Ch 57 - Operation Success

*Boom*

Our fists collide and produce a sound as if two large trucks traveling 100 Miles/Hour are crashing into each other, deforming the landscape and throwing the two of us far away from each other.

"Would have thought it would be harder," I mutter under my breath as I look at my cracked ice gauntlets and look towards Sai who similarly staring me down.

The reason why I'm saying this is because I finally got a reading on how powerful fledgling Armament Haki really is. It's basically just a hard coating that hardens your hands at this point, similar to my ice gauntlets but a little bit harder evident by the cracking, even though I can clearly tell that Sai barely even learned it as barely 35% of the time he succeeds in cover his attacks in Haki.

"Impressive that you can counter both my Haki and Hasshoken techniques, Quoc scum! But this ends here!" Sai says as he raises his right leg 180 degrees into the air, like a split, seemingly getting ready to perform a final attack.

"It seems you need to work harder than…" I taunt as I think on an attack, I've been thinking about for some time now which if I calculated correctly should allow me to finish him off and act similar to the Explosive Punch, a technique that enhances my attacks and surprisingly lets me counter the Hasshokens shockwaves to a limited degree.

'Really didn't think it would be able to counter it so well… I guess Sai is just at the stage where he needs to still develop, it is about 4 years before he's introduced in canon after all.' I think to myself, seeing that the fight that lasted about 30 minutes so far is finally coming to an end.

It would have been a lot faster if I used all of my abilities, but I don't really want to make myself seem too powerful or display my signature abilities as Chinjao would intervene at that point and I would have no chance whatsoever of winning against him, not even with my Fusion clap.

"Wujiaogen Heel!" He yells as his leg becomes encased in a thicker layer of black Haki and begins to vibrate powerfully, creating mini shockwaves in the air, followed by launching himself in my direction at a tremendous speed.

"Explosive Mace," I similarly yell as I encase my gauntleted hands in a huge amount of ice, creating a rounded mace with sharp deadly spikes and surround it in more Limitless, immediately moving forward using a powerful shave.

*BOOM*

Our attacks once again collide, but this time something strange happens, instead of Sai's attack actually colliding with me, it stops in the air, not moving forward one bit, confusing him, yet he quickly forgets about this as he is suddenly hit with the full might of a large and far more powerful explosive punch; or more like explosive mace, in the leg, which knock back into his head and sends him flying and crashing into a far off ship, with his eyes rolled back to the back of his head.

"I guess it works just fine! Hahaha!" I laugh as I see the results.

What I did there is finally use the shielding factor of Limitless in order to confuse the enemy and catch him off guard with a powerful explosive attack, one that is deadlier and hits harder because of its heavier, rounder shape and because it was covered in sharp spikes, adding sharp tiny wind blades into the mix; not to forget the extra power due to using Shave.

"Haah, I guess Haki really does affect my Limitless field…" I sigh as I look at my mace-like fists that immediately crack into large chunks and fall onto the ground allowing me to see my heavily shaking fists; I was lucky I acted quickly because by the end it seems Sais' Haki actually got through to touching me and even a bit of his shockwaves reached me, he definitely could have damaged me at the end if he hadn't been so confused at the time.

However, I quickly remember where I am and send the thought to the back of my mind for later scrutiny; I then look around and what greets me is a destroyed ground that is covered in large cracks and deep potholes that are filled with water and melting ice.

"*Whistle* Looks more like a warzone than anything… Guess I should get out of here before anything unfortunate happens…" I quickly state as I immediately cover myself in Limitless and shave into the ocean, heading towards a nearby but desolate tiny island.

…

*Snore* *Snore*

*Poke Poke*

"Hmm? Haa?" I groggily mumble as I look around to find whatever woke me up from my afternoon nap on some soft ground that I found on this barren rock.

"Sigh, Cade do you really have to sleep when you made such a ruckus not long ago?" voices out the culprit, Carina, who I see is the one that poked me with a stick.

"Eh?... sorry, I must have been too tired after the fight… I barely won you know…" I shamelessly lie in her face to excuse my ever-present laziness.

"Well… I know that's a lie… I could still see what was happening through the flower you know…" Carina says with an 'I know your lying' expression.

"Aah!?" I scratch the back of my head in response, not willing to dig myself deeper into the hole.

"Whatever, let's just get back to the ship, we should quickly get out of here if we want to be safe from any backlash," Carina tiredly says as she walks back to the small ship I see anchored not too far away.

"K," I simply say as I follow behind her and focus on her swaying behind… like a creep.

…

"Finally!" I say as Porche-chan hands me the large tome which is titled "Eight Impacts Fist Manual."

"I'm glad you finally got what you wanted, Cade-kun!" Porche-chan happily comments as she approaches me and gives me a big hug.

I quickly put down the manual and returned the hug, cheekily pulling Carina who is awkwardly standing in the corner into the hug as well.

"Hey!" She protests and squirms for a few seconds before she finally gives up and relaxes into the heartwarming embrace.

After about a minute of this we finally separate with Carina heavily blushing due to the affectionate act.

Seeing this Porche-chan and I laugh at her," HAHAHA, Carina why so riled up?!" I ask playfully.

"Yoooouuu! Hmph!" she turns to the side with a glare.

"Heehee Cade-kun, leave her alone! She just isn't used to close contact yet! Hahaha" Porche-chan comes to her defense in order to calm things down again.

"Alright alright, fair enough… Anyways, now that we achieved what we wanted, it's finally time to leave the West Blue! Say goodbye to it because by tomorrow well be in a different ocean entirely!" I seriously state after I calm down.

"Right!" they both respond back with smiles on their faces.