Chapter 226: The God Lord’s Crushing Defeat
“Damn Qinghai people!”
“How dare you offend the dignity of god.”
Enel, beaten black and blue, was utterly furious. Having lorded over Skypiea for many years, it was the first time he had been beaten so miserably. To be precise, he had almost completely forgotten what pain felt like, but Luffy made him recall the concept of pain in the most brutal way.
To be honest,
Enel’s strength is really not weak.
The speed and attack power of the Rumble-Rumble Fruit, plus that quite high-level Observation Haki, if fully utilized at 100%, even Gear Second Luffy absolutely couldn’t touch the hem of Enel’s clothes. The speed of lightning is extremely fast. Even if the Devil Fruit ability can’t fully reach that extreme speed, it’s not something ordinary humans can catch up to.
At the very least, Luffy’s Gear Second is still a bit reluctant.
However, in the original history, Luffy who hadn’t even mastered Gear Second still defeated Enel. If His Highness Elus were to comment, it’s purely because Enel, who hadn’t experienced proper combat, lacked combat experience too much, and his combat consciousness was severely insufficient. Strictly speaking, less than one percent of his full strength was brought out.
Furthermore, he encountered the Rubber Human, this thing that could touch him without using Haki······ something beyond his cognition.
Being beaten so badly was an inevitable result.
Of course, as long as Elus gave Enel time and he experienced a few more similar battles, even without mastering Armament Haki, Enel would be sufficient to become a true strong person, rather than being invincible against weaklings like now, but completely helpless against true strong persons.
“So boring!”
His Highness Elus shook his wine glass, watching this not-so-interesting battle.
“Hey, Skypiea’s god, put some effort into it! You’re too lame like this? Luffy’s gonna beat your yolk out, fight back! If lightning doesn’t work, melt that stick of yours into a knife! You idiot, did you hear me?”
“His Highness Elus!!”
Hearing His Highness Elus giving tips to Enel.
Nami immediately panicked. This wasn’t how you played; they agreed to just watch the fun, but interrupting the ongoing battle like this was too tasteless, right?
“Sorry, I got excited for a moment. Who makes this play so uninteresting? Luffy has grown too much, while Enel hasn’t changed at all······ An enemy that was supposed to be defeated after thousands of hardships ends up being easily thrashed; that’s really uninteresting!”
His Highness Elus sighed repeatedly.
Looking at Enel who was beaten nearly to concussion, unable to even curse properly, his sighs grew even heavier.
“Is this what they call reaping what you sow? Ending up like this······ Damn it! Zero fun at all.” Finding drinking from the cup boring, His Highness Elus simply picked up the wine bottle and chugged straight from it.
Nami shrank her neck beside him, looking at His Highness Elus whose mood had inexplicably soured for some reason, not daring to make a sound, afraid of angering him in this state and getting innocently caught in the crossfire, with nowhere to reason.
“200 Million Volts · Thunder God!!”
Finally realizing he was in a very bad situation, Enel made another foolish move. He didn’t use the Rumble-Rumble Fruit’s speed to pull away distance, nor fly into the sky to catch a breath; instead, he directly unleashed his strongest ultimate move.
He released nearly infinite thunder and lightning,
and wrapped these thunder and lightning around his body in a way like equipping armor, thereby transforming into the form of a giant Thunder God. Under these dark clouds filling the sky, the pure white Thunder God truly looked majestic like a deity, involuntarily inspiring fear and awe in people’s hearts.
Nami shot to her feet.
Seeing Enel transform into such a terrifying form, Nami’s heart, which had just calmed down with great difficulty, tensed up again.
“Big but useless, flashy but insubstantial.”
His Highness Elus looked at that shiny ‘Thunder God’ and shook his head.
Such a transformation, apart from looking intimidating, actually had no essential improvement. It seemed like it could output attacks at greater power, but the problem was that Enel’s enemy was a pervert rubber human who ignored lightning and had high heat resistance; his attacks were doomed to have no effect.
Doing this was purely wasting stamina. It would be better to maintain the small form, use that skill called ‘Thunder Metallurgy’ to make more bladed weapons, and there might still be a chance to cause some damage to Luffy······
“Combat consciousness is too poor.”
His Highness Elus sighed.
“So big!”
Luffy looked up at the giant Thunder God and exclaimed in amazement, but there was no fear on his face; instead, his excitement grew even higher. “Perfect, I’ll use this big guy to test my new move.” He extended his right hand, bit his right thumb, and with lung capacity comparable to a high-pressure air pump, blew air into the gaps in his bones.
