signingbooks Chapter 698: I Need You
Chapter 698: I Need You
The golden divine power is like a scalding needle.
It pierced through the chest and into the limbs.
Luffy lay prone behind the ice rock, his face pressed against the ice shards.
Chen Yefen's solar god power flowed backward within his body.
Nika's torn veins were stitched up inch by inch.
pain.
Lava poured into the dried-up riverbed, and blood vessels spasmed between repair and burning.
He coughed violently.
Clotted blood gushed from deep in his throat, splattering onto the ice with a thud, turning a dark purple.
Nika's depleted life force.
If you don't cough it out, your life won't be ignited.
Luffy coughed seven or eight times in one breath.
With each cough, the golden light on his chest expanded outwards by a ring.
From the heart to the ribs.
From the ribs to the arms.
The finger moved.
My left little finger curled up slightly.
Then came the ring and middle fingers, and finally the entire hand gripped the hilt of the first divine weapon.
The knuckles are turning white.
The veins on the back of his hand bulged out.
The regained grip caused the sword to emit a low, metallic groan on the ice.
Luffy braced himself with his sword, his arm trembling violently, managing to lift his upper body a few inches off the ice.
The original divine weapon has reacted.
The cracked patterns on the sword were covered by a very thin layer of golden light.
The residual Apollo power of Chenye poured molten gold into the crack, re-bonding the nearly shattered sword.
White light shone through the golden light.
It's darker than before, but it's still there.
This force has its limits.
The golden light repaired the meridians and ignited the remaining white flames, but it couldn't replace Nika.
Someone built a bridge for him.
The bridge ends at a cliff.
You have to rely on your own legs to jump over it.
The sky above the ice rocks exploded.
Chenye's massive golden-black body blocked Leviathan's path as it attacked Luffy, its left hand blocking Leviathan's right claw.
Five fingers clenched into the gaps between the scales.
The dark gold aura and the crimson gold divine flames exploded simultaneously, and the claw strike, which was not enough to split the iceberg, was forcibly stopped in mid-air.
Leviathan's left claw swept across.
Chen Ye released his right hand, palm facing upwards, and a ball of crimson-gold divine flame slammed directly into Leviathan's gaping maw.
Flames exploded inside the giant maw.
Leviathan was forced to tilt its head back, and black smoke mixed with golden sparks spewed from its throat.
Chen Ye didn't turn around to look at Luffy.
His voice cut through the storm, overpowering the noise of the ice shattering, and poured directly into Luffy's ears.
"Kid, recover quickly."
Six characters.
Battlefield information.
I'll shield you from it.
I can't hold out for long.
Leviathan recovered from the bombardment of golden flames, faster than Chen Ye had anticipated.
The dark gold patterns on the surface of the scales suddenly reversed direction, and the crimson gold divine flames that had blasted into the mouth were absorbed by the patterns, turning into harmless streams of light that dispersed into the tail.
Leviathan pressed forward, its massive maw opening once more.
The target wasn't Chen Ye's front, but his shoulders and neck.
That bite could tear apart a god's physical body.
Chen Ye did not dodge.
He allowed Levi to absorb some of the golden flames, deliberately letting the divine flames linger on his body for an extra half breath.
Just as Leviathan's massive jaws were about to close, Erebus darkness surged from his shoulder, not directly blocking the attack, but instead wrapping around Leviathan's jaw.
The darkness solidified into several thick chains.
One end was driven into the ice field, while the other end was tightly wrapped around the jaw joints on both sides of the giant mouth.
Leviathan's mouth was forcibly pulled shut.
Dark breaths muffled into a low rumble within the closed mouth, and the beast's throat trembled with rage.
Taking advantage of this brief moment of respite, Chen Ye pushed Leviathan's head to the side.
Turn it back to face itself.
Turning his back to Luffy.
"I want to completely eliminate this guy in front of me."
Chen Ye suppressed Leviathan's attack, and the golden-black behemoth and the dark-scaled beast clashed head-on at an altitude of ten thousand meters, their scales rubbing against divine flames and bursting out dazzling white spots.
