Uchiha Puppet Master, Starting from One Piece

Chapter 232 War Begins

Shanks moved.

There was no warning whatsoever.

To everyone else, the red-haired man's hand remained still as if he had just drawn his sword, but Griffin's blade was no longer in its original position.

The angle at which the knife tip pointed to the ground shifted by less than three degrees, the heel of the right foot lifted slightly by half a centimeter, and the angle of the knee bend increased by about two degrees.

These tiny changes, when added together, amount to one thing.

The red-haired man made his move.

Bai Yu's pupils contracted for a split second.

It's because he barely saw Shanks exert any effort.

It's a realm that completely transcends muscle memory; there's no acceleration process between the body's rest and its maximum speed, like those few frames that are deliberately deleted in a video editing.

"So fast!"

Then a black shadow flashed past in his peripheral vision; it was Jabba.

The old man was incredibly fast. The moment he pushed off the ground with his left foot, a large number of fallen leaves were blown away by the gust of air, revealing the black, wet soil underneath.

Jabba's movement speed is on a completely different level from when he was walking; the old guy had been hiding the whole time.

"Mihawk."

Bai Yu's gaze swept to the other side.

Hawkeye didn't move.

He was still standing there, in the exact same posture as before, arms crossed, the black knife on his back still unsheathed.

But Bai Yu noticed a small detail: Mihawk's breathing rate had changed.

The breathing changed from even, slow, almost imperceptible to a deeper, slower rhythm, with each inhale feeling like a downward sinking motion.

That's a kind of waiting.

They weren't waiting for the signal to start the battle, but rather for the right moment to strike.

What level of existence is Loki?

Mihawk wanted to know the answer to this question.

Because Shanks described this guy's strength as earth-shattering, someone that even if he, Jabba, and Shanks joined forces, they might not be able to defeat.

"oh?"

Loki's voice came from above, the "oh" trailing off for a long time.

His eyes lingered on Shanks for a fraction of a second before quickly scanning over Jabba, Mihawk, and Shiraha.

The playfulness and teasing from before were gone from those eyes; in their place was a pure, almost ruthless seriousness born of a fighting instinct.

"Then let's go."

Loki said.

Then he made his move.

He didn't use the magical iron thunderbolt that was placed at his feet, but rather he used his bare hands.

He raised his right hand from the pile of fallen leaves, his five fingers spread out, each one like a large tree.

The hand paused in mid-air for less than a second, a fleeting window of time that almost no onlookers could perceive, before suddenly slapping forward.

Bai Yu saw the trajectory of the hand moving downwards from above his head.

He saw it very clearly.

It wasn't because he was faster than Loki, but because Loki never intended for this move to be difficult to catch.

The giant's attack style is completely opposite to that of the great swordsman; it does not pursue speed that makes it impossible to react, but rather seeks to cover a wide area and absolutely overwhelm the opponent with destructive power.

The sound of that slap was very strange.

"Bang!"

A muffled thud.

It was as if someone had smashed a thick, thousand-page dictionary onto a neatly folded quilt.

Where Loki's palm struck, where Shanks stood, everything within a twenty-meter radius was instantly crushed.

The fallen leaves were compressed into paper-thin sheets, and the humus layer beneath them was squeezed out of all moisture and air by an unstoppable force, turning into a black, hard, rock-like substance.

Then the "rock" shattered.

The cracks radiated outwards from the point of impact, each as wide as an arm and bottomless, with black soil swirling up from the edges of the cracks, like wounds torn open in the earth.

Shanks isn't under that palm strike.

There was now a deep, huge handprint where he had just stood, but Shanks himself had appeared at the edge of the handprint, less than a meter from the edge of Loki's palm.

A meter away, everything on the ground was normal.

This means that Shanks precisely, perfectly, and without the slightest error left the attack range just before Loki's slap landed, and then precisely and perfectly stopped at the closest point outside the range.

It's not some kind of teleportation.

The judgment of Observation Color is accurate to the millimeter level.

Bai Yu looked at the distance and silently calculated it in his mind.

