One Piece: The Dragon All-Star - 191

Chapter 191: Showdown with Kaido (Part One)

At the heart of the battlefield, the solid ground had reached its limit under the full force of their clashing Conqueror’s Haki.
Spiderweb cracks raced outward in all directions.

The shockwaves from their auras alone were strong enough to knock ordinary powerhouses unconscious.

“Wororororo!”

Kaido threw his head back in wild laughter, his voice shaking the air.
“Brat, you have grown this much? That really makes me happy!”

“I just do not want to abandon my dream because I am not strong enough,” Kai said with a light smile.

“Well said. Take this!”

Kaido’s massive body shot forward like a fired cannonball.
The kanabo in his hand crackled with thick black and red lightning, radiating pure destruction.

“Bring it on.”

Kai surged up to meet him.
His right fist turned pitch black, arcs of black-red Conqueror’s Haki lightning leaping and dancing over his knuckles like crazed serpents.

In the next instant—

Boom.

Fist and iron club never actually touched.
They crashed together in the air, a hair’s breadth apart.

Two peaks of Conqueror’s Haki twisted together, grinding and devouring one another.

The space between his fist and Kaido’s club warped violently, light itself bending.
For a heartbeat, a tiny black point bloomed there, like a miniature void trying to swallow everything around it.

The gale howled again.
The sea that had only just calmed exploded into an even greater frenzy, tidal waves rearing like mountains and hammering every ship around the island.

“Just the aftershocks are this strong… I cannot see a thing!” Viola shouted.

She threw an arm up in front of herself, straining to withstand the wind.

Bonney, Chopper, and Bepo were far too light.
Their small bodies rocked wildly, seconds away from being hurled into the air.

Seeing this, Loki quietly stretched one arm off the makeshift raft at his side, planting it in front of the Rayquaza’s bow like an unshakable wall.

The raging wind slammed into that barrier and broke.

“Phew. Saved,” the three small ones exhaled together.

They all turned grateful eyes on him.

“Thank you, Loki!”

“Oi, Law, look at the sky!” Sachi said.
His finger shook as he pointed upward, his voice gone strange with shock.

Law looked up automatically.
His usually cool expression shattered, pupils narrowing.

The sky… had split.

The thick canopy of clouds had been parted straight down the middle, a long, clean trench carved across heaven as if someone had combed it open.

“Ha ha ha, that is just Kai and Kaido saying hello,” Yamato explained, smiling like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Saying… hello?

Law could not help clicking his tongue.

Was this some strange custom he had never heard of?

When top-tier monsters said hello, did they always open a crack in the sky?

What did the sky ever do to them?

In the center of the battlefield, after that first full-force clash, Kai and Kaido slid back from each other.

Thud, thud.

Kaido clearly skidded one extra step.

The realization jolted through him.

This brat’s strength…

It had gone up again.

Did this Mythical Zoan of his not have a ceiling?

“Kai-sensei, looks like your odds are not great today,” Kai said lightly, picking up on that tiny difference at once.

“Wororororo! Do not get ahead of yourself, boy,” Kaido barked, laughing loud as he crushed his surprise down.

He swung the kanabo and charged in again.

The greeting was over.

Now the real fight began.

In the next heartbeat, both of them shifted into their hybrid beast forms and slammed together.

Jet-black claws and a vicious iron club crashed again and again at speeds the eye could not follow.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Conqueror’s Haki and Armament Haki lightning sprayed from every impact like storms of wild thunder snakes.
Every bolt that struck the ground blew a new crater open.

The shattered rocks never made it back down.
The crushing wind picked them up, flinging them across the sea like cannon shells.

“Careful!”

“More rocks incoming!”

On the surrounding ships, pirates yelled over one another as they scrambled to defend against the incoming shards.

They had no choice.

The ones who had scoffed at those stones earlier were now flailing in the cold sea.
Their ships had been punched through and gone under in moments.

“This power…” Law murmured.

The scene before him looked less like a battle and more like a natural disaster.

It was his first time seeing Kai fight without holding back.

If he had been standing where Kai was now, the aftermath alone would have torn him to pieces.

Now he finally understood what it meant to stand at the top of the pirate world.

Doflamingo’s dream of becoming king was a joke.

Compared to this level of force, he did not even qualify to pick a fight.

