Chapter 478: Peak Battle

Chapter 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.

"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.

Voting for this book is highly appreciate. Cover image is the MC, artist's ig: @fatmaqn_

I've uploaded Chapter 516. Oden's Test

- Pictures of both stories (ex: bounty poster & magazine cover) by /CaptMermain

(the web didn't use _underscore_, it's to avoid censorship)