章 478: 478. Peak Battle
Fueled by his anger, Imu's attacks become more powerful. It makes the fight more difficult for Buggy, but it also makes the fight more exciting. A battle maniac like Buggy surely loves it. The more difficult a battle, the more he loves it even if his chance of winning will get lower and his chance of dying increases.
With the fallen part of Red Line getting split in half and sunk into the ocean, both of them don't have any choice but to fight in the air. They have the flying ability now, so they don't have any problem fighting midair. It allows them to move more freely too.
Besides, any ground won't be able to hold their fight. Every clash of their battle will destroy the ground no matter how hard it is. If even the Red Line ground couldn't withstand the impact of their clash, then no other ground would be tough enough to withstand it.
Imu swipes his claws at Buggy's half-lightning dragon body. The sharp claws create sharp energy blades that cut Buggy's body into a few parts. But no blood appears because Buggy chops his body using his ability.
Buggy's arms also get chopped, but he doesn't retract them. He uses them to attack instead by launching his fists like rockets toward Imu. His fists fly at a very high speed with the boost of Enel's lightning that he borrows.
One fist is aimed at Imu's left face while the other is aimed at Imu's right waist. They are very fast, but Imu dodges them by making his body horizontal between both fists while spinning. He creates an attack while doing that by generating a black flame from his body.
The black flame spins rapidly, creating a horizontal black flame tornado that shoots at Buggy. It keeps getting bigger as it gets closer to Buggy who has reattached his body except for his hands. Seeing the incoming black flame tornado, Buggy doesn't retreat and takes a deep breath instead.
"Let's try this. LIGHTNING BOLO BREATH!"
Buggy shoots a small fire beam that has lightning bolts around it. He combines the dragon's breath with lightning to make it more powerful. Its size is small because he uses it in half-dragon form, but its power is by no means small.
The fire-lightning breath clashes with the black flame tornado. A massive explosion is created by the clash that destroys both attacks. The explosion hasn't even subsided, but Buggy and Imu have clashed again.
They dive into the explosion, dispersing it to deliver their attacks. Imu sends a powerful punch covered by black flame while Buggy sends a kick covered by lightning. Buggy's hands return when he sends his lightning kick, but he doesn't use them to attack because he is focusing his power on his kick.
Their attacks clash again, now creating a very powerful impact that pushes the seawater below them everywhere. A deep cavity is created in the sea as big waves spread in all directions. The Clown Pirates are controlling their ship that gets pushed by the waves and winds created by the impact.
They are forced to retreat even further to avoid their ship getting crushed by the battle. Buggy realizes this, so he leads the battle away from his crew. He goes to the part of Red Line that gets its upper part chopped in a V shape.
Imu knows his plan, but he still follows because it doesn't matter where they fight, he just wants to crush Buggy now. Besides, he also needs to land for a while to catch his breath. He has just exchanged a few moves with Buggy after going berserk, but those all are big moves that used a lot of his energy.
Both of them land on the cliff of the chopped Red Line on different sides. None of them make a move for a while as they stare at each other silently. Only sounds of violent waves can be heard there, making the atmosphere even more intense.
They don't stay like that for too long and start battling quickly. As they fly toward each other, Buggy swipes his right claws, creating 5 diagonal energy blades that fly toward the incoming Imu. The big Demon King also swipes his right hand, but in a spear shape.
An opposite diagonal energy blade made of black flame comes out of Imu's spear hand. It's very big compared to Buggy's energy blades, so it can hit all of them. They destroy each other, but Imu's attack actually pushes Buggy's attacks back a bit.
Both of them finally reach each other the moment their attacks get destroyed. Imu stabs his spear hand at Buggy's chest, but Buggy dodges it by chopping his chest to the cellular level, creating a hole in his chest where Imu's spear hand passes through.
Buggy tries to catch Imu's neck to rip it apart, but Imu moves back quickly to dodge it. He doesn't just move back though. Imu tries to catch Buggy's arm which almost catches his neck. He wants to burn Buggy's arm with his black flame, but Buggy transforms his arm into lightning.