“We… actually have the luck to be on the same crew as someone like that,” Sachi said.

He and Penguin traded a look.
In each other’s eyes, they saw the same awe and fierce gratitude.

This was an opportunity they would not have dared dream of.

“Kai-aniki has gotten stronger again,” Zoro said.

He did not blink, staring at the battlefield even though he could not make out any details of the exchanges.

“What is wrong?” Sanji grinned. “Gap too big now? Afraid you cannot keep up with Kai-nii anymore?”

“Oi, Zoro, are you seriously the first of us three to fall behind?” Ace added, sounding genuinely surprised.

“Shut it, both of you,” Zoro snapped, whipping his head around.

There was no fear in his eyes, only boiling battle lust and excitement.

“I am fired up. Got it?”

He looked back toward the hellscape of the island and licked dry lips, fingers tightening around Wado Ichimonji.

“One day, I will be as strong as they are,” he said.

Roronoa Zoro was not the kind of man who turned his back on a wall.

“That is better,” Sanji said, nodding, a small approving smile at his mouth.

“We are going to get that strong together,” Ace laughed, clapping both of them hard on the shoulders.

With a stage like this and resources like these, how could they not give everything to reach the peak?
How else would they face the friends who believed in them, or themselves?

On the island, after countless bone-crunching collisions with no tricks and no wasted motion, the once-barren rock looked like the moon.

Cratered.

Broken.

Kai and Kaido broke apart again.

Both of them were breathing a bit harder now, and there was no hiding the exhaustion on their faces.

Their stamina was not the problem.

They were both top-tier Mythical Zoan users, monsters with absurd endurance.

The real issue was—

“Stubborn old beast,” Kai exhaled, white breath steaming from his lips.

He shook his head once, forcing his mind to sharpen.

Their fight was more than bodies and Devil Fruits slamming together.
It was Conqueror’s Haki against Conqueror’s Haki.

They both had Future Sight-level Observation Haki.

It was far too easy for things to fall into an endless loop of “I predicted your prediction of my prediction of your prediction,” a spiraling game that devoured focus at a terrifying rate.

But skating on the edge, gambling everything against another top monster like this—

It felt incredible.

A bright, wild grin split Kai’s face.

“Again!”

“Wororororo! I will go as long as you can,” Kaido roared back.

He suddenly threw his jaws wide.
Blistering heat gathered in his throat.

“Boro Breath!”

A blast hot enough to melt steel erupted from his mouth, swelling as soon as it left his lips.
It turned into a world-ending fire dragon, shrieking down at Kai.

Kai’s eyes sharpened.

He drew a deep breath, chest swelling.

“Flamethrower!”

An equally vicious beam of fire exploded from his mouth to meet Kaido’s breath head-on.

Boom.

Midair, the two torrents of flame smashed together.

Light and heat went wild.

A fireball tens of meters across bloomed into existence, a second sun hanging over the island and painting everything around it blazing white.

The shockwave rolled out like a tsunami.

“Hot. It is so hot!” pirates howled.

The ones who had been laughing at their soaked comrades earlier suddenly found themselves jealous.
The sea sounded far more comfortable than this.

“Who is the Flame-Flame Fruit user again?” Ace choked, staring.

For a second, he honestly regretted ever eating the Mera Mera no Mi.

As the great fireball detonated, a huge shape burst through the flames and drove straight for Kai.

The kanabo in his hands shone darker than ever, wrapped in a storm of black and red Conqueror’s Haki and Armament Haki lightning.
The swing came down with the weight of a collapsing mountain range.

“Roaring Thunder: Bagua!”

So fast.

Red light flashed in Kai’s eyes.

His Observation Haki screamed.

The ground under his feet exploded as he moved.

“Extreme Speed.”

Boom.

The club hit only empty air.
The impact cratered the ground, a deep pit opening where Kai had been standing as cracks raced out for dozens of meters.

“Tch. Slipped it, did you?” Kaido muttered.

Red light flickered in his own eyes.

In the next moment, his absurdly thick waist twisted in a way that should not have been possible, dragging the rest of his massive body and the kanabo with it.

He came around faster than any normal man could have managed, club already waiting right in the path of Kai’s return strike.

“Dragon Claw.”

Kai’s black, taloned hand flashed out, meeting the swinging iron head-on.

Clang.

