Bab 62: Fred vs Lerna (Part 1)
Many of the things that had happened in that forest couldn't be explained simply with an absurdly good preparation.
The giant rocks that fell from the sky, the endless hordes of beasts and insects whose species, quality and quantity didn't fit at all in that forest, , the fact that the corpses of the beasts disappeared and were replaced by a combustible and above all the sudden appearance of a giant pit with tons of fuel at the bottom in a place where he had recently passed...
All these unusual events could only be explained by one thing
Akuma No Mi!
Everything indicated that Fred had been using the powers of the Akuma No Mi that he had been trying to sell until now, something that infuriated him as his suspicions grew and that they exploded once he saw the last pit, where all his doubts disappeared
But now wasn't the time to rage about something that had no solution, his biggest concern now was to know...
"What powers did you get from eating it? Is it a Paramecia?" Mr. Lerna asked Fred as he killed analyzed him, specifically the place where his left arm should be, which to his satisfaction had been amputated
But obviously Fred wasn't stupid enough to reveal the characteristics of his new power to let his enemy use that information against him.
Instead, Fred tried to use this opportunity to get information from his rival. "Maybe I'll answer your questions when you explain to me what a New World big shot is doing posing as a two-bit pirate in the West Blue... Lerna [The Hydra]"
Information that for some weird physic law in the manga/anime worlds, until now all his enemies had given him for free.
Although many times, like Lerna, speaking in a somewhat vague way "Big shot... New World... I'm not a big shot and I don't want to go near that place again...
And if it wasn't for the fact that I must and want to kill you, I would even give you the same advice, brat who thinks he's someone important and powerful"
"I see..." Fred asked, intuiting his story with a somewhat sadistic mocking twist "You wanted to became the next Gold D. Roger but you were beaten up in the New World and after being defeated you ran here with your tail between your legs, shaved your head out of shame and hide your face with an iron mask to avoid being a laughingstock
Have I come close?"
"Ha... you've come close..." Lerna replied with an impeccable nervous laugh "I thought I was a monster with the ability to kill even a Yonkou... until I met a true monster that made me understand reality
I wasn't qualified to take on a Yonkou...I couldn't even take on one of his men...King [The Conflagration] of the Beast Pirates beat me in a humiliating way..."
"I see... It makes sense, that guy is not only a monster, but also your perfect counter, fluking Lunarians and their super powers" Fred answered while looking disgusted at his heads without any injuries... and with satisfaction at the multiple wounds and burns he had inflicted on his reptiloid body with his tactics
"Yes... he is..." Lerna replied, very surprised to see that this kid had such confidential information. He was so surprised that confessed everything he thought without censoring anything "My perfect counter...
My spear couldn't hurt him, my fangs couldn't poison him, his strength was far superior to mine, I was unable to reach him when he flew and his fire...
His damn fire cauterized the wounds on my heads, preventing them from healing...
Yes... the same fire that you tried to use against me in the forest… I've realized... I'm not an idiot and I know you aren't either... Let's stop pretending we haven't noticed... "
Lerna was forced to pause his explanation to take a long deep breath after confessing one of his weaknesses... to immediately relive the day he felt weaker in his life
"...The bastard captured and tortured me, but I managed to fake my own death and escape
After that I hid my identity in case they came after me and I tried to earn money in the most discreet way possible to retire with honors and never be a pirate again...
Something I could have done in few days if it wasn't for you! FREDERICK FREED!" Lerna yelled hatefully, pointing his long spear at Fred as he ripped off his head in succession to grow even more heads into his hybrid form.
A very credible threat that came from a dangerous pirate user of a fearsome Akuma No Mi and that gave off an immense thirst for blood towards Fred, the guy who had just ruined his life again
However, to Fred that threat...
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
Made him laugh...
"Ha... Hahahahahaha!!! So at your first setback you gave up on your ambitious and complicated dream... and chose the easy and comfortable way out of the golden retirement in a remote place where no one would recognize or bother you...
Pff... Hahahahahaha!!!" Fred laughed out loud, so much so that he even cried a little
But that mocking laugh didn't cause anger in the already angry Lerna, rather it made him feel sorry to see part of his old self reflected in that teenager whom he hated with all his soul "Laugh all you want...
You will understand this once you grow up... although you won't have that privilege...
You will die for and being an idiot brat who overestimated his abilities and underestimated the world he lives in."
"No... I'm not laughing about that... I'm just laughing... because now I have more reasons not to lose against you..." Fred replied cockily just before...
