Chapter 305: True Combat Power

The spear pierced through everything like a radiant rainbow, completely running through the location where Im stood.

BOOM!

All four brothers shot backward in unison. The ground trembled violently, massive stone fragments exploded into the air, and a crimson mushroom cloud of fire rose abruptly. The sky itself changed color!

The intense tremors spread throughout the entirety of Mary Geoise, throwing the primary battlefield into complete chaos.

"What! What's happening?! What is going on?!"

A deep, thick sense of dread welling up in everyone's hearts.

"How is this possible!" The Five Elders' expressions transformed dramatically. They knew that a location capable of causing such a massive upheaval could only be where Lord Im was situated.

Exchanging glances, the Five Elders all shared a look of clear understanding. "Although the Legendary Four Brothers have already attained the power of Emperors, they are absolutely no match for Lord Im."

"We must block them before Lord Im arrives!"

They were well aware that the tide of battle had severely tilted, and the defeat of the World Government's military forces was only a matter of time. However, they still held a trump card capable of instantly reversing the situation!

As long as they could hold out until that moment...

"Let's move!" The Five Elders personally joined the fray, serving as the main vanguard standing at the absolute front of the entire battlefield.

Nothing remained on the field except the reverberating cries of slaughter and the clash of weapons...

"Luffy... Sabo!" Dragon looked in the direction from which the massive noise had echoed. You boys can definitely do it!

"I'll clean up the remaining mess down here then." Saying this, Dragon raised a single hand, and black wind dragons materialized on the battlefield once more—and not just one or two. Over a hundred tempests of wind dragons soared in every direction, roaming across the field and covering the entire war zone.

"What? It's already been settled?" Having just flown over, Luffy looked at the rising layers of smoke and dust, pouting in dissatisfaction.

Ace and Sabo traded smiles.

"Haha, Luffy, really sorry about that. Looks like there's no chance for you to show off," Sabo said, spreading his hands.

Luffy walked over, huffing with puffed cheeks. "You three guys..."

He had finally gotten a chance for a real fight, and it was over just as he finished warming up?

ROAR... KABOOM! Following a massive shockwave, a dark shadow materialized behind Luffy in an instant.

"Luffy, WATCH OUT!" The expressions of the three brothers shifted simultaneously.

A beam of black laser energy shot forth at extreme velocity, targeted directly at Luffy's head.

Luffy's eyes flashed with a red glint; he tilted his head slightly, and the laser grazed past his ear, slamming into the earth directly in front of him.

BOOM!

"Damn it!" Luffy gritted his teeth, but by then a silhouette had already appeared behind him.

"Aren't you brats looking down on people a bit too much!"

Drake was even faster. A slash of sword light swept across, skimming past Im's cheek, and a deep trench instantly split the ground.

"Luffy, FALL BACK!"

The moment Drake's words cleared his lips, a sky-blotting sea of black fog surged forward, bringing a wave of bone-chilling coldness.

This was...

Facing this abrupt development, Drake tightened his mental focus, his grip on his sword hilt tightening even further.

"Spatial Warp!" Just as his body was about to displace, his movement ground to a sudden halt, and a wave of frost shot straight from his feet up to the crown of his head.

A bone-deep chill!

How could this be—he actually couldn't warp?!

The black fog completely enveloped Drake, steadily constricting to seal him inside.

"You're the brat from earlier, aren't you? How did you escape?" Within the black fog, a pair of eyes glowing with purplish light emerged.

Gazing at those eyes radiating a deep, terrifying aura, Drake was momentarily taken aback before letting out a soft laugh. "Want to know? I'm not telling you!"

"Though I must say, that little place of yours is truly full of surprises," Drake added meaningfully.

The eyes constricted noticeably, followed by a fierce roar: "Speak! What did you see down there?!"

"Drake! How are you holding up?!" Luffy's anxious voice drifted in from the outside. "Hey! Woman, give Drake back!"

"GUM-GUM..."

Immediately after, heavy vibrations echoed from beyond. Then, Drake realized that not a single sound from the outside world could reach him anymore—she had clearly isolated the space completely.

