Blake shook his head. He had immediately seen through the true nature of the power within Luffy's body. Normally, according to the proper timeline of the One Piece world, Luffy would have had to take several more severe beatings from Kaido to awaken the Gear 5 Nika Form. He would even have to hover on the brink of true death.

But look at the situation now. Because Blake had sold Luffy too many powers from other systems, the divine will residing within the fruit felt a severe threat to its existence. In order not to be forgotten by its host, Nika actually chose to forcefully boot up ahead of schedule. It was just like a legal wife seeing a bunch of flashy newcomers suddenly added to the harem. To secure her position, she had no choice but to pull out all her trump cards.

On the battlefield, Meruem tore through the rubbery blanket of earth covering him. Unconcealable rage finally surfaced on his cold face. He was the King at the very top of the food chain on this planet. How could he be toyed with like a bouncing ball by a giggling brat?

The tail behind Meruem snapped taut, its stinger gleaming with deadly purple light. Transforming into a green bolt of lightning, he appeared directly behind Luffy. The stinger aimed squarely at the back of Luffy's head and plunged down viciously. The strike was so fast that the air didn't even have time to produce a sonic boom.

But Luffy didn't even turn his head. The back of his head suddenly caved inward like a balloon, perfectly dodging the lethal stinger. Immediately after, Luffy's head rotated a full one hundred and eighty degrees on his neck. His face met Meruem behind him, flashing an incredibly exaggerated funny face.

"Blehhhh!" Luffy stuck out his tongue, grabbing Meruem's thick tail with both hands. Then, like swinging a giant pinwheel, he whirled the King of the Chimera Ants in mid-air, turning him into a blurry green afterimage.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Meruem's body was used like a morning star, frantically smashing against the surrounding ruins. Every strike pulverized a mountaintop. The Ant King's proudly super-resilient body began to groan under the overwhelming strain of this illogical, violent pulling. He tried to use his Nen to sever Luffy's hands, but the Nen blades, capable of slicing through steel, bounced comically off Luffy's white skin.

It was a completely unreasonable fighting style. Luffy had turned the battle into an absurd comedy, and Meruem was the unluckiest supporting character.

Ace and Sabo watched in stunned silence from a distance. They couldn't comprehend the scene unfolding before them. The monster that had effortlessly beaten Dragon and Kuma was now being swung around like a toy by Luffy.

"What the hell... did Luffy eat?" Ace swallowed hard, starting to wonder if he was dreaming.

Sabo was equally dumbfounded. The steel pipe in his hand had long fallen to the ground, rolling off to who knows where. This kind of battle, which ground the laws of physics into the dirt, had completely exceeded their meager understanding.

Left dizzy and seeing stars from being swung around, Meruem finally reached the limit of his endurance. The Nen within him erupted without holding back, forcibly breaking free from Luffy's grip. He stabilized himself in mid-air, gasping heavily for breath. Green blood flowed down his forehead into his eyes, making his compound eyes look even more ferocious.

He stared at the white-haired boy still bouncing around on the ground, feeling an emotion called powerlessness for the first time. He could calculate Dragon's attack trajectories. He could see through Kuma's defensive blind spots. But he completely couldn't predict what ridiculous move Luffy would make next. This brat absolutely did not follow any established patterns.

Luffy stopped bouncing. Tilting his head, he looked at Meruem in mid-air, then stuck a finger in his nose and dug around.

"Hey, green bug." Luffy's voice carried a carefree cheerfulness. "You hurt my family. I'm really angry right now, you know."

Despite claiming to be angry, the smile on Luffy's face grew even brighter. He grabbed both ends of the ground as if holding a massive rubber band. Then, he pulled back with all his might. The entire crust of the NGL Autonomous Region warped along with his movements. The ground was stretched into a giant slingshot.

Luffy loaded himself like a cannonball into this unbelievable slingshot. "Gum-Gum..."

White mist surged wildly around Luffy. The beating of the Drums of Liberation reached its peak. Meruem felt an unprecedented crisis of life and death. Focusing all his Nen in front of him, he formed a materialized Nen shield over ten meters thick. He prepared to take this final strike head-on.

