Chapter 74: Clash of Ultimate Arts — The Legend Falls - One Piece: The Dragon Knight of the Grand Line - NovelsTime

One Piece: The Dragon Knight of the Grand Line

Chapter 74: Clash of Ultimate Arts — The Legend Falls

Author: Kaizo26
updatedAt: 2025-10-08

CHAPTER 74: CHAPTER 74: CLASH OF ULTIMATE ARTS — THE LEGEND FALLS

"Jyeh-hahahaha... you stopped one—how about the rest?"

Sensing Karl’s aura and feeling knives carving through his brain, Shiki knew his voyage was nearing its end. He stopped holding back. Stamina poured from him like a waterfall and turned into Float-Float power that drove the archipelago, birthing pride after pride of sky-blotting earth lions.

He burst from the thinning dust. Though an earth lion had blocked Karl’s Lightlance, Shiki looked worse for wear. Splitting his focus between fruit power and evasion had let the Haki covering his head and body dissipate for a moment. Blood ran from the wound on his crown, streaking his body with dried lines of red mixed with dust.

Yet the more he felt his life ebb, the stronger his aura and might became.

A man with nothing left to lose can draw out a hundred—no, a hundred and twenty—percent of his power.

Especially a man like this—a legendary great pirate.

With both legs intact, Shiki’s current might would have rivaled Whitebeard, Garp, and Sengoku.

Even legless, commanding the archipelago and forging island-sized earth lions, his destructive power remained truly emperor-class.

The pity: he couldn’t sustain it. This was a dying blaze—life burned to snatch back a fleeting peak.

"Senior Shiki, that technique is terrifying. I doubt many on the sea could withstand it."

Karl didn’t grow grim. He shook his head and reminded him, "But you know I’m a Rumble-Rumble Fruit user. Cataclysmic physical strikes don’t affect me."

"Oh, right."

Shiki smacked his left palm with his right fist, nodded as if enlightened—then raised that fist and laughed. "Jyeh-hahahaha... thanks for the reminder!"

A fresh torrent of stamina became unseen Float-Float force, seizing every island under his command.

Lakes upon the isles, seawater hauled up from the Blue Sea to wrap them, even the waters of the White Sea—

Countless tons rose in towering waterspouts, poured over the earth lions like tides, and formed armor of living sea around them.

In a breath, the pride split into two colors: blue and white.

The White Sea is "white" because its water hides in cloud. Those white lions weren’t merely covered by seawater; they were sheathed in sky-cloud.

"Jyeh-hahahaha... how about now?"

Panting from the cost of arming his lions with seawater, Shiki still wore a triumphant grin.

As the last enemy on his route, Karl meant something opposite to Roger in Shiki’s heart.

If Roger was a life-long obsession, then Karl was the final one.

The foe who forced him to abandon a twenty-year design just to reclaim his lost strength and stake life on a duel.

"Compared to Byrnndi World, I think you deserve the title ’World Destroyer’ more, Senior Shiki."

Karl didn’t stint on praise.

No question—this island-breaking ultimate technique would rank top-tier worldwide in scope of destruction. With seawater layered over those earth lions, even Aokiji or Akainu would tread carefully; Kizaru too. Seawater is the bane of fruit users, and the volume Shiki poured over his lions rivaled Whitebeard’s opening tsunami at Marineford.

If those seawater-clad lions crashed down together, all of STRONG WORLD would be inside the kill zone—bludgeoned by falling land and scoured by the element that suppresses Devil Fruits.

But not Karl.

The Rumble-Rumble Fruit’s field made teleportation more versatile than light. He could ignore the technique entirely.

And Karl wasn’t truly just a Logia, while Little White was—seawater’s special restraint wouldn’t work on him at all. Without Armament or elemental advantage, no weapon could hurt Karl—not even Sea Prism Stone.

The perfected Rumble-Rumble is an immortal Logia.

Besides, he didn’t need to elementize. He only had to blink to Shiki’s side. With his stamina drained for that grand move, the Golden Lion wouldn’t be a match up close.

In short, the ultimate heaped more fuel on Shiki’s death.

Just as Karl decided Shiki was wasting his strength—

"Jyeh-hahahaha..."

Shiki laughed as if reading his mind. "You plan to ignore everything with lightning teleport and target my blind spot?"

"You think I, the master of a legendary power, know nothing about the Rumble-Rumble Fruit?"

"Your field must have limits—you can’t cover an entire island, can you?"

He pressed down with one hand.

A black shadow like a stormfront blanketed all of STRONG WORLD.

The lions, which had been circling and actually spreading to wide positions, dove at once.

At the instant of descent, their seawater—and their bodies—turned uncanny.

The water shed its buoyancy and peeled free, dragging sheets of "flesh" with it, spreading into an ocean-wrapped earth-mass. Those masses and the liquefying lions melded together and became a true sky-blotting lid carved with countless leonine visages.

Every inch of STRONG WORLD lay under that lid’s span.

When it dropped, the force wouldn’t simply shatter the island. It would weld the lid to STRONG WORLD and make a colossal sandwich.

