A Nightmare's Shadow

**Date Started:** December 18th, 2021
**Date Completed:** Ongoing
**Previous Role-Play:** N/A
**Users Involved:** User:KontonMan, User:Lemasters30
**Setting:** Wolf Den, New World, 1580
**Characters Involved**:
**Purgatory Pirate Alliance:** Maurier Harlan, Pars Luna, Umori Kenshiro, Charlotte Kiwi \*
**Cofresi Pirates:** Cofresi D. Roberts, Trent, Honoji, Belial, Undead
**Other:** Daiki Sekiro \*

## Winter

**December 18th, 1580**
It had been a week of non-stop sailing, leaving the heat of Al-Shams’s desert, and his fiery encounter with a passionate Bakura Kaien behind. The Cofresi Pirates had returned to the sea of origin of both Trent and Roberts, the dangerous New World. About two years prior, the rookie crew decided that their cruise in Paradise was enough of a warmup for their true destination, the large stretch of ocean that held the goals to their dreams.

In a similar vein as the last Pirate King, the Cofresi had opted to lay low for nearly two years, focusing on building up their strength and overall power. Roberts had finally visited the ancestral island of Gealach, where generations of pasts users of his current Devil Fruit had left their legacy, hundreds, if not thousands of reborn soldiers, had built a society where they had but one purpose, to build their strength and prepare for their next “Master”.

It was this acquisition, and his improved abilities, that made the Yurei confident enough to finally make his stand in the New World. The upcoming battle he had thrown himself into offered the perfect opportunity to show his true power to the entire world. A means to an end, as Roberts, unlike many of the current pirates in the seas, didn’t truly care about his infamy or level of influence, yet he recognized that these aspects would solidify him as a force to be recognized by pirates and the World Government alike, which functioned as mere stepping stones to fulfilling the promise he had made to her.

But before such an event, he had one more thing to accomplish. He had to return, to the place of his biggest trauma, the land that once served as his home, before being the site of a conflict that ultimately led to his current path and goal.

He stood on the large deck of his ship, the massive snail that he had simply named as Gary. Gary carried a fortress on his shell, which now served as the home and headquarters for Roberts and his companions. The snail’s destination had been set, and just now, Roberts finally caught a glimpse of his former home, a place currently known as The Rift. The once massive landmass had been split into three islands, lands that had been used by pirates, bounty hunters and mercenaries alike, to conduct their underground businesses. But a few years prior, a formidable alliance of mighty pirates had declared The Rift as their own, rebuilding each island into their own image, and establishing them as a sort of gathering point for their own organizations.

This fact didn’t bother Roberts’s decision to visit the land once again, finally. He knew all too well that his journey would lead him into scenarios where he was more than likely to die, as such, he wished to catch a glimpse of his former home, the place Molly had built for he and Trent, and for thousands of others who joined under her protection in a free land.

Roberts reached into his pocket, as the silhouette of The Rift came into view. He spoke into a Den-Den Mushi, exhaling a breath of cold air as he did so.

“Trent…I can see it-gosu…” He paused briefly. “We’re finally home.”

“Motherfucker…” Trent replied through the snail as he laid within the shell of Gary, where part of it had turned into a laboratory for his inventions. Large tubes filled with water and organisms within bubbled behind him. A one-way panel of the shell allowed Trent to look out and see what laid ahead of them. An immensely large land that had been forged together with the life force Molly had collected. She had put an archipelago together so the three of them would be able to live their lives in peace. He clenched his fist at the memory, remembering what had happened on these lands.

Trent began to climb down to the bottom of the shell, towards its “exit.” Tossing the snail into the air and catching it once more before speaking into it. “So, remind me what we’re doing once we dock? The temple below the fake one?”

“Yeah…” Roberts answered almost in a whisper. “Molly never let us play there. Heh…It was one of the first times she scolded us furiously-gosu.” He let out a slight chuckle under his cold exhale.

“We might encounter some resistance in the way. So-“

“No shit.” A voice echoed from behind Roberts. Steps approached him, a breath as calm as falling snow. A masked individual clenched a blade as he stepped to Roberts’s side.

“You know who this territory belongs to-oji? You guys are mad…”

Roberts turned his head towards one of his newest acquisitions, a swordsman comrade that once hunted for his head. Through unknown means, about a year prior, Roberts had convinced him to join under his flag, after the swordsman, a now former bounty hunter, had targeted his head for Roberts’s 366,664,000 bounty. Clashing for nearly 9 hours straight, after a brief conversation, the duo had stopped their clashes, and Roberts introduced the newest member of their group.

“Don’t worry-gosu. It won’t take long. I know all too well *those* that rule this territory.”

“Tch!” The masked man looked into the distance, witnessing as it came into view, a silhouette which appeared as the body and head of a gigantic wolf.

“That didn’t stop you before, didn’t it-oji? You were crazy enough to sneak into Coldharbour, and you never even told us what you stole-oji!”

Roberts raised a brow at his comrade’s questioning, while his cloak was fluttered by the wind.

“Heh! Don’t blame me from wanting to keep a secret trump card from you-gosu! Ye’ did try to kill me once.” The masked man remained silent. “But like I said, I’ll be quick. I ain’t here to pick a fight-gosu. This one’s personal…”

He continued. “Yo Trent! You wanna’ come too or would you rather stay behind-gosu?

"Tch, I’m good for now." Trent replied as he stepped onto the deck. “I’ve got maintenance to run if I wanna get *them* up and running soon. You run into trouble just hit the underside of your ear. It’ll send me a signal.”

He craned his neck to the masked man. “Plus, someone’s gotta keep an eye on this…hothead.”

Roberts chuckled once more. “Right! Besides, it’s not like I’m ever truly alone-gosu!”

Roberts looked back into the distance. “Then I’ll take my leave-oji. I have no interest in setting foot there.”

“Hey, don’t go yet-gosu. We got some company already.”

Just as Roberts stated that, the masked man knew his words to be true. A fleet of both air and sea vessels came into view. “T-This far off?!”

Roberts grinned. “Makes sense-gosu! These guys are known to be super protective of their shit.” His eyes scanned the distant vessels, recognizing the fearsome flag of the Reaper Pirates.

“Yo Trent! There’s gonna be a bit of turbulence for a minute, Zahaha!”

"Man..." Trent sighed. He cracked his knuckles before glaring up towards the vessels. "I don't feel Uncle K up there so..."

He turned to Roberts. "You. Get the fuck outta here. I can test out one of those guys and keep 'em distracted. Just hurry with the fucking temple, you shit."

Muscles tensed on the deck as Trent leaped in one direction, golden light leaking from his tattoos as he went to become the diversion.

“Gotcha!” Roberts’s shadow expanded, covering a large portion of the deck. A bubbling black substance began to ooze upwards, and quickly after, the maw of a gigantic beast emerged from it.

“Charlie! Let’s take out some on our way there-gosu!” As he ended his words, the massive flying beast arose from his shadow, soaring into the skies as the flap of his undead wings left a storm on its wake.

Roberts continued to grin as his undead beast emerged to the skies, having contained its minion within his shadow. Those affected by his powers, alongside inanimate items, could be affected and pulled into Roberts’s shadow, a powerful technique he developed due to the need to truly evolve into a one man army.

His shadow retracted, pulling back into his body, before it began to crawl unto Roberts’s own back. A small portion of shadow rose, attaching itself to it’s master’s upper body, extending and protruding, before taking the form of two massive, devilish wings.

“I’m off, Honoji!” Roberts waved at the swordsman, as he flapped his own dark wings and soared into the skies faster than a rocket. Trailing behind him was a cold mist, residual coldness from his own body, being propelled by the force released by his flight.

Roberts clenched on his new blade, strapped horizontally on the back of his waist. A blade designed solely for him, a master of bladed weaponry, to fit his particular needs. Charlie burst through the air, breaking the sound barrier several times as Roberts trailed close behind. From the Reaper airships, a swarm of metallic soldiers emerged, being powered by their own flight-suits.

As if the hundreds of soldiers hadn’t covered their entire view, Charlie and Roberts continued onwards, gaining even more speed as they closed in on the fleet.

“T-They’re heading straight for us!!” A soldier exclaimed from the airship’s deck. The skies became lit, as thousands of blasts were fired off from the ships and the flying soldiers.

It was for naught, as the undead dragon’s scales easily repelled even the plasma bullets that rained down on him. The beast continued its high velocity trajectory, bashing its massive horned skull into the first airship it encountered, ripping through its enhanced steel as if it were nothing. With the chunks of metal still falling from its body, Charlie turned its neck sideways, opening its maw as if it were to bite through the next airship. And it did.

Soldiers and weapons were merely crushed within the potent force of Charlie’s undead jaw. But it wasn’t the end of the dragon’s assault. For its jaw opened once again, as sirens screeched from the half bitten airship on its descent towards the sea. A bright, green energy swelled from within the undead dragon, fired off less than a second later from the beasts’s throat. A beam of highly toxic energy shot from its mouth, blasting through most of the ships that once covered the skies. In one fell swoop, an undead dragon had decimated a small fleet without much effort, a fact that left the soldiers in slight shock, even with their mainly mechanical nature. They figured however, luck was on their side, for if they could cut off the head of the snake, its minion would follow behind. They failed to realize of course, Roberts’s own death wouldn’t be enough to stop those he “revived”.

But the thought was fleeting, for it seemed as an impossible task at the moment. The rain of bullets and blasts earlier did not even prove capable of stopping Roberts, who seemed to have evaded every single shot aimed at him. A much smaller target than the draconic beast, Roberts was also incredibly swift, gliding through thousands of bullets even as he flew closer to his attackers.

“Clink!” The scabbard of his blade resounded, a mist of incredible frost escaped from the slightly released blade. The thousands of hours practicing with a blade flashed through his head. The lessons from the Holiday Pirates building up his foundation for who he was today as a combatant.

“**Phantom Blade**…” Roberts uttered, as he rocketed straight towards the swarm of soldiers. His grip on the blade tightened, his left arm still hidden by his cloak, his right extended towards his back. He drew the blade further.

“**Cursed Winter**.”

The skies became ice. In a flash of light, Roberts’s body had seemed to teleport, continuing on his flight towards the island. Behind him, the trail of his deed descended towards the sea. Human sized blocks of ice plummeted towards the sea. Their very mechanical wires had been frozen solid in what they collectively witnessed as merely a sudden puff of mist. From this wide spanning cloud of frost, their frozen bodies fell from the sky one by one, the few survivors still in the sky paralyzed by their residual human instincts.

On the sea atop Gary, Honoji witnessed as Roberts and Charlie handled the fleet, sighing at the Captain’s utter unconcern about just who those forces belonged to. For now however, he decided to continue on that train of thought later on, realizing the situation had forced him to act.

The ships, carrying large mechanical monsters, had surrounded Gary during the brief moment he had decided to glare at the battle above. The Warmongers, numbering hundreds, prepared to fire off from every point they surrounded. Gary had been intercepted from the front and both sides, the only untargeted area being from behind.

Without uttering a word, the swordsman unsheathed his crimson blade, taking a stance with both feet wide, and pulling his blade to his back, which glowed with scorched intensity.

“I trust you have the other side-oji.” Honoji uttered for Trent to hear, before thrusting his blade forward in a tremendous display of force. The ocean’s surface parted as his thrust manifested into a powerful air cannon, that frankly resembled the image of a blazing star of gargantuan size being fired towards from left side of Gary.

“**RAGING SUN!**”

The scorching air cannon decimated another portion of the Reaper’s perimeter fleet, the last image many soldiers witnessed being that of a mighty sun rushing straight towards them, pulverizing anything it touched without even ashes being left behind.

“Always…”

Trent let the light from his Ki dim until it faded. But it didn’t stop dimming, as the lines of his tattoos became darker, almost obsidian in colour. He had applied science to this mystical force, something he had spent most of his time on. Ki produced light. So Trent decided to make it become the absence of light. A complete shift in its original nature, for now it was something more. But that something more would be needed if he was to destroy those airships from here, and kill all onboard.

“**DARK...Thunderclap!**”

Trent slammed his hands together, and unlike his original technique, simply generated raw force. The air turned ashen as pure kinetic force adopted a similar hue as it simply travelled forth like a growing tsunami. Destroying the land below while aiming to annihilate the sky ships on his side and kill those onboard.

The alarm rung, with a screen being projected unto a lab deep within Coldharbour. Umori Kenshiro glanced at the wide screen, putting down his tools and walking away from the android that laid on a table. His green orbs glared at the screen, his sharp pupils dilating at what he witnessed. Trent’s devastating impact obliterating ships both in air and sea. Honoji’s sun bullet scorching through another portion, while the rest of the air forces were shattered by Roberts and an undead dragon.

With another press of a button into a nearby screen platform, Kenshiro’s voice was sent directly to his intended target. An emergency protocol.

“Luna…it seems the brats are returning home. From the trajectory, they seem headed towards your “Wolf’s Den”. However, I’ve been worried about the pup as of recently.” He paused, speaking as if knowing truly that whom he spoke to would already be aware of this sudden issue.

“Plus, they stole something from my castle. So I ask you to sit this one, my dear, and let me handle those who I have a bone to pick with…Fufufu…”

"I saw. They're loud, aren't they?" Luna replied back, already at the ready as if she had known this was happening. Ever vigilant. "Of course, Kenshiro. I'm not one to deny you that right. There is a...slight issue however."

Luna took in a deep breath, remembering *his* drunken stupor from last night. "He's already at Wolf's Den. By the statue. If he see's them passing...there's not much I can do from here."

“Tch!” Kenshiro cursed mentally. “I am not one to lose faith in the young Emperor, but there’s still time for the “Curse of two decades” to follow through.” He paused once more, fully accepting if Luna were to feel insulted at the unusual concern from the Scourge himself.

“*He* stole something of value from me. Something powerful. I’ll let *him* handle it. I doubt that ghost bastard would be foolish enough to disturb him. Be wary though, as he doesn’t have a code of honor to follow…” Kenshiro continued to speak in an unusual tone, one that seemed similar from when a master speaks of a student.

“He doesn’t play fair…So neither should you…”

"Don't worry. There's a reason we're keeping a bit more...contained this year." Luna reassured her ally. "I've got no intention to let that curse get rid of him. He has plans, apparently. Which was new for me. But I have to ask...what'd they steal from you?"

Luna sighed, and let a smirk appear on her face. "Though if the ghost boy does bother him while he's hungover..." she paused.

"Do you think he'd really play fair?"

“Fufufu…” Kenshiro chuckled. “Drunken Wolf Fist, that’d be new.” He grabbed hold of his tools once again.

“It’s only fair I keep you in the loop, as they would say…” He remained silent, as he scanned over which tool he needed next. “What he stole, is a source of great power…at least for him.”

