Faced with the countless light projectiles racing toward him, Haruto immediately contracted his En, reducing its range until it covered only ten meters around him.
The Nen freed up by shrinking his detection radius surged toward his hands.
Aura rapidly condensed at his fingertips, taking shape as dozens of translucent kitchen knives, each about the length of his palm.
"Flying Knife!"
Haruto swept both arms forward.
Dozens of phantom blades shot from his hands and collided head-on with Kizaru’s storm of golden light.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Golden projectiles and translucent knives exploded against one another in midair, producing a rapid succession of deafening blasts.
Scorching shockwaves rolled across the street in waves, shattering the windows of nearby shops and scraping the upper layer from the stone pavement.
A moment later, Kizaru stopped firing.
When the smoke cleared and revealed Haruto standing there completely unharmed, a trace of surprise appeared in his eyes.
"Ooh... scary. You actually blocked every single one."
Kizaru knew exactly how destructive those light projectiles were.
Each possessed penetration comparable to a bullet, and such a dense barrage would be difficult even for a Marine Vice Admiral to intercept without taking a single hit.
Combined with the fact that Haruto had already survived his light-speed kick, Kizaru finally reached a clear conclusion.
Capturing this man with a bounty of three hundred million Berries was going to be considerably more troublesome than he had expected.
Of course, in Kizaru’s mind, it was still only troublesome.
Haruto stood silently, his gaze fixed firmly on the Admiral as his mind raced through possible solutions.
His En could detect the trajectory of every movement Kizaru made and even provide a small degree of prediction.
The problem was his body.
No matter how quickly Haruto perceived an attack, his physical reactions still could not truly keep up with light speed. There was always a slight delay, forcing him to remain on the defensive.
If this continued, Kizaru would eventually find an opening.
Haruto needed a way to break the deadlock.
Then an idea flashed through his mind.
Neferpitou.
In the Hunter world, Pitou possessed Terpsichora, a Nen ability that used aura strings to manipulate the body and force its movements beyond ordinary physical reaction limits.
Haruto did not need to copy the ability exactly.
He could borrow the principle.
His Nen erupted again.
Countless nearly invisible aura threads spread across his body, wrapping around every muscle fiber and joint.
With this, his movements would no longer depend entirely on signals traveling through his nervous system.
The instant En detected an incoming attack, the Nen threads could directly pull his body into motion.
His reaction speed would be forcibly pushed several levels higher.
Almost the moment Haruto completed the setup, Kizaru vanished without warning.
The next instant, he appeared directly beside Haruto’s left side.
His right leg rose.
This time, the force concentrated into the kick was several times greater than before as it tore toward Haruto’s ribs.
A direct hit would have shattered even a body forged from steel.
Haruto’s pupils contracted.
His En captured every detail of Kizaru’s movement the instant he appeared.
At the same moment, the Nen threads wrapped around Haruto’s body snapped taut.
His left hand shot outward at a speed impossible for ordinary eyes to follow, leaving layers of afterimages in the air.
Barely a millisecond before Kizaru’s kick struck him, Haruto’s fingers clamped firmly around the Admiral’s ankle.
A massive amount of Nen poured from Haruto’s palm, wrapping around Kizaru’s entire right leg before rapidly spreading toward the rest of his body.
For the first time, Kizaru’s expression changed completely.
He had not expected Haruto, who had been struggling to defend himself only moments earlier, to suddenly increase his reaction speed to this degree.
More alarming was the strange energy pouring from Haruto’s hand.
Every hair on Kizaru’s body stood on end.
A powerful sense of mortal danger swept through him.
Without hesitation, golden light erupted from his body as he attempted to elementalize and escape Haruto’s grip.
But the instant his right leg began transforming into light, the Nen wrapped around it acted like an invisible shackle.
His transformation slowed.
Only for an instant.
But that instant was enough.
Haruto clenched his right hand into a fist.
More than half of all the Nen in his body compressed violently over his knuckles.
There was no elaborate technique.
He simply twisted through his waist and drove every ounce of strength he had straight into Kizaru’s chest.
BANG—!!
The impact sounded like a massive hammer striking thick leather.
The compressed Nen exploded the moment Haruto’s fist connected.
Even though Kizaru forcibly completed his elemental transformation, it was already too late to avoid the strike.
His body was blasted backward.
He crashed through one stone building.
Then another.
And another.
Only after smashing through three or four shops did he finally stop.