Its thickness was monstrous—"meat" shaved off the archipelago and recombined until it was as thick as a normal island. The target wasn’t Karl; it was everything.

Which meant Karl couldn’t blink outside the impact zone.

He didn’t need to.

"Jyeh-hahahaha... magnificent, isn’t it? My full power."

Hovering beneath the falling "sky of earth," Shiki spread his arms. The smile on his face was the same feral, evil grin he’d worn after trying to recruit Roger and being rebuffed. "And you think I prepared all this... just to deal with you?"

"Wrong. Dead wrong."

"The enemy of this move is me

. You’re just along for the ride."

He laughed to the heavens, Haki howling. "A lion does not die by another’s hand. And for this move... I will not dodge."

"Because—I am the Golden Lion!"

Watching him roar to the four corners, Karl finally, fully felt the might of the old era.

Before Shiki, the old era had never interested him. Its strongest—Whitebeard, the current world’s strongest—had grown old, strength much diminished. In his youth, Whitebeard could shake heaven and earth, quake and conqueror’s entwined as easily as drinking water. Age had pared his Haki’s volume and bite, and robbed that colossal body of its skybound agility.

Beyond the still-fearsome Quake-Quake, the living titans—Kaido, Charlotte Linlin, Shanks—had been more compelling to Karl.

Now, after witnessing one of the three great legends with his own eyes, Karl admitted it: the old era called to him. If even Shiki was like this—then what of Whitebeard? What of the Pirate King?

For a heartbeat he hated the timing of his crossing. To test himself against those sovereigns in their prime—what a life that would’ve been.

"Senior Shiki, I won’t dodge either."

The mentor who’d given him several lessons—Karl raised his voice.

Waiting for the final horn, Shiki glanced down at the man on the ground.

That maddening, admirable youth grinned up at him. "I’ll shatter you head-on. The voyage of your old era ends with my new one."

Karl summoned the Mysterious Spear—the same weapon Shiki thought he’d already thrown away.

He poured his will into his body and used Life Return. Like a sea, his stamina flooded into the spear and turned to blinding gold.

Life Return could let him charge the Lightlance in an instant—yet this time, the buildup looked long and obvious, just like before he learned the art.

If Shiki attacked now, he could interrupt it.

He didn’t. He watched.

As the "sky of earth" sank lower and lower, devouring the island’s light until only the golden glow in Karl’s hands remained—

SHEEEW——BOOM!

A blade of gold tore the black.

A meteor rose from below and traced a line through night.

It passed Shiki’s face—the gold washed across his distant gaze—

And the next instant—

A titanic golden flower detonated hundreds of meters up with a world-splitting roar.

Sun-bright radiance bathed STRONG WORLD.

Ruuumble—

Moments after the bloom, the ground beneath Karl bucked.

When the glare faded, nothing looked the same. Weighted beyond endurance, part of the island sank into the White Sea.

Trees, mountains—everything had been slapped flat.

Only the exact center, where Karl and Shiki stood, kept its grass and flowers.

Because the core of the falling "sky" had been vaporized by that golden bloom.

Cliffs thick as islands and tsunami volumes of sea had turned to dust and steam beneath unmatched light and heat.

If Shiki’s ultimate was a lid, then Karl’s Lightlance had punched a vast hole through it.

The greatest shield fell to the greatest spear.

And with it—

The master of the shield fell to the master of the spear.

"Guh—!"

As Shiki stared blankly up at the clear sky, pain ripped his chest.

Karl blinked to him. The Mysterious Spear—thrown a moment ago—was back in his hands, and it ran through Shiki’s heart.

"Please remember my name, Senior Shiki."

Karl looked at him, breathing hard, and introduced himself again. "I am Karl—of the East Blue."

"I see..."

With Haki fading, blood spilling from head and breast, Shiki’s eyes widened—then softened into relief. "Stopped... by a man of the East Blue... again..."

His gaze drifted. The Rocks era and the age that followed flickered through his mind. "A man who ruled the sea from the sky... to die beneath the sky—perhaps that’s my fate... Though I lost to Roger, I have no regrets on this voyage..."

With his last words, the will that had held his splitting skull together guttered out with the final light in his eyes.

Zzzzzzt—

As the candle of his life shrank to its last ember, Karl pressed a palm to Shiki’s chest. Lightning poured into the failing heart and kept a thread of beat alive.

He hefted the Golden Lion’s body and looked out over the archipelago, now losing buoyancy and dropping toward the White Sea. With Observation he quickly found Karina.

Whoosh—

Unleashing his field, Karl blinked away with Shiki in tow.

BOOM... BOOM... BOOM...

Beyond STRONG WORLD, chunks shorn by the Float-Float slammed into the White Sea and sent mountains of spray rising. Karl shot upward through the storm of waves.

In short order, beneath the White-White Sea at nine thousand meters, he rejoined Karina.

When he lifted his hand from Shiki’s chest and laid the body into the black stone sarcophagus, sealing the lid—

A legend’s curtain fell.

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