His mind flashed to a year prior, his anger at discovering the Dark Reaver’s deeds. To the unknowing eye, Roberts’s infiltration of the Coldharbour citadel was merely a declaration, a statement which spoke of his capacity to infiltrate into any location he desired. Undetected, and unnoticed unless desired. That seemed to be the conclusion, as no visible damage beside a handful of guards being knocked out was caused by Roberts. This also applied to the myriad of powerful prototypes that sat within the citadel, as neither those nor their designs seemed to have been stolen. But Kenshiro knew more than to consider this a mere declaration of his stealth abilities. No, *he* always has an ulterior motive. He had taught him so himself…

It was when he descended to the nigh-inescapable prison section of his palace. Deep underground, guarded greater than he would admit to even his close allies, laid the section where Kenshiro contained his valuable test subjects and prisoners. As he and his troops scanned the area, they also failed to notice anything unusual, other than the brief shift in temperature reported by its sensors during the time of the infiltration.

He walked towards the highly secure chambers, where a mere glance at one of his valued prisoners had made his biggest concern all too real.

His mind returned to the present, where he finally decided to reveal just what had he lost from Roberts’s unannounced raid.

“He stole shadows. The shadows of the captured Hellspawn Pirates…”

"Oh. Shit." Luna said.

She took a few moments to collect her thoughts. This new information was...unprecedented. To not only sneak into Coldharbour but take those? That would give Roberts even more of a reason to be considered a threat to most.

"Kenshiro, have your troops try and guide Roberts towards the wolf statue. Once you're there, create some noise. Force their paths to cross..."

“Bzzz!” Static seemed to interrupt, prompting Kenshiro to stop and quickly turned towards the monitor. A simple static sound would be unheard of during one of their communications, going to great lengths to secure them.

“That won’t be necessary-gosu.”

Kenshiro’s anger swelled. “H-How did you…”

“You’re a genius, Ken-san, but my brother is right up there with you. It wouldn’t be unusual for me to accidentally drop something in your castle during my last visit. Something even your genius head would fail to notice-gosu.”

He had been ridiculed, not once, but now twice. And worse, given the fact that since his own transmission had been somehow hacked, Luna would be able to hear from the other end.

“But like I was saying-gosu. I am merely visiting my former home. Let’s leave violence for another day-gosu, how about it?”

There was a moment of ominous silence. “Luna. Open the gate to the Wolf Den. He’s disrespected me enough!”

There was silence from Luna's end for a few moments as well. When she did speak, she ignored the both of them.

"Wake up."

The sound of heavy rock music began to echo out from the giant wolf statue, shaking the trees and nature around the Wolf Den. Finding Roberts' location from where he had sent his transmission was not a task beyond her or Kenshiro, as one of the eyes of the statue shot a beam of light towards Roberts for a moment.

A loud belch, belonging to none of the three, echoed throughout the call.

The light turned off, and Roberts would likely notice the heavy smell of colas and...barbecue sauce?

“What the-“ Roberts moved as a black blur, having escaped the sudden beam of light thanks to the music that alerted him. He glanced at the statue, once again disappearing in a shadowy blur, before landing on the island’s soil. He turned towards the eye of the statue, and then turned his attention to his surroundings, wondering the meaning behind the sudden rock music resounding from all over.

“Well…I assume you’ll handle things now that it’s come to this.” Kenshiro hung on the call, putting away his monitor as well, and returning to the work he was performing prior to the call.

Back on the Wolf’s Den, Roberts glanced around the landscape. His shadow wings dissipated, swirling around in a black mass before returning back to their owner. Afterwards, his own shadow expanded into a black sheet once more, as Charlie plummeted head first back into Roberts’s shadowy domain. Contracting his shadow back, the pirate began to walk as he continued to look around, opting to ignore the music for the time being.

“Erebos, I think the entrance to the underground should be around here somewhere-gosu. Place has changed so much I can barely recognize the area, but I think I’m right…Or so I hope-gosu.”

*Krk.* *Fzzt.*

The sound of carbonated liquid came from behind Roberts, no other sound having been audible earlier. The rock music died out as a figure trudged through the foliage of the Wolf Den. But no matter what, no noise escaped from that figure. His movements had become completely silent. He let out a familiar belch, the same one that had come on the transmission earlier.

Black combat boots that meshed with black sweats, a deep violet shirt that was covered by a long obsidian cloak. Long white hair that dangled loose down past his jaws with piercing violet eyes that snuck through. Scars littered the body, one even passing over the left eye. One arm itself was mechanical in nature, a prosthetic. A can of cola in the other as the scent of cherries leaked from it. The figure took a swig before rubbing the bridge of his nose.

Maurier Harlan glared at the individual ahead of him. “Who…” he belched. “…the fuck are you?”

## Snowcloud

Roberts didn’t respond immediately. Such a silent presence would’ve gone unnoticed even by Roberts, who was proud of his sensory abilities, if not for his shadow’s own perception. It alerted Roberts of his surroundings even without the yurei having to do so himself. However, this is was still a struck of bad luck. Before Roberts could even attempt to use his own technique to utterly vanish his presence, he had been approached by the one man he had been warned not to mess with…yet.

“*Such silence-gosu.*” Roberts thought. “*I can’t even “hear” his breath…Though his technique feels somewhat different from my own.*”

He finally stepped around, raising his hood to cover the back of his head. Roberts’s dark eyes fell upon Harlan, covered fully by his cloak, hiding everything underneath with the exception of the blade strapped on the back of his waist.

“I’ve heard so much about you-gosu.” Cold streams of air were exhaled after Roberts spoke. “Seems I missed some kind of party.” He chuckled, now fully facing towards Harlan.

“The name’s Roberts. And this place was once my home-gosu. I merely want to revisit my memories, so I really have no interest in anything else-gosu.”

Roberts’s own presence seemed to shift between realms, yet it hadn’t become fully silent as Harlan’s own. “Would that be a problem?”

"Yeah, it is..." Harlan yawned. In contrast to Roberts' cold breath that left with every exhale, the crackling of blue escaped from Harlan's. His eyes flickered towards the blade, his eyes trailing Robert even as his presence became weak.

Black spread throughout the ground behind Harlan, as trees, fauna and all objects behind Harlan turned a deep vantablack. As if the half-Mink stood in front of the void itself. He pointed a scarred finger at Roberts. "Cause you smell like a guy I know. Some of his scent is still on ya..."

"And I guess you're why Luna told me to wake up. You're a dick for that! I was tryna fucking sleep and shit..."

Harlan's raised hand flicked in a circular motion, carving through the inner layers of the air itself with the wrist performing a final nudge towards himself. A vortex opened up before Harlan, uprooting trees and boulders towards Harlan and into the vortex where they'd be in stasis. The same force aiming to pull Roberts into it as well.

"**Third Howl, Fimbul**."

“*Tch! “Maurier Harlan is a difficult guy to deal with…” That’s an understatement-gosu!”* Roberts thought to himself in slight frustration, as without much warning, Harlan had begun the offensive, in what seemed to be an attempt to repel Roberts from his intention.

“All this just cause you got woken up-gosu…” He snickered. His entire body tensed up as he noticed the force of the vortex was ferociously dragging him forward. He held his ground with a stomp, black strides rising through his cloak, which maintained it tightly covering his body even with the hurricane winds.

“*I see, it’s similar to what Z does. In that case…”* Not unlike Harlan, darkness expanded from the soles of Roberts’s boots, covering a large area behind him, rising through his boots and merging with the black strides already along his cloak. He could barely see anything clearly as the debris continued to pile up in the air before him.

Up to below his knee, his legs became merged, rather, sunk into the dark shadow he created. His hair and cloak weaved wildly, trees and even the ground was being uprooted and dragged through the air into Harlan’s singularity.

Roberts’s response seemed simple, but one rooted in experience. The yurei had attached his very being to his own shadow, becoming unmoving unless the shadow itself was moved. To further prevent this, his ability expanded, rooting itself into the ground and maintaining a firm grip on it, as a way to keep the ground in place and avoid it being dragged into Harlan’s Fimbul technique.

“You’re really hard to reason with aren’t ya-gosu?” Roberts exclaimed, even his voice became mostly muffled by the screeching winds, as the very oxygen around him was also being sucked into the vortex.

From between his cloak, Roberts pulled out his right hand, which held a canister that was also immediately sucked into Harlan’s technique. Keeping his shadow tense and rooted, Roberts squinted his eyes, attempting to follow the canister’s trajectory as it was dragged into the vortex. Within it, the canister would detonate, yet it released no blast…only sound and light.

A flashbang essentially, a quite enhanced one, fitting to deal with the monsters of the New World. It released a blinding glow of light before Harlan, within the very vortex, releasing a high pitch sound normally undetectable by regular humans…yet quite harmful to those with enhanced hearing, such as animals and of course, minks and halfbreeds.

The flashbang wasn’t meant to deliver much of an impact on Harlan himself, rather, it sought to disrupt the half mink’s focus and senses, the bright, white glow providing an artificial source of light, expanding all shadows for a flicker of a second. Roberts’s own shadow contorted, the expanded sheet of blackness seemed to rise into the trees and bushes, tendrils rising and lowering back in a semi-liquid form, akin to a sea of contained eldritch beasts…

Sound and brilliant light filled Harlan’s senses. An incessant high-pitch noise rang through his ears that caused him to squint as the splitting pain racked his head. This Roberts fellow had come prepared for Harlan, it seemed. A weapon meant to mess with something who’s senses helped to make him the threat he was.

But even as Harlan seemed caught off-guard, his body had already reacted. It had drawn in the kinetic force from his one-handed variant of Fimbul. The light from the flashbang may have caused the shadows to waver, but the miasma hadn’t budged. It hadn’t been created by light, it was simply the primal emotion within all.

With the force coursing through Harlan like a river, it searched for a way out. Roberts laid ahead of him, a clear target. The clear answer. Yet instead Harlan slammed his hand onto the side of his head and released the kinetic force. And in that single moment, multiple things happened at once. For one, that force had “rebalanced” Harlan.

Forcing an abrupt settling of his vision and clearing of that annoying ring. The world to the side of Harlan had spider-cracked as the force continued outwards, stalagmites bursting out. And in that single moment, there were three Harlan’s where he had been. Each appearing as if they were to take off in a different direction. One in the air, and two from the side.

But that moment had been a hoax.

The winds didn’t move, nor did a drop of sound escape Harlan’s movements as he ran straight forwards while staying low to the ground to strike before a breath could escape Roberts once more. Harlan wouldn’t stop and strike, he’d carry the momentum of his absurd speed through his attack as he aimed to slap Roberts on the side of the head to disorient his hearing and vision as Roberts had done with him, but to also harm the young man and send him catapulting away.

Roberts’s silver eyes glimmered. The moment Harlan seemingly split into three, they seemed solid, yet were a product of the ridiculous speed in which the Seawolf casually operated. The burst of kinetic force drew his attention momentarily, nature once again being damaged by another of Harlan’s casual movements.

He knew all too well, the many stories told from this man’s exploits. Even his newfound allies couldn’t really provide him with much more knowledge than already known publicly. His battle within the Mirror World didn’t provide anything he didn’t already expect or knew about his fearsome pirate, only serving to cement the power he truly possessed, in particular regarding the insurmountable speed and skill he possessed.

Roberts’s shadow nudged. His eyes followed, glimmering briefly as his pupils lowered to the corner of his eye, just barely catching a glimpse of Harlan’s true frame, a fraction of a moment after he noticed his afterimages.

“*This guy…*” The force of Harlan’s slap sunk into Roberts’s cheek, spit was sent flying from his mouth, and his entire body was jerked in the opposite position of the strike. His head rung, yet for some reason, a burst of coldness was emitted from under his cloak.

The resulting sound from the impact resembled the crackling of ice, or even steel being shattered. The yurei’s body separated from his connection to his shadow, being sent reeling into the air as grains of ice trailed behind. He caught his breath, tensing his body once again and forcing himself back into the ground, his feet still sliding through the earth until he finally came to a stop several meters away.

Roberts raised his head, revealing that under his hood, his cheek had seemingly shattered. Rather, it was the effect of Roberts’s natural layer of ice coating his dense yurei skin.

“*He got through my initial ice armor with a simple slap-gosu…*” Alarming, yet expected from a monster. He wouldn’t expect otherwise from someone that stood at the apex of this world.

“It seems we both have our own ways to deal with shockwaves-gosu!” He chuckled.

Underneath his cloak, nothing more moved after his sudden burst of coldness just a second prior. His arms remained hidden, alongside his arsenal of weaponry and gadgets, yet his “partner” reacted even without his visual cue.

Rising from Roberts’s prior position, were dozens of sharp tendrils, which quickly evolved into hundreds, rising with unhindered speed and accuracy. In a similar vein as Harlan had just done, the shadow Roberts left behind acted upon the threat to his master, without sound or alteration of the air currents. Roberts had uncovered the true nature of his ability, shadows that were unhindered by the laws of physics, which were being limited merely by his own perception. Shadows could reach unimaginable speeds, being a conceptual and weightless aspect of reality, as their Master, Roberts, had finally learned to unlock the very shackles he had unconsciously established on his own ability.

He maintained his ground as the bladed tendrils arose, aiming to plunge unto Harlan’s limbs and pierce him in place. Trapping the young emperor wouldn’t be as easy as many of his prior opponents, and Roberts adjusted accordingly, allowing his shadow, Erebos, to unleash its unrestricted speed and to attempt to plunge through each of Harlan’s limbs in a flurry of bladed shadows.

Harlan’s eyes trailed Roberts despite how fast he had been slapped. The eyes of a wolf were motion-sensitive, and someone as experienced in combat as Harlan had no trouble following his movements. But much like Roberts had planned, the tendrils of shadow went undetected by Harlan’s sense of touch or sound. They were unrestricted by those meagre senses. Yet a sense Harlan, and everyone else, used most in the world came into a play. After all, the eyes of a wolf also had a wider peripheral.

A single talon of Morrighan extended outwards, a Saijo O Wazamono weapon. As Harlan faced Robbie and away from the tendrils, he defended himself. He poked each tendril with the talon in rapid succession, allowing Harlan to collect the force it would have used to pierce the man’s limbs as pure force. A display of mastered martial prowess, something that Harlan seemed to do out of pure instinct. “Combat” without attention.

The moment every tendril was in stasis, he moved. Harlan released the kinetic force from all those tendrils, while at the same time using the footwork of the Kitsune style to move undetected to behind Roberts. Harlan’s plan was to grab onto the back of Robert’s head and ram him into the incoming kinetic blast at breakneck speeds before the tendrils could move again.

“This bastard…” Roberts uttered as his eyes managed to track a blur, yet thanks to the connection to his shadow, he figured out what Harlan was doing within his shadowy attack. But as he processed this, he felt the grip of Harlan’s hand on the back of his head.

“*There’s no question about it. He’s using a technique similar to my own “Ghost Step-gosu!*”

Roberts was ignorant on the specifics of Harlan’s stealth and speed, but he recognized he was against someone whose skills in those areas surpassed his own in this state.

“SPLAT!” Blood seemed to splatter as Roberts’s face was slammed into the incoming force. The blood splattered through the air, condensing into blobs that remained airborne, before the head on Harlan’s grip went from solid to a gooey feel.

