Uchiha Puppet Master, Starting from One Piece

Chapter 235 Devastating Victory

The moment Mihawk drew his sword, the temperature of the entire battlefield changed.

Night's blade slid out of its sheath in a way that transcended the realm of speed. The movement didn't even seem fast, but anyone present couldn't describe the specific process of that movement in retrospect, because what they saw wasn't the trajectory of the blade, but the result left behind after the blade had reached its destination.

The blade of the Black Blade Night was not wrapped in ordinary Armament Haki, but rather a kind of Haki honed by Mihawk over decades.

A special Armament Haki that has been compressed and refined to the extreme.

That domineering aura has no form, no perceptible external features, but when it cuts through the air, the air does not make a cutting sound, because the speed at which sound is generated cannot keep up with the speed at which it cuts through the air.

Sword energy.

A horizontal arc, over a hundred meters in diameter and composed entirely of slashing motions, was released from the tip of Night's blade at an almost stationary speed.

No, it wasn't still; it was moving so fast that it appeared still as it advanced toward the black dragon's neck.

Along the trajectory of that slash, space itself was torn open with a thin, dark crack, and tiny sparks of energy kept jumping around the edge of the crack.

Jabba launched an attack from the left at the same instant.

The Armament Haki on his two battle axes reformed. This time, he didn't add anything extra to the Haki, nor did he shape it. He simply compressed all the Conqueror's Haki he could muster into a layer one atom thick on the axe blade in the most primitive, pure, and savage way.

There was no skill involved in this axe strike.

This axe blow is all about power.

Jabba launched himself up from the ground like a meteor, and the black, glassy ground beneath his feet shattered instantly. It wasn't shattered by his footing, but rather by the Conqueror's Haki he released just before he exerted his strength. When he stepped on it, the fragments didn't even have a chance to fly before being vaporized by the second layer of force.

He spun several times in the air, each spin accumulating more kinetic energy for the battle axe. Eventually, his body became so fast that it was no longer visible to the naked eye, leaving only a blurry, dark outline drawn by Armament Haki, tracing an almost perfect arc on the left side of the black dragon's neck.

The two battle axes simultaneously struck the same scale on the black dragon's neck.

Shanks is on the front.

Griffin moved 0.3 seconds before Mihawk's slash and Jabba's battle axe were about to hit. It wasn't that he attacked prematurely, but rather that he saw through his Observation Haki that if he didn't act within those 0.3 seconds, Mihawk and Jabba's attacks would interfere with each other. It wasn't that they were poorly coordinated, but that the black dragon was too big, so big that their attacks would interact unexpectedly due to the energy fields they carried before they hit each other.

"Gods avoid."

the second time.

On Griffin's blade, Conqueror's Haki and Armament Haki merged together in an unprecedented proportion. The boundary between the two types of Haki formed countless tiny, visible vortexes on the blade. Each vortex was spinning, annihilating, and regenerating at high speed. The energy released in this process was presented in the form of light, not reflected light, but light that was spontaneously radiated after the energy itself reached a certain threshold.

Three attacks, from three directions, struck the black dragon's neck almost simultaneously.

boom-

Not a sound.

There were three sounds, but the intervals between the three sounds were so short that they could not be distinguished by the human auditory system. In the end, they appeared on the eardrum as a loud, suffocating sound, as if the whole world was screaming.

Mihawk's slash arrived first.

The horizontal arc, a hundred meters in diameter, struck the left side of the black dragon's neck. The moment the strike made contact with the scales, a strange visual effect was created. The strike did not penetrate the scales as Mihawk had predicted. Instead, a refraction-like phenomenon occurred on the surface of the scales. The energy of the strike spread along the scales, like a column of water hitting a wall coated with grease. The water splashed in all directions along the wall, but the wall itself remained undamaged.

Mihawk's pupils contracted slightly.

His strike was deflected by some kind of force field on the surface of the scales.