If Loki's slap had been any bigger, or if Shanks' judgment had been any worse, the captain of the Red-Haired Pirates would already be slammed into that compacted and shattered ground.

But he didn't.

This is the combat intuition of a Yonko (Emperor of the Sea).

"Not bad, you haven't regressed compared to a few years ago."

Loki's voice came from above.

He withdrew his hand and looked down at Shanks standing at the edge of his palm. The smile that had just disappeared returned to the corner of his mouth, but this time the smile was completely different from the previous one.

The smiles I gave before were social, meant for old friends, warm, nostalgic, and bearing the marks of time.

This smile, however, was combative, meant for the opponent; it was cold, hard, and bloodthirsty.

"You still love to dabble in minute details."

Shanks remained silent.

He dashed out the instant Loki withdrew his hand.

This time, Bai Yu saw something.

It wasn't that I couldn't see it at all, but rather that I saw a blurry, red afterimage, as if someone had drawn a line in the air at an incredible speed with an extremely fine red paintbrush.

The line started at Loki's feet, ran up his arm, and ended at his neck.

Griffin's blade was pointed at the giant's throat.

Loki's left hand moved.

It was much faster than his right hand just now.

The index and middle fingers of his left hand were brought together, like two giant steel spikes, thrusting from the side towards Shanks's blade. It wasn't a parry, not a block, but an interception; before Griffin's blade reached his throat, he used two fingers to trap the knife.

"Humans are really weak."

If Loki were facing an ordinary swordsman, this would be enough.

But Shanks is no ordinary swordsman.

Just as Griffin's blade was about to enter the range of Loki's two fingers, it suddenly changed direction.

It wasn't a change of technique, nor was it sheathing the sword; rather, within the same continuous slashing motion, the blade's direction shifted from Loki's throat to the base of Loki's index finger.

Those are joints.

That was one of the most vulnerable spots on the giant's fingers.

Loki's eyes widened slightly; it was the first time he had shown surprise during this battle.

His left hand didn't have time to change; two fingers were already joined together, and the clamping motion was halfway done. He couldn't completely withdraw before Griffin's blade reached the base of his index finger.

Therefore, he chose not to withdraw.

Loki clenched his left hand into a fist.

Instead of grabbing the knife, he clenched his fist and used the bones and muscles of his fist to take Griffin's slash head-on.

At the same time, his right hand, the one that had just slapped the ground, rose up from below, its five fingers spread out like a giant net, encircling Shanks from behind.

This is a trap.

If Shanks continues to strike Loki's left index finger, his blade might leave a wound on the giant's finger, but he himself will be caught by Loki's right hand.

If a human is grabbed by a 60-meter giant, there is only one possible outcome.

Shanks knew it was a trap.

He still slashed down.

Griffin's blade sliced ​​into the outside of Loki's left fist.

Bai Yu heard the sound.

It wasn't the sound of metal clashing against metal, nor the sound of a blade cutting through flesh and bone, but a stranger sound, somewhere between cutting and impact, like someone using an extremely sharp knife to chop at a huge, dried, and extremely hard old tree root.

Then he saw blood.

The blood of giants.

It wasn't the kind of blood that slowly seeps from a wound when a human is injured, but rather a thick, lava-like blood that gushed out from a wound that Griffin had cut open.

The instant Griffin slashed into Loki's fist, Loki's right hand had already closed behind Shanks.

The five fingers are contracting inward, like a giant cage made of five steel pillars closing.

Shanks did not look back.

He didn't even turn around.

It was just a slight, almost imperceptible sway.

But Loki's right hand suddenly stopped moving the severed limb.

Conqueror's Haki.

It wasn't a wide-ranging, indiscriminate release, but rather a Conqueror's Haki entanglement compressed to the extreme, precisely targeting only that one point on Loki's right hand.

Loki's right hand froze for less than half a second under the impact of that domineering force.

Half a second is enough.

Shanks lightly tapped Loki's left fist with his foot, and like a red bird, he flew out from between Loki's clenched fingers, landing on the root of a giant tree about three thousand meters away from Loki.

His breathing remained steady.

Loki looked down at the bleeding wound on his left fist, then looked up at Shanks, who had landed safely.