“Damn. You’re more annoying than I thought-gosu.” Roberts words would’ve reached Harlan, yet they were emitted back from where Roberts stood initially.

Exchanging places with his own shadow was one of the first skills he had mastered with his powers, further enhanced through training, Roberts had learned to switch places not only with his doppelgänger, but with shadows he had also stolen. The “blood” had been merely the shadow that now stood in his place, taking the force of the impact head on and splitting into dozens of liquid-shadow parts. It reformed into a floating head, silently cackling at Harlan as it dispersed into a black mist.

Roberts’s body manifested within the sheet of shadow, rising from it as his silver eyes now glowed with an icy blue hue.

“I already said I didn’t intend to fight you-gosu. But you’re hard headed ass is gettin’ on my nerves!” The sheet of blackness continued to expand, appearing seemingly endless as it continued towards the forest behind him, creeping on the massive wolf statue in the near distance.

“Let’s make a deal then-gosu.” He nudged at Harlan. “Fighting with *just* our lives on the line isn’t that fun.” His echo-like voice rung, at this point, it was the only thing being emitted from Roberts’s presence. It had seemed that, during his exchange, the entirety of Roberts’s presence had disappeared somehow. His scent, and even his breath, the only thing that apparently remained detectable was the coldness he exhaled unconsciously. For even experienced Haki sensors, from this moment, it would appear as if the clash that unfolded on the Wolf’s Den was hidden from view.

“**Ghost Step**.”

Even while he remained in view, it would almost feel as if Roberts’s entire self vanished, and only a reflection of his body remained. Of course, this was his Ghost Step technique in action, which essentially muffled his entire existence into an almost undetectable beat.

“Eh? This isn’t a fight.” Harlan yawned, rubbing the back of his neck. He glanced down at his foot as he raised it off the ground slightly, as if he was taunting Roberts by ignoring him despite the impressive show of virtually disappearing before him. “I’m just doing shit cause you woke me up. And this Ghost Step shit…”

Harlan’s mind flashed back to fighting Kitsuki, where the two had adopted a footwork to become invisible to the world, even to the other Masters of Dai Densetsu. This Ghost Step of Roberts was similar enough, albeit it didn’t seem to be as pristine as one of the finest techniques of the Kitsune Style. He let his foot fall back to the ground, still holding that can of cherry cola despite all of those movements of his.

“Here’s the thing Popsicle. You’re on my land, yeah?” Harlan finished the can of cola, before black flame enveloped it and turned it to cinders. “You’re not here alone though, right? I smelt others on you earlier. Fresh. So stop hiding you bitch. Or I’ll go kill all of them.”

“Ah-“ Roberts raised his head, for the moment, appearing unbothered by Harlan’s fierce threat. He glanced at the sky, the afternoon sun on this island, it was just as he remembered it. Decades ago, just watching the sun set until darkness came, surrounded by those two he held most dear.

“Well, you see, wolf bastard…” His head continued facing the sky. “Yeah, you won’t do that-gosu.” He lowered his head to face Harlan once more.

“You see, someone dear to me died right here, long ago.” A strange occurrence emerged afterwards. A bulging vein on Roberts’s neck. Anger. Unrelenting fury…then calmness once more.

“And if I got my info right, you do the same thing, no? You just waltz into places and make em’ your own-gosu. Zahahaha!” He laughed, truly and passionately, as if it was the last chuckle he’d ever have.

“I ain’t scared of dying…However, you threaten’ my family…And I’ll make you suffer-gosu.”

He sighed. His shadow extended further, merging with the very shadow of the massive wolf statue that could be seen even from the sea. The very structure would rumble tremendously, as the gigantic wolf head would release dust and debris, before turning its head towards the direction of the fight. It was simple, Roberts’s shadow had manipulated the shadow casted by the massive structure, and it was now essentially under the influence of Roberts’s own will.

“My friends stayed behind, because like I said twice, I came here to see my old home-gosu. If I were about that whole conquest shit, I’d have brought my full force to take this land over…But I have no interest in that-gosu. I only care to revisit some memories before I head to war…”

“You fucked with my statue rock thing?” Harlan groaned. He ignored everything Roberts had said it seemed as he simply glanced towards the den where he and Kiwi spent countless nights partying. They could always build another one of course. Harlan’s wealth as an Emperor and all the territories he had conquered was ineffable. But he was upset that his statue had been taken over. Enough such that…

Harlan sighed, his head craning to where Gary and the rest of Roberts’ allies were. “Luna says if I’m gonna be Yonko, I gotta offer this shit sometimes…” he faced Roberts once more. “Last chance, blah blah. Stop your shit and become a bitch of my crew, blah blah.”

A grin curled onto his face soon after as his eyes found Roberts. “Please say no.”

Roberts’s grin disappeared. There was no anger within him, in fact, he was filled with amusement.

“It’s a flattering offer-gosu, but I aim to become a Shichibukai. Can’t be one if I’m serving your crew.” He shrugged, removing his hood, revealing his much longer mane of silver hair.

“So the answer is no-gosu, I ain’t becoming anyone’s bitch. You see, I just want to fulfill someone’s dream-gosu, a promise I made to myself.” He chuckled, recognizing Harlan’s utter disinterest. “Not that you would care either Zahaha!”

“Just tell me one thing, Maurier Harlan…” Roberts paused, even the statue seemingly stopped moving.

“There are rumors that you encountered a certain man-gosu. Before you continue trying to kill me, I have to know…” His eyes became somber, the icy blue hue dissipated.

“The one known as Rena Argo…how strong is he?”

“He’d kill you.”

For the briefest of moments, Roberts would’ve seen a instant of it. As in Harlan’s place there appeared to be multiple of him occupying the same exact spot. Each flickering out as if to make their own move. And then he was gone. Nothing reacted to his movements. Not sound, wind, nor even his own shadow as it remained behind, appearing to be flipping off Roberts before miasma covered the shadow.

The higher echelons of Harlan’s speed, the speed of a man worthy of becoming a Yonko. The speed of a man who aimed to be the Strongest Martial Artist in the World. He had chosen his prey, and nothing would stop him. His **Phase Step**.

Off in the distance, Trent would suddenly be met with the earth as his face collided into it. There was pain coursing through him, as blood poured from the sides of his head. How could he feel this much force from simply crashing? He glanced up, spotting the figure of Maurier Harlan in the process of dropping his Phase Step to deal with Trent.

The Oni went to push up from the ground, relying on his catastrophic strength. But he couldn’t stand, the force being applied down onto his skull was too much. How was this man, renowned for his speed this strong?

Meanwhile, Roberts would finally see a surge of afterimages before they dissipated as a scream from Trent echoed throughout the island. For Harlan had just broken the Oni’s arm.

## Thundersnow

As Harlan went on to target Roberts’s comrades, before the sound of Trent’s injury reached him, a conversation occurred, deep within the yurei’s psyche. If Harlan moved so fast that even his shadow seemingly reacted late to his physical movements that defied logic, the conversation happened at around that same fraction of a millisecond.

“Seems he has some knowledge on my abilities as well-gosu.” Roberts commented after he witnessed Harlan’s own black colored ability hide his very shadow from view.

“Kkakaka…probably just his instincts.” A deep, devilish voice answered Roberts’s thoughts.

“Erebos…you know what to do, *if* it comes to that.”

“You’re planning on dying here?”

“Not yet-gosu. But if my life is close to being forfeit, before you dissipate, take my corpse back to Trent. Just like **she** did before-“

Trent’s scream finally reached him, taking Roberts out of his internal dialogue with his doppelganger, his eyes turning icy blue once again.

On the top of Gary’s deck, Honoji, for just the briefest of moments, felt a peculiar presence that made his skin crawl. Being alert to remnants of the patrolling forces, he completely missed Trent’s disappearance until the moment of his scream of pain. He looked towards the direction of the sound, immediately recognizing the silhouette that pinned down the Oni. His hand fell on his blade’s grip, yet he made no intent to defend his new comrade. In fact, his focus merely fell upon Harlan.

“Should’ve killed you when I had the chance-oji.” He shrugged. “But let’s see how *they* deal with you…”

Darkness traveled through the forest at unimaginable speeds, the moment the sound waves reached his eardrums, Roberts’s instincts kicked in. As Trent would’ve probably gasped for air after suffering through the pain, faster than that same breath, shadows reached the coast as the passed through every obstacle on the way unperturbed, in an attempt to merge with Trent’s own shadow underneath him, and use their ability to influence whatever shadow it came into contact with.

A tendril seemed to reach for Harlan, one that still remained in its conceptual form, not a physical construct as it appears when detached from the ground, but merely pure shadow. However, from that one strand of shadow rose something physical, yet for a brief instant, it also would appear to take on a more “ethereal” form.

A long dagger held by a cold limb rose from the shadow strand, an upwards, slash that aimed directly towards the lower portion of Harlan’s forearm. A slash so fast that the aftereffects of its movement would resound through the air various seconds after its strike. Of course, the dagger had been coated by a formidable layer of Busoshoku Haki, focused and hardened for the purpose of this precise dagger slash that, with almost surgical precision, aimed to not only force Harlan’s grip on Trent to become lose, but to sever the tendons on his forearm.

While by many standards, Roberts’s own physical strength could still be considered monstrous, even if it paled to his brother’s own, but the yurei made up for it with his precision, strategy and swiftness.

Roberts’s right arm rose with his shadow and dagger, the strike’s speed causing that not even the coldness emanating from his skin would be felt as of yet.

But Roberts’s wasn’t done with just a slashing attempt. Harlan was a monster combatant, that much was clear, and Roberts recognized that in order to survive this encounter, he had to probably use every card on his hand, and then some. This wasn’t the time to hold back, much less on someone who quickly opted to damage that which he held dear.

Even if his first strike proved ineffective, if Harlan remained in such close range, Roberts would follow with what merely seemed as a flutter of his cloak. He learned of Harlan’s capacity to redirect force, but Roberts opted for something slightly different.

“**Phantom Glacier Fist!**”

Roberts delivered a punch with his left hand, which still remained hidden under his cloak, and the strike began and ended underneath. Yet if struck, Harlan would feel the waves targeting his body, not unlike many capable fighters who rely on pressurized or shockwave attacks. Yet Roberts counted on his force redirection skill, for it was the after shock of his strike which he truly focused on.

Roberts delivered a punch with his left hand, which still remained hidden under his cloak, and the strike began and ended underneath. Yet if struck, Harlan would feel the waves targeting his body, not unlike many capable fighters who rely on pressurized or shockwave attacks. Yet Roberts counted on his force redirection skill, for it was the after shock of his strike which he truly focused on.

Harlan heard steel hissing through the air, sensing a moving presence alongside it. It moved rapidly, faster than Harlan expected from those new to these seas like Roberts. While Harlan could escape should he tried, he didn’t want to. Instead a decision far more terrifying echoed throughout Harlan’s psyche. He was terror given form, so he chose to teach these two a lesson. A reminder why he was at the peak of war and all others were kneeling before him.

The hand resting on the back of Trent’s hand lifted off slightly as Harlan’s torso began to spin. His wrist flicked in a circular motion, fingers carving into the back of Trent’s skull as blood was meant to rush out and dye the fauna a deep crimson. A vortex opened up as Trent’s body began to rise off the ground as the Fimbul variant pulled him up and the terrain around them towards it. Yet Harlan’s balance and footwork allowed him to stay planted on the ground, moving as if the Fimbul had never been enacted.

In that same motion as the hand and the spinning torso, the hand that had caused the Fimbul and been lifted off Trent slammed its palm through the blade of Roberts instead of allowing it to slash at his forearm. As metal pierced flesh, it suddenly found its path halted as the muscles in Harlan’s hand tightened. The same sort of muscle control that he had used in his encounters with Silva to keep them stuck in close combat. But even that wasn’t enough to keep Harlan’s focus as it had already split, noting the incoming fist that aimed to strike at Harlan.

As Trent had been pulled into the air, Harlan’s other arm moved so that it seemed as if it had never moved. A motion that didn’t allow sound, wind or logic to follow it as it grabbed the bleeding head of the Oni and brought it to where the arm had once been. And with a powerful and rapid thrusting motion, before Robert’s fist could fully extend, Harlan slammed the body into the fist. The shockwaves ran rampant through Trent as he continued to scream as the vitals of his body shook and a deep cold rushed through him. Gold light flashed from his eyes as he forced his Ki to warm himself up slowly.

“More rotation from the back foot, popsicle.” Harlan grinned. “Like this.”

Harlan’s hand seemed to phase through the dagger it had embedded into itself as his footing shifted. The hand holding Trent released the body, but before even gravity could let the body fall, Harlan moved. The muscles in his arm and shoulder flared, more flaring down his back to the toes of his back foot. Electro crackled within the muscles themselves so rapidly that its noise couldn’t even be heard. A combination of nigh unmatched speed and the raw strength of the Ryujin style. Speed that outsped the Ryujin Grandmaster’s Kenbunshoku, strength that shattered his strongest defence. The arm burst forwards, creating a hole through Trent as if the man had never been there as it aimed to slam Roberts in the face. Behind Harlan, his shadow wavered and split in two as miasma went to cover them.

“**Eighth Howl, Wolf’s Thunder Web Fist.**”

Should it strike, it’d paralyze Roberts after the shockwaves pierced all throughout the body instead of the typical bludgeoning force that many could work to eventually redirect. But even if it struck nothing, the world around them would be in peril. The pressure from the strike caused rubble and trees to split and float upwards. The waves rose to heights that dwarfed Gary. Sand turned to glass. The clouds above split from the sheer force contained within this single strike. This was Harlan’s lesson.

Roberts’s entire world fell. Even as his eyes followed the unfortunate fate of his most trusted companion, his brother by all means and purposes, as he was helplessly swung around by Harlan’s maneuver’s, Robbie’s own senses attempted to follow the Seawolf’s every move. While unsuccessful to track every single one of his masterful moves, his sixth sense still spent its focus on him. It wasn’t a conscious attempt either, as Robbie had awakened his Kenbunshoku much earlier than most, as not even a half a decade old young yurei, the “breath” of others was part of his everyday life ever since. His body seemed to go limp, or at least that’s how he felt, whereas in truth, the muscle memory built by countless travels and encounters seemingly forced his body to act on reflex, while his own consciousness trailed slightly behind.

The environment suffered in the wake of Harlan’s strike. Before, when Robbie unleashed his slash, it reverberated a shockwave of its own, a late effect, yet it was overcome by the raw power of Harlan’s fist.

Sound traveled slower than the events taking place, it is for this same reason that earlier, when Harlan had pushed Trent against Robbie’s cloak-covered fist, the vibration of metal clashing against the Oni’s skin would be heard a bit later.

