CHAPTER 80: CHAPTER 80: THE GAP BETWEEN MONSTERS AND THE APEX—UNABLE TO WITHSTAND A SINGLE BLOW

"29 minutes 15 seconds... 29 minutes 38 seconds... 29 minutes 51 seconds..."

"30 minutes, zero."

Watching ships file out of the Golden Harbor one after another, Nami stood beside Karl, counting down the final seconds.

As the last second ticked, Karl’s right hand began to crackle.

His wrist and part of his forearm dissolved into blazing blue-white lightning.

Boom—

An instant later, high above the Golden Hotel at the heart of Gran Tesoro, a blinding blue-white core formed and in a blink became a colossal thunder pillar that slammed down.

The pillar swallowed the entire Golden Hotel, yet for the first time the lightning did not shatter everything outwardly.

Bathed in the thunder, the hotel’s exterior looked unchanged.

Only those inside knew how terrifying that strike was.

All those clinging to a sliver of luck, and those Gild Tesoro had imprisoned within, were plunged into a sea of lightning, bodies seized by endless current, twitching and convulsing.

In moments, ninety-nine percent lost consciousness as the scent of char rose from their flesh.

They were electrocuted alive.

In an ordinary building they would not have suffered such inhuman punishment. Unlucky ones would be engulfed directly and vaporized by heat with no pain. The lucky might have debris shield them from the brunt and survive.

But this was a hotel made of gold.

A judgment that normally carried a set radius yet remained a single-target strike was forcibly magnified by gold’s conductivity into a guaranteed area-wide hit.

Whatever voltage the pillar held, everyone inside received that voltage, whether on the roof or in the basement.

Unless one could coat the entire body in Armament Haki, no one could evade Karl’s blow.

In the golden city Karl’s combat power hard-counters the Gold-Gold Fruit completely.

Tesoro’s supposed home-field advantage became Karl’s amplifier, and Tesoro lost his own edge.

His mood now must be as stifled as Enel’s was facing Luffy.

Swoosh.

When the pillar dissolved back into coursing arcs,

Karl blinked into being over the Golden Hotel, looking down. "Come out. You can’t hide your presence from me, Emperor of Gold."

Boom.

Almost the moment the words fell,

a violent blast erupted from the hotel’s top floor.

A shockwave surged upward, laced with radiant heat, shards of gold, and Armament Haki, roaring straight for Karl.

He did not dodge. The wave engulfed him whole.

The thermal radiation that could have seared skin was immediately drunk up by the electric heat pouring from Karl.

The slicing gold fragments were all pre-read by his singular perception and avoided by preemptive elementization.

As the fastest of Logias, the Rumble-Rumble and the Glint-Glint carry the fastest elementization. Paired with deep Observation Haki, ranged attacks are the least threatening.

Even at close range, even a monstrous explosion only requires a preemptive elementization to null the blast and a blink to exit the kill zone.

Other Logias lack both the speed and the clean disengage.

"Dragon Knight Karl!"

When the shockwave passed and the body it had hurled was gone, Karl reappeared at the exact spot in a flash.

Tesoro’s roar rose from below.

His whole body had turned to gold, its surface lacquered black by Armament Haki. He threw back his head and howled, "Why are you doing this? Where have I ever wronged you?"

"Because you tried to con me."

Karl flickered into place before him, eyeing the compact golden giant. He spoke frankly.

"For that?"

Tesoro could not believe it. "I would have acquired the Gold Bell from elsewhere. And over a little scheme, you drive out all my VIPs and shatter Gran Tesoro’s reputation?"

"For me, that’s reason enough."

Karl spread his hands and smiled. "Like I said. From now on, this is my turf."

"So you really are after Gran Tesoro."

Teeth grinding, Tesoro suddenly sneered. "Heh... you won’t take away years of my work. I won’t let you."

"I’ll destroy it before I hand it over."

He raised both hands, gathering for a secret art.

"Sorry. I can’t let you wreck my city."

In the next heartbeat Karl flashed into his face and punched, breaking the wind-up.

Boom.

Tesoro hadn’t expected lightning’s speed.

Before he could turn stamina into power, he threw up a rushed fist to meet Karl’s.

The little gold man stood over three meters tall, broader than a bear.

Against him, the one-meter-ninety Karl looked like a child.

Crack.

The instant the sandbag-sized fists met,

the black-gold sheen of Armament-coated gold and the arm beneath shrieked with a sharp fracture.

"Ah!"

Tesoro screamed.

His arm twisted grotesquely and his body became a black-gold blur hurtling backward.

He smashed through the top-floor golden wall. A shockwave burst from his mangled shoulder, punching a hole straight out of the hotel.

Retracting his fist, Karl’s own arm was now sheathed in flowing golden Haki.

