, turning the head a blinding, molten red, heat rolling off it in suffocating waves.
"Die, insect!"
With that thunderous roar, the burning hammer came crashing down.
At the same time, a colossal pillar of flame erupted from beneath Kai's feet, swallowing him whole in an instant.
Got him.
Loki's face split in savage satisfaction.
But before the smile could fully form, a figure wrapped in golden light tore through the wall of fire, streaking straight toward him.
Bang.
A heavy punch, wreathed in freezing cold and Haki, slammed into Loki's chest.
In that instant, a flood of killing frost and tyrannical Conqueror's Haki exploded, surging into Loki's body like a bursting dam.
Boom.
The sky-shaking blast echoed for miles.
A brutal shockwave rippled out from the point of impact, hurling rock and flame aside. A mushroom cloud of smoke and debris speared upward, and all of Fluffy Island shuddered and groaned.
Deep, bottomless fissures spiderwebbed out from the battlefield's center, ripping the island apart like cracked glass.
When the dust began to thin, a human-shaped crater of terrifying size yawned in the middle of the devastation, its bottom lost in darkness.
Kai stood at the rim, coiled like a drawn bowstring, silently waiting for his opponent to climb back up.
Barely ten seconds later, a massive hand of flame shot from the pit and clamped onto the edge.
"Bastard!"
Loki's huge body hurled itself skyward in a rush of boiling rage.
He was no longer composed. His flames flickered unevenly, chaos licking across his form. Several teeth were missing from his grin; his whole appearance was a wreck.
"Surrender?" Kai arched a brow, utterly at ease. "You should see the gap between us clearly by now."
Loki sucked in ragged breaths and glared at him. He didn't waste a single word. His answer was another swing of the flaming hammer.
"So troublesome."
Kai sighed, a hint of helplessness in his tone. "If I don't beat you until you literally can't stand, you won't back down."
Elbaf's warriors made wonderful allies. As enemies, their stubbornness was a headache.
Bang.
Kai simply lifted his arm and blocked a blow that could have pulverized a mountain.
The ground beneath his feet cratered with a roar, caving under the sheer force.
Kai himself did not budge. His expression stayed calm, his stance rock-steady, and he even had strength to spare to push back in a raw contest of power.
"Impossible."
Loki's eyes bulged.
Kai had taken that hammer head-on.
He wasn't sent flying. He hadn't even taken a step back.
"No. My strength is invincible!"
Unable to accept it, Loki howled in fury and rained down blows, hammer smashing again and again like a blacksmith gone insane.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Every savage strike met Kai's guard and was turned aside with surgical precision.
"Still don't get it?"
Kai's voice slid through the cacophony, steady and unshakable. "In this form, my strength, speed, defense—every attribute—already surpasses yours."
Even so, putting Loki down quickly was easier said than done.
An Ancient Giant wrapped in a Mythical Zoan's full buff was absurdly tough. Loki was tanky to the point of comedy.
Time bled away in blast after blast.
The sun sank. Twilight fell. Night deepened. And still they fought on into the first pale edge of dawn.
"They're… still going?"
Offshore, the evacuated residents of Fluffy Island stared at their ruined home. Flames and blizzards still erupted into the sky from the scorched wasteland. Shock and confusion warred on every face.
A creeping premonition settled in their hearts.
Maybe it was time to seriously think about moving.
At the bow of one of the refugee ships, Chiffon finished a call with Katakuri and looked toward the apocalyptic glow on the horizon. Worry carved deep lines across her face.
Katakuri‑nii‑san and the others were coming here.
Would they really be all right?
They wouldn't lose… right?
The thought alone sent a chill through her.
No. Impossible.
Katakuri-nii-san was the man who never showed his back.
The most reliable pillar of the family.
She balled her fists, trying to steady herself. Still, the shadow on her heart refused to lift.
…
On Rayquaza, floating in the sea on the far side of the island, Yamato and the others were just as focused on the roaring battlefield.
"To fight evenly with Kai for this long… even a Marine Admiral couldn't last like that," Hiyori said, eyes shining with awe.
Just then, Viola, who had been using her Giro Giro no Mi to watch from afar, suddenly cried out, "Someone's coming!"
"Who?" Kuma reacted first, voice dropping.
"It's Charlotte Linlin," Viola said, tension threading her words. "She's riding a cloud, coming here at high speed. And the Sweet Commanders are with her."
"That fast?"
Everyone sucked in a breath.
Fluffy Island was not close to Whole Cake. That meant the moment word came in, Charlotte Linlin had launched herself at full speed.
Just as Kai had predicted, her obsession with giant power had reached madness.
"How long do we have?" Robin asked, keeping her composure and going straight to the point.
"At her current speed… no more than thirty minutes."
Regret colored Viola's tone.
If she had not been pouring all her focus into tracking the island fight, she might have spotted their movement sooner.
"Can we reach Kai?" Reiju pressed.
Robin shook her head, expression grim. "The Transponder Snail was destroyed in the fighting. The only way to warn him now is to break into the battlefield ourselves."
"Then I'll go."
The volunteer no one expected was Enel.
"That's the situation. Hurry," he snapped.
Using the Goro Goro no Mi's lightning movement, Enel threaded through one lethal shockwave after another and materialized at Kai's side, rattling off the news of Big Mom's approach in one breath.
