Vice Captain of the Straw Hat Pirates

"Wororo! That hurts."

Kaido screamed before turning into a large dragon. He seemed to have tanked Luffy's attack, and by turning into a large dragon, it started creating several tornados around him.

[Dragon Twister]

These tornados began pulling Luffy in the middle. Despite his agility, he was able to escape this force without destroying the tornado.

[Demolishing Wind]

Several large wind slashes came out of his mouth and rushed toward Luffy.

Splash! Splash! Splash!

Despite his armament coating, Luffy wasn't able to stop those attacks. But also gave him a chance to break out of those tornados since these wind slashes were strong enough to destroy them.

As he escaped, he hurried several meters away from Kadio and stretched out his right hand.

[Python]

His hand stretched out like a snake's head and turned its trajectory several times in mid-air before going towards Kadio.

Seeing this, Kaido swung his tail and struck Luffy's fist. This collision created a loud sonic boom, and Kaido's tail was reflected after the collision.

Luffy used this moment as an advantage and pushed his fist forward. In Gear Fourth, he could easily control the length of his stretching.

So, he easily reached Kadio and struck him with all of his strength.

Advance Armament was strong enough to damage Kaido, but in his beast form, his defenses were increased by several times.

Seeing this, Luffy gritted his teeth and prepared his left fist. It stretched out like before and struck Kaido before he could even react.

[Gomu-Gomu No- King Kong Gattling]

Luffy sent a barrage of punches at Kaido, and surprisingly, Kaido simply decided to tank it with his dragon form.

Those weren't normal punches. They were coated with Advance Armament, but despite that, Kaido simply refused to fight back.

"What's going on? Why isn't he doing anything?"

Liam saw several chances for Kaido to fight back, but he was just letting Luffy attack.

He didn't understand why. He didn't believe Kaido would be kind enough to help Luffy train.

Suddenly, a hint of realization struck him as he murmured.

"Kaido is an emperor. So, even as a battle maniac, he shouldn't get that many chances to fight, especially someone of his caliber."

"In the original timeline, Luffy invaded his base, but even then, he was fighting with his weakest strength and only reached his peak when Luffy caught up."

"He doesn't have to worry about his base. He wants to fight a stronger opponent, and considering that he has seen our battle, he must have realized Luffy's weak control over his Conqueror Haki."

"So, either he is making an opponent for himself, or he isn't taking this seriously."

Looking at that dragon body that was being bombarded with punches, Liam sighed.

"I am afraid it's the latter."

Kaido was getting bored. Originally, he didn't come here with much expectation, but upon colliding with Luffy, his expectations rose.

Especially when Luffy used a trick to launch a powerful attack on him, but even then, it didn't do much damage.

That meant his Conqueror Coating and Advance Armament weren't strong enough.

Luffy did train his Armament Haki, but it wasn't for the sake of doing something right or keeping his word.

It was just to finish his normal training and play with Chopper and Usopp. So, without that motivation, he did learn Advance Armament, but he didn't master it or even make it stronger.

During his battle with the Admirals, he was so busy learning the Conqueror Coating that he forgot to improve his Armament.

This was the result of simple motivation.

Liam knew this very well.

Even though it was Rayleigh who taught Luffy Haki in two years' time-skip, it wasn't a life-and-death battle.

That's why it took Luffy so much longer to awaken and master Observation and Armament Haki.

But with Liam constantly feeding him information on Haki and their battles with Marine, Warlord, Enel, and even each other, Luffy managed to grasp Haki much quicker.

It also came with a problem. Because he didn't train enough, his Haki wasn't solid, especially since he also relied on medicine to improve his Haki.

All of these resulted in the current Luffy being several times weaker than Wano Luffy, even though he had mastered everything Luffy in Wano had mastered except for Gear Five.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Luffy punched and punched again. It was like a barrage of black fists falling on a mountain, but nothing could shake it.

As time went on, Luffy realized that his attacks weren't even going through Kaido's defenses.