The pressure wave was devastating, fitting from someone capable of overcoming the titans of the pirate and martial arts world. Roberts’s cloak flared, revealing his weapon-filled clothing underneath. A tight skin suit on his upper body, wrapped with smaller daggers across his chest. On his belt, a pair of larger daggers were held, with one of its holsters currently empty, belonging to the ornate dagger that now flew across the air, landing somewhere in the coast. On another side of his belt, he held a pair of small, also ornate axes. Canisters were strapped on his back, on top of his horizontal blade strapped on the back. His left arm finally came fully into view, revealing the existence of a fierce gauntlet of metallic-like nature. Another shared similarity to his adversary, Robbie’s gauntlet made his left forearm and hand at least three times the size of his right, reaching up to his elbow. Seemingly, from beneath the clawed gauntlet, veins of ice ran across Roberts’s left bicep and up to his shoulder.

The pressure wave was devastating, fitting from someone capable of overcoming the titans of the pirate and martial arts world. Roberts’s cloak flared, revealing his weapon-filled clothing underneath. A tight skin suit on his upper body, wrapped with smaller daggers across his chest. On his belt, a pair of larger daggers were held, with one of its holsters currently empty, belonging to the ornate dagger that now flew across the air, landing somewhere in the coast. On another side of his belt, he held a pair of small, also ornate axes. Canisters were strapped on his back, on top of his horizontal blade strapped on the back. His left arm finally came fully into view, revealing the existence of a fierce gauntlet of metallic-like nature. Another shared similarity to his adversary, Robbie’s gauntlet made his left forearm and hand at least three times the size of his right, reaching up to his elbow. Seemingly, from beneath the clawed gauntlet, veins of ice ran across Roberts’s left bicep and up to his shoulder.

That same gauntlet barely managed to clash against Harlan’s own fierce strike, albeit momentarily.

The instant Robbie’s gauntlet collided against Harlan’s fist, his entire body rattled with such force he nearly began to reminisce once more. Yet his intent was never to stop Harlan’s attack. In that instant, his right hand gripped Trent’s leg, and along his already merged shadows, he used their powerful pull, aided by the shockwave, to pull Trent from his unfortunate predicament.

The sound of shattering glass reverberated, but not the glass that had just been transmuted from the sand, rather the product of Robbie’s layer of skin ice completely breaking apart. Roberts’s gauntlet was made for the purpose of being nigh-unbreakable, among other things. Harlan’s electro seemed to have been contained by the gauntlet itself, yet the infusion of his will forced the electricity to continue its course through Robbie’s body. The impact was devastating, filling the yurei with overwhelming pain. Pain, something that most of his adversaries had trouble inflicting upon him, but such a feat would clearly prove insignificant against a warrior of Harlan’s caliber, and for the first time in years…

Drops of sweat fell from Robbie’s forehead.

Roberts was sent reeling through the air, pools of blood and spit gushing from his mouth, yet with his unwavering will, he held tightly on Trent’s leg as they soared nearly to the far edge of the coast.

With a thud, Roberts landed on sand a great distance away. Waves crashing into the coast as the world calmed down after Harlan’s attack. Robbie’s mind traveled several years back for an instant, during a time where he first witnessed the raw strength of his former captain, the one Cain D. Abel.

His senses returned as his back met sand, and the warmness of Trent’s blood beside him. Roberts’s eyes flared open, yet he seemed unable to move his own body. By sheer force of will, he moved his neck to glance at Trent, who unlike him, had landed in a pool of shadows that immediately acted to cover the Oni, even appearing as if Trent was being forcefully sunk into the pool of darkness.

A tear escaped his darkened eyes. It was the tragedy all over again. Yet this time, Trent had been fatally wounded due to his selfish desires. The feeling of being helpless as he witnessed those closest to him succumb to a seemingly unstoppable enemy, it overcame him with grief, despair…hatred….

Anger. Passion. Determination. Calmness.

“I hope you can forgive me-gosu, Trent.” Still paralyzed from the neck down, Roberts began to rise merely moments after landing. Even breathing had become heavily difficult, but Robbie breathed. Short, yet powerful inhales, short exhales, and frost began to once again form on his skin. He continued to rise upwards, aided by his own shadow that enveloped great part of his body. Half of his face had been darkened by blood and flesh from Trent’s own guts, blood that trailed down his cheeks and fell on the pool of shadows underneath.

“Don’t worry…” Roberts’s mind flashed once more to around a decade ago. “I got this.”

Roberts stood tall, bloodied and damaged by Maurier Harlan’s unrelenting technique. As he stood in front of Trent, and uttered the same words she did many years ago as she stood against the odds, Roberts felt a sense of relief.

“I finally understand, bro. How Molly felt…”

Ice continued to form on his skin as the final remnants of nature’s disturbance settled, also an unconscious act, and with that, the overwhelming pain coursing through his body slowly but surely began to subside, as his eyes were focused on staring down the mountain peak that was Maurier Harlan.

Robbie coughed blood, raising his hand through his shadow to clench on his abdomen. Veins of ice trailed across his neck and cheek, his sharp teeth separating as he spoke again.

“I get it, yeah-gosu? You’re strong…” His eyes scanned the devastated forest and coast. “Admirals, Emperors, Revolutionaries…I don’t give a shit about any of you-gosu. Ya’ll can rule and plunge the world into chaos for all I care…” His breath began to stabilize.

“But you messed with the one thing I care about, my family. And that…” An invisible pressure of energy began to swell around Roberts.

“That’s the sin I just can’t forgive-gosu!”

“Gosu this, gosu that…shut the fuck up.” Harlan snarled. The crackling voice seemed to roll over the entirety of the Wolf Den.

He spread his arms out, grinning at Robbie despite the huge distance between them. Miasma began to spread throughout the ground, quickly covering everything around the half-Mink as it only continued to spread.

“Show me this sin shit!"

“Of course. From now on…words aren’t needed!”

Roberts’s shadow expanded exponentially, the remnants of his shadow that lingered back in the forest fully reaching his location. It added unto the pool he created around himself, creeping and enlarging in a similar stride as Harlan’s miasma.

“**Black Abyss**”

“*Rest within, Trent. I won’t allow you to die-gosu.*” The abyss of shadows fully consumed Trent within, a technique developed by Roberts to contain an innumerable quantity of objects, and due to Trent being at the time connected to Roberts’s own, he would be placed in a state of stasis for a limited time within the endless dark.

Unknown as of yet if it was due to Trent’s influence, slowly, a pair of dense, crystalline horns protruded from Roberts’s forehead. Emitting the same icy hue as his eyes, his diamond-like horns released a controlled mist of coldness that began to envelop Roberts.

A dark arm emerged from the shadows, falling on Roberts’s shoulder, with a large, ominous, devil-like head following after. Erebos silently cackled besides its master, gazing down with its unemotional eyes.

Aided by his shadow, Robbie raised his hand, wiping off the frozen blood from his face and mouth.

“*Grrrrrrrraaaaaahhhhh*”

Robbie’s growl rumbled the air. His hair flared up as he began scanning his unmoving body. To continue fighting moving with his shadow was of no consequence, it was in fact part of his own extensive arsenal of techniques. But Roberts would not allow himself to take this precarious challenge with a handicap.

“*Move..*"

The shadow strands around his body oozed out of him and merged unto Erebos, forming a new arm on his shadowy body. Roberts struggled to even force his fingers to move, barely clenching his hand and unable to even form a fist.

“*Move!*”

A gust of cold wind began to swirl around Roberts, as his own light blue aura surged from his body in a steady flow. He tightened his jaw, and his horns and pupils shifted into an icier shade of blue.

“FUCKING MOVE!”

By sheer force of will, Roberts clenched his hand into a tight fist. But his overcoming of his paralysis came with a residual effect. It had been years as well, since he willfully relied on his willpower to overcome a situation. An act that brought forth even more painful memories, but for now, reliving his darkest time served as fuel for his will…

A storm unlike others, or to be more precise, an overwhelming blizzard exploded forth from the yurei’s body. It washed over the coast, freezing the nearby waters and everything in its vicinity. Unlike before however, this wasn’t the result of the yurei’s unique “reitai” ability, but something much more unique.

“GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!”

Roberts roared as the last surges of electrical energy were repelled from his body, unleashing with it a massive wave of sheer cold aura that threatened to alter the very ecosystem into a frozen wasteland. The emerging ice then cracked, bursting into countless shards that were sent flying in every direction with the pressurized wave conjured by a brief display of Roberts’s own will.

Land, sea and air were frozen, then violently repelled by the rising surge of power Roberts contained within himself.

Roberts had just cemented himself as one in millions, a tragic soul blessed with the power of domination, as he released the mark of a true conqueror…

Robbie’s Haoshoku Haki could be felt even to the furthest reaches of the Wolf’s Den, carrying unforgiving frost with it. The yurei shook his head as the world settled again, finally taking deep breaths and waving his hand as he wished.

“Sorry bout’ that. Let’s get this over with-gosu.”

“Gahaha…” Harlan chuckled lightly. “Garorororo - GARORORORORO!” Harlan held his sides as he continued to laugh, his howls reaching the crevices and cracks of the island. A wide grin on the young man’s face as he seemed to be joyous and unable to stop laughing. Was it excitement? A twisted sense of pride? Harlan laughed for several seconds, until it all suddenly dyed out, the echoes vanishing as if they had been erased. Harlan glared towards Roberts.

“How fucking dare you?”

As much as violet yearned to leak out of Harlan, he contained it within. The frost that coated his island was something he had to deal with, ignoring the shivers that the burst of kingly will had brought forth. Harlan tilted his head as the acres of miasma began to burn like embers. Heat reminiscent to that of the sun, a heat that none could match. The heat of Bradford Silva, thawing out the frost. And worst of all Harlan seemed unbothered by the surging heat, his tolerance to such temperatures having been raised to the extreme due to the severity of his encounters with that man and training. Heat and frost raised into the air, the winds picking up as some of the currents of wind seemed to flash a vantablack at moments. “So…what was it about Argo?”

Miasma rose up like a massive wave ahead of Harlan as it adopted an almost liquid like viscosity. Bubbling as it travelled forwards. Anything that had the unfortunate fate of crossing its path ended up dissolving within, reduced to complete nothingness. Harlan had made contact with Roberts, and fortunately a trauma of his coincided with Harlan’s own. Poison.

Harlan had sent a tsunami of miasma towards Robbie. Miasma that behaved like Rena Argo’s poison.

“Ah…” Roberts hadn’t figured out why yet, but a sense of unease filled him as the black wave of miasma rushed towards him. His view was darkened by the tsunami, yet after those terrifying moments, Roberts’s breath was stable once again as it was when they first met. He outstretched his right arm.

A shadow limb reached into the distance, grabbing hold and flinging Robbie’s dagger towards his stretched hand. Clamping his dagger, Robbie thrusted it forward, as Erebos silently cackled once more.

“Come forth, my Legion of Shadow. Rise my Reborn, from the depths of the abyss, and serve your master’s will without question.”

As Roberts uttered an ancient text left behind by past users of his Kage Kage no Mi, the large abyss reacted to his words. A massive, draconic head emerged besides Roberts.

“Charlie. I figured it out-gosu. That black shit reminds me of him.” The enormous beast opened its maw, a surge of greenish energy building up within.

“**Atomic Devastation.**”

The surge of energy continued for a second more, before unleashing into a destructive blast of toxic proportions. The beam of energy was tens of times more devastating than Charlie’s previous attack against the air fleet, concentrating the unrelenting force of the blast breath towards the middle of the miasmic wave, in an attempt to disrupt its advance and split apart its momentum and size.

“Gog. Magog. **Arise**.”

As Roberts commanded, two new presences rose from the depths of his domain. Braided hair that reached below their waist, with a mechanical arm not unlike Harlan’s own. Grasped within their hands, were living scythes, also “reborn” that served as their weapons of choice. The eyeball in each of the scythes desperately looked at their surroundings, while each of the undead warriors instantly released a burst of intense killing intent.

Gog and Magog. Twins that terrorized the seas about four centuries ago. Each of them once possessed the powers of the Kage Kage no Mi, and even in death, they continued to serve their predecessors, the owners of the shadows that gave life to their bodies having long been sealed within the unmelting ice of Gealach.

“Bro, what the fuck! Finally some action!” Exclaimed Gog, the fiery one.

“Look ahead. Be alert.” Uttered Magog.

“Ugh what! Isn’t that Vinzo’s black goo?”

“Use your head, brother. Vinzo perished long ago. This must be its most recent user.”

“Whatever, we just gotta blast this shit, no?” Gog stated.

“Correct.” Magog asserted.

Gog and Magog grounded themselves up, taking a stance that if Harlan could’ve witnessed, would probably remind him of the identical stance taken by many giants.

Raising their scythes, Gog and Magog moved their weapons in an arc, ending with a forceful swing towards the air. Each of them unleashed an earth shattering wave of pressurized air, spiraling at sonic speeds before it collided with the tsunami, Gog aimed for the left side, while Magog launched his attack to the right, aiming to further disperse the wave a second after Charlie’s own blast.

"**Hakoku!**"

“Damn,” Harlan said as the wave of miasma began to stop its advance as he heard the humming of some sort of energized blast holding it back. The tremors, though slight due to the grand distance between them, could still be felt by the half-Mink. A testament to the sheer power of a single beam of force. As much as Harlan yearned to charge in and eradicate every obstacle past that wave, he wouldn’t. Not yet, at the very least. He had to provide a brief glimpse of hope first. So Harlan crossed his legs as he sat on the destroyed ground by him, looking towards the chaos ahead of him as he removed another can of cola from his pocket.

Then came the others, two more figures that with such force, carved through the wave. Harlan watched as his miasma split and broke apart. He craned his neck as the scent of rotting flesh struck his nose. No that wasn’t accurate, it was more so preserved. As if the dead had been kept pristine for ages. This newbie could control other creatures? Were they allies? No, that didn’t make sense since Harlan would’ve noticed them. These had to have been created by the young man. Harlan let a small smirk creep onto his face. If they were sending soldiers into fight, who was Harlan to deny that?

As the miasma split and began to fall down to the ground, they’d all see it. A flash of violet from within the falling fear. It shone bright until it was blinding, an unholy will cascading out as what nature remained nearby Roberts began to decay. An arm of black appeared as the light dimmed.

Covered in what seemed to be a sort of half-plate armour. Miasma began to coat an amethyst figure, a ten foot tall silhouette in the armour of a knight. Cracks throughout the armour revealing that same unholy will that had tried to consume all around it. A helm wrapped around the skull, a fluttering cloak of miasma behind it. Violet glistened in front of it as more miasma wrapped around it, as a broadsword formed before them. A violent clasping of the weapon as the air shook.

This was one of Harlan’s soldiers. A Kingsguard known as Tommy.

The blade didn’t even seem to move as Tommy swung it around him in a single sharp and jagged motion to best utilize Jinrairyu. A massive sphere of pressure and flying slashes burst from around the knight, carving through the air such that air began to turn into a vacuum as the sphere expanded. Sound unable to keep up as the soldier of fear faced off against the legion.