A brilliant golden light suddenly shot upward from the dust-filled ruins.
Kizaru emerged into the air.
The Marine coat and uniform covering his chest had been torn open by the impact, revealing a clearly defined fist mark across his skin.
The familiar laziness had completely disappeared from his face.
Only cold killing intent remained in his eyes.
"Ooh... that really hurt."
His voice was lower now, the anger beneath it barely restrained.
His gaze fixed on Haruto like a nail.
"You’ve actually managed to make me angry, Haruto-kun."
Golden light surged from Kizaru’s right palm.
A long sword formed entirely from condensed light slowly took shape in his hand.
"Ama no Murakumo Sword."
Haruto showed no intention of backing down.
Nen rapidly condensed around his right hand, forming a long, narrow willow-bladed kitchen knife. The weapon was perfectly straight, its cutting edge thin as a cicada’s wing.
Even though it was made purely of Nen, it radiated astonishing sharpness.
"Food Technique: Nen Knife!"
Kizaru glanced once at the blade in Haruto’s hand.
Then he vanished again.
This time, there was no restraint whatsoever.
He appeared directly in front of Haruto and brought the Ama no Murakumo Sword crashing down toward his head.
CLANG—!!
The collision rang out like metal striking metal, painfully loud even from a distance.
Haruto rotated his wrist and raised the Nen Knife, catching the descending light blade head-on.
A terrifying shockwave erupted from the point of impact and swept outward like a tsunami.
Buildings within more than ten meters were pulverized into clouds of debris.
The stone street beneath them cracked outward in dense spiderweb patterns, some fissures deep enough to swallow a person’s knees.
The two blades collided again.
And again.
Their figures blurred through the street as each impact triggered another small explosion.
Within only a few seconds, they had already exchanged dozens of strikes.
Using the Nen threads to reinforce his reactions, Haruto somehow managed to withstand Kizaru’s relentless barrage of sword attacks.
Then, during another collision, Haruto’s expression suddenly changed.
"Hey, come on. Isn’t this getting a little unfair?"
At some point, five or six identical copies of Kizaru had appeared around him.
Every one of them held an Ama no Murakumo Sword.
They surrounded Haruto from every direction, sealing off every possible escape route.
It seemed the Marine Admiral had finally decided to stop playing around.
Haruto released every bit of Nen he could muster.
His blade moved so quickly that it became a continuous silver curtain around him, barely intercepting the attacks coming from all sides.
But every clash sent a painful numbness through his arms.
The ground beneath his feet fractured repeatedly as he was forced backward step by step.
After only a brief exchange, Haruto had learned roughly where his current limits lay.
Thanks to the unusual properties of Nen, he could barely contend with Kizaru for a while.
But if they fought to the death with everything they had, Haruto was absolutely not the Admiral’s equal.
In that case, there was no reason to remain in the One Piece world any longer.
Haruto could have hidden inside the Gourmet Restaurant, but this world contained more than a few Devil Fruit users with abilities involving space.
He had no idea whether someone might eventually find a way to detect, lock onto, or interfere with the Gourmet Restaurant itself.
That risk was not worth taking.
Rather than gamble on whether anyone could discover its weakness, it was safer to simply leave this world altogether.
Having made his decision, Haruto used the force of one clone’s slash to propel himself away.
His toes struck the ground.
He shot backward dozens of meters and opened a wide gap between himself and Kizaru.
Then he casually dispersed the Nen Knife in his hand.
That unexpected gesture made Kizaru, who had been preparing to pursue, pause for a moment.
"Ooh, scary, Admiral Kizaru. Looks like I really can’t beat you."
Haruto waved toward him from a distance, sounding perfectly relaxed despite admitting defeat.
"So I’m running away."
"See you next time."
The instant he finished speaking, Haruto vanished.
There was no flash.
No sound.
Not even the faintest trace of his presence remained.
Kizaru’s pupils contracted sharply.
Almost at the same moment, his body transformed into brilliant golden light and shot hundreds of meters into the sky.
His Observation Haki spread throughout the entirety of Gourmet City.
He searched every street.
Every building.
Every corner of the city.
Nothing.
No matter how hard Kizaru looked, there was not the slightest trace of Haruto anywhere.
It was as though he had never existed in this world at all.
High above the city, Kizaru dismissed the golden light around his body and stared down at the densely packed buildings below.
He scratched his head helplessly.
His expression looked genuinely troubled.
"Ooh... now this is a problem."
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