The standoff between the pillar of golden light and the colossal dark hand lasted only a moment.
Then, the balance shattered.
There was no deafening roar.
Only the ear-piercing hiss of annihilating energy remained.
Immediately after, a devastating ring-shaped shockwave erupted from the point of impact, sweeping outward in all directions!
Wherever it passed, rock turned to dust. Distant mountain peaks were shattered into fragments, some completely leveled.
The already scarred earth of God Valley was brutally ravaged once more by this silent, crushing force!
"Ugh!"
"Damn it!"
Rocks, Roger, Whitebeard... Every spectator watching from a distance was violently swept off their feet by the irresistible energy storm.
They were sent flying far back, smashing through countless boulders before managing to regain their footing in disarray. Each of them stared fixedly at the storm's center, too stunned to utter a single word.
This was just the aftershock of a long-range clash, yet it was already this terrifying.
In the core of the raging energy, a golden figure and a dark figure emerged from the blinding light and shadow almost simultaneously.
Imu had abandoned the long-range bombardment. He had realized that on a purely energetic level, the opponent's sacred light was in no way inferior to the primordial darkness he commanded.
Countless arcane black runes began to spin wildly across the body of Jaygarcia Saturn, whom he was possessing. His tentacles instantly mutated, transforming into razor-sharp black claws. With a shriek of tearing space, they lunged straight for Lucian's chest!
But Lucian did not dodge or evade.
He met attack with attack! Violence with violence!
Facing those darkness-wreathed claws that could tear through anything, he threw a golden fist wrapped in divine sunfire at an even greater speed.
A direct clash!
*Clang!*
A deafening crash echoed across the skies above God Valley once more. At the epicenter of the collision, a spiderweb of pitch-black spatial fractures erupted violently, spreading outward. The mere stray energy caused a massive, previously intact mountain kilometers away to silently collapse, crumble, and vanish into nothingness.
In the next instant, both figures vanished.
Two streaks of light and dark tore across the vast skies of God Valley in a frenzied slaughter. Neither the naked eye nor even top-tier Observation Haki could fully track their movements.
Every impact triggered violent atmospheric distortions. Their battlefield stretched from the ground to the heavens, spilling into every corner of the surrounding space.
At the edge of the battlefield.
"Gurararara... Just what... what level of battle is this..."
On the ground, Edward Newgate, the Whitebeard, drove his Murakumo Giri deep into the earth to brace himself, barely managing to stay upright.
He looked up at the two blurred figures in the sky, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty.
"This level of combat... truly terrifying monsters..."
His pride and joy, the world-shaking power of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit, seemed to pale in comparison to the clash unfolding above.
Beside him, Roger's face had never been so grave. He gripped the hilt of his famed blade, Ace, the veins on the back of his hand bulging. As one of the era's absolute pinnacle warriors, he understood better than anyone that the power and combat represented by those two figures in the sky had transcended the realm of conventional understanding.
High above, the battle grew even more intense. Imu manipulated boundless darkness, shaping it into several grotesque, massive tentacles that sealed off every possible escape route for Lucian from all directions. Each tentacle pulsed with a dark energy that devoured light.
Lucian merely let out a cold snort.
With a mere thought, he summoned a holy spear of the sun from thin air, forged entirely from pure light energy.
He didn't even bother with elaborate movements.
He simply tossed it!
The holy spear transformed into a golden lightning bolt that pierced heaven and earth, instantly skewering and shattering those dark tentacles along with the space behind them!
The dark blockade shattered in an instant!
*Boom!*
Another violent fist clash. Golden solar divinity and pitch-black void energy collided wildly, forcing the two apart for a brief moment.
In that fraction of a millisecond, Lucian's brow furrowed beneath his white mask.
Not because of Imu's attack.
It was coming from within.
The Dark-Dark Fruit he had previously obtained, which had lain dormant in his System storage space, was now vibrating with unprecedented intensity!
*Thump... thump... thump...*
An instinctual, intensely craving consciousness erupted from the fruit, transmitting wildly. This awareness was pure and primal, devoid of complex thought, holding only a single imperative—*Devour!*
Its target pointed with crystal clarity toward the figure shrouded in dark energy a thousand meters away. It was as if it had caught the scent of a supreme delicacy.
Imu!
The Devil Fruit, representing gravity and darkness, grew incredibly restless, violently battering against the barriers of the System's storage space, desperate to break out!
It was Imu! The primordial force of void, darkness, and absolute consumption emanating from him had awakened the fruit!
This sudden internal anomaly did not disrupt Lucian's combat rhythm. Outwardly, he remained expressionless, but as Imu lunged at him once more like a black lightning bolt, his killing intent flared.
At the exact moment Imu's claws were about to graze his chest, Lucian's body twisted at an impossible angle.
His right leg, wreathed in divine sunfire, became a golden battle-axe, cleaving through the sky and leaving a trail of sonic booms!
A light-speed spinning kick, striking faster despite moving second, landed with pinpoint accuracy on Jaygarcia Saturn's torso!
*Thwack!*
Imu took the full brunt of the colossal force, a flicker of stunned blankness crossing his crimson eyes. In the next second, his entire body tumbled dozens of times through the air, compressing the atmosphere into visible ripples before he barely managed to stabilize himself.
On the body of Jaygarcia Saturn he possessed, a distinct crack appeared exactly where Lucian had struck.
Though the crack rapidly sealed under the surge of dark energy, this was undoubtedly the first time since the battle began that Imu had truly suffered a disadvantage in close-quarters combat!
His crimson eyes locked onto Lucian, burning with fury and a trace of incomprehension. He didn't understand.
Why?
Why had the opponent's power suddenly spiked in that exact instant!
After kicking Imu away, Lucian did not immediately press the attack. He hovered silently in the air, maintaining absolute oppressive dominance over Imu.
Simultaneously, he sank a thread of his consciousness into the System. With a cold, unquestionable mental command, he asked within his mind.
"System. Explain."
"What exactly is going on with this fruit? The Dark-Dark Fruit."
The battlefield temporarily fell into a standoff. Imu was frantically assessing why Lucian had unleashed such vastly superior power in that previous strike.
And Lucian was waiting for the System's answer.