Gog and Magog stared in awe at the manifestation of the fear soldier. Their zombie weapons began to emit an unholy screech and jerk around their user’s arms.

“See? That’s Vinzo’s soldier!” Gog exclaimed.

“Again. Not Vinzo.” Magog stated. As Tommy took its stance, manifesting after the miasma wave settled, Gog and Magog stared the warrior down without any doubt of their own abilities. They seemed to take a stance, but as Tommy launched its faster-than lightning air slash, a voice echoed within Gog and Magog’a head.

“Stand back-gosu.”

The pressurized wave of slashes cleaved with ferocious force through the damaged coast, carrying power enough to easily carve through defenses through speed and precision. Roberts had already taken his own stance. His cloak fluttered while his left arm covered across his face. He held the blade strapped to his back with his right hand, knees bent and feet grounded. His eyes remained forward, as he drew his new blade, Dainsleif, from its scabbard, releasing a stream of frost from its blade.

As in a blink of an eye, Roberts prepared to clash against Tommy’s attack, his body seemed to twitch momentarily, at least three separate times. It was subtle, yet quick, and his hair began to prickle upwards ever so slightly, his expression becoming more…feral.

“*That slice technique…it can’t be…Regardless, I could try using my own strength to try and match the attack-gosu, but with these injuries, I should play it safe…*” Roberts spoke to himself in the briefest of moments as he prepared for the counterstrike.

“Heldleh, Haku…Trent.”

“I thank you for your strength!”

Quality over quantity. Among the hundreds of years of history, the users of the Kage Kage no Mi varied tremendously in ideals and skills. Some gathered hordes of undead, others focused on mastering their shadow abilities, while others were more calculating, and tried to balance both of their abilities. Robbie had decided long ago that he’d unravel the full potential of this power, going so far as to develop a successful partnership with his own shadow, allowing him to draw out greater output and techniques. And even while Robbie could easily amplify his strength by consuming hundreds, even thousands of shadows for a monstrous boost, the yurei opted for a different mindset. He would train his body alongside the consumed shadow, allowing his muscles to accustom to the shadow’s new skill and strength, which in turn enabled Roberts to draw out even greater power when infusing himself with others’s shadows.

With just three shadows, Roberts’s speed utterly skyrocketed, intercepting the attack in the air after dashing right past Gog and Magog without their realizing, ignorants to Robbie’s boost.

As Roberts continued to draw out his blade while floating in midair, it seemed as if he then pushed it back into its scabbard, without ever truly drawing it out. However, an explosion of dark blue frost burst from in front of Roberts. As if a blizzard manifested from out of nowhere, within the frost, dozens upon dozens of icy blue air slashes, an indication of Roberts’s own Haki infused in them, exploded forth and clash against Tommy’s own flurry of air cuts. Their clashes caused the air to rattle and screech with an eerie melody. Some slashes managed to pass through, causing Gog and Magog to seemingly phase through them as they continued standing in place.

“**Crescent Moon Hailstorm!**”

While it wasn’t a fully “borrowed” technique, but rather one he learned by a master of Jinrairyu himself. And using the knowledge of the shadows within, Robbie’s slashes seemed to vibrate in a lightning fast pattern, and as they dispersed alongside Tommy’s own during their clash, the wave of their clashing pressures causing the second brief blizzard to disperse as well.

Robbie landed on the ground, staring at Tommy that stood tall not too far away. However, from the air around them, small droplets of ice had formed and began to fall. Robbie’s own vibrating cold slashes had frozen the water droplets in the atmosphere, causing slight hail to form and fall.

Robbie extended both arms to his side, pointing both index and middle fingers to the ground. His shadow expanded, a lone tendril extended in the far distance of his expanded abyss, while several large ones burst from the shadow underneath him. Remaining in their non-physical form, the shadow tendrils expanded with even greater speed than before, curving and twirling around the sand as they seemed to ignore Tommy altogether.

The cracking of ice would signal its intent, as Robbie’s shadow began manipulating the droplets of ice by taking over their shadow. Robbie then raised his extended arms, crossing them across his chest in an “x” before he simply uttered.

“**Cursed Technique: Shadowfrost Execution!**”

Faster than a breath, enormous and sharp spikes of ice manifested from around Tommy. In fact, if Tommy were to actually feel cold, he’d notice that the initial deep sense of coldness would aim to firstly appear just inches from his armor. In a sense, what Robbie intended, was to gather the shadows of countless droplets of ice, merging them together and compressed into a few dozen spikes of dense ice, that instead of being launched from the air at him, it was the shadow tendrils that compressed the ice, and aimed to strike at the shadow cast by Tommy’s miasma body. Even if somehow the shadows were prevented from merging with it, the speed and swiftness in which they gathered, compressed and launched their strike was nearly instantaneous, aiming a few dozen ice spikes to pierce through its armor with the speed of shadow. Of course, due to its miasma body, Robbie intended to envelop and freeze the fear soldier and its miasmic body within frost, the ice spikes merely providing a medium for his intended technique to proceed, aiming to stagnate the ethereal soldier in place.

Tommy received no orders. He was simply expected to act as perfectly as the construct could. The being was made from the sort of trauma that could affect even Maurier Harlan’s psyche. A sort of beating a younger version of himself had sworn to never forget. But the second half of him was made of an indomitable willpower. A imperial authority that had taken this trauma and completely tamed it for Harlan’s benefit. In a way, the construct was almost an extension of the half-Mink himself. Or it may have been the source of the willpower that couldn’t help but crackle in admiration at Roberts’ determination. At whatever preparation was being made as tendrils slithered by the construct. And as the technique was executed, what did Tommy do?

The knight shrugged.

As frost collected across the miasma as the shadow was about to be bound, he simply threw the blade forwards and away. And the sheer willpower within escaped the suit of armour as Haoshoku moved forth, unveiled in all its glory. Pure violet glided forwards as ice shattered in its presence. Yet the armour remained behind while willpower chased the moving blade. But rising from the blackened sand Harlan had created were tendrils that quickly wrapped around the will. The armour of a knight drew in light as Tommy had reappeared, arm extended out as he grasped onto the hilt of his weapon.

Tommy was his King’s sword. He resembled a knight, warriors that charged into battle without so much as a second thought. All for their kingdom. But this knight lacked that patriotism; he only held his Emperor’s will. And so in the moment that the knight had grabbed his blade, he thrust it towards the sun and dragged him along with it. But the miasma from the sand followed behind, joining with the cloak of Tommy as he reached the peak of his flight. The sun shone behind the knight, as if showing that a hero of light could be found within the miasma clad knight. But that was not his purpose.

The cloak billowed up behind Tommy as the purple within his blade leaked into himself, causing him to swell. And a wave of Haoshoku burst from above as birds and animals from above fell crashing down onto the ground. Layers of sand seemed to “break” as fauna and trees began to rot. A brief show of Haoshoku had been enough to cause the earth to fear him. But that hadn’t been the point of Tommy’s flight. For now there was simply a massive circle of vanatblack in the sky. One that blot out the sun. Darkness cast across the island. Pitch black. Without any light, there could be no shadows cast.

Harlan finally got to his feet, cracking the side of his neck as he did. His eyes shone in the dark much like an actual wolf’s would. Though imperceivable through this darkness to most, miasma leaked from Harlan back into the sand to “reset” his domain. Harlan’s steps completely silent, his movements entirely, even his breath. Nothing could be heard. Yet his voice finally broke the eerie silence of the false night.

“You. Show me a sword thing. Without using your shadowy tendril shits.”

Roberts chuckled. *This guy’s good*. He thought to himself, of course, he wouldn’t dare say it out loud. The display he witnessed was utterly impressive, and yet, he knew it felt short to what the Seawolf was truly capable of.

Earth and sky were bent to his will. Nature broke apart while the heavens darkened, truly an ominous ambience befell the Wolf Den as these figures clashed. Robbie continued glaring in amusement at Harlan’s own powerful minion, and a smirk followed suit as the young emperor addressed him.

Roberts glanced at his pitch black surroundings, his eyes still glimmered with cold intensity amidst the darkness.

“Ya’ think you hindered me-gosu? Kaa! Zahaha!” His double toned voice echoed throughout.

“Holy shit. We’re fucked!” Gog exclaimed in a sarcastic tone.

“Do not let your guard down.” Magog answered his corpse brother.

Ignoring his soldiers, Roberts continued, as even amidst the pitch black, his own shadow still squirmed beneath his feet. “I am the **Master** of shadows, ya’ idiot. Ain’t no circus tricks gonna fully stop my powers-gosu.”

As he answered, Roberts began a steady walk towards his adversary, tightly clenching his blade. “I also ain’t gotta listen to shit you ask of me…*However*…” His last word seemed to echo through the air, heard almost simultaneously as a cold winter breeze suddenly burst from seemingly nowhere.

Gog and Magog tightened their grip on their weapons, but their master had already vanished from view almost entirely, only coldness persisted. For Roberts, it wasn’t simply a technique, as controlling the output of his own breath came as naturally as the cold he exuded from his skin. While highly capable individuals like Bradford Silva and Necho could quite literally make their aura vanish and even their physical self from sight through applied training, the perception one would receive through Robbie’s own version could invoke feelings of dread, as only coldness persisted, an assurance that at any moment, he could, and would strike. A ghost that wandered through the darkness, never truly gone, yet remaining as imperceptible as shadows.

A ghastly emanation suddenly broke the silent darkness, as the otherworldly chill blasted towards the King’s Sword, a figure of nightmarish proportions aimed to swallow Tommy’s ethereal body whole. What it was, remained unclear amidst the dark, but it seemed that not only frost, but a physical component accompanied this sudden emanation of winter. A demonic silhouette suddenly took from within the frost, looming over Roberts’s ghastly body that seemed to flicker between the material realm. A slash towards Tommy’s right side, frost accompanied the slice, such coldness that even allowed the Yurei to contend against their rival tribe of the Onis. Frost that Roberts seemed to excel in thanks to his tough upbringing. If Tommy retaliated, he would find that all he struck was merely cold air, whereas the silhouette would simply take form again, and aim to deliver slice after slice of sheer and dense coldness, all the while the vortex of winter spiraled around the knight.

Roberts’s himself floated above Harlan, attempting his best to remain hidden to all senses. Of course, against an opponent of such caliber, he couldn’t expect much of a sneak attack, yet he continued onwards with his assault.

Roberts spun and spun, launching himself towards Harlan with his blade in tow. His body was fully covered in frost as well, drawing its focus into his blade as he blasted downwards like a spinning vortex, similarly delivering slash after slash that aimed to shred and decimate everything underneath. With every cut, the momentum of his spin multiplied as did the number of slashes, aiming to ultimately crash unto Harlan’s own self and continue with the relentless onslaught.

“**Ghastly Doppleganger Dance!**”

Both Roberts and his doppleman aimed at their adversaries, with Roberts personally aiming towards Harlan, while Erebos manipulated an emanation of frost emitted from Roberts’s Reitai and his own spirit, imbuing and emitting his cold Haki for a greater enhancement to his unique skill. Roberts not only aimed to demonstrate that at the very least, his own shadow remained active even under utter darkness, it would still have ways to aid its master in battle, emulating their shared skills in an unforseen way. Roberts’s had launched himself at Harlan knowing full well even an explosive barrage of slashes wouldn’t serve as much to truly overwhelm the notorious fighter, but for the first time in their battle, the two warriors would seemed intent in taking their bout into a closer range fight.

Roberts’s breathed into his diaphragm, as he sent oxygen to every part of his body, forcing its system to operate at a greater extent in order to draw out the full power of the shadows that now enhanced his full skillset and physicality. His eyes glimmered with icy intensity within the dark, briefly flashing throughout Roberts’s shadow-like movements.

“Zyaaaryaaa!” Roberts’s screeched as his body was pushed further, pumping the strength of two onis and a giant through his strikes, while foregoing the defensive ice layer on his skin that, while a formidable defense, prevented Roberts from ever moving at his true speed. Weightless as shadow, yet powerful as an iceberg, with breath control and focus, fighting amidst pitch darkness would only serve to remind Roberts of what he truly fought for. Harlan had been locked in by Roberts’s own coldness, for he could detect anything warmer it touched. His mind flashed to Harlan’s own weightless speed, as he aimed to truly become one with shadow and deliver devastating slashes to both of his targets in an ominous dance within the darkness.

Tommy’s retaliation was simple. He had no need to fight back, he had served his purpose. His figure faded as the large sphere of miasma that was left in his wake continued to blot out the sun. The frost would continue to circle around the sphere but there was nowhere to find purchase across it. The conditions to interact with the miasma of the Ifu were specific and with no kingly will giving it life of its own, it was simply Harlan’s tool to cast his Wolf Den into pitch black.

“Ya didn’t have to listen…” Harlan agreed as a malicious grin curled onto his face. “But you did.”

Roberts was physically gone from sight. Even though Harlan’s eyes were extremely sensitive to motion and he did possess night vision, the latter wasn’t as effective in this artificial darkness. Coupling that with Roberts’ stealth capabilities, the like of which Harlan had never encountered before, he completely understood being unable to see him with just his eyes. Yet Roberts did exude this aura of dread. One that would keep many off of their game as they’d be reminded that they couldn’t catch Roberts in action. An assurance that he could strike at any moment. But to someone like Harlan, the promise of an attempt at his life at any given second was a challenge. And he’d always take those head on.

Harlan’s eyes found movement above him as Roberts rapidly spun down towards him. Each rotation slowed in Harlan’s vision as he saw the intent behind the motions. Multiply the amount of spins to multiply the force and number of slashes. Harlan almost leaped to unleash his own dance, one that had granted him victory against the Kitsune grandmaster. But he restrained himself for he simply wanted to show the gap between himself and others. A hand raised, palm first towards the incoming slashes. The Sea Wolf watched as the world moved in slow motion around himself, Roberts admittedly moving faster than many of other New World fighters that fell under his gaze.

He leaped up, slithering like a serpent as he navigated through the slashes, using them as platforms. Each cold to the touch even as Harlan moved at absurd speeds, momentarily reminding him of when he had been trapped in a space where motion could not exist. There was no doubt in Harlan’s mind that Roberts would eventually be able to do the same. So for now, while Harlan could still solely rely on pure martial prowess for that, he’d imbue Roberts with a lesson of what it meant to mess with the Purgatory Alliance. To mess with Maurier Harlan.

Harlan reached Roberts before the first cut could strike the ground, having quickly moved up via the slashes acting as platforms. But each step would have caused the cuts, precise and powerful, to deviate off of their natural course. Each step caused the cut to fade from the sheer amount of speed applied to it from an opposing direction. The meaning of such speed revealed as Harlan extended his arm and began to turn to the side. The muscles in his silent moving shoulder flared as did it down his back and extended arm. To become invisible and undetectable through sheer speed. Something that he had achieved during his encounter with Kitsuki, to become so fast that almost all of the other grandmasters could only hope to see their movements. As Harlan drew attention towards his lariat strike, he moved at a speed that left behind a sole image while he moved beyond most could achieve to strike elsewhere. An invisible and silent strike that aimed at the back of Robert’s skull with a single hammer fist, the force more than enough to break even the bones of an Oni.