His control over Armament Haki was slipping. This forced him to stop and get serious.

His Willpower burst out as Conqueror, and purple lightning emerged in his hands.

Only then did Kaido show some interest. He opened his mouth and released a massive burst of flames.

[Hot Breath]

Luffy didn't dodge it this time. He realized just how weak his Haki was and remembered Liam's words in his mind.

That's how he had made progress throughout his battles. And that's what he planned to do.

As the flames hit him, Luffy tore through the torrent of flames and rushed in front of Kaido.

Kaido was stunned by Luffy's defenses because his Hot Breath was more than capable of destroying a mountain.

As Luffy reached in front of him, his right fist started contracting. The contraction created a massive tensile strength on his right hand as he pushed it forward.

Bang!

'This punch. It contains a lot of power. But..... But…..'

"It's not enough!"

Kaido simply tanked the attack and roared. His roar created a massive shockwave as he managed to push back Luffy's fist with just a roar.

He clenched his fist on his mace.

Seeing this, Liam clenched his fist on his sword. He was ready to interfere at any moment.

But his eyes widened when he saw Luffy suddenly contracting his extended fist into a small ball.

It looked gimmicky, but seeing his painful expression, he knew Luffy had something in his arsenal.

[Roaring Thunder Eight Trigrams]

[Gomu Gomu No- Galaxy Blast]

Luffy's Conqueror Haki exploded. At this moment, it wasn't a conscious control but rather a curious determination to replicate someone's movement.

The bolts of purple lightning shattered the ground as they turned into massive star clusters.

A powerful heat burns on Luffy's fist. That contraction seemed to have created a lot of friction and heat, causing his fist to flame on.

As he released his fist, it turned into a fireball- no, a supernova. The flames extended outward as his fist collided against a mace.

Boom!

A terrifying shockwave spread out. The level of destruction that Liam hadn't seen before was in his eyes.

If Luffy was weaker than his Wano version before, now he was stronger, excluding Gear Five.

His replication of Galaxy Impact created a supernova that melted the island beneath them.

Luffy used his Gear Fourth form to fly, while Kaido used flame clouds. Liam had to rely on Geppo to step on air as the ground turned into molten lava.

Bang!

Maybe it was due to the heat or the powerful impact of Luffy's supernova, but Kaido fell short in his stick.

His mace didn't contain enough power to hold back Luffy's punch as it pushed it down and punched his fist.

Bang!

At this moment, Kaido flew away like a cannonball. Thanks to the flame clouds, he didn't fall into the ocean, but Luffy's punch did some serious damage to his face, burning half of it.

Of course, it wasn't just Kaido that was seriously injured by that punch. Luffy almost melted his hand.

The level of contraction that Luffy achieved to throw that punch was more than enough to generate heat that could surpass lava.

That meant Luffy had surpassed the terrifying heat of Logia Magma Fruit with just his rubber fist.

To keep his fist from burning, he had used all of his Haki, exhausting himself in an instant.

Poof!

Luffy started spewing out air from his mouth and fell out of Gear Fourth. Liam instantly appeared next to him and caught Luffy before he fell to the ground.

"That attack was amazing. How did you do that?" Liam was in awe. He had never seen this level of destruction Luffy could cause with a single attack.

Maybe Bajrung Gun might have that level of destructiveness. But there was a clear difference.

Luffy was simply using the properties of rubber to expand his fist on that attack, while here, Luffy was genuinely using the heat and friction generated by contracting his stretched-out rubber fist to create such power.

.......

Several kilometers away, a submarine-type ship was stationed. On the deck of that ship, there were several people holding binoculars.

"Boss, can you do this kind of attack?" One of the crew with a hat asked.

"No!" The man wearing a northern-style fur hat, which was white with a spotted pattern, spoke. He held a sword in his other hand, and he was holding it quite tightly.

"Straw Hat Master.... He has truly reached the Yonko level in strength."