Then a familiar arrogance curled across his face. He folded his arms and jerked his chin at the raging fire giant. "Beg this god a little, and I might graciously help you deal with this lumbering idiot."
Kai hadn't even answered yet before Loki exploded.
"A weakling like you dares call yourself a god?"
The word clearly hit a nerve. Loki abandoned Kai on the spot, swinging Iron Thunder at Enel with the full intent to kill.
"Damn."
Kai's brow knotted. He was too far to physically intervene in time.
He could only drive a fist toward Loki's chest, hoping to force him to defend and break his attack.
Loki ignored it entirely.
He took Kai's punch square in the torso, flames dimming from the blow, and still fed all his hate into the strike aimed at Enel.
Even if it meant trading injury for injury, he would smash the blasphemer who dared steal the title "god."
"Too fast!"
Enel's heart lurched. He reflexively tried to disperse into lightning.
He hadn't expected the hammer to curve mid-swing like it was reading his mind, cutting him off along his escape path.
Boom.
The Conqueror's Haki-laced strike tore him out of elementization on the spot.
It felt like being hit by an erupting volcano. Blood burst from his mouth and nose as his body shot away like a broken kite, drilling a crater into the ground with a crash.
If Kai's punch hadn't knocked some power out of Loki's swing at the last instant, Enel might have hit the ending credits right there.
On the other side, Loki himself staggered, flames guttering darker. He skidded back more than ten steps before he could steady himself.
"God? Tch."
He spat a gob of molten spit that hissed on the ground, contempt dripping from his voice.
"I couldn't even take one of his blows…"
In the crater, Enel forced his screaming head up and locked his gaze onto the distant fire giant. Humiliation burned his soul like the flames roasting his skin.
Something invisible stirred awake deep within him.
"Oh? Awakening Conqueror's Haki now? Too late, isn't it?"
Loki snorted, not even bothering with a proper follow-up.
He lifted one massive hand. A tiny orange flame blinked into existence over his palm.
Then he flicked.
Boom.
The spark ballooned as it flew, blooming into a ten-meter-wide column of fire pouring down toward the helpless Enel.
"Turn to ash in despair."
Enel's eyes went wide as the onrushing inferno filled his vision.
He strained to move, but every bone felt shattered, his body one big raw nerve. He could not twitch.
The heat was already crisping his hair and skin.
He shut his eyes in bitter frustration.
So this was it. The end of this god's journey.
Too bad he'd never set foot on that endless earth.
Kai, you bastard. You'd better… go see it for me.
Just before the fire swallowed him whole, a voice like salvation rang in his ears.
"Touch my crew, and you should at least ask what I think."
A black fist slammed into the column of fire.
Boom.
The blaze shattered, blowing apart into a storm of embers.
The shockwave tugged fiercely at Kai's clothes and hair, but he stood firm at the crater's edge, unmoving as a mountain.
Show-off, Enel thought numbly, staring up at the broad back in front of him as a complicated warmth welled in his chest.
"Enel, can you still move?"
The question snapped him from his daze. He forced the pain and churning blood down and twisted his mouth into his usual arrogant grin. "He's a hundred years too early to kill me."
By sheer will, he dragged his wrecked body upright.
"Good. Then fall back to the ship. Leave this to me."
Kai turned and met his eyes, calm but absolute. "Trust me."
Enel clenched his jaw. In the end, he gave a hard nod. "Don't you dare lose, idiot."
He blurred into lightning and vanished.
In the last moment before he fully elementized, he looked back at Loki, burning the giant's silhouette into his mind.
This god would reclaim his pride one day.
In the heart of the battlefield, Kai and Loki faced each other again.
Kai broke the silence first. "Time's short. Let's end the farce."
He had to finish this before the Charlotte Family arrived.
Because once they showed up, which side they'd pick would be like lice on a monk's bald head, or T1's BO5 record against LPL at Worlds—plain as day.
"Hmph. Arrogant. We still don't know which of us will fall."
Loki pointed the blazing hammer at him, face twisting with rage.
Who did he think he was looking down on?
"No. You don't understand."
Kai shook his head slowly. His eyes no longer stayed on Loki.
Everything so far had been like an Ultraman trading basic blows with a kaiju.
What came next would be the beam finisher before the three-minute mark.
Kai bent his knees and kicked off hard.
Boom.
The ground exploded beneath him as he rocketed into the sky like an inverted meteor.
As he climbed, his already massive dragon-man body expanded again, stretching taller and longer.
Mega Rayquaza descended.
"Running away?"
The thought flashed through Loki's mind and vanished a heartbeat later.
There was no world where that bastard Kai turned tail.
If he wasn't fleeing, there was only one answer.
This would be the final, deciding strike.
A sudden weight settled in Loki's chest. Then it became fuel, setting his fighting spirit ablaze.
His Observation Haki screamed like an alarm bell.
Future Sight showed him the next moment, and he snapped his head up.
A point of impossible green light bloomed high above and came hurtling down at him at insane speed.
"Come!"
Loki roared to the heavens. The flames around him erupted higher than ever, wrapping him in the mantle of a world-ending fire god.
"Show me, you bastard. Do you really deserve to rule Elbaf?"
He gripped Iron Thunder with both hands and poured everything into it—his strength, his Haki, his burning will to fight—as he swung to meet the oncoming star of destruction.