This was the **Ninth Howl, Hollow Wolf Ghost Strike**.

Roberts was struck. With both realization, and unimaginable pain. Even with three powerful shadows currently empowering his being, he instantly recognized how logic didn’t really apply to those at the top. A coldness that he had never before felt overcame him. There was an insurmountable amount of fear coursing through his body as he merely caught a glimpse of Harlan just as his attack launched.

“Is this…death?”

Roberts’s neck contorted in an unnatural fashion as bones seemed to shatter, before he was sent forcefully hurling like a comet towards the earth below. The impact created a powerful crack in the air, before it was then muffled by an even louder tremor caused by Roberts’s rocketing body crashing on the ground, creating an impact crater of great proportions. Enormous portions of soil blasted upwards as the ground shattered in response to the result of Harlan’s powerful blow, just as the slashes continued raining down, as the force of Harlan’s strike sent Roberts in an unstoppable descent that outpaced even his own attack.

Gog and Magog remained silent, brief shock as in an unregistered instant, their captain’s presence vanished from its prior position in the air, almost being “teleported” into a different direction in a mere moment. While Roberts’s own aura had become almost undetectable, his undead soldiers had forged a different kind of connection with their master, that allowed them to sense their master even if he remained “invisible”.

But Roberts hadn’t vanished from view. They had sensed their master was still there, prompting buried under meters of dense bedrock. There he appeared to remain. Unmoving. Silent. Could their master had really lost?

Their senses then alerted them of another. Not Harlan, not Tommy, but someone else…like them.

“Flap.”

A kick would then attempt to force its way into Harlan’s own neck with incredible descending force. Velocity that surpassed Robbie’s demonstrated own, as its “flap” would have created destructive gale winds that would crash against the landscape, though this effect was only felt later by those below. Yet they required no sight nor capacity to follow its movements to recognize the shadow that empowered one of their own.

Belial had appeared, the prospect of his master in danger alerting the being to act. Back on Gary, the Cofresi snailship, Honoji himself had been pushed back by Belial taking flight towards its master’s battle. It soared into the darkened heavens, before descending like a ferocious raptor towards its master’s attacker. Belial’s armored knee was aimed at the nigh-untraceable presence of Harlan in the air. A being that could not only see amidst the darkness, but could even witness certain normally invisible frequencies that traveled through the air. Belial was unique even among Roberts’s legion, for it had served many masters of shadows in the past, and survived through possibly centuries.

As it aimed an armored and destructive kick towards Harlan, Gog and Magog launched themselves closer towards the battle, both in an effort to aid their General, and in hopes of recovering their captain’s possibly unconscious body.

Harlan was unable to revel in his show of power, there were already others coming to stop him. This cold-skinned man that had come face to face with Harlan was unlike most fighters he had met. A plethora of others that were somehow connected to him. Although it reminded him of his Kingsguard, these were likely a direct use of the other mans’ powers. These soldiers of his were formidable in their own right, and when it came to sheer numbers…Harlan knew that there had to be more of these. After all, these were the same things that allowed him to sneak away.

His eyes found the motion quickly, his ears finding the high-pitched noise that came when regular metal screeched against the air. The other two moving towards where his opponent had crashed into the earth below. Harlan’s eye twitched with anger. Why was it everyone that came his way? These new folk that had just found their way into this side of the world found it appropriate to fight him? Harlan’s main focus was on achieving the title, to be recognized as the Strongest Martial Artist in the World. Yet people still found reason to come across *his* land. *His* home. And what? Did they expect a fair match?

The half-mink glared towards his massive wolf statue, sighing. Harlan's palm drifted up, out facing towards Belial as the muscles within his shoulder flared just as Belial’s knee was about to strike Harlan’s extended palm. He remembered the stillness that had been induced onto him. The world around Harlan came to painful stop. His foot rested against his other leg as he became his own base, still afloat in the air. Everything created motion, which was kinetic energy. Harlan had always used his variant style in a way that the force would be redirected through him, not stored. But that wasn’t to say he never could.

If everything created motion, that was force ready for Harlan to draw into himself. As he drew it into himself, the violent winds began to cease. Rubble that had scattered paused in the air momentarily. The animals across the entirety of the Wolf Den were forced to a halt as all of their motion was drawn into Harlan, an unadulterated amount of pure kinetic force. All of it was within that extended palm.

A final glance at the statue. “I can get a new one…” His palm thrust towards Belial, as his own eyes seemed to resemble that of anothers for a second.

"**Seventy-Third Song. Noble Truth of Creation**."

All of that force burst outwards towards Belial. Harlan’s miasma wavered, force causing the clouds past it to simply dissipate. Tremors and quakes rumbled throughout the entire Wolf Den, the waves by the shores crashing onto land and the giant snail. Even the other islands in The Rift began to shake from the sheer force exuded point-blank at Belial. Rubble turned into pieces of dust instantly, trees shattering like glass. This technique was what had truly set Harlan down the path of becoming a martial artist. A technique for the penultimate of another martial artist order. And Harlan had quite frankly, stolen it.

The force that exuded out allowed Harlan to push away from Belial, as he changed his momentum to “teleport” in a similar fashion as he had made Roberts by the hole, his arms extended out as his hair seemed to resemble his First Mates own. Each forearm aimed at the necks of the two shadow swordsman that Roberts had brought forth. The back of his shoulders flared with explosive power as he used the Ryujin Style while using the principles of Kitsune to make the strikes seem as if they hadn’t even left yet. Coupling all that sheer power with the sheer momentum of what had sent him catapulting forth, this technique was devastating. This was the **Tenth Howl, Wolf Cross**.

Should his lariats strike, he’d hook his arms around their necks and use it to bring their bodies together in such a way that it’d decapitate them with sheer bludgeoning force alone. But that wasn’t Harlan’s only goal as he aimed to simply continue to cleave through them and release an absurdly fatal concussive blast towards whatever had gone down that hole.

## Parade of One Hundred Demons

Pure power. The feeling of an absolute dominant force made Belial remember a fateful encounter from the past. The air screeched as everything around the large archipelago of The Rift were forced to revel in harlan's strength. Flora was pulverized by the shockwaves that tore apart the landscape, as even soldiers all the way in the island referred to as "Graveyard" knew all too well the cause of the overwhelming reverberations. Belial's body was sent towards the darkened heavens, chunks of his dense flesh trailing behind his seeding body.

His mind flashed, memories contained within his shadow. A white-haired yurei charged forth, leading Belial and countless others into battle. Yet it wasn't Roberts. A woman. Her beatiful yet powerful body clashed against a monster, Belial then dashed forth in order to aid his master, striking the ferocious being with strikes that shook the air. Belial was then hit by a punch that sent him reeling halfway across an island in a mere flash, it was then that Belial witnessed the power of the Gura Gura no Mi.

Even against such a power, Belial hadn't felt as overwhelmed as he felt against Harlan's "Noble Truth". His body had no sense of pain, so even the loss of flesh barely impeded the undead beast. However, he could tell that this attack had caused serious problems for him. Namely, his wings had been crippled, and several internal bones had been pulverized, which could definitely limit his physical capabilities. Even if Roberts still lacked the experience to streghten the stolen shadows and the legion as a whole as she was capable of, the emount of damage received by this focused attack had surpass those he received against the past user of the Gura Gura no Mi.

As the demonic zombie was blasted through the sky, Gog and Magog never saw Harlan's attack. The thunderous release of his attack had already caused enough problems as their surroundings were ravaged, impeding their successful retrieve of their master. The once brothers in life glanced at each other, their heads spiraling in the air as their shocked faces observed as Harlan truly wasted no movement, launching a devastating attack towards the area where Roberts had crashed unto earlier.

Even if the cracks on the ground had caused Roberts to fall deeper into the bedrock, Harlan's attack aimed to pierce through every obstacle in its way and finish off his target. The meters of dense rock wouldn't even detain its momentum.

Suddenly, a pair of gloved hands tore through the earth, meeting the attacl head on as ripples emitted from the limbs, the clashing of both forces causing an explosion that resulted in a deep and large crater that expanded gradually. Meters of soil blasted towards the sky, revealing the depth at which Roberts had crashed down to. However, it had seemed that Roberts hadn't been alone. Behind the mysterious figure that clashed against Harlan's shockwave, Roberts kneeled on the ground. Blood dripped from the top of his head, covering the front portion of his silver hair, and falling unto the left side of his face. He held his stomach tightly with his left hand, seemingly vomiting out viscuous black blood on the ground before him. He coughed, hurling out even more liquid from his insides. Small pellets fell down his mouth alongside the pool of fluids, a disgusting truth of the result of deadly battles.

But it wasn’t simply blood that was thrown out of Roberts’s mouth, the small pellets wiggled around as if something were inside. A kick rose to meet Harlan’s shockwave, a boot emitting powerful shockwaves themselves clashed against the attack, before the full force of her leg’s ascension forced the concentration of violent vibrations to blast up high.

A woman stood in front of Roberts. A black dress and black hat, that covered her voluptuous body. Even in undeath, what little of her skin was revealed to others glowed with unmatched beauty. Her yellow eyes, unlike Roberts and even Belial, perfectly tracked Harlan’s nigh-undetectable movements. Locks of precious silver hair fell over her shoulders, as she placed her right arm on her hip, exhaling a mist of slight coldness.

“My, my…-gosu.” She began. “I gotta’ give you some credit, hatchling. This shadow isn’t half bad.”

Roberts raised one knee, wiping off the blood draining out of his mouth. “It bothers me that yer’ names are similar, but I figure nothin’ less than the Crimson Queen’s shadow could suffice for your powerful body…Lady Sylvanas-gosu.” Roberts uttered with a raspy voice, his throat clearly suffering from his wounds.

“Oh my~. I can’t resist when handsome young men compliment an old lady like myself.”

“You’re not old. But I’m glad you’re able to have some of your true memories-gosu.” As Roberts spoke, there began a strange rattling sound.

“Of course. And Silvenya, huh? So that brat managed to grow into quite a monster. I commend you for being able to get your hands on this. Now…what do we have here?”

Her eyes never left Harlan’s frame, another cold exhale followed. “To think I’d be able to witness a “Black Sun” again. The Ifu Ifu no Mi…Heh! Vinzo and I used to toy with armies when we combined our strength!” A cold, bright aura began to manifest from Silvanas’s undead body.

The rattling then ceased, before the black pellets began to explode into streams of a black substance. From this, shadows emerged, planting themselves into the ground as each took a different form. The small orbs expanded, revealing within its contents masses of condensed flesh, armor and weapons.

Even with Dark Abyss, while he can store probably hundreds if not thousands of shadows within his own, the amount of focus it takes to retain corpses within that technique is more stressful on his stamina. However, Roberts devised that by permanently altering the shadows, and compressing their bodies into the smallest form he could, he could store even more quantities of his loyal soldiers as flesh and shadow pellets inside his own stomach, further employing his Reitai within in order to contain his own stomach acid.

Soldiers began to rise and expand, with some even reaching enormous sizes. Sir Mordred planted his greatsword on the ground besides Roberts, while Hayate flashed into existence behind him.

“Hell yeah!” Umi Umiexclaimed, jumping in place and throwing several punches in the air.

Swinging their scythes in an upwards arc, rotating their entire bodies to grant momentum, Gog and Magog pierced their own heads in the air, as their bodies landed on the ground. Their respective heads fell on their arms, as they glanced at the direction of Roberts and Sylvanas.

“YO SIS! SEEMS WE’RE EQUALS NOW!” Gog exclaimed.

Sylvanas ignored their taunt as a stream of cold energy continued to release from her body, her attention fully on the enemy. “Equals? Not a chance.”

“I’m using *that thing*-gosu”
.” Roberts briefly uttered before clapping his hands together.

Sylvanas didn’t even glance back, yet she seemed to understand what the yurei meant. “So he’s that strong, eh-gosu? I understand!”

Within his clasped hands, Roberts held a dense flesh pellet. It had come to this. Roberts was aiming to show his full hand against this adversary. While he never intended a clash, he certainly wasn’t aiming to back down from one, which then evolved into having a true motive, for Maurier Harlan had trampled on that which he held dear.

Slight streams of his Conqueror’s Spirit seemed to exude from his person. Derzhul raised his scepter, emitting a brilliant blue light, and Sylvanas had vanished.

There was the sound of distortion in the air. No sudden indication would alert of Sylvanas’s movements, as she had “repelled” the air around her and moved near instantly. A palm would aim to close in on the side of Harlan’s head. Covering said arms were two rings made of swirling ice, that spun with Sylvanas’s flowing arm in between. As if she caressed the very air, her arm moved as swift and peaceful as the ocean’s wave, yet would aim to strike lethally at her target. The rings would expand as she aimed to make contact with Harlan, and should it fail, her technique would release regardless, as another constant surge of vibrations launched one of the rings through her palm, expanding and freezing the air as countless more rings were formed in an oval wave pattern. The vibrating "sea" of freezing waves encompassed more surface area the further from Sylvanas it traveled, freezing the very air and the water particles within the affected area.

While a deadly combination of two different styles employed by female warriors that now acted as one, Sylvanas’s attack wouldn’t end there, as her other arm aimed to rise from below, again sweeping through every movement as it aimed to strike the underside of Harlan’s chin with the back of her hand. Her right leg would then sweep in an angle and coat itself in an icy layer that she covered under her initial palm strike. Wether her two attacks remained successful or not, she ultimately aimed for a freezing roundhouse kick that aimed to instill utter coldness unto Harlan, and deliver an impact fueled by the body and soul of two veteran warriors.

The legion of zombies would continue to rise, and Roberts’s shadow expanded in an instant, extending webs into each of the shadows present thanks to Derzhul’s glowing scepter expanding the presence of the shadows. Roberts would remain in place as the powerful Nomad pirate, enhanced by the shadow of Silvenya, launched herself against the monstrous half mink. He quickly recalled how he barely escaped with his life moments prior.

In a moment of survival, Roberts had no doubt Harlan aimed for a decisive killing blow. His ice armor couldn’t form fast enough nor tough enough without preparation in order to withstand what was sure to come. Even his shadow exchange could be outpaced by the martial artist. As such, Roberts had merely opted to begin his “exchange” from the inside out, enabling his insides, to become shadow itself, saving Roberts from the tremendous contortion his neck and spine would suffer under the initial impact, not to mention the resulting effects.

Luckily, his body could withstand the rest, albeit at the cost of severe damage and still a few broken bones and a concussion from areas that couldn’t switch fast enough. Instead of continuing to lament, Roberts brought forth a powerful warrior, and had begun preparations to reveal something that can be accurately described as a “thing”. And that “thing” had once been Sylvanas’s ultimate zombie, a trump card not even she could control. A nightmarish beast that once rampaged after her own death, only being brought down by a collective effort from her former Captain and another individual from the opposing side.

