Their gazes collided across the distance, Haki clashing!
Just as this ultimate confrontation reached its peak, an anomaly suddenly occurred!
“Buzz!!” Centered around Gern, the ground for a thousand meters began to vibrate at a high frequency.
All the ice mirrors shattered simultaneously, and Kuzan's true body vanished in the broken ice.
“I found you!” Gern's eyes snapped open, his crimson pupils locking onto the front-left.
He crouched and sprinted, each step creating spiderweb-like cracks.
His right fist was drawn back to his waist, Armament Haki coiling around it like liquid.
“Black Tremor - Instant Hell Hundred Strikes!”
His punch was like a dragon!
Within one-hundredth of a second, he unleashed over a hundred shockwave punch-shadows, each one tearing through the air, causing space to collapse and form a vacuum tunnel.
Kuzan's pupils constricted violently, and he crossed his arms, using Armament Haki to resist.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!” He was sent reeling backward, his feet plowing two deep furrows in the ground.
Sparks from the Armament Haki collision erupted like fireworks, and freezing air intertwined with shockwaves to form a destructive storm.
“Ugh!” Kuzan roared, unleashing his freezing air with all his might.
“Eternal Freeze - Zero Domain!” The absolute zero domain expanded!
Gern's punching speed visibly slowed, the vibration particles suppressed by the extreme low temperature.
Frost climbed his limbs, attempting to completely solidify his blood.
“I’ve said it many times…” Gern sneered, his Haoshoku electrical arcs erupting completely.
“This level can’t freeze me at all!!!” He forcibly shattered his restraints, his left fist striking out at a speed beyond visual perception.
“Black Tremor - Godfall Nail!!!” The force of the punch pierced through the battlefield!
Kuzan's absolute zero domain was forcibly torn open, and he was sent flying hundreds of meters, crashing through three icebergs before finally stopping.
In the dust, Kuzan knelt on one knee, his icy body covered in cracks. “If it’s just like this…”
He took a breath, then let out a low chuckle: “You can’t defeat me!”
“Is that so?” The temperature around Gern began to boil.
The pale shockwaves suddenly became extremely unstable, and the intense friction caused by high-frequency vibrations began to distort and heat the surrounding air.
“In that case…” As he finished speaking, the originally pale, dazzling air-shattering cracks instantly transformed into scorching orange-red, spreading wildly through the surrounding space!
“Kuzan… can your freezing air seal the rage of vibration?!” Gern roared, his voice carrying a tearing echo due to the high-frequency vibrations.
This was no longer simple vibration.
Gern had directly elevated the vibration frequency to a mad, even self-destructive, realm.
The extreme friction generated terrifying high temperatures capable of melting everything!
Wherever the orange-red shockwaves passed, the ice plain beneath his feet wasn't shattered, but instantly vaporized into huge hollows, releasing steaming hot white mist.
The chill in the air was violently dispelled, replaced by a scorching heat that burned the lungs.
Kuzan's expression became utterly serious; he felt that utterly different, destructive energy, as if it would incinerate everything.
It was very similar to that guy he disliked so much!
“It’s turned into a temperature I dislike, Gern.”
“This battle should end!” Gern was no longer content with long-range bombardment; he stomped, shattering the now vitrified ground beneath his feet, and transformed into a human-shaped shockwave, charging towards Kuzan!
Kuzan's eyes were icy cold; he shook his arms, and instantly, hundreds of rotating prismatic ice shields, each several meters thick, condensed in front of him!
“Useless!” Gern didn't dodge or evade, his right fist, wreathed in destructive energy, struck straight out.
The prismatic ice shields exploded one after another, unable to stop him for even a moment!
The instant the last ice shield burst, Kuzan had already leaped up, avoiding Gern's charge while pressing his hands downwards: “Ice Age - Coffin!”
A giant ice coffin, formed from absolute zero cold, layer by layer sealed Gern within!
“Can you trap me?!” Gern’s furious roar came from within the ice coffin.
The ice coffin instantly became covered in orange-red cracks, then exploded with a bang!
Kuzan's pupils contracted; as the light dissipated, Gern burst through the center of the explosion, steam swirling around him.
But his speed was clearly delayed for an instant, and the orange-red shockwaves on his body also dimmed somewhat.