The metal scream rang in everyone’s ears.

This time, the one who lost ground was Kaido.

Forced into a rushed counter, he took the worst of the trade, blasted back by the sheer force of Kai’s strike.
His heels gouged twin trenches in the rock.

Kai did not let up.

He streaked after Kaido like lightning.

Fists, elbows, knees, shins, even his forehead—every part of his body turned into a weapon.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

The drumbeat of impacts never stopped.

Under that relentless storm of blows, even Kaido could only turtle up and defend, snatching rare chances to throw counterattacks of his own.

“Oil-Burner Uppercut!”

With a shouted kiai, Kai gathered power into his right arm and drove an uppercut from below, his fist snapping up into Kaido’s jaw before he could fully cover it.

The force detonated.

For a ridiculous instant, the enormous Yonko seemed weightless.

Then his body shot straight up into the sky like a launched rocket.

Kai kicked off the ground, leaping in pursuit.

He had not flown far when Kaido’s roar crashed down from above, thick with pain and fury.

“Conquest of the Three Worlds: Ragnarok!!!!”

High overhead, Kaido raised his kanabo above his head.

He began to spin, club and body whirling like a living drill of iron and muscle.

Black-red Conqueror’s Haki lightning wrapped the iron tight, compressed into a single, seething pillar of thunder.

He hurled himself downward, dragging all of his mass, strength, and raging Conqueror’s Haki with him, slamming it at Kai like a falling world.

Clang.

Kai crossed his arms and caught the blow head-on.

For an instant, he felt like an island had landed on him.

Then he was the stone, and the swing was the bat.

He screamed toward the ground at even greater speed.

Boom.

The instant his body hit, Kaido’s flood of lightning crashed down as well, drowning the impact zone and raking it again and again.

The island groaned like a living thing on the verge of breaking.
The ground shuddered under every ship’s keel.

Only after a long moment did the thunderstorm finally begin to fade.

At the center of the smoking crater, Kai stood, his whole body blackened.
He exhaled a long breath, smoke curling from his mouth.

“Your Conqueror’s Haki is something else, Kaido-san,” he said. “I nearly could not hold that one.”

If he had not reached a new understanding of Conqueror’s Haki over the past year, he would not have taken that hit head-on.

“Do not give me that,” Kaido growled.

He landed back on the torn earth, glaring down into the pit.

He actually looked worse off than Kai now.

His chest and face were latticed with claw marks and fist-sized dents.
Scales had shattered, blood seeping steadily from the torn flesh, leaving him looking more ragged than he ever liked to show.

Kai’s earlier flurry had not been easy to weather.

“Oi, brat. Did you learn that old hag Linlin’s trick?” he demanded.

He stared hard at Kai, feeling how little his aura had dropped, and a suspicion took shape in his mind.

“More or less,” Kai answered without hesitation. “I have a rough handle on it.”

He had not spent the whole year just eating rocks.

While he had been stockpiling “fuel,” he had never stopped pushing deeper into what Conqueror’s Haki could do.

Now he could actively pull a portion of his Conqueror’s Haki out to defend himself, instead of trusting to instinct alone.

He was not at Big Mom’s level yet, that nearly automatic, flawless “iron balloon” that wrapped her whole body.
But compared to those who could only rely on Conqueror’s Haki passive protection, he had clearly climbed to a higher rung.

“Wororororo. Interesting,” Kaido said.

His left hand, scaled and scarred, came up to press against the deepest wound on his chest.

With his regeneration, that cut should have closed the moment it was made.

Instead, it still gaped, Kai’s Conqueror’s Haki clinging to it and choking his recovery.

“So you picked that up too. You have taken your Conqueror’s Haki training further than I can pretend not to be impressed by,” Kaido admitted.

Shock rolled under his amusement.

This brat’s talent really was monstrous.

It was not that the techniques themselves were impossible.

They were brutally hard, yes, but the sea did hold others who had pushed their Conqueror’s Haki to this height.

What truly staggered him was how fast Kai had reached that point.

He had never seen a genius like this.

“But the fight,” he said, Conqueror’s Haki surging up from his core, “is just getting started.”

His Conqueror’s Haki roared through him, blasting away the Conqueror’s Haki Kai had left on his cuts.
Before their eyes, the wounds began to close, his body knitting back together.