With three of his most capable soldiers on his sides, with Sylvanas on the move, Roberts sought to summon a calamity, a weapon that he had saved for his revenge against Rena Argo, was about to be unleashed upon not just Harlan, but possibly on the entirety of The Rift…

“Man, stop talking.” Harlan groaned as more shadowy figures began to rise. The pellets caught his attention but he had no intention of doing anything to deal with them. They didn’t feel like threats. Yet this woman that had appeared before him did. “What the fuck is a Vinzo? No one shuts up about that thing.”

That woman vanished right before his eyes, Harlan’s ears feeling the sudden change in air pressure as it violently distorted. Something was coming and it was likely Sylvanas. Motion sensitive eyes picked up as soon as it was in range, the hand coming for the side of his head. He quickly slid back with his feet, the side of his forearm suddenly rising to meet the incoming hand as a powerful impact echoed out from the collision. Yet the rings still expanded outwards, Harlan feeling the air get colder and colder. And the colder it got, the harder it would be to move.

Two more strikes followed, and Harlan was prepared for them. Martial skill deemed him an unpredictable force. First was the uppercut to which Harlan responded by letting his arm awkwardly grab the incoming wrist, and using his core strength, raised himself into the air and making the strike unable to hit him. Legs up in the air, Sylvanas was still able to execute the sweeping kick as he spun back onto the ground, to which Harlan once again raised his legs off the ground in a quick hop to avoid. But it was just as he was landing that the roundhouse kick came. Harlan was still able to react as he brought his knee up to meet the kick, but the impact was still devastating.

The fist thing to come into effect was that cold. Chills ran through Harlan’s body as he felt his internal temperature drop. As if his muscles and joints were being told to shut down. Then came the impact that because of the momentary stasis, Harlan was unable to redirect. It rattled throughout his body as he cursed to himself. When was the last time he felt this sort of physical pain? It was excruciating, blood coming to his mouth as it began to drip down the sides of his lips. This Roberts could summon something like this? Something that would quite frankly, overwhelm most people he ever came across?

Anger began to drill through Harlan. An anger that sharpened into an apathetic focus. There had always only been one solution to things like this, and that was to win. Harlan’s body began to warm. The temperature not just in his body, but of the world around him began to rise rapidly. Destroyed fauna began to light aflame just from proximity. Miasma burnt around Harlan as if he was being burnt alive, a cursed grin making itself evident on his face. The power of his devil fruit awakening, to give his miasma the properties of the things that he feared and had been traumatized by. And the sheer heat the miasma was producing was none other than the result of his fight against Bradford Silva. Harlan was quite literally, on fire. But the fire could not harm him, only the surrounding world.

His storm grey eyes glared out in the darkness he had cast, letting his knee slide to the ground. He was surrounded by these soldiers of Roberts. Formidable creatures that made getting to their master all the more troublesome. Were they here to put him down? Why? Because he had stepped all over that boy in glasses? Maybe their reason was justified. But Harlan didn’t care. This was his land. His island, his rules. It was that simple. Harlan shifted into his fighting stance, legs slightly spread with the feet tilted 45 degrees, each facing another direction. Arms up as decreed by his Okami-ryu.

Killing intent unlike anything Harlan had shown. A twisted yearning to put down everything he saw before him. A murderous intent so pure that it mixed with a martial artists ability to generate an “aura”, as what seemed like a massive pack of wolves were behind Harlan, waiting for him to lead the charge. Muscles in his body flared, and relaxed. He took in a sharp breath and breathed it back out.

He spat the blood from his mouth at the ground.

Harlan’s front arm cocked back to his waist in a twisting motion, bringing the fist right to his ribs. Then the arm was suddenly extended, twisting back out in an opposite spiral to strike Sylvanas’ gut. Vibrations that travelled through Harlan’s arms that aimed to lock down the joints and muscles of the physical body as they forcibly causes muscles to spasm in ways that prevented the target from properly using them. No matter the result, Harlan’s upper body would fall back to avoid a potential counter as he formed a bridge position as often seen in gymnastics. As he did, his lower body snapped up as muscles throughout his lower half flared as he brought out his understanding of the Ryujin style to strike her in the chin, choosing to instead cause that physical force to rattle throughout her internals to cause the body itself to fail. Without a body, one could not fight.

Legs snapping up as Harlan’s shoulders and body contorted unnaturally as the legs landed on the ground, to which Harlan took off in a four-legged sprint. Nothing proved that Harlan had moved. Sound, wind, logic. All of it trailed behind Harlan as it begged to keep pace. His next target was the other boy, Umi Umi. Without so much as stopping his movement, as Harlan went to pass him, he released a myriad of strikes all across his body. Each targeting crucial joints such as the shoulder, knees, ankles, elbows and neck, as Harlan aimed to release enough force to cause the limbs and joints attached to where he had struck to simply pop as he relied on a mixture of his Ryujin Style and masterful technique.

Ignoring the results of whatever happened to the previous, Harlan approached the duo nearby Roberts. For Mordred he raised his knee up as Harlan leaped towards his skull in what appeared to be a knee strike. Harlan’s movement and execution of it were that of a perfect form. As if he had forced all of his momentum into that strike. But clearly, it’d be proven false. He utilized his Hollow Wolf Ghost Strike once more as even his presence became a blur as he released an invisible attack towards the back of Mordred with the maximum output of his Ryujin. But using his understanding of kinetic flow via his Earth Melody variant, Harlan aimed to cause all that force to travel through Mordred’s body and armour and into the sword to completely shatter it. But Harlan did not wait for results as he went for Hayate, who stood to back and diagonal of Mordred.

For him, Harlan chose to repurpose his Eighth Howl. To use that technique without a fist and instead a leg aimed towards the chest of Hayate. The technique that had broken through Trent’s body and spines, breaking a material prided as one of the strongest; oni bone. As Harlan aimed to kick his body spun so that his own face would be facing Roberts’ back. Ignoring if the kick even did the desired effects, miasma collected above Harlan as an infamous Ulfgarn spear took shape as it burst at speeds not unalike to what Harlan had used earlier towards Derzhul.

Which left only Roberts. For him, Harlan’s attack was simple. A strike to the back of his head that encompassed a knee strike while his elbow came flying down from above onto the top of his skull, while using the power of the Ryujin Style to do immense physical damage to the Yurei in a two-pronged attack, somewhat reminiscent to the one Sylvanas had released as the burning hot miasma that had also accompanied every other single attack he had released after revealing his murderous intent were also aiming to be released onto Roberts.

And it was only now that the blood Harlan had spat hit the ground.

Some believe that, only those destined for greatness will reach the true pinnacle of existence. The remainder of humanity would merely follow under the influence and whims of those above them. A fact that Harlan wanted to cement on the Cofresi.

Sylvanas grinned. Harlan was a true monster, taking her strikes that probably surpassed those of hers when in life, as Silvenya’s shadow provided a better understanding of Hasshoken, that was coupled by the formidable pirate’s own experience. Even in death, Sylvanas’s body still retained coldness, which was supplemented by Frost Dials of Trent’s own manufacturing. The Crimson Queen’s air repulsion technique was amplified by Sylvanas’s own skin, which remained able to “breathe” their frost. She instantly recognized, she was probably the one zombie currently in the legion which could attempt to hold her own against this caliber of opponent. Unless he brought “it” out.

Her arms crossed as the air “boomed” once again, jet-like streams of frost blasting from her back and legs as she accommodated her body to take Harlan’s first strike head on. His strike to her gut met a dense shield of ice, a circular platform that exuded from her crossed arms. Her shockwaves traveled through the ice, aiming to divert or reduce the spiraling force of Harlan’s fist.

The shield cracked and shattered, before her the shadow empowering her instantaneously reacted the only way it could to such a maneuver. His body contorted to a bridge, her own frost cloud was whooshed away by the great force from Harlan’s lower body, striking her chin as her head immediately flared upwards. Her body threatened to follow through the momentum pushing her upwards. Bones shattered across her body, a destructive force traveling her undead insides.

As her legs became apart from the ground, Sylvanas’s body tensed, as if she had become a block of ice herself. Her body crashed into the ground with a tremor, vibrations following through the ground as it cracked the earth in a small diameter around her.

“That kid…” She recognized Harlan’s prowess, having to resort to an advanced technique in order to self repair herself. Layers of frost seeped through her bones and froze together the broken fragments. Even in some areas where the bone was pulverized, an icy replacement was put in place. Even as quick as this happened, when Sylvanas glanced towards Roberts, everything had already ended. Her disbelief at what transpired plastered all over her face. Suddenly, the shadows finally reached her and the others, but the damage had already been done. From underneath, the unconscious body of Trent sprung up from the shadows and landed into her arms. The hole on his torso had been patched up as best as he could, with shadows pulling the body and organs together and conjoined with ice. Dozens of medically skilled shadows aiding in keeping his brother alive.

She had no time to dwell on what she witnessed, as the Oni was launched at her arms, the commands for her next move already in her head. But she was sure of it. The unique coldness that even her own tribe feared. An emanation that hadn’t appeared in the seas for generations. There was no doubt in her mind, she had just seen…

A True Ghost.

Umi Umi’s new body had been greatly enhanced, providing elasticity and rubber-like qualities to aid on his fighting style. He couldn’t react, merely feeling his self being rammed by unseen strikes that tore holes all around his body.

Mordred got it worse. His armor shattering at the force delivered to the back of his helmet, his blade also cracked in half as the force traveled all over, miasma seeping into both him and Umi as they were yet to react to what had transpired.

Hayate was abnormally quick, yet his body was split in half as his torso flew away from his lower body. Derzhul’s skeletal body was merely pulverized by the overwhelming force of a thrown spear of miasma, that emulated the gargantuan weight of Wolfgang’s famous weapon.

“I’m sorry.” A fleeting thought that lasted an instant. Roberts’s senses picked up on his loyal soldier’s shadows as his connected with theirs. Their undead bodies were destroyed, while the scorching heat of the miasma ate away at what remained of their bodies. The feelings of regret and failure could come later, as each minute that went by in this battle was to his detriment. Harlan surpassed Roberts in endurance, and in every other aspect he could think of. Even then, the yurei expansive repertoire and abilities allowed him to survive even against opponents well beyond his capabilities. As he always said, he never fought alone.

Harlan had destroyed most of Roberts’s strongest warriors in an instant, faster than the droplet of blood fell unto the ground, while the many others that rose from their compressed forms would merely get in the way should they attempt to intervene. Yet, even that instant that it took for his forces to be decimated, while his hands remained placed together.

Roberts took his last breath.

Harlan speed surpassed his shadow’s own, especially in a place where Derzhul’s glowing scepter provided the only source of light, yet the instant they made contact, veins bulged through Roberts’s icy body.

The moment the shadows touched, every single one became connected to Roberts’s own. Without absorbing them into his body fully, Roberts momentarily drew upon every single one of the hundred shadows that he had brought forth from within his zombies. Even Trent and Sylvanas’s were attached to his, as his prior inhale made every fiber of his being pulsate with energy.

His eyes briefly glimmered with a golden hue, using a less refined, yet instantaneous form of Trent’s “Dragon Breathing”. Reitai manifested from his feet at the same instant he channeled the strength of his shadows into sliding his feet towards an arc behind him, twisting his body along to face the bloodthirsty gaze of Maurier Harlan.

Indeed, the strength of around one hundred and fifty shadows was what it took for Roberts to perform his next move. His body had become more muscular as Trent’s and Sylvanas’s shadow disconnected from his, the rest being forcibly pulled into him. His arms flared out as he went to intercept each of Harlan’s strikes.

Roberts’s Haki already carried a great sensation of coldness, which, combined in his Emission skill, exuded his Reitai alongside his aura, condensing in excessively powerful ice gauntlets, darkened and tightened further by his Haki. The strength of dozens of notable warriors now coursed through his being, their shadows providing power even as they were being sucked in.

Even then, Roberts’s durable armor cracked under the ferocity of Harlan, yet his glare towards the Seawolf never faltered. In fact…Roberts’s consciousness had seemed to have faded away. Harlan’s knee and elbow were the weapons intended to crush Roberts, yet now, with his frost grip enhanced by his shadows, Roberts applied enormous pressure on his grip, emitting waves of sheer coldness that even the Oni could fear.

The ground sunk underneath him as Harlan’s weight came down on him. Even as this happened, Roberts failed to realize the change that underwent within him. As a commander of a legion of shadows, and a combatant that employs a self aware yet obedient shadow entity alongside him, Roberts’s attention was always divided. In every battle, in almost every waking moment. He failed to realize this often, yet he was a master multitasker, as noted by him even commanding some within his “Abyss” to repair his damaged brother.

As his senses became hyper focused in a single task, Roberts experienced a moment of pleasure and bliss he had never felt before. He truly understood himself, the breathing of nature and even his enemies. It was then that Roberts finally understood her sacrifice.

Within the depths of his soul, there remained a feeling, anger and sadness, definitely regret, but mostly disappointment at himself. Now he understood why Molly did what she did. He hated the fact that he survived instead of her, but in his moment of “enlightenment”, Roberts truly embraced every feeling within him. And he let go…

Even as he poured in immense coldness through his body, Harlan’s flaming miasma delivered a excruciating pain to his arms. Roberts could resist incredible amounts of heat without so much as a burn mark, yet against such boundless heat, similar to Honoji’s own, he could only resist so much. Yet even the pain from this dissipated as his mind went blank, his eyes stared into nothingness.

Suddenly, his grip and coldness would intensify in an instant. The air around him plummeted in temperature, breathing would cause painful frost to enter the nostrils and freeze the insides. As this occurred, even the frost ghost himself wouldn’t be immune to these effects.

Cold air spiraled with tremendous force around them, wrapping around Roberts as if a shroud of cold mist created new layers of clothing and transformed his appearance. Roberts’s own eyes began to bleed, ice freezing the inside of his eyeballs and then causing his blood vessels to burst and release blood as if they were tears. Due to the sheer intensity of the cold, even the blood froze after only falling a few inches from his eyes.

“KHREEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Roberts growled, a guttural sound being the only thing he could emit from his freezing throat. An explosion of frost ensued, manifesting large spikes of ice around Roberts in a mere moment. The swirling cold air wrapped around Roberts as a cloak, with spikes of solid ice bursting from his skin and decorating the misty cloak. Above his head, the air focused into bringing forth a crown of ice, that floated above him, with swelling energy within. It was then that a secondary explosion occurred.

The frost cloak merged with the cold air around him, producing a powerful vortex that rose to the heavens. The being that was once Roberts now expelled powerful streams of coldness from the very spikes that burst from his skin. His lips tore apart, and his black sclera and pupils became frozen as they emitted an icy blue glow.

Shinrei Mode.