"Luffy..." Drake's brows knit tightly together; he was completely unable to move.

Outside, Ace, Sabo, and Luffy unleashed a continuous flurry of techniques, charging forward one after another.

"AGAIN!" Ace's form flickered, leaving behind faint trails of lingering fire as he thrust his long spear repeatedly.

While Sabo and Luffy didn't realize it, Ace understood completely—this was exceptionally troublesome!

The enemy's strength was simply too absolute. He couldn't fathom how she had taken that full-power strike earlier and emerged completely unscathed.

That had been his maximum-output attack!

And it had been reinforced by Drake's spatial power on top of that.

No matter how one analyzed it, emerging without a single scratch was mathematically impossible.

His spear moved like an ascending dragon as Ace launched a direct frontal assault. Sabo transformed into a massive fire dragon, whipping his tail to generate sweeping gales.

BOOM! Im raised both hands to block the incoming strikes from both flanks, black fog swirling continuously from her palms.

Luffy accelerated straight down from the high sky, cutting through layers of atmospheric pressure as he focused power into his Gear Fourth muscular arm.

Opening his Conqueror's Haki domain to its absolute limit, he channeled every drop of his Conqueror's Haki. The surrounding air expanded violently under the intense energy wave.

Rippling shockwaves and spatial distortions reverberated through open airspace.

"GUM-GUM CONQUEROR'S GUN!"

BOOM! The fist smashed downward like an earth-shattering cannon. A dominant, air-tearing shockwave resounded over the entire field as the fist descended from the heavens at mind-boggling velocity.

Filaments of deep crimson, crackling lightning expanded continuously. Surrounding structures collapsed entirely, and the iconic Grand Hall Castle of Mary Geoise was pulverized into dust.

The destruction continued to ripple outward.

Everything on the surface underwent catastrophic, large-scale annihilation. Before long, a gargantuan crater stretching five hundred meters in diameter materialized in everyone's field of view.

The area beyond the crater was reduced to complete ruins. A full third of the magnificent, opulent architecture of the Holy Land was utterly destroyed by this single blow.

This sheer destruction left every combatant on the battlefield flabbergasted.

"W-What happened?!"

"What in the world is that?!"

Gazing at the vast expanse of ruins, the crowd had zero vocabulary to describe their current mental state.

Was this the end of the world?

A second ago, it was the noble, glowing Holy Land; in the next heartbeat, it had been reduced to an absolute wasteland.

For something like this... to actually happen directly before their eyes!

"HEY HEY HEY! What on earth is going on over there?!" Hidden in the shadows, the journalists from the news agency stared blankly at the scene.

This was far too terrifying.

Just what kind of power could reduce these massive structures to such complete devastation?

"QUICK! TAKE PICTURES! This is an earth-shattering news story that will stun the entire world!" The journalists immediately scrambled into motion.

For the Holy Land—unscathed for eight hundred years—to be destroyed, what did this truly signify?

This was a massive scoop.

Above the colossal crater, Ace and Sabo stared at the scene below in absolute, shock-stricken disbelief.

At the very center of the pit, Im was catching Luffy's full-power fist with a single hand!

"WHAT!"

Judging purely by the devastation of the surrounding environment, the sheer kinetic power of Luffy's punch was beyond doubt. Yet Im had caught it effortlessly, looking as if it were nothing.

"IMPOSSIBLE!"

Im slowly opened her eyes, the corners of her lips curling upward into a subtle smirk. "Is this truly the full extent of your power..."

"Then allow me to demonstrate what true, absolute power really is!"

A terrifying aura suddenly rocketed into the heavens as black fog surged toward the sky like layers of dark storm clouds, instantly dimming the once-bright sky.

An invisible pressure domain seemed to manifest around Im, causing the bedrock beneath to tremble uncontrollably.

"This is..." Luffy gritted his teeth, his body plunged straight from the air to hit the ground.

This feeling was not unfamiliar to him; the power Akainu had deployed back then possessed a nearly identical pressure effect.

It felt as though a crushing weight had been placed directly onto his frame.

Ace and Sabo experienced the exact same anomaly, both left gasping for breath under the crushing, sudden pressure domain.