Imu's black flame and Buggy's borrowed lightning hit each other and exploded. The explosion is big, but they don't seem to get affected as they start clashing again. Buggy's arm reforms immediately from lightning and he uses it to send a punch at Imu who shoots a black flame beam now.
Their attacks clash, and now Buggy is winning as his punch chops the black flame beam into small cubes. It forces Imu to fly higher to avoid the chopping that keeps moving after destroying his black flame beam. Imu is very wary of Buggy's chopping ability because he knows he'll lose when he gets chopped even though it doesn't even injure him.
Buggy then dashes toward Imu and sends a right leg kick coated with advanced haki at Imu's body. Imu blocks it with his left leg that's also coated with advanced haki before sending a left hook that he coats with advanced haki too which Buggy blocks with his advanced haki-coated left palm.
Both of them start to exchange advanced haki-coated punches and kicks. They don't dodge at all now and keep blocking each other's attacks. Advanced haki looks very easy to use for them as they keep using it to attack and defend. So even if their fists and kicks don't touch each other, the impacts caused by their clashes are very powerful.
Seeing them spamming advanced haki endlessly makes even someone like Palu who also masters advanced armament haki sigh. Even he won't dare to keep using advanced haki like them because the energy needed to use it like them is very high.
He would have run out of haki energy already a long time ago, especially if he uses as much power as them which obviously requires a lot more energy because their advanced haki attacks are very powerful. Only true monsters like Buggy and Imu have the energy to fight like this for so long without running out of power yet.
"How's things going?"
Cricket asks while lying on the floor weakly after having his devil fruit power transferred to Buggy temporarily. Both Enel and he can't move now because of it. This is the side-effect of having their devil fruit abilities borrowed from them as it's the same as their power being taken temporarily.
Well, if their devil fruit abilities are being taken forever, then they would die. Luckily, getting weakened until their abilities return is the only side-effect. There won't be any harm as long as their comrades can protect them when they can't do anything.
"It doesn't look good. Captain isn't losing, but he also doesn't have a clear advantage even after using this plan. It's hard to judge who'll win seeing how they fight so far."
Magnus replies to Cricket's question with a worried tone.
"No need to be worried. Just leave this to him as usual. He is someone who always goes against all odds and wins. Our Captain is someone who has done what even we thought to be impossible so many times. Besides, there's nothing we can do if he fails. So the only thing we need to do now is trusting him."
Palu says it without looking at them and only watches Buggy's battle. The others sigh because he is right. Even if things have gone too far that they thought it was impossible to solve, their Captain would always crush it as if showing nothing is impossible, things were just much harder than they thought.
So now they keep watching as Buggy exchanges powerful blows with Imu. They don't get weaker as time passes. Instead, their attacks become stronger, fiercer, and deadlier as their battle goes on. But none of them dodge those attacks and only block everything to show they aren't afraid of each other's attacks.
This happens for a while until eventually one of them finally gets hit. Buggy actually manages to fool Imu by detaching his right foot right before it gets in contact with Imu's arm which's supposed to block his kick. So Imu's arm doesn't block anything as Buggy's foot gets past it.
Buggy's kick hits Imu's left face really hard, sending him flying to the ground. Imu crashes onto the V-shaped cavity of the chopped part of Red Line. The ground where Imu crashes melts into lava, which softens his landing as it acts like a cushion.
"Damn tough bastard."
Buggy grumbles while holding his foot that kicked Imu just now. Its skin is burnt quite severely despite the advanced haki, dragon scales, and lightning power that protected it. He gets some damage, but it's worth the price of breaking a part of Imu's face.
Imu lost around a quarter of his left face. His left ear and the part of his face before his left eye have been chopped into cubes by Buggy's awakened devil fruit ability when he gets kicked in the face. The damage on Imu's face looks like a pixelated drawing because of it.
Both of them finally managed to injure each other quite severely for the first time. They haven't won yet, but they can see that each of them has gotten closer to their limits because they've finally made mistakes. This great battle of theirs is getting close to its end, but no one knows the victor yet.
________________________________________
You can read more chapters ahead of my fanfics and more pictures on my Pa_treon page if you are interested.
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I've uploaded Chapter 516. Oden's Test
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