That force field wasn't Armament Haki, Observation Haki, or even Conqueror's Haki. Rather, it was an inherent attribute of the Black Dragon itself, a powerful defense carried by Nighogd as the being that "devours the roots of the World Tree."

Any attack must break through this barrier before it can reach its body, and the essence of this barrier is decay.

It is the decay of the attack itself.

Mihawk's slash underwent accelerated aging in a temporal sense the moment it touched the scales. The slash should have been at its sharpest, most stable, and highest energy density peak within a fraction of a second after it was released, but the black dragon's scales caused it to complete the entire process from peak to decay to dissipation in less than a microsecond. By the time the slash actually touched the scales, it was already old.

So old that it's no longer lethal.

Jabba's attack followed immediately.

His two battle axes struck different parts of the same scale at different angles. The Armament Haki compressed to its limit on the axe blades met the same fate as Mihawk's slash in the first microsecond after contacting the scale's surface: it was decayed, aged more rapidly, and weakened to almost nothing.

However, Jabba's Armament Haki has a unique quality that Mihawk's slash lacks.

When the black dragon's power began to erode Jabba's Armament Haki, the extremely thin layer of Haki changed its nature in a very short time, becoming less easily eroded.

It wasn't because Jabba deliberately controlled it, but rather that his domineering nature learned to survive when pushed to its limit.

This is legendary, experienced advice.

Mihawk's strike was perfect, but perfection lacks the space for self-adjustment when faced with something beyond reason.

Jabba's domineering nature is imperfect—rough, primitive, and savage—but it is precisely this imperfection that gives him adaptability and the possibility of surviving in dire situations.

The blades of the two battle axes eventually cut into the scales.

not much.

But that's enough.

The moment the axe blade pierced through, Jabba sensed a crucial piece of information: he felt the interface between the scales and the tissue beneath—a completely different material structure, softer, more fragile, and closer to the fleshy tissue he had seen on the creatures of this world.

It can be cut in.

Jabba's lips curled into a smile for a fleeting moment.

He can make a cut in the black dragon's body.

Then Shanks's "God Avoidance" arrived.

Griffin's blade made contact with the black dragon's neck in a way completely different from the other two attacks.

Unlike Jabba, who tried to cut into the scales with his axe blade, or Mihawk, who tried to cover a wide area with a wide-ranging slash, Shanks compressed all his power into a pinpoint on the tip of his Griffin blade and then hammered that point into the scales like a nail.

This is another way of using the concept of divine avoidance.

The essence of Conqueror's Haki is the power of will.

Shanks' will is unmatched by few in this world.

The tiny point pierced the barrier the moment it touched the scales, not because Shanks' Haki was stronger than Mihawk's, but because he concentrated all his power on an area much, much smaller than Mihawk's slashing blade.

The tip of the knife pierced the scales.

It pierced the scales.

It pierced the softer, more fragile flesh beneath the scales.

Shanks' Observation Haki caught a chilling signal in that instant: the black dragon's muscle tissue reacted the moment Griffin pierced it.

Bai Yu stood still.

His Rinnegan captured all the information the moment Mihawk, Jabba, and Shanks made their move: the trajectory of every attack, the flow of every bit of energy, and the microscopic details of every contact with the black dragon's scales.

He understood what had happened earlier and more accurately than anyone else.

Of the three attacks, two were defended, and one caused damage.

The depth of that attack that caused the damage, relative to the black dragon's ten-thousand-meter-long body, was roughly equivalent to a human being pierced through the outermost layer of their skin by a single hair.

He's injured.

But the extent of the injury was negligible.

The black dragon moved.

Its neck reacted after Shanks' knife pierced its flesh, not by dodging or retaliating, but by a movement that seemed unbelievable to humans—its neck muscles contracted in that specific area.

It was just a muscle fiber the size of a fingernail that contracted.