His right arm swelled and enlarged like a balloon, turning into a giant’s arm in the blink of an eye.
“Gear Third!”
Luffy swung that giant-sized arm and launched an attack.
“Rubber Giant Pistol.”
The roar echoed through the sky, even suppressing the deafening thunder in that instant.
Not long after,
the battle came to an end in a boring way.
For Enel, who had lived a pampered life for so many years, being able to hold on without being knocked down by Luffy’s three punches and two kicks was already impressive, but he ultimately couldn’t withstand Luffy’s storm-like attacks. The attack power of Gear Third form was quite impressive, like the final straw that broke the camel’s back; this unlucky camel Enel cleanly fainted and fell from the air back onto the deck.
Luffy dragged the unconscious Enel over and tossed the exposed bald-headed Enel at His Highness Elus’s feet.
“Here you go.”
“As agreed, he’s yours.”
“······Wait a moment.”
His Highness Elus looked at the black-and-blue Enel, raised his hand and shot out a chain. The chain infused with Armament Haki wrapped around Enel, dragging him up so his head just touched the apple held in the other hand. Spiritual Pressure surged into Enel’s mind like a tsunami.
In an instant, Enel, who had merely been knocked out, fell into a deep coma,
and at the same time,
the apple in His Highness Elus’s hand began to change shape. The apple swelled and enlarged, its color began to change, and intricate patterns like arabesques appeared on the smooth skin····· Under Luffy and Nami’s gaze, a blue-and-white Devil Fruit appeared in His Highness Elus’s hand.
“······Devil Fruit?”
Nami’s eyes turned into Beli symbols.
In her cognition, Devil Fruit = massive amount of treasure······ Unfortunately, East Blue is the weakest sea, and it seems even Devil Fruits disdain this great sea. The probability of Devil Fruits appearing on this sea is particularly particularly small. In her thieving career, she had truly never obtained a Devil Fruit, only hearing numerous stories and legends about Devil Fruits from various sources.
From joining the Straw Hat Pirates onward, and later being abducted by His Highness Elus······ she had seen quite a few ability users, but this was truly her first time seeing a Devil Fruit.
“So cool!”
Luffy’s thought process was much simpler.
He didn’t associate it with money like Nami, nor did he think His Highness Elus’s move was particularly impressive; he just purely thought turning an apple into a Devil Fruit was super cool!
“How about it? Pretty cool, right?”
His Highness Elus smugly shook the Devil Fruit in his hand.
He reached into the refrigerator again and took out a chilled apple, closed his eyes, silently mobilized the Hogyoku’s power, and injected the power of the Float-Float Fruit, which had already been pre-analyzed, into the apple, performing the creation of a Devil Fruit once more.
Luffy exclaimed in amazement again.
Nami quickly calculated in her mind how many Beli two Devil Fruits could sell for at most.
The Float-Float Fruit was casually placed by His Highness Elus on the table.
He took the Rumble-Rumble Fruit and bit into it.
Lately, he was too lazy to bother with those heavy-flavored foods to mask the Devil Fruit’s utterly awful taste. After eating them so many times, he wasn’t quite used to it, but his tolerance had clearly improved a lot. At the very least, he didn’t dry heave; his facial muscles just twitched uncontrollably a bit.
This taste is really intense!
But enduring it passed quickly. His Highness Elus tried to shift his attention to the power of the new Devil Fruit.
“Kara!!!”
Thunder rumbled across the sky.
His Highness Elus turned into thunder and shuttled through the sky. This was a flight experience completely different from using wings or the Float-Float Fruit’s power. With a thought, his body dispersed into thunder, and a wonderful feeling of omnipresence fed back into his heart.
In this state, he didn’t lose perception of the outside world; vision, hearing, smell······ all were operating normally.
He reverted to human form, floating in the air, looking at Luffy on the deck, and pointed with one hand,
“Thunder Bird!”
Brilliant thunder bloomed at his fingertip, and a gorgeous and ferocious giant Thunder Bird sped toward Luffy. This strike was useless against the lightning-immune Rubber Human, but it successfully damaged the Ark Maxim to some extent, putting another hole in the deck.
His Highness Elus didn’t care much about this.
If it were before, he might have been quite interested in a flying warship like this, but with the Float-Float Fruit ability, he could mass-produce large numbers of flying warships. The Ark Maxim’s value probably lay in the massive gold on board and the 200 extinct Wind-Pressure Shells.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
Luffy climbed out from the hole and shouted angrily at His Highness Elus flying in the air.