"You may be called a monster of the New World,"

his voice sounded on the wrecked top floor, then in the ear of the man plummeting outside a heartbeat later.

Karl hung in the air without Geppo, hovering on the Rumble-Rumble, setting a straight-punch stance. Below, Tesoro fought through agony to alter his fall, awakened power liquefying a thousand meters of gold into tide beneath him. Anything touching his body could be made into a golden giant. Karl’s gaze was cold.

"But the gap between monsters and the apex is, in truth, unable to withstand a single blow."

Those last words snapped from far to near in Tesoro’s ear at full volume.

Karl’s figure, trailing a wake of lightning, carved a gleaming arc. He fused the Rumble-Rumble with Shave, blasted to a point above Tesoro, and dropped the fist onto the black-gold armor.

Boom—

Just like Moonlight Moria and Crocodile before,

Karl’s fist crashed down on Tesoro’s chest.

An air cannon—whether born of brute force, Haki projection, or their fusion—burst out of Tesoro’s back and drilled into the ground below.

As with those before him, when Karl went for the kill...

Tesoro’s golden armor shattered in an instant, yet his chest did not cave in with a hole. It only dented slightly, and his fall did not accelerate.

The air cannon venting backward had bled off his descent.

But look close—

his eyes rolled white and his consciousness fled.

Observation would show his life flickering, ebbing at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Karl’s punch had not only smashed the armor. It had pulped his organs.

Had Tesoro not been so big, and Karl’s fist a touch farther from the heart,

it would have burst on the spot.

Even so, his state now differed little from a ruptured heart.

Unless a surgical ability user were on hand to swap in fresh organs at speed, Tesoro would die in minutes.

Just as Karl said—

the gap between monsters and the apex cannot withstand a single blow.

In the original tale Luffy beat Doflamingo in Dressrosa, then Gild Tesoro in Film Gold, and even Charlotte Katakuri on Whole Cake, a New World monster whom Morgans hyped as a fifth emperor.

Such a fifth emperor.

On Wano, in his first clash with Kaido, he was flattened by one Thunder Bagua and earned the title King Luffy.

Karl’s overall power is still shy of the few true overlords.

But he stands at the sea’s summit, able to fight them evenly for a time and carrying trump cards that can wound them.

Tesoro has neither monstrous physique nor the near-immortal elementization. His Gold-Gold Fruit is hard-countered by the Rumble-Rumble.

If Karl hadn’t yet mastered Conqueror’s coating, finishing Tesoro would be as simple as Kaido’s one-shot. No need for two punches.

As Tesoro blacked out, the awakened tide of golden waves congealed.

They stopped surging but did not return to normal.

A thousand meters of city became a field of crude golden wave sculptures.

With his current strength and the matchup, Karl had still destroyed a small slice of the golden city. He didn’t mind.

A little area damage was acceptable.

With the Float-Float Fruit, Nami could liquefy and move gold as well.

She couldn’t restore every structure, but tearing down ugly waves was easy.

Grabbing the dying Tesoro, Karl opened his field and blinked through obstacles, flashing back to the Golden Harbor stage.

"Lord Tesoro..."

Before Karina and the others could welcome him back, Baccarat—still under watch—stared wide-eyed. "Impossible?"

How long since the thirty-minute countdown ended?

A single thunder pillar, and waves of gold visible even from the harbor.

All told, not even five minutes.

The New World monster Lord Tesoro was beaten by the Dragon Knight?

In that moment, Baccarat understood why Tesoro least wanted to face Karl.

Their powers and their levels were not in the same league.

"Miss Baccarat, you have two choices."

Karl pushed current into Tesoro’s chest to keep the life flicker going, then smiled at her. "One, join me and use your power for me. Two..."

"I pick one. One."

She cut him off in a hurry. "I’ll join. I was only an employee of Tesoro before."

"Goodness, not even a ’Lord’ anymore," Karina muttered.

"Welcome aboard, Miss Baccarat."

Seeing how sensible she was, Karl’s smile widened. He had Nami release the golden bindings from her wrists.

"Please take care of me, Captain."

Without even soothing the hurt in her hands, Baccarat flashed a winning smile.

As for Karina’s jab, she felt no embarrassment.

Of course.

Karl’s second option didn’t need saying. It was die with Gild Tesoro, or be locked away.

She was in her prime, with years of youth to spend. Why die, or rot in a dark cell?

Her relationship with Tesoro had never been more than boss and staff. Not captain and crewmate.

She had served him because he was the world’s richest man. He gave her a life free of want. She only had to host VIPs and drain gamblers’ luck.

She had some loyalty, but not the kind to follow him into death.

Now the boss was finished. The enemy didn’t kill her, and even offered her a berth. Only a fool would refuse.

One pillar falls, a stronger pillar rises. Baccarat felt her power had indeed worked.

Because she was just that lucky.

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