Crash!
"WHAT THE HELL"
Lerna, who didn't even move, fell into another deep pit! An extremely wide pit.
So much so that he couldn't grab the walls to break his fall, although it wouldn't be long before his back made contact with something solid.
A weird solid that unfortunately he knew very well.
"FUCK NO! ANTS AGAIN! NOOO!!!" Mr. Lerna yelled desperately as he ran as best he could through living and deadly quicksand to cling to the wall
Once again the bottom of that pit was full of killer ants that tried to get into all the holes in his body to eat him from the inside out and against that he only had one alternative.
Climb up and run away as fast as he can!
"Not this time..." Said Fred, who in front of the edge of the pit watched as Lerna climbed just below him.
However, Fred didn't just watch as the hydra climbed!
Right below his feet he made a green light appear that quickly spread all over the wall that Lerna was climbing right now. And before he could realize it, part of that wall made up of dirt and rocks turned into viscous and slippery oil.
"WHAT!?" Lerna yelled in astonishment as he fell on top of the killer ants that had climbed over each other to follow him.
And together with her sisters who had also been climbing the wall or waiting their turn, they completely covered Lerna's body again in less than a second to have a feast.
And while Lerna was trying to get rid of that plague, Fred was running around the edges of that hole at high speed while taunting him "Thank you for giving me time to prepare this…
Be suspicious when someone asks you about your unnecessary backstory!"
The only reason Lerna dragged out her conversation so much Fred wasn't because he needed to socialize or empathize with his enemy, he needed a little time to catch his breath before the final battle. But now very offended, he understood that he wasn't the only one with ulterior motives when it came to wasting time with partially useless speeches with his enemy.
Fred had used that same time to dig this hellish hole right under him with the powers he had obtained from his Akuma No Mi. Powers that he was now using as he ran to turn the rest of the walls of the hole into oil to make it even more difficult to climb
'What is this?
Is he turning the earth into oil wherever he steps?
Is this the power of your fruit?
Transform things into others?
Has he created the beasts in this way too?' Lerna thought, covered in killer ants trying desperately and without much success to climb the slippery walls of the trap where he had fallen...
Until another unusual event made him stop for a moment.
"Nani?!"
All the ants that had been harassing him and on which he had been walking and swimming suddenly disappeared and were replaced by oil instead. The same oil that prevented him from climbing and that had spread the fire through the forest
"OH NO!!!" Lerna exclaimed after having a horrible premonition
A premonition that became an absolute certainty when he looked up and saw how Fred dropped several torches into that death trap.
FRRJJJJJ!!!
A death trap that quickly burned with virulence. And within it also Lerna, who was unable to detach himself from those flames that began to consume his body
"AAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
AAAAHGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!"
No matter what he did, everything around him was on fire and his body, both inside and out, was filled with burning flammable oil that he couldn't get rid of. No matter how hard he tried, climbing was still just as difficult as before, but much more painful because the walls were also on fire
It looked like he was destined to burn to death!
Besides, Fred seemed to be willing to kill him like that.
"Fire purifies and... I am one of those who tends to add more… wood… to the fire"
In coordination with those words, Fred threw a large amount of sand into the pit with his right hand and suddenly each of those grains of sand almost instantly turned into tree trunks and bushes, which further fed the flames and began to bury Lerna alive
"AAAAAAAGAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
DAMN YOU!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
FUCKING BASTARD! Y CURSE YOOOUUUU!!!!
KIAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
However, Fred turned a deaf ear to those insults and cries of pain and continued throwing sand that would later become trees and bushes to continue burying Lerna and further fueling the flames.
In this way Fred gradually, being very careful not to suffocate the flames, was throwing vegetable fuel into the fire until the flame rose several meters above the ground, the embers completely covered the hole and was impossible to hear Lerna's cries of pain...
"And this is the way Heracles defeated the Lernaean Hydra, with wood and fire…
In a radically different way, but more or less with the same means..." Fred said to himself as he stared into the fire and embers wondering if it was a good time to have a barbecue
Despite being quite exhausted and confident that Lerna had been scorched to death, Fred didn't dare to declare victory yet, especially after what happened to his arm. These events made him reassume his paranoid and extremely negative mentality and for this reason, as a good One Piece fan, he didn't believe about the death of any character within that universe until he saw his death certificate.
Not even with the death of an unofficial pirate like Lerna!
However...
The seconds passed and the embers and the fire didn't seem to be disturbed by any movement.
