Chapter Eighty-Three: The Invincible Tailed Beast Ball [Second Update]

Honey, I miss you.

At the very last instant, Crocodile’s body instantly turned to sand and merged into the desert, only to reappear elsewhere. The dozen sand spears that had burst toward him clearly missed their mark.

“So a Logia user’s true greatest advantage really is the ability to freely elementalize the body. Killing them is far too difficult.”

Shu Mingyuan’s expression darkened. After awakening, the power of the Sand-Sand Fruit had already begun to stand on nearly equal footing with Shukaku’s abilities, and he could no longer treat it lightly.

“Brat, this time I’ll blow you away for sure!”

“Heavy Sandstorm!”

Crocodile drew his arms in front of him and then swept them apart. A torrent of sand and dust roared up, countless grains being caught and flung into the air by the massive sandstorm. Its might was such that it blotted out heaven and earth.

The wind was ferocious, and the sand tornado had swollen to twice its original size. The enormous cyclone of destruction came crushing toward Shu Mingyuan, and even from far away one could feel the razor-sharp gale within it.

“You can’t elementalize yourself. Let’s see how you dodge this!” Crocodile sneered.

“You think… only you know how to whip up a storm?”

The boy’s tone was disdainful. The immense chakra of Shukaku suddenly surged from the depths of his body to every limb and bone. Black violet markings began to surface across his skin, and the pale-brown phantom of the One-Tail gradually solidified around him.

Shukaku and Shu Mingyuan’s souls were perfectly in sync. That colossal figure, mountain-like in scale, suddenly appeared over the desert. Shu Mingyuan’s body slowly rose as well, coming to rest at the center of Shukaku’s brow. He opened his eyes, the Three-Tomoe Sharingan fully unleashed, and in this state he felt stronger than ever before.

“So this is the complete tailed-beast transformation Naruto reaches later on? As expected, it’s absurdly powerful.”

His consciousness fully controlled Shukaku’s body. Looking at the ever-more terrifying storm, he gathered immense chakra in his mouth and finally spat it out.

“Wind Release: Infinite Sandstorm Breakthrough!”

A storm of comparable power erupted between heaven and earth, linking sky and ground. The world changed color. The collision of the two immense tempests even produced peals of thunder. Sand whirled everywhere, blanketing the entire capital of Alubarna.

The strange phenomenon in the skies north of the royal palace shocked every soldier of the royal army and the rebel forces. The terrifying momentum rolling in from that direction made everyone realize what kind of horror was unfolding there, and the fighting briefly came to a halt.

“Lord Shu Mingyuan, is that you?” Vivi looked anxiously toward the north. With the elite officers of Baroque Works wiped out, and the true king of Alabasta, Nefertari Cobra, having returned not long before, the royal army, bolstered by the king’s favor, had actually managed to hold off the assault of nearly two million rebels.

Vivi knew that all the hope this brought was due entirely to one person. The gratitude in her heart gradually took shape as an extraordinarily tall and perfect figure.

...

The two storms twisted together and clashed. Shu Mingyuan, transformed into Shukaku, raised his head and opened his mouth behind the storm. A tiny black point of matter formed there, and then, under the steady convergence of chakra in a two-to-eight yin-yang balance, after several dozen seconds a pitch-black sphere the size of a fist finally took shape.

A violent surge of chakra rippled through the heavens and earth. A strong sense of mortal danger rose in Crocodile’s heart. From far away he stared at the energy sphere condensing in that monster’s mouth, and he could smell death upon it.

“Desert Shield Wall!”

He gave a low shout, and layer upon layer of massive stone walls rose from the desert to block Crocodile’s front, but the sense of danger in his heart did not diminish in the slightest.

Shu Mingyuan opened his mouth and spat out the Tailed Beast Bomb, sending it straight at Crocodile like a cannon shell.

The Tailed Beast Bomb passed cleanly through the center of the two storms. The immense force it carried plowed a trench a hundred zhang wide through the desert below. It charged ahead without resistance, smashing through all of Crocodile’s hastily prepared Desert Shield Walls like dry weeds under a storm, and then, beneath his horrified gaze, exploded with a thunderous roar.

An utterly terrifying detonation erupted. In the desert, a blinding white flash appeared, so intense it seemed to seize the world itself. The white light first contracted, then expanded at an indescribable speed, engulfing more than half the desert in an instant, before at last an earth-shaking boom reached their ears.

Boom!

This power was practically like the wrath of heaven.

No, even more terrifying than the wrath of heaven!

The light from the northern region of the kingdom was clearly visible to the people throughout the city. The momentum coming from there did not weaken; rather, it surged to its peak at that very moment.

Countless people in the capital stared at the dreadful spectacle in horror, their faces pale as they fell to their knees in panic, thinking that the gods had been angered and intended to destroy Alabasta.

Alubarna trembled beneath the roar. The explosion of the Tailed Beast Bomb unleashed an unmatched gale, and the two storms from before were actually smashed apart by sheer force. Shu Mingyuan fought desperately against the pressure of the blast; after releasing the Tailed Beast Bomb, he could clearly feel Shukaku’s weakness.

It seemed that Shukaku’s chakra was not, after all, the endless, bottomless power of rumor. A Tailed Beast Bomb compressed to such an extreme density would require even it a great deal of time to form.

The supposedly inexhaustible chakra of the tailed beasts was likely inexhaustible only in comparison to humans. Compared with the frail bodies of people, the enormous physiques of the tailed beasts could naturally contain far more chakra. And Shukaku was only the One-Tail, the one with the least chakra among all the tailed beasts.

If it were the Nine-Tails, Kurama, then its chakra could truly be called boundless. Even a Tailed Beast Bomb, that sphere of chakra, could be spewed out recklessly without restraint. And the time required to gather one would be only ten seconds or so, unlike Shukaku, which nearly needed a full minute.

Though its power was enormous, the long casting time made it easy to interrupt, and after a single Tailed Beast Bomb it was nearly incapable of further battle. That was why Shukaku would not casually use it.

Shu Mingyuan had taken advantage both of the ignorance of the people in this world and of the two storms colliding to buy himself enough time to unleash this strike. Once it was done, he gradually withdrew from the complete tailed-beast form.

The blinding white brilliance lasted for several dozen seconds before slowly fading, though the thunderous rumble continued to echo through the heavens and earth. Ahead, in the desert, there now lay a crater half a kilometer across. The sand in its center had been scorched by the intense heat of the blast and turned into solid crystal.

Looking at the terrifying scene before him, Shu Mingyuan still drew in a sharp breath. Although he had long known the Tailed Beast Bomb was extraordinary, seeing it with his own eyes left him too stunned for words.

Because this power was indeed outrageously monstrous...

Crocodile had been at the center of the explosion. Whatever he had done at that moment, there was no way he could have escaped it, because this terrifying force had already far exceeded the limits of what he could withstand.

Shu Mingyuan closed his eyes and felt carefully. Confirming that there was no longer any trace of Crocodile’s presence in the air, he slowly turned back toward the royal palace.

This battle for the Sand Emperor, Sand-Sand Fruit against the desert’s Shukaku, had ended with his victory after all.

P.S.: Congratulations, RNG!