After the roar, the ice field fell into a long dead silence.
From the dissipating intense light, only the man covered in thick Haki exhaled a hot breath.
Armament: Hardening!
After directly withstanding temperatures exceeding two thousand degrees Celsius, Shanks remained motionless, without even a singe or burn.
Then, the Armament Haki covering his entire body retracted, coiling even more densely around his famed sword, Gryphon.
The sword emitted a dark, subtle glow. The wave-like patterns on the blade pulsed silently, mocking the opponent before him.
'I admit your high heat counters swords well, but what if it meets my Haki?'
"So scary." Shanks, holding his long sword horizontally, sighed ruefully and said lightly: "We're friends, right? Do you have to be this ruthless?"
"Tch!"
Sakura brought her hands together. Numerous ice spikes took form on the ground, while she herself quickly created distance from Shanks.
Armament Haki, flying slashes spanning hundreds of meters, swordsmanship learned from Captain Roger...
Shanks, possessing all these qualities, deserved the title of Great Swordsman. And as everyone knows, swordsmen really hurt when they cut you!
"Don't even think about running away. Either you behave yourself and let me cut you once, or let me capture you and take you back to the ship. Your choice!"
Dark lightning crackled again. With a smug expression, Shanks pounced like lightning towards Sakura on the ice field.
"Shanks, you pervert! Divine punishment!"
A savage great force rose in a crescendo. Boil Release ignited her Chakra, forming rising flames of light.
An unprecedented gale swept across the sky. Intense vibrations erupted from the storm sword in the girl's hand, from the inside out, covering everything.
"Spear of Elbaf: Ikoku Sovereignty!"
Pure impact tore through the air, crying out sharply. The sword wave, carrying blazing flames, transformed into a sharp, sky-piercing, earth-penetrating spear.
Pulverize, smash, destroy all things. The vast spiral impact covered all of Shanks's escape routes, leaving absolutely no room to dodge.
"Don't look down on me, Aramitama!"
Amidst the roar, the crimson sword light carried violence and hunger, wanting to utterly destroy everything in its path.
Facing Sakura directly, Shanks grinned, his face, also filled with domineering will, laughing heartily, so fierce!
The figure he had chased since childhood… now he finally saw a chance to surpass it. How could that not make one's heart surge with excitement?!
Boom!!!
In that instant, a hurricane arose out of nowhere, sweeping and spreading.
Concentric cracks spread out across the ice under their feet. Flickering intense light rose from the ground, then exploded violently.
The shockwave swept out, and the Red Force, freed as the ice surface shattered, rocked up and down.
"These two are going too far!"
Yasopp raised his sniper rifle, continuously firing at the huge chunks of ice crashing towards the ship.
"Hey, Yasopp, protect that guy's ship while you're at it!"
Lucky Roux, who had smashed a piece of ice and landed back on the ship, turned his head to remind him.
"Sigh! Got it."
Moving agilely to reload, Yasopp leaped high up to the top of the mast and fired at the ice chunks heading towards the Leviathan. Seeing his comrades handling the aftermath of the fight, Lucky Roux let out a sigh and sat down on the deck.
That earlier exercise had made him lose weight from hunger. He quickly took out a steak to replenish his nutrients.
"Hey, Beckman, who do you think will win?"
"Not sure. But I know that woman hasn't used Armament Haki at all this entire time."
Ben Beckman's single sentence killed the conversation, directly plunging the second and third-in-command of the Red-Haired Pirates into silence.
The center of the storm.
Sakura clashed blades with Shanks while using her abilities to maintain the ice surface below, preventing it from collapsing and causing a tsunami that would swamp her ship.
"Tch, that hurts. Is the Haki seeping under my skin?"
The Storm Sword once again scraped sparks off the black blade in Shanks's hand. Sakura created distance between herself and Shanks.
"So? Ready to admit defeat?"
Shanks gripped his sword with both hands, slashing out thirteen flying slashes in a brief instant, yet this still wasn't his limit.
The wildly swelling sword energy slashed out violently and intertwined, forming an impenetrable net.
"Hah? Admit defeat to you, mere Shanks? Don't even think about it!"
With one hand dealing with the flying slashes Shanks was sending her way, the fingers of her other hand began to showcase the skills of a shinobi.
Two fingers formed half of the Tiger hand seal. Yang Attribute Chakra, learned from Medical Ninjutsu, surged and was injected into the solid ice beneath her feet and the flames in the air, causing the once lifeless ice and the rising flames to develop a semblance of breath.
[Yang Release: Bestowing Life upon Form]
While it couldn't achieve the level of the Sage of Six Paths in creating life, or Hashirama's effortless self-healing-
As a product of Sakura's research into the Nature Transformation of Yang Attribute Chakra within Medical Ninjutsu, bestowing physical form upon matter to turn it into puppets controlled by Sakura was something she could accomplish easily.
The emergence of this technique also signified that her integrated development of Devil Fruit's Abilities and Ninjutsu had entered a new stage. It's just that the man before her would become its first victim.
Roar-!
A giant beast twisted its body, crawling out from within the flames and frigid ice. It opened its massive maw towards Shanks and let out a deafening roar.
Under Shanks's stunned gaze, ferocious and frenzied giant beasts formed into an army. Then, they crowded around and guarded Sakura at their center, surrounding their king.
"Just how absurd are you? Isn't your ability to manipulate heat?"
'Who exactly ate the Hie Hie no Mi? Even that monster Vice Admiral in the Marines doesn't play like this!' (T/N: Ice-Ice Fruit.)
Sweeping his hand down, sword light scattered. The pale dance on the sea surface swayed, while a dark crimson comet charged forth!
Like a flash of light, Shanks's Haki flickered, fluctuating. His figure tore through all obstacles, charging right up to Sakura's face.
"Divine Departure!"
Whoosh-!
The long sword, carrying a strange and brilliant crimson hue, swept horizontally, cutting down the towering herd of beasts before him with devastating force, slicing them in half at the waist.
A rainbow light flashed in the beasts' pupils before they exploded violently!
"It's not over yet!"
Sakura brought her palms together. A violent shockwave spread out, buying the other beasts a crucial moment. Dozens of beasts completed their encirclement of Shanks.
Then, they bared their sharp claws and gnashed their pointed fangs, lunging to tear and bite at the red-haired man in their center.
Shanks, covered in Haki, looked on indifferently. He raised the long sword in his hand and swung it forward.
Amidst the roar, no sharp flying slash shot out from the pack of beasts. Yet, the giants of flame and frost suddenly stumbled and fell mid-charge.
They slid to a stop right before Shanks. The blue light in their eyes gradually faded.
"Hmm?"
From that brief fluctuation, Sakura sensed that the Yang Attribute Chakra she had imbued within her created beings was being interfered with by something.
And that seemed to be...
'An impact of will!'
"Conqueror's Haki... can be used like that?"
"There's still plenty you don't know!"
Shanks swung his arm, sending Gryphon, wreathed in lightning, slashing out. In an instant, it crossed the vast distance, arriving right before Sakura.
Sakura raised her right hand, throwing a black cherry blossom kunai at Shanks.
His Observation Haki easily locked onto the kunai's trajectory, and Shanks tilted his head to the side, then revealed a sly smile: "Hey, you don't actually think this kind of thing…"
Whoosh!
The illusory light of Space-Time burst out, and the target that Shanks's famed sword strike turned into an afterimage and shattered.
[Flying Thunder God: Second Step]
Amidst the chilling cold that swallowed everything and the terrifying high heat, Shanks mechanically turned his head. The shock on his face seemed frozen solid.
"I think... I'm about to die?!"