The force generated by the muscle contraction was transmitted through the scales to Griffin's blade. Shanks sensed a terrifying power that was completely outside the human world. This power was not applied to Griffin from the outside, but rather expanded outward from the inside of Griffin's blade, as if the blade itself had suddenly turned into a bomb, and the direction of the explosion was from the inside out.

Shanks' fingers made the judgment in a fraction of a second: it wasn't that he couldn't hold onto Griffin anymore, but rather that if he didn't let go, his hand would be shattered by that force. Not a broken bone, but a complete disintegration at the molecular level.

He released his right hand.

Griffin tumbled through the air and flew away. The domineering aura on the blade vanished instantly under the impact of that force, like a candle being blown out by the wind. The blade itself drew an irregular arc in the air and finally stuck into the black, glassy ground hundreds of meters away, the blade sinking into the ground all the way to the guard.

This was the first time Shanks, the Red-Haired, had his weapon knocked away during a battle.

Jabba sensed something was wrong a split second before the black dragon's neck muscles contracted.

His Observation Haki doesn't have the ability to foresee the future like Shanks', but after living and fighting for so long, every cell in his body has developed a purely instinctive sense of danger that doesn't belong to any kind of Haki.

That ability sent a signal just before the black dragon's muscles contracted, and the signal was so strong that Jabba felt as if a bucket of ice water had been poured over his back, giving him a sudden jolt.

He let go.

The instant Jabba's body left the surface of the black dragon, the two battle axes were flung off the scales by contracting muscles, not pushed away, but blasted apart by a force that erupted from within.

When the two battle axes exploded, the Armament Haki that Jabba had carefully compressed on the axe blades shattered like glass, leaving fleeting black streaks in the air.

Jabba tumbled through the air countless times, feeling like a stone casually tossed aside by a giant, completely unable to control his own trajectory.

When he landed, his left leg hit the ground first. His left knee made a dull sound the moment it touched the ground. It wasn't a fracture, but it was more unsettling than a fracture. The ligaments and cartilage were stretched to their limits after being subjected to an impact force far exceeding the design limits. Although they were not torn, they had already deformed.

He knelt on one knee, supporting himself with his left hand, and blood gushed out again from the old wounds on the web of his left hand and the palm of his right hand.

Jabba's lips moved, but no sound came out.

He silently uttered a curse word.

Mihawk sensed the danger before the black dragon's neck muscles contracted. Although his Observation Haki didn't have Shanks's precognitive abilities, his understanding of the word "danger" was among the best in the world.

His hand had already touched the blade of Night, which was only half-drawn from its sheath, the moment the black dragon's muscles showed signs of contraction, and he took a big step back.

But the area covered by the Black Dragon's next attack will be quite large.

The black dragon's head slowly turned, its dark eye sockets, devoid of pupils but containing only two pulsating dark red lights, aimed at three directions on the battlefield: the location of Mihawk, the location of Shanks, and the location of Jabba.

Then its jaw opened.

It's not as simple as just opening its mouth; rather, its entire lower jaw opens downwards in a way that transcends the limits of biological anatomy, at such a great angle and with such speed that it leaves no time to react.

The moment its lower jaw opened, there were no flames, no lasers, no light, and no offensive or defensive forms within the scope of human understanding.

All there is is the wind.

But it wasn't ordinary wind.

It's dragon's breath.

Its spray leaves nothing but barren land in its wake.

The moment that dragon's breath was released from the black dragon's mouth, the color of the entire world changed.

It wasn't that the colors deepened or lightened; rather, all the colors along the dragon's breath path vanished, leaving behind a pure expanse.

There was no information whatsoever; it was a blank space, as if something had ripped it out of reality.

The blank path stretched forward from the black dragon's mouth, its width expanding from tens of meters to hundreds of meters the instant it left the mouth, and continued to expand at a speed that defied all fluid dynamics.

Dragon's Breath's first target—Mihawk.

There's no escaping it!!!

The dragon's breath will affect not only Mihawk, but everyone.

Come here!

Everyone heard Bai Yu's words —

"The Heavenly Conquest of Recognition!!"