Continuous combat and maintaining high-frequency vibrations had consumed a massive amount of his stamina, and Kuzan was in the same state now.
So, at that very moment, when old strength was exhausted and new strength had not yet emerged!
Kuzan's figure, like a ghost using the refraction of ice crystals, appeared in Gern's blind spot!
“Touch of Eternity!” Kuzan’s cold voice rang out; this touch sought only…
An eternal ice seal with one strike!
Gern's Observation Haki gave a warning, and he forcibly twisted his body!
This prevented Kuzan's hand from touching his chest, landing instead on his left shoulder!
In an instant, extreme freezing air instantly invaded, attempting to completely freeze him from the inside!
And Gern, at the cost of taking a direct hit from Kuzan, gained an opportunity for close combat!
“Got you!” Gern’s left hand was like a burning branding iron, his five fingers splayed, no longer wrapped in pale or orange-red vibration particles!
“Were you intentional?” Kuzan's pupils vibrated, his elementalization instinct activated, but it was too late!
“The consumption of stamina will surely cause both you and me to lose momentary thought and rely on instinct.
You only wanted to touch me, like a beast locking onto its prey, regardless of where its fangs landed.
But the target in my mind has always been just one!”
As he finished speaking, Gern ignored the ice crystals spreading from his shoulder to his chest, and pressed his hand firmly onto Kuzan's chest.
“Shockflame - Core Blast!”
There was no earth-shattering roar to begin with, only a muffled hum like a heartbeat.
Gern's palm seemed to become a black hole, forcefully injecting ultra-high frequency vibrational energy, without reservation, directly into Kuzan's elementalized body!
Kuzan's body suddenly stiffened, his pupils instantly filled with the orange-red light emanating from within.
Time seemed to be frozen for three seconds, or perhaps only an instant passed.
“Crack… crunch…” The grating sound of shattering did not come from outside, but erupted from the deepest part of Kuzan's body!
Countless orange-red cracks, like lava veins, spread and proliferated wildly across his ice-crystallized body, originating from Gern's palm, covering his entire body in the blink of an eye!
He seemed to have transformed into a glass vessel on the verge of shattering, yet inside, the power of an erupting volcano surged!
The light was too intense to look at directly, and the terrifying high temperature even began to vaporize Kuzan's own freezing air!
The next second—
“Boom!!!!!!!!!!”
The ultimate explosion, from the inside out, completely erupted!
A sphere of orange-red destructive light rapidly expanded, instantly engulfing both figures.
What followed was not a shockwave, but a circle of silently spreading pure white shockwaves; wherever they passed, all matter was instantly vibrated into its most primitive particles.
Then came the terrifying, ear-splitting roar, and the pillar of lava-colored energy that shot into the sky!
The entire island let out a groan of unbearable strain under this final strike; huge fissures ran through the earth's crust, as if to drag everything into the abyss!
The light gradually faded, and dust (or perhaps not even dust remained) slowly settled…
At the center of the explosion, a giant crater nearly a thousand meters in diameter was bottomless, its edges glowing with hot, vitrified crystals.
Gern knelt on one knee at the edge of the crater, his entire left arm hanging limply, charred and emitting wisps of white smoke, clearly having paid a huge price.
On the other side, there, Kuzan stood his ground.
Blood continuously spilled from the corner of his mouth and dripped onto the ground, but was immediately vaporized by the residual high temperature, making a “hissing” sound.
“It really is…” He raised a hand to wipe away the blood, then looked up at Gern and smiled.
“I’ve been turned into 'Wang Wang Crushed Ice' by you.” Before he finished speaking, Kuzan’s hand, which was pressing against his chest, finally slipped away powerlessly.
“Thud!” His tall body heavily tilted forward, crashing onto the scorching, vitrified ground, and the terrifying lava cracks on his body gradually extinguished.
Finally, they completely turned into charred marks, and his ice crystal body no longer reformed.
This meant that the ability user himself had completely lost consciousness.
Gern looked at the fallen Kuzan, his violently heaving chest slowly calming.
Then, dragging his heavily injured body, he walked step by step to Kuzan's side, then lay directly beside him, chuckling softly.
“It seems…”
“Today, my ‘vibration’…
Slightly surpassed your ‘freezing,’ Kuzan.”