"White Rocket!"

Luffy released his grip. His entire body transformed into a white shooting star, crashing toward the Ant King in mid-air at a speed that transcended the laws of time.

.....

In the tavern, Blake set down his juice. He knew this farce was about to end. When a gag character gets serious, the villain's doomsday has arrived.

.....

Luffy transformed into a white shooting star, moving so fast that the surrounding space severely distorted. The materialized Nen shield, over ten meters thick in front of Meruem, instantly lost its original hardness the moment it came into contact with Luffy's hands. The high-density Nen sank in softly, like butter meeting high heat.

Luffy's hands plunged into the Nen shield, then fiercely ripped it apart to both sides. With a tearing sound, the Nen shield capable of withstanding a nuclear blast was ripped in half by him like a piece of rag.

Meruem's compound eyes contracted violently. He had absolutely no time to make any defensive maneuvers. Luffy's palms, coated in Armament Haki and Conqueror's lightning, had already firmly stamped onto his chest.

"White Rocket!" Luffy shouted the name of his attack, the carefree smile still hanging on his face.

An entirely physics-defying, terrifying elasticity detonated within the Ant King's chest cavity. Meruem felt as if his internal organs had all been churned into a messy stew. His body stretched into an extremely exaggerated shape in mid-air. His eyeballs bulged out of their sockets, and his chin stretched all the way down to his chest.

Pfft!

A massive mouthful of green blood sprayed from his mouth. Immediately after, this unexcelled King of the Chimera Ants was sent flying backward uncontrollably, like an unguided missile. He crashed straight through a dozen tall mountains, finally smashing heavily into a massive lake on the edge of the NGL Autonomous Region.

The deafening roar echoed. The lake water was blown into the sky by the violent impact, raining down in a torrential downpour.

Luffy did a somersault in mid-air and landed steadily on the ground. The white mist around him was still tumbling.

Thump-thump, thump-thump. The heartbeat of the Drums of Liberation echoed across the empty ruins.

In the deep crater not far away, a hand covered in mud and blood grabbed the edge of the hole. Dragon struggled to climb out from the underground. The man with the astronomically high bounty, known as the world's most heinous criminal, looked incredibly pathetic at this moment. Several of his ribs were broken, and every breath brought agonizing pain.

But he didn't care about that. His purple Rinnegan stared intently at the white figure ahead, looking at the youth bouncing up and down on the ruins, laughing like an idiot. Dragon's breathing grew rapid. Not from the pain, but from an awe buried deep within his memories.

"What the hell is that thing?"

Ivankov approached, clutching his severed stump. The makeup-covered, oversized face of the Revolutionary Army commander was deathly pale from severe blood loss, but the shock in his eyes was no less than Dragon's. "Luffy-boy's Gum-Gum Fruit... can turn this color?"

Ivankov swallowed hard. He had seen Luffy use Gear 2 and Gear 3. But those techniques, involving steaming vapor or inflating bones, were at least somewhat understandable within the concept of rubber. Now, this form that completely assimilated the environment into rubber, and even altered the physical properties of other people's attacks, entirely exceeded the common sense of Devil Fruits.

Dragon didn't answer Ivankov's question. Clenching his jaw, his mind churned with the ancient texts classified as top-secret by the World Government. For eight hundred years, the World Government had been searching for a certain Devil Fruit. To hide its true name, they had even given it an extremely ordinary moniker.

Zoan-type, Human-Human Fruit, Mythical Model: Nika. The Sun God of legend who possessed the most ridiculous power, bringing laughter and liberation.

"So that's how it is," Dragon muttered to himself, his voice carrying an indescribably complex emotion. He finally understood why "Red-Haired" Shanks had brought that fruit to the East Blue back then. And why he had placed that straw hat, a symbol of a certain inheritance, upon Luffy's head.

This wasn't some Paramecia-type Gum-Gum Fruit. This was the deity the World Government had tried to erase from the river of history.

---

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