At this point it very seemed unlikely that there would be anyone alive buried down there.
So unlikely that Fred almost began to relax and seriously think about having a barbecue right now...
"What the…"
Or that would have happened if it weren't for the fact that his acute senses noticed something!
Something that seemed to move inside the earth several meters away from the biggest bonfire he had made in his life
Something that in a few seconds like a mole emerged from the surface…
"FREDERICK FREACKKKKKKKKK!!!"
And that something was the screaming, angry and scorched Lerna, who finding himself unable to climb the hole covered in boiling oil and clogged by incandescent trees tried to use another method to escape
He used all his snake heads to tunnel to a minimally cold area through which to exit, something he managed to do in time before being crushed to death by the trees, burned to death by the flames or by or carbon monoxide poisoning
"Do Zoan users never die!?
FUCKING ZOMBIES!
YOU'RE FUCKING HATEFUL!!!" Fred yelled, unable to believe that guy was able to survive his hellish burial.
Their heads were in perfect condition, without any type of burn or injury, since once they were cut they always regenerated in perfect condition.
And his body...
There was no longer a trace of the injuries he had sustained from the beasts and from falling into the countless traps in the forest.
But because they had been completely burned!
There wasn't an inch of skin or scale below his neck that hadn't been completely burned away, a burn that hadn't been merely superficial. The flames had burned quite deep in many areas, completely deforming them, reducing their volume and creating horrible asymmetries between the different hemispheres of his body
Fred couldn't believe that someone with a body in that state could still be alive! However, he quickly remembered that he was in the world of One Piece, where people hit by the explosion of an almost atomic bomb (Pell) were able to survive and his disbelief dissipated.
PLASH!
After putting his thoughts in order again, Fred accelerated with all his might towards Lerna's grotesque body to deliver the final blow with his sword, specifically to his body and more specifically to his heart, an extremely important organ that he wouldn't be able to regenerate as their heads
Besides, in the condition his body was in, no matter how much of a One Piece character he was, he shouldn't even be able to move, let alone be able to fight.
Now his only concern was the serpentine heads!
PLAM! CRASH! PLOS!!
Heads that stretched out to absurd limits to bite him with their poisonous fangs.
Fangs that the only thing they managed to bite was the ground!
They were unable to follow the absurd speed of Fred, who constantly changed direction to avoid the attacks, but without changing the target in the slightest.
The heart of Lerna!
SLASH!!!
A heart that he couldn't pierce with the ease he thought...
"Nani!?"
Before delivering his final blow, multiple Lerna heads wrapped around his body, creating a quite resistant multi-layered meat shield capable of regenerating extremely quickly that prevented Fred from delivering the coup de grace
'Shit!'
Although Fred managed to cut through several layers of that great meat shield with his right arm. There was simply too much meat between him and Lerna's heart, a distance that he couldn't overcome with a simple blow of the sword, especially when he could only use one arm.
"Do you think you're the first bastard who discovers that my body is my weak point?
DO YOU THINK I HAVEN'T CREATED COUNTERMEASURES" Screamed multiple heads of Lerna as they lunged at Fred to end his life as other heads renewed the shield of flesh around his body.
'Fuck...
This battle will be more fucked up than I thought'
And when he saw that mass of giant snakes coming at him from practically every direction, without more traps to use Fred had no choice but to back off.
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!
And while Fred backed up, wherever he stepped, in less than a second huge trees would appear that minimally stop the advance of the heads until he managed to stay out of their long range, where he began to rethink his strategy.
'It's best not to get too close for now...
His body can barely move... therefore I just have to keep my distance from those heads while I set up another trap to cook him completely...
Let's see... I should set up extra traps around in case he digs again and...'
But before Fred could complete that mental scheme, Lerna made his move.
In his giant hybrid form dozens of heads began to coil around his body until it was impossible to see even an inch of Lerna's charred skin. Lerna seemed to have become a terrifying and grotesque Lovecraftian anthropomorphic monster made up solely and exclusively of snakes.
"But what..."
And the most terrifying thing is that this mass of snakes surrounding the scorched body began to advance at a high speed! All those heads manipulated his injured and almost immobile body like a puppet to advance towards Fred!
'Fuck...
It's disgusting... more fucked up than I thought and...' Fred thought resignedly as he got used to the idea that it would be impossible to avoid direct combat 'Change of strategy... '
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!
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pa-treon.com/user?u=83938371
PERTIMBANGAN PENCIPTA 
Meralman
Meralman Second part in few days
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