— — — — — —
"My Lord! We've successfully gathered five thousand troops!"
Priest Shura knelt before Enel, reporting respectfully.
"Oh?" Enel raised a brow with interest. "Five thousand already? That's enough. I'll leave the training to you."
"Remember this—my Divine Guard doesn't need trash! Push them hard. In the end, I want the top 400 selected and assigned to each of your personal units."
"Now go."
Honestly, Enel didn't think much of these so-called Divine Guard members. But hey, he couldn't do everything himself. Gods needed lackeys to handle the grunt work—it was part of the image.
"Found you, Enel!"
A sudden voice echoed through the hall, catching everyone off guard.
"Who's there?!"
Enel jumped to his feet, scanning the area—but there was no one in sight.
Clearly, at this point, Enel hadn't awakened Observation Haki yet.
"Who dares call out the god's name so casually?! Are you tired of living?!" Shura shouted, enraged.
Swoosh!
A moment later, Renzo suddenly appeared in the temple out of thin air.
He glanced at Enel, then at Shura, and let out a mocking chuckle. "God, huh? That title has gotten cheap. These days, even nobodies think they're divine."
"You—!"
Shura couldn't take that insult. Furious, he lunged at Renzo, ready to throw a punch.
"Sheer Cold."
Renzo didn't even bother to look. With a casual wave of his hand, a burst of freezing energy shot forward, instantly encasing Shura in a block of solid ice.
A second later—Crack!
The ice sculpture shattered into glittering shards, scattering into the air.
Small fry like that, running his mouth and still dares to throw hands? No point letting him live.
"You'll pay for that!"
"Receive my Divine Punishment!!"
Furious at Shura's death, Enel roared and slammed his golden staff against the floor.
A blinding bolt of lightning, two meters wide, tore down from the sky, blowing through the temple roof and hurtling straight toward Renzo.
"Lightning Release: Chidori!"
Renzo didn't even dodge.
With a sharp crackle, a terrifying lightning blade over a meter long sparked to life in his right hand. He slashed upward, directly into the incoming lightning.
SZZZRAKK!!
In Enel's stunned gaze, the massive lightning strike was cleanly split in half—dissipating harmlessly before it could even graze Renzo.
Oh, and to avoid any stray static messing up his hair, Renzo had already wrapped his head in a telekinetic shield.
"N-No way!! How?! You're just a Blue Sea dweller—how the hell did you slice through divine lightning?!"
Enel completely lost it.
He turned into pure lightning and shot toward Renzo, swinging a powerful punch.
"Tsk. Divine?" Renzo shook his head with a half-amused smile.
He let the Chidori fade, coated his right fist in Armament Haki, and threw a punch.
BOOM!!
Their fists collided in a thunderous crash.
Enel expected his lightning to paralyze the opponent—but it didn't work. Instead, a terrifying force traveled up his arm, exploding through his body.
He was sent flying like a ragdoll. At the same time, he felt the bones in his right arm shatter.
But Renzo wasn't done.
He blinked forward like lightning, closed the distance instantly, and slammed his fist into Enel's stomach with brutal force.
"Gah!!"
Enel's eyes nearly popped from his skull. A gush of blood exploded from his mouth as his body smashed into the stone floor, creating a massive crater.
He felt like his organs had all been turned to mush.
"W-Why… why can your punches hit me?!"
Enel looked up at Renzo, struggling to accept reality. "I-I'm a god… physical attacks shouldn't work on me…"
Renzo casually flexed his hand and smacked his lips. "Yeah, normally physical attacks don't work on Logia users. But in the Blue Sea, there's something called Armament Haki—and that changes everything."
He gave Enel a mocking smirk. "Man, your worldview is pathetically narrow. You really thought being a Logia-type made you invincible?"
"Heh… naive."
"Let me tell you something. Guys like me who've mastered Armament Haki? In the New World, there's at least eight to ten thousand of us! If you strolled into that place with your current attitude, you'd get your face smashed in so fast you wouldn't even know what hit you."
"But hey, not that it matters anymore—you're not even gonna get the chance."
With a smirk, Renzo raised his fist and threw another punch.
Zzzap!
At the last second, Enel turned into a bolt of lightning and tried to flee into the distance.
"Run! I have to run! I can't beat this guy!"
"I need to get to the Blue Sea… learn that Armament Haki or whatever it's called… and when I do, I swear I'll get my revenge! I will!!"
As Enel was thinking that, a strange voice echoed in his ears:
"Dōjutsu: Takamagahara."
Then, just as he was escaping, something invisible brushed past his body.
BAM!
Next thing he knew, he'd crashed headfirst into what felt like a steel wall—he was violently knocked out of his lightning form. Blood poured from his face as his vision spun. He looked around in total confusion.
"W-What the hell? What did I just hit? There's… nothing here?"
He waved his hand in the air, trying to feel the obstruction—but there was nothing there.
"Weird. This is seriously messed up."
Ever since running into this strange guy from the Blue Sea, everything Enel thought he knew had been turned upside down.
"This has to be your doing!" he shouted, panicking.
"Where are you?! Show yourself!"
Lightning exploded from Enel's body in all directions as he blasted his surroundings in desperation.
Whoosh!
Renzo suddenly appeared right in front of him. Before Enel could even react, a fist smashed directly into his face.
BAM!
Enel was sent flying again, crashing into the ground.
"Elemental form— Disabled."
Renzo focused, changing the rules of his Takamagahara Domain.
Immediately, Enel realized something terrifying—he couldn't turn into lightning anymore.
"It works, just as I thought," Renzo muttered with a satisfied nod. "Looks like this Takamagahara technique still has untapped potential."
He stopped experimenting, condensed a blade of pure lightning in his right hand, and casually swung it across Enel's neck.
Szzzzzt—
Enel's head rolled cleanly off his shoulders, lightning and blood splattering everywhere.
A few seconds later, Renzo sensed a strange cluster of energy rising from Enel's corpse. It was trying to drift away.
He instantly locked it down with his domain and snatched it out of the air.
In a flash, Renzo disappeared and reappeared hundreds of meters away, sitting cross-legged on a thick tree branch.
He activated his Omniscience Dōjutsu and began analyzing it.
— — —
After 2 Weeks
"So that's how it works, huh? Finally done parsing it."
After sitting motionless for over half a month, Renzo stretched and cracked his neck.
Then, with a thought, he used a teleportation trick to grab a pineapple from a fruit stand on a Sky Island town several kilometers away.
He placed the lightning essence into the pineapple using a palm strike.
In seconds, the fruit transformed into a glowing blue devil fruit, crackling with spiral lightning patterns.
"Huh. The pure origin form was easier to decode. I'd say that knocked the difficulty down by a good twenty percent."
He gave the newly formed Rumble-Rumble Fruit another once-over with his Omniscience, testing how it interacted with the laws of energy.
Satisfied, he flipped his hand and stored the fruit away.
After a moment of thought, he sat back down, closed his eyes, and was about to slip into his consciousness space.
"Wait... last time, after I learned Haki, I got Overshadowed by Boss Aizen. If I try to show off this time, will another boss show up...?"
"I won't find Boss Thanos handing out Infinity Stones like candy, right?"
"..."
"Whatever. I'll just accept my fate."
Pirate Renzo began entering the consciousness space.
.
.
.