“Giving you a chance to challenge me, how about it? Want to try sparring with me?”
His Highness Elus asked with a smile.
Life’s journey is constantly changing; past beliefs and persistence may not adapt to future changes. His Highness Elus once painstakingly operated to try replacing the Celestial Dragons, but he hadn’t expected to gather so many Devil Fruit powers in one body.
This earth-shattering change made some past plans lose their original importance.
For example, he hadn’t inquired about Caesar and Miss Buckin’s experiment progress for a long time. Those things were nice if they could be made, but if not······ it wouldn’t matter much. His own continuously growing power was the most reliable.
“Challenge? Sounds fun! Of course I won’t miss it. Get ready! I’m coming at you!” Luffy’s interest was easily piqued. Not fighting His Highness Elus in Alabasta was quite regrettable for him, so now that there was a chance, he naturally wouldn’t miss it.
Even Nami, who was extremely worried in her heart, said nothing at this time and quietly sat aside to watch the battle.
“Rubber Jet Beast Strictness Pistol.”
Luffy in Gear Second state used ‘Soru’ to shift in front of His Highness Elus, and smashed a fist viciously toward His Highness Elus’s head.
“Not fast enough!”
His Highness Elus’s head split open.
It split open in the physical sense; his head actively elementalized to dodge Luffy’s fist. This move was indeed useful. Unlike hard-blocking with Armament Haki, as long as he seized the timing, he could dodge enemy attacks with minimal consumption.
“Rubber Jet Gatling.”
Luffy missed one move but didn’t get discouraged, switching moves to continue the frenzy attack.
His Highness Elus was happy to use this opportunity to test active elementalization. Luffy’s storm of fists creating afterimages made for quite a good training dummy.
“Too slow, too slow, speed up more, or you won’t even touch my hem! With your current level, you’re still far from becoming Pirate King!” His Highness Elus taunted to stimulate Luffy, then noticed the fist attack speed really had a slight but steady increase.
Luffy’s learning ability was indeed astonishingly strong.
This point,
His Highness Elus confirmed once again firsthand.
His combat consciousness was also quite excellent, completely heaven and earth compared to that idiot Enel. In the battle with His Highness Elus, he maintained Gear Second mode throughout, never using Gear Third from start to finish. The so-called Gear Third was actually just a variant of Gear Second.
Sacrificing some speed for enhanced attack power.
Fine against that idiot Enel, but dreaming to defeat His Highness Elus with it. In Gear Second form, there was hope to touch His Highness Elus’s hem, but in Gear Third form, absolutely no chance, none at all.
However,
Gear Second state actually didn’t have much hope of touching His Highness Elus’s hem either; that gulf-like gap wasn’t so easily bridged. After practicing elementalization for a while, His Highness Elus had a grasp of the Rumble-Rumble Fruit’s characteristics and stopped testing further.
He waved his hand, and seven or eight chains shot out from his sleeve, clashing head-on with Luffy’s fists. The solid, cold-hard iron chains whipping the body hurt like no other.
Even a Rubber Human couldn’t ignore iron chains infused with Armament Haki; getting whipped by this thing hurt especially bad. At the very least, Luffy’s yowling proved its power.
“Chain-Chain Fruit, more useful than imagined.”
Among the many Devil Fruit abilities mastered so far, the Chain-Chain Fruit was probably the one he ate most casually. The other few Devil Fruits were carefully selected and obtained through all means, but compared to those other abilities, the Chain-Chain Fruit ability was one he used frequently.
Whether in combat or life.
The Chain-Chain Fruit ability was quite handy.
“Ouch ouch! Damn it, why does it hurt so much? It hurts just like Grandfather’s fists!!!”
Luffy shouted.
If it were being slashed by a knife, burned by fire, or frozen by ice, no matter how painful, it would be expected, but why did getting hit by iron chains hurt so much too? This pain truly baffled him.
“This is the power of Haki.”
His Highness Elus deliberately separated out one chain; the Armament Haki-infused chain shone with an unusual dark sheen. Clearly deep darkness, yet it had a bright, shimmering gloss. The chain flew in front of Luffy.
“Watch closely! This is Armament Haki.”
His Highness Elus thought for a moment and added: “Right, let me tell you something. Fire Fist Ace, your brother, spontaneously mastered Armament Haki in his battle with a Navy Vice Admiral······ I wonder what you can achieve?”