The swirling of frost ceased, and Roberts had been replaced by an unholy hellspawn from the depths of Helheim. His grip seemingly loosening, as his arms were now besides him, covered in a jet black substance. Almost doubling in stature, his hair became longer and black. The cloak of frost had seemingly increased his stature, while providing for a truly terrifying appearance. Similar to Sylvanas’s rings, two wheels of frost and spiritual energy were attached to this spirit’s back, as the crown on his head settled in a star-like pattern. Streaks of blue lightning spread from his being, as Roberts’s Conqueror’s Spirit poured from his being, and while it didn’t intend to force another King to bow to his whim, it instead empowered his own and his transformation’s foul appearance. It aimed to instill fear, a feeling that allowed the tribe to contend against their more physically capable rivals.

A fear of ghosts.

The Oni tribe pride themselves in their bodies and spirit, and had retained a long-standing rivalry against the cold natured Yurei tribe. The special properties of their Reitai allowed for the tribe of wraiths to contend against the Oni, their frost providing one of the few ways their bones could actually be harmed. Yet, the capacity for the Oni to harness and balance their spirit, and essentially “transform” into a greater state, had proven to give their tribe an edge. Even with their Reitai, the Oni’s control over their bones allowed them to regenerate and endure the coldness that sought to make them brittle.

Shinrei Mode was created as a way to even out the conflict. It had been a technique Yurei could always use, yet it had remained hidden among certain circles due to its immense power, but mainly due to its lethal drawbacks. Yurei’s are beings of cold, their bodies functioning in a sense as opposite to most races. By removing the limits of their “breath”, a Yurei could draw out the true nature of their own spirits, embodying and transforming into the soulless form Roberts presented to Harlan. It had been decades since a Yurei had shown this form to an outsider from their tribe, and even more time had passed since a Kingly Ghost had awakened it.

Insurmountable power wasn’t without drawbacks, as a deformation of their bodies was among the more common of the side effects of this form. Yurei often greatly covered their bodies, and this became more true for those who had suffered the after effects of their exalted state.

Roberts’s hands and forearms had been nearly scorched to the bone, a layer of true ghost Reitai covered his bones and bits of skin, and solidified by his Busoshoku Haki. His grip on Harlan had never loosened in fact, his forearms and hands merely replaced by his shadow, which were now empowered with the full force of the shadows around them. Earlier, Roberts had drawn in power from each of the shadows present in order to clash and briefly move at unregistered speeds to hold out his adversary. Yet ultimately, the shadows were poured back towards his doppleman, which used its enhancement to attempt to hold Harlan in place.

If the sheer cold didn’t manage to even slow down the Seawolf for less than a second, the foul form of Roberts quickly plunged forward, as the spiritual emanation of frost launched its two arms towards Harlan’s abdomen.

It aimed to show the true meaning of this form, as it embodied such coldness it could near instantly freeze most obstacles, bypassing the outer layers of skin as its ghastly arms aimed straight for Harlan’s heart. Indeed, the Shinrei attempted to bypass external layers of protection and quite literally envelop its victim’s heart in its frozen grasp. His jaw widened, as it went for a deadly bite towards Harlan’s neck or shoulder. Should it succeed, it would instill such coldness that the side effects of Shinrei mode would affect the victim immediately. Cells would freeze and organs would fail, freezing the target from the inside out as their exteriors were force to remain still by utter frost, merely due to the close proximity of this beast.

As the cold that permeated aimed to slow the unstoppable fighter for even less than a second, it would only serve to empower the Shinrei, as, in a similar way to Harlan, it wouldn’t wait for its attack to be countered, a disperse in what seemed to be a cloud of mist, and reappear behind the half mink. The hundreds of shadows aimed to empower Erebos for this plan to succeed, while Roberts, now empowered solely by his own spirit, had surpassed even the great potential acquired by his shadows, by giving in to his tribe’s true form.

It was a death sentence for him. The life Molly gave back, he was now using to defend the pride he felt for his family. Molly wouldn’t have desired for him to succumb to such a fate, yet it was only natural for him to defend the lives of his family. Trent’s, and Molly’s pride had been stepped on, and like she did in the past for them, it was now Roberts’s turn to cement his power and will on these seas, even at the cost of his life.

“For Molly. For Trent…”

**Judgement of Divine Spirit: Ice Tomb.**

It was then that his zombies succumbed to the scorching miasma, and the multitude of ice spikes around Roberts tore through the earth at unprecedented speed, its aim to envelop the Seawolf in a tomb created from the very air he breathed.

How long had it been since Harlan had seen something like this? Every single newcomer to these seas were worthless in his eyes. They boasted about themselves and had ambitions far beyond what their skill would ever allow them to reach. But Roberts wasn’t like them. He was literally more than willing to give away his own life to stand up for his morals, his will. That in of itself made Harlan respect the man a bit more. More than the others that had come. And this drive that Roberts held? It reminded Harlan of himself, and it was then he knew that Roberts would rise in infamy.

Shadows held him in place as Harlan for a moment, gawked at the absurdity of what Roberts had become. His miasma became hotter and hotter rapidly as he could feel the temperature around him dropping despite the intense heat that Harlan himself was providing. This creature in front of him was something from a nightmare, and Harlan could say that with the utmost authority. Roberts was a monster unlike the others of his brood, something Harlan could still not believe. Was there still hope that stronger people would come into the New World to provide challenges? And would Roberts become one of them in these coming days? Only time would tell.

Fangs plunged into Harlan’s neck, as cold struck him from within. A temperature that aimed to completely freeze him from the inside out at the most microscopic level. This was a killing blow, in all honesty. If this blow struck someone else they would’ve died, there was no way to deal with it that many could come up with. Harlan understood that and felt it to his core. And if not for Harlan’s awakening and encounter with Bradford Silva, he would’ve faced the same fate others would. The heat was unmatched. He had to raise them to as hot as what Silva himself had used during the final stretch of their first encounter within his body to simply match the cold. Harlan didn’t want to overcome the cold for then the heat would damage him. Instead he had to perfectly counter the cold so that his body would remain in stasis for the duration of that bite.

Roberts burst into mist, electro crackled by the wound as Harlan’s body remained safe from that obscene freezing. His ears flicked, nose scrunching as his eyes scanned the vicinity. 3 of his primary senses worked in perfect unison. And instinct fuelled their union as the very moment Roberts reappeared, one of Harlan’s arms burst out while he faced the other direction, violet tinting his palm as he aimed to grab and wrap the palm around the Shinrei’s neck. “Oi, popsicle.” he said. “We’re done. How about you…“ Harlan was cut off as ice enveloped Harlan, completely encasing the man inside the tomb made from his own breath. Victory against him stayed for but a moment. Ice shattered as violet burst from around Harlan, spinning around at speeds unlike anything he had shown yet. Harlan was the Sea Wolf, and Roberts was a strong challenger. Violet tinted his other hand as he moved.

“Fuck off.”

Harlan aimed to slam his other Haoshoku Infused palm into the side of Roberts’ head to end this bout once and for all.

Roberts in his Shinrei mode was undoubtedly his most durable and formidable state. But Robbie had taken hit after hit from this monster, a young man easily recognizable as one of the greatest, if not the best martial artist in the world. Yet this punch was unlike any of the others.

Roberts had moved across Harlan earlier at a speed new to himself, and was determined to continue to showcase the full power of a true yurei. But his body couldn’t keep up. His own insides already began to suffer the effects of his own power. His Haoshoku had poured out in constant waves, his body pushed beyond its limits. Even if he had no way of accurately measuring it, he had roughly estimated his transformation to remain sustainable for less than a second. He already had surpassed the time limit for shutting off his technique, though Harlan’s punch ultimately aimed to knock his very lights out.

A clash of Conqueror’s ensued, as with the last embers of his breath, Roberts attempted to push back Harlan’s fist and clamp unto it with his teeth, in hopes of delivering a final rush of absurd cold with intent to kill. But his plans wouldn’t come to fruition, as in an explosion of mist, his Shinrei mode dissipated, Harlan’s fist now sinking straight unto Roberts’s unprotected skin. The streaks of purple and blue lightning spread across their surroundings, before Roberts was sent quite a distance away from where he stood, crashing on the high walls of the crater they stood within. His body crashed, and then bounced back towards the ground.

His body laid motionless, his arms bled profusely as everything from the elbow down he had sacrificed, only his right arm retained enough tissue and bones to barely resemble an arm. Yet, even as the Yurei suffered his first known defeat…his frozen eyeballs seemed to continue to glare at Harlan.

Roberts then stood up.

A brief flash of his Haoshoku preceded this, creating even more dents on the soil beneath him. By sheer force of will, a scene that he had repeated in his mind over and over seemed to have been drilled so deeply into his subconscious, that his body emulated the movements out of the constant mental picture. His legs forced his upper body upright, as he rose without a single bit of conscious intent in his mind. Time and time again, Molly had been mortally wounded, to the point most fighters would pass on. Yet, like an undead warrior, each time she rose with greater ferocity to protect what she loved.

Roberts stood upright, his body as tight as a glacier. He couldn’t see from his eyeballs, as they remained frozen. He could breathe, his lungs ceased their function. He couldn’t hear nor talk, his heart stopped, veins were frozen… yet it was his unyielding willpower, that kept the Master of Shadows defiant to the very end.

On his chest, due to his transformation which had deformed him slightly, now protruded a capsule not too dissimilar from the one he had used at the start of the battle. There were some words written on this device, spelling “Big Bang”. What remained of his arm aimed to punch into this device out of pure instinct…

If only his body hadn’t fully succumbed inches before contact.

Sylvanas looked back as she fell to her knees, already having separated herself quite a distance from the battle. She could feel as the kingly ghost had defied logic and had even intended to fully blow himself up alongside his enemy. She scoffed, even if brief, her master had truly been an interesting guy.

“Hah…” Harlan let everything fade around him, his burning miasma coat fading as he wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. His eyes glared at Roberts. There he stood, one blow was all it’d take to end his life.. And without a sign of moving, he had leaped towards Roberts.

## Spring Thaw

Roberts would find himself laying on a tarp. His wounds all healed, the ramifications of using the Shinrei form faded. Next to him laid two other figures. Trent was one of them, laying down asleep as it appeared all of his wounds had been fixed. And a strange young woman as well. More surprisingly, the island itself seemed completely repaired. As if it had been reverted back to its original state. The only thing that remained as proof of the battle was the Black Sun and Robbie’s missing forearms.

Sitting criss-cross across the three was Harlan, sipping down a can of Cherry Cola. The electrical burns and frost still around his neck, as if he was choosing to let that wound remain. “Oh shit,” Harlan jutted his chin out in greeting, noticing Robbie stirring awake. “You’re finally getting up? Took you long enough, popsicle.”

Roberts opened his eyes. He could see? He coughed, yet barely any pain resided in his body.

“I can breathe-gosu. I can talk!” His eyes shot at Trixie, and then found themselves to Harlan, noticing the remains of his attack on the Seawolf. He had questions, but as he went to clench his grip out of custom, he didn’t feel a thing.

“Ah. Arms are missing…” He glanced at Harlan, before bursting into laughter. “Zyahahaha! Wait! Don’t tell me you ate my arms-gosu! Zyahahaa!” His expression then became serious.

“Why…” He began. “Why heal us, and how did you even do it-gosu?”

"I don't eat arms, do I look like Calamari?!" Harlan yelled back, quickly taming his anger as he took a deep breath. "I didn't heal you, Trixie did." his chin pointed at the white-haired woman.

Harlan took another swig of his cola. "Her powers are wacky. And why I had her heal your ass...you're strong. Strong enough for these new fucks. You got one good hit on me, that's fucking crazy. But you also were like, willing to die just to fucking hurt my ass? Bro? You good in the head? Garororo!"

"But yeah. I like people that are good at stuff." he said. "That's about it. You robbed Kenny, but eh. I think we're good now that I punished your ass for him."

”Tch! Save me your praise-gosu.” Roberts responded as he looked to the side. “You were barely trying…” His eyes drifted as he appeared to be briefly lost in thought. He blinked.

“Oh yeah…Kenshiro.” His pupils then became small yet his glare intensified. “I’ll kill him soon enough.” His brief intensity disappeared.

“I’ve been ready to die ever since my life was given a second chance-gosu. But it seems fate wants me alive for a bit longer-gosu. Heh! Third time’s the charm-gosu…” He glanced at his arms and then at Trent. He sighed and looked at Harlan once more.

”So what, are we like your prisoners now or something? Tch, wouldn’t be the first time-gosu.”

"The fuck? Why would I keep your ass around?" Harlan guffawed, finishing off his can of cola soon after. "I don't know why you're tryna kill off Kenny, seems kinda weird if you ask me. As for you and glasses, I want ya to fuck off. Like I said before I hit you. I'll let you look around for a bit since you have a boner for this place or something. But then you skedaddle. And I give you something."

Roberts blinked twice. “I just tried to kill ya-gosu. You’re wrong in the head as well! Zyahaha!”

”Are you this generous with everyone that comes for your head-gosu? Well, to be fair, I wasn’t targeting you just yet. You were the last on my list, and you weren’t supposed to even be here-gosu. Yet here you were, hungover sick.” He raised his arm to clench his forehead, again forgetting he lacked the limbs.

“Oh.”

From pure shadow rose a right arm, attaching perfectly into his arm. His shadowy limb now stretched a few feet long and smacked Trent in the forehead.

“Oii! Wassup?! We got an interesting situation here-gosu. Can’t miss it.”

"The fuck does that word mean?" Harlan raised a brow. "Shut the fuck up. You can't do shit to me, ever. Don't even glatargot me. I just rock with people who can do shit. And a lotta fucks from your generation are little piss babies."

Trent snapped awake, grabbing his gut. "Man...my stomach.

"Shut the fuck up. I got you fixed up and shit." Harlan spat.

The Oni glared at Harlan. "Why the hell would you do that?"

"Cause popsicle likes you. Why're you talking?"

"I swear to-"

"Fuck off. Popsicle, are you gonna look around this place already?" Harlan tilted his head. "Or are you gonna just chill here. Get up already, it's not like I killed you or anything."

“Godamnit sheesh!” Roberts screeched as he formed his second shadow limb, clenching his fist before relaxing, blowing a stream of cold air.

“Eh, whatever. I’ll take whatever I can, even that pissant attitude Zyahaha! Trent, let’s go find it” He hopped and walked towards Trixie, lightly bowing his head. He glared at Harlan as he passed by him. “Don’t expect any thanks from me. I’ll make ya’ eat those words one day-gosu.”

He walked out of the tent, even as he said otherwise, he raised his right shadow arm and lightly waved it. “Thanks though, ya’ bastard. I’ll come back for that souvenir-gosu.” He uttered.

“I’ll get to continue trying to fulfill her dream. Plus I’ve gotten stronger-gosu…”

Trent nodded, clicking his tongue at Harlan before following Roberts.

Harlan rolled his eyes. "You can't eat words, you fucking idiot. Don't go anywhere you're not supposed to, cause I'll figure it out. And then I'll have to do this whole thing again. Fuck off already."

”No promises-gosu!”

He then chuckled. “Tch! Sounded like Molly right there, eh?”

*Fin*