Then he laughed.

It wasn't the kind of laughter that arose from a specific reason, but a purer, more primal laughter that arose from the battle itself.

Even with a broken arm, you're still so difficult to deal with.

Loki said.

He raised his left hand to his eyes, stuck out his tongue, and licked the blood from the wound.

That movement looked particularly strange given the size of the giants.

"but."

Loki said, shifting his gaze from Shanks to a point further away.

That spot is Bai Yu.

Aren't you going to make a move?

'

Bai Yu felt a huge gaze pressing down on him, like an invisible mountain.

Loki is watching him.

It was not a pre-battle assessment, nor an evaluation of the opponent, but a stranger kind of self-illumination, imbued with a certain expectation.

"Didn't you come to see if I'm strong enough? How will you know if you don't try?"

Loki's voice was tinged with laughter.

Bai Yu did not move.

Loki is very strong, as evidenced by his brief clash with Shanks just now.

But Bai Yu has not yet seen Loki's true strength. The so-called "divine weapon Iron Thunder" has not yet been unsheathed, and Loki's true fighting style has not yet been revealed.

If that's all there is to it, he has no interest whatsoever.

"Don't rush."

Shanks' voice came from thirty meters away, his tone calm.

"Now is not the time to make a move."

Shanks paused for a moment.

"Loki, you are the prince of Elbaf, a genius among giants who appears only once every few centuries, a monster who was considered an ominous figure from childhood and was destined to stand at the top of this world."

Loki's expression changed slightly when he heard the word "monster".

It wasn't anger, nor pain, but a more complex expression, mixed with self-deprecation and a deep weariness.

"monster."

Loki repeated the word, as if savoring its taste. He thought of his mother, who had treated him like her own son, that gentle woman—

"You're right, I am a monster."

His voice suddenly became very soft, so soft that it didn't sound like the volume a sixty-meter giant could make.

"So monsters should be kept in cages, right?"

This question has no answer yet.

Loki reached his other hand towards the pile of fallen leaves beside him.

That wasn't the hand that slapped Shanks earlier.

When the hand lifted from the pile of fallen leaves, something was between its fingers.

It's not a mine.

It is a tree branch.

A few meters long, an ordinary branch that had fallen from a giant tree and was already starting to rot.

Loki held the branch up to his eyes.

Then he made a gesture.

A move that seemed all too familiar to Bai Yu.

"Armament Haki Enhancement!!"

Loki held the several-meter-long branch horizontally in front of him, gripping the "handle" with his left hand.

If the branch has a handle, place your right hand on the handle, with the tip of the blade pointing towards the ground and the blade at approximately a 45-degree angle to the ground.

That's the starting stance for the Iaijutsu.

A giant, using a tree branch, assumed the starting stance for the Iaijutsu (a type of sword strike).

Bai Yu's brain was working at high speed in that instant.

He studied the fighting style of the giants and read all the information he could find about Elbaf, including the intelligence about giant warriors that had leaked from the pirate world.

The giants primarily fight with heavy weapons, such as greatswords, axes, and hammers, employing sweeping, powerful attacks and relying on their size and strength to overwhelm their opponents.

Iaijutsu is a human sword technique.

It is a human swordsmanship that emphasizes instantaneous drawing of the sword and a single, fatal strike, which is the complete opposite of the giants' fighting philosophy.

But Loki's movements were perfect.

It's not a perfection that's already good enough for giants, but an absolute perfection that can't be faulted even in the human swordsmanship evaluation system.

His left hand grip was precise, and the position of his right hand on the back of the blade was exactly the same. The distribution of his body weight, the position of his feet, the angle of his waist twist, and the degree to which his shoulder blades were open—every detail was exactly the same as those of the top swordsmen that Bai Yu had ever seen.

wrong.

Not exactly the same.

It is better.

That two-meter-long, ordinary, and already rotting tree branch was swung out by Loki in a way that defied the laws of physics.

But Loki's action was clearly a sword draw and slash.

His hand drew a trajectory in the air.

That was plasma generated by friction between gas molecules after the air was cut to its limit, along with black and red lightning wrapped in a domineering color.