His voice came a second time.
It is lower and clearer.
"We need you."
Luffy heard it.
He stopped shaking as he supported himself with the first-generation divine weapon.
Golden divine power had spread from his chest to his fingertips, and the remaining white flames were flowing again in his meridians.
A thin, resilient flame.
Just enough.
He grinned.
My lips were covered in blood, and my gums tasted of rust.
But the curve of that smile was exactly the same as every smile he had made on Fishman Island, Dressrosa, and Wano Country.
"Wait for me."
The original divine weapon responded.
The white light on the sword went from dim to bright in just half a breath, and white flames climbed from the base of the hilt to the spine of the sword, spreading all the way to the tip of the sword along the forging patterns from eight hundred years ago.
The sword rang out clearly and melodiously.
The deafening roar of divine battle pierced through the air overhead, blasting out a ring of fine ice crystals behind the ice rock.
Luffy stood up.
My legs are trembling.
The synovial fluid in my knee was frozen, and every degree of straightening was accompanied by dull pain.
But he did manage to stand still.
The first-generation divine weapon was inserted diagonally to his side, its tip pointing backward, with white flames dancing on the blade, illuminating the ice surface half a meter below his feet.
Zoro stood guard ten meters in front of the ice rock.
He kept his hand on the hilt of the Wado Ichimonji sword, his gaze shifting back and forth between Luffy and the sky.
Seeing Luffy stand up, he loosened his grip halfway.
The time allotted for predicting when to draw the knife has been increased from 0.1 seconds to 0.3 seconds.
The remaining force was used to guard the surroundings.
Chopper peeked out from behind Zoro, his hooves clutching bandages and medicine, his eyes rapidly switching between Luffy's injury and the Tatsumi in the sky, his mouth opening and closing repeatedly.
"Don't come any closer."
Zoro didn't turn around, and his voice was very low.
"Luffy cannot be touched by anyone right now."
Divine power is connecting with him.
Any external intervention, even a shot of adrenaline from Chopper, would disrupt the rhythm.
Chopper understood.
He gritted his teeth, put the medicine back into his medical kit, and turned to run towards the pile of wounded soldiers behind the ice rock.
There lay a dozen or so Allied soldiers whose ribs had been shattered by the aftershocks of the darkness, their blood staining the ice a dark red.
Chopper crouched down, his hooves quickly and precisely stopping the bleeding and bandaging the wounded. His eyes were red, but he didn't turn around.
He and Zoro, in their own ways, turned the thirty meters beneath Luffy's feet into the only quiet zone in the center of the battlefield.
Beckman stood on the ice ridge further away.
The cigarette burned the filter, but he didn't flick it off.
His Observation Haki spread out like an intricate net, capturing every change in the atmosphere on the battlefield.
Luffy's aura is returning.
It's not a straight line, it's a fluctuating curve.
Each fluctuation represents a collision between golden light and white flames.
But the overall trend is upward.
This is enough.
Beckman stubbed out his cigarette.
His voice wasn't loud, but it reached precisely the ears of every commander in the allied ranks who could still move.
"Concentrate ranged fire to suppress the remaining Knights of God, and do not disperse. Giants are responsible for transporting the seriously wounded to the southern coast. Marcozabo guards both sides of the retreat route."
He paused for a moment.
"The aftershocks of Leviathan could reach the second line at any time. Everyone should remain on the move and avoid gathering in groups."
Marco transformed into a blue flame arc in mid-air, landing atop an ice pillar on the left side of the retreat passage. His arms spread out, transforming into phoenix wings, and blue flames covered the entire passage.
Sabo stood on the right, the flames on his fists still burning, an iron pipe slung over his shoulder, his gaze sweeping across the entrance to the passage.
The coalition forces began to move.
It wasn't a rout; it was an organized transfer.
Giant warriors carried the wounded in pairs, while the remaining naval soldiers, under the command of their officers, regrouped. Long-range crossbow bolts and cannonballs rained down on the hiding place of the remnants of the Knights of God, pinning them down and preventing them from raising their heads.
At the edge of the ice pit, Garin Sheng crawled out of the pile of rubble.
