ryethenovel Chapter 498: The Shikai That Incinerates All
Chapter 498: The Shikai That Incinerates All
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"My face... my flawless face!"
Zarbon's voice cracked, sounding like a rooster being choked by the neck. His eyes, once full of mockery, now boiled with an intensely venomous rage.
He glared at Akainu in the distance, wishing he could swallow the red-suited native whole.
"You lowly piece of trash! You dare ruin my beautiful face?!"
Akainu slowly retracted his left arm, the magma dog head reforming back into a human limb. He looked down upon the frantic Zarbon with the utter disdain reserved for the weak.
"Beautiful? No matter how much a pirate dresses up their skin, it can never mask the stench rotting in their bones. Today, you must die here."
That sentence ignited the final fuse of Zarbon's sanity.
He had always avoided using his true power because he found his transformed state far too hideous. But now? His perfect appearance was already ruined. He was going to make this ignorant native pay the most agonizing price imaginable.
Zarbon violently tore off the remnants of his shredded cape. He clenched his fists tight. His muscles began to emit teeth-setting sounds of grinding bone. His slender body began to swell grotesquely.
Thick, bulging veins popped out from beneath his green skin. The bone structure of his face deformed violently. His once-handsome features stretched horizontally, his mouth widening immensely as his teeth sharpened into jagged fangs. Ugly, fleshy tumors sprouted across his forehead.
An aura more than double his previous strength erupted from the ugly monster, tearing upward into the sky like a physical storm.
Rubble was swept high into the air. Even the pool of magma at Akainu's feet rippled under the sheer force of the gale.
Zarbon's eyes, now slitted like a reptile's, locked onto Akainu as he let out a beastly roar. "I'm going to tear you to shreds! I'll chew your bones to dust, inch by inch!"
His roar echoed through Namek's thin air. His once-slender legs had become as thick as pillars, completely tearing through the rest of his combat suit. His feet burst out of the white boots, sprouting razor-sharp toes. His green arms inflated to an exaggerated degree, the knotty, muscular surface now covered in dark purple spots.
This was the true form of the Frieza Force's high-ranking executive—a slaughtering machine that had discarded all aesthetics in pursuit of ultimate destructive power.
A berserk wind blasted outward with Zarbon at the epicenter. The ruined, dome-shaped houses of the village were flattened entirely. Even the massive, uniquely shaped trees of Namek in the distance were uprooted. The energy fluctuation was so massive it triggered scouter readings dozens of kilometers away.
Akainu stood his ground, letting the fierce wind batter his Justice coat. A flash of gravity crossed his cold eyes. The feedback from his Observation Haki was crystal clear: the energy inside this monster had more than doubled in mere seconds.
Zarbon's transformed roar made the earth quake. His slitted eyes were bloodshot with madness. His thick legs slammed into the ground, instantly collapsing the hard Namekian bedrock into a crater over ten meters wide.
His massive body blurred into a streak of green light, his speed more than double what it was before. Before the sonic boom could even register in the air, he was already right in front of Akainu.
His gigantic fist, covered in dark purple spots, crashed down with apocalyptic force.
Akainu didn't retreat. His right arm turned into boiling magma and met the strike head-on.
"Great Eruption!"
The gargantuan magma fist collided with Zarbon's fleshy one. This time, his fist met solid resistance. Zarbon's fist was coated in an incredibly intense, high-density aura of ki. This white ki violently repelled the thousands of degrees of magma.
Not only that, but the berserk physical force bypassed the magma and transmitted directly to Akainu's true body.
Akainu let out a muffled grunt. His towering frame was thrown back over ten meters by the brute force, his feet plowing two deep trenches into the earth.
Zarbon opened his massive jaws and laughed maniacally. "Die, trash!"
He brought his hands together, rapidly condensing a blinding pink energy sphere in his palms. Within a fraction of a second, the sphere swelled to the size of a water vat and blasted toward Akainu's position.
The destructive power within that energy sphere was enough to completely level a large mountain.
Akainu's gaze hardened. Armament Haki instantly coated his entire body as he simultaneously elementalized massive portions of his physical form.
The moment the pink energy sphere made contact, it detonated.
Blinding light swallowed everything in the vicinity. The violent explosion kicked up a sky-high cloud of dust and debris. Namek's blue turf was uprooted and turned to ash. The shockwave even threw the water from a distant lake high into the air.
Zarbon stood in place, gasping for air, a cruel smile plastered across his hideous face.
"Not even ashes left, huh?"
He possessed absolute confidence in his transformed strength. With a power level breaking the 30,000 mark, aside from the Ginyu Force and Lord Frieza himself, he, Zarbon, was the strongest existence in the entire army.
However.
Before the smoke could fully clear, a terrifying, extreme heat rose from the epicenter of the explosion. This temperature was a hundred times hotter than the magma from before. It was so intense that the surrounding air literally crackled as it burned.
Zarbon's smile froze. He widened his slitted eyes, staring dead ahead.
Akainu's figure slowly materialized from the thick smoke. His Justice coat had been reduced to ashes by the explosion. His red suit was tattered and torn. But he had not fallen.
In his right hand, he tightly gripped a seemingly ordinary katana. The blade was long and slender, with a dark red light flowing across its edge.
This was the reward he had obtained from the previous ninja-world dungeon—a Zanpakuto forged from a system-rewarded Asauchi.
Akainu glanced down at the sword in his hand. The warm sensation radiating from the hilt made the Mag-Mag Fruit powers within his body even more active. He raised his head, looking at the ugly green monster in the distance.
"Is this the strength you are so proud of? Nothing but a beast that's lost its reason."
Zarbon was completely enraged by the remark. "Arrogant native! I'll smash you and that piece of scrap metal to pieces!"
He flared his aura once more. His massive body charged toward Akainu like an out-of-control heavy tank.
Akainu took a deep breath. His Observation Haki locked onto Zarbon's every movement. He gripped the hilt with both hands, pouring his Mag-Mag Fruit power and Haki into the blade without reservation.
"All things in the universe turn to ashes."
"Ryujin Jakka."
Akainu's deep voice echoed across the battlefield.
With the release of the Shikai command, the ordinary katana violently erupted into a sky-piercing pillar of flames. The color of the fire was profoundly deep, carrying a domineering will to thoroughly incinerate all creation.
The flames merged perfectly with the magma inside Akainu's body. The surrounding temperature skyrocketed once again, and the rocks on the ground began to melt in large swathes.
Halfway through his charge, Zarbon slammed on the brakes.
He felt an unprecedented, lethal threat. A shudder originating from the very depths of his soul. The sword in that man's hand radiated a heat that surpassed even the surface of a star.
This was no parlor trick. This was true, destructive power.
Zarbon gritted his teeth, forcibly suppressing the terror in his heart. "Stop bluffing!"
He opened his jaws wide and fired an impossibly thick energy beam from his mouth. This blast compiled every ounce of ki in his body, roaring toward Akainu with devastating momentum.
Expressionless, Akainu raised Ryujin Jakka and casually swung it at the oncoming energy wave.
A dark red crescent of flame howled forward.
The flame slash and the energy beam collided mid-air. There was no violent explosion. There was only a teeth-grinding sound of rapid dissolution.
The energy beam, carrying all of Zarbon's might, melted like a block of ice pressed against a branding iron the second it touched the flaming slash. It was burned into absolute nothingness.
Without losing a shred of its momentum, the flaming slash cleaved straight into Zarbon's chest.
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