Chapter 107: Chapter 107 The Second Gap, A Clash Beyond Dimensions
Boom! Boom! Boom...
After knocking Kaido back with one punch, Karl pressed the attack, using Lightning Blink again and again to appear at Kaido’s front, back, left, and right.
Either spamming the "basic" Six Kings Gun, or unleashing a Lightning Kick strong enough to snap a Red Mangrove—his blows poured down on Kaido like a squall.
Some strikes Kaido blocked; others, riding lightning’s speed, landed clean.
Every hit, beyond pure body arts or the Rumble-Rumble Fruit’s power, carried top-grade Armament Haki with internal destruction.
Thus...
When Karl’s assault connected for the first time—
The haze of liquor in Kaido’s head was blasted away by that long-missed pain.
The drunken film over his eyes cleared in an instant.
And then...
Hassaikai’s swing grew faster still.
Sobriety also sharpened his Observation Haki—sluggish a moment before—so it cleanly tracked Karl’s every move.
So much so that Karl’s second Lightning Kick failed to land and was parried by the kanabō.
Carried by the club’s immense weight, Karl himself was blasted away, turned into a streak of lightning, and crashed into the rubble, bursting a blue-white firework.
Swoosh—
Lightning leapt from the smoky blast. Unscathed, Karl looked at Kaido and teased, "Senior Kaido, seems the drink’s worn off."
"Hmph... brat, you’re far from it!"
Kaido snorted, a liquor-laced breath huffing from his nose as his thunderous voice rolled out. "If you’re set on abducting my idiot son, let’s see what you’ve got!"
"Exactly what I had in mind."
Karl’s face brimmed with fighting spirit.
Boom—
In the next heartbeat, for the first time against an enemy, Karl unleashed a world-shaking surge of Conqueror’s Haki.
As the gale swept out, a golden dome—visible only to those who wield Haki—spread in a blink over half of Onigashima.
Under that dome, everyone in the Beasts Pirates below the strength of a nine-figure bounty—the Supernova class—rolled their eyes back and fainted as if clubbed at the base of the skull.
"Kid, your Haki’s still green."
Kaido answered with Conqueror’s Haki of his own.
As in that clash between Luffy and Barrett in the film, Kaido’s Conqueror’s formed a cyan dome that locked against Karl’s gold.
As the two poured on, the domes surged forward and back, advanced and retreated, swelled and shrank...
Rrrrumble...
Zzzzz...
Like his earlier clash with Yamato’s coating, the collision of these two monsters’ Conqueror’s stirred heaven and earth again.
The clouds that had only just dispersed massed over Onigashima once more.
Within them, thicker, greater serpents of lightning writhed, muttering with dull thunder.
On the ground, the raging gusts blew apart the lingering mushroom cloud and dust.
Within the storming air, dark red arcs crackled again and again.
But before the Conqueror’s clash could deepen the omens—
This stalemate without a winner lasted only a dozen seconds, just like before, and Karl’s Conqueror’s Haki shattered under Kaido’s.
In that instant, Karl found another place he lagged behind the Four Emperors.
Unlike the other two Hakis, Conqueror’s comes to one in millions—kingly aptitude, the inborn tyrant.
A power only the chosen can wield.
So Conqueror’s cannot be awakened and strengthened through training like the other two.
Even once awakened, it cannot be honed in the same way.
Conqueror’s Haki is will and spirit made manifest.
Its capacity and its quality are decided by the user’s resolve and mettle.
The stronger one’s resolve and mettle, the greater Conqueror’s capacity and quality.
If one’s resolve and mettle crumble, even the chosen might lose Conqueror’s.
Karl’s Conqueror’s is strong; among those ten to twenty-nine, few can match it.
He has never tasted defeat since birth.
If his "invincibility" in East Blue was only nominal—
Then upon entering the Grand Line, after his second evolution, after felling the first Warlord Crocodile and seizing Enel’s Rumble-Rumble Fruit, Karl became truly invincible.
If he could not win, the foe could not touch him.
If he could win, the foe could not flee.
After awakening Conqueror’s in the battle with Shiki, Karl found in every fight thereafter—even without using it—that his Conqueror’s grew stronger each time.
After proving himself in the New World, his Conqueror’s all but crushed whoever it touched.
The weak trapped within it could still be kept conscious—if Karl wished.
But freely controlling Conqueror’s like that still lagged far behind the New World’s four sovereigns.
Four monsters, the youngest already thirty-two.
Battle-scarred, their strength, resolve, and spirit stand at the true summit.
Any one of their Conqueror’s can become pressure that attacks the foe.
Even battle-hardened pirates worth over a hundred million cannot withstand a glance.
Karl’s gap with the Four is in Conqueror’s capacity and quality.
Even absolute insight, which let him steal the rare Conqueror’s coating few elites can wield, cannot change that fact.
If his Conqueror’s is "mid-grade, perfected," then theirs is "high-grade" and "high-grade, perfected."
Having found this second gap to the true summit, Karl stopped flinging that weaker Conqueror’s around. He wound it onto his fist, became lightning, instant-shifted to Kaido—and, for the first time, drove a punch on an extradimensional level.
Seeing it, Kaido’s face finally showed rare surprise.
"...Raimei Hakke!"
Without a breath of hesitation, Kaido sheathed Hassaikai in Conqueror’s as well and swung at Karl.
This is how super-strong men say hello—a clash beyond dimensions.
And the true prelude to old era meeting new.
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