His breastplate was dented, his left arm hung at an abnormal angle, and his face was covered with ice shards and dried blood.
But he was still smiling.
The Celestial Dragons' characteristic arrogant, condescending laughter.
Then he saw the sky.
Chenye's massive golden-black body pressed down on Leviathan head-on.
Two colossal figures, each a hundred meters tall, clashed and tore at each other against the gray sky, the aftershocks swirling the clouds into a vortex.
Behind the ice and rocks, Luffy stood up, supporting himself with the first generation of divine weapons.
The white flames on the sword shone brightly against the dim ice field.
Garin Sei's smile froze.
The curve of her lips remained, but the light in her eyes had faded.
He saw Luffy stand up.
Zoro was seen holding the line.
They saw the allied forces regroup.
All the pieces he thought had collapsed were returning to their places.
"Attack that recovery point."
Garin Sei's voice became shrill.
"Concentrate all remaining forces and charge!"
He didn't finish his sentence.
Sabo's fiery fist slammed in from the flank, burning through the defenses of the four swordsmen in the front row of the God's Knights. Flames seeped in along the gaps in the armor, turning the dark gold armor into a red-hot iron shell.
All four people fell to the ground at the same time, rolling around and screaming in agony.
The two knights' spearmen who were flanking the ice pillar had just gone around when Marco kicked them away with his blue flames.
The blue flames poured into the gaps in the faceplates without warning, sending the two flying more than ten meters before crashing into a pile of broken ice, never to rise again.
Garin's remnant army's attack plan was nipped in the bud the moment it was launched.
Sabo withdrew his fist, slung the iron pipe back over his shoulder, and coldly glanced in the direction of Garin.
"You don't have enough soldiers."
Garin Sheng clenched his fist, his nails digging into his palm.
He did not issue any further orders.
In the sky, the dark gold patterns on Leviathan began to become disordered.
It wasn't because of an injury.
It is fear.
The sophisticated machine, which had been running for eight hundred years, began to show visible signs of malfunction.
Leviathan's giant eye locked onto Chenye and Luffy back and forth.
It cannot process two sources of the sun god's aura simultaneously.
Chenye's golden flames were tearing through its defenses head-on.
Luffy's white flames reformed behind him.
The texture system attempts to address both issues simultaneously, but it fails to do so effectively.
Im's voice came from deep within the Levi missile, and for the first time, he was no longer composed.
"...That's enough."
This will that has ruled the world for eight hundred years has made a decision it has never made before.
Abandon precision hunting.
Switch to coverage-based attacks.
All the dark energy within Leviathan began to converge towards the bony fin on its back.
The texture no longer processes external forces; instead, it focuses entirely on internal compression.
The bony fins turned from dark gold to jet black, and the metallic scales emitted a sharp squeaking sound as the energy expanded.
The target is not Chen Ye.
It's not Luffy either.
Im prepared to release all the darkness that had accumulated in his bone fins at once.
They swallowed Chenye and Luffy simultaneously using a circular enveloping method.
Along with the ice field spanning several miles between them, it was crushed into nothingness.
Chenye's Observation Haki accurately captured the energy-gathering rhythm of the bone fin.
The darkness was compressing at an unprecedented speed, with a density far exceeding any previous instance.
This is not a thorn.
It's a blanket.
Im sacrificed precision for range, aiming to include the entire battlefield within its destruction radius.
The white flames on the first-generation divine weapon sword suddenly jumped.
Some more primal instinct triggered the alarm.
Luffy looked down at his sword, then looked up at the sky, his pupils suddenly contracting.
Leviathan's bony fins were so black that the bottom could not be seen.
Im stopped speaking.
No mockery.
No waiting.
For the first time in eight hundred years, it chose the most reckless approach.
The precursors to a sweeping impact have been suppressed.
The ice field was trembling.
The air is contracting.
Even the retreating Allied forces in the distance were slowed down by the gravitational pull generated by that accumulating force.
Chen Ye and Luffy were hundreds of meters apart, yet they both received the same signal at the same time.
Im is about to flip the table.