One Piece: Dungeon Shop. Scamming Garp, Reward: Eight-Tails Jinchuriki-Chapter 390: Pierced by a Single Finger

Want to read ahead? Join my Patreon for just $7 to get early access to all upcoming Chapters!

> Patreon.com/NegativeTranslations

─────

Chapter 390: Pierced by a Single Finger

A deathly silence hung over the ring.

Imu knelt in the rubble, her hands desperately clutching the terrifying, gaping hole in her chest.

Black blood gushed through her fingers, sizzling loudly as it dripped onto the scorching hot stone.

Her once-proud "immortal body" was now functioning like a rusted, broken machine.

The black substance writhed at the edges of the wound, struggling to reconstruct her destroyed organs, but the process was agonizingly slow.

Cough, cough...

Imu hacked up a massive glob of black blood. Her face, usually hidden in shadow, was now deathly pale and contorted in unwillingness and rage.

She raised her head, her crimson Rinnegan locking onto Piccolo, who stood a few meters away.

The green-skinned freak hadn’t even broken a sweat.

He had merely pointed a finger.

There were no flashy movements, no world-shaking build-up.

Yet he easily punched straight through the ultimate defense she had perfected over eight hundred years.

"Why..."

Imu’s voice cracked, laced with hysterical tremors.

"Why is the gap this massive!?"

She couldn’t understand.

She truly could not understand!

Under the scan of her Observation Haki, this green-skinned freak’s physical structure didn’t seem all that exaggerated.

He lacked Kaido’s inhuman muscle density.

He lacked Charlotte Linlin’s iron-balloon durability.

He didn’t even have the hyper-refined muscle striations of that three-eyed human from earlier.

He looked like a perfectly ordinary creature of flesh and blood.

He even looked a bit thin.

"Your physique... clearly doesn’t seem that strong..."

Imu grit her teeth, her eyes nearly bulging out of her skull.

"No Haki coating, no Devil Fruit enhancements..."

"How!?"

"How were you able to shatter my divine body with a single strike!?"

"How was your speed so fast I couldn’t even track it!?"

"This makes no sense!!"

Imu’s roar echoed across the ruins, filled with the sheer despair of a shattered worldview.

She was the King of the World.

The master of the Empty Throne.

The god standing at the absolute pinnacle of the One Piece world!

She could accept defeat, but she absolutely refused to accept a defeat so utterly nonsensical, a loss that felt like a dimensional suppression!

Faced with Imu’s bloody, weeping interrogation...

Piccolo merely threw her a cold, sideways glance.

It was a look reserved for an ant that was trying to bare its fangs at a dragon.

It was full of an untouchable, high-and-mighty indifference.

"Hmph."

Piccolo snorted, crossing his arms back over his chest.

"Explain?"

"What’s the point of explaining to a frog in a well."

Piccolo’s voice was flat, but every word slammed into Imu’s face like a sledgehammer.

"Your so-called strength relies entirely on the hardness of your outer shell and those flashy little parlor tricks."

"We, on the other hand, train our ’Ki’."

"It is the destructive power born from compressing life energy to its absolute limit, and detonating it in a single instant."

Piccolo shook his head, looking mildly annoyed.

"Forget it. You wouldn’t understand even if I told you."

"Your level is too low."

Your level is too low.

Those six words felt like six daggers stabbing directly through Imu’s fragile ego!

"BASTARD!!!"

"I am a god! I am the sole god of my world!!"

Imu lost her mind.

Ignoring the excruciating pain in her chest, she forcefully over-drafted her life energy, wringing out the very last drop of power in her body.

BOOM—!!!

Countless black spikes erupted from her back, forming a colossal net of death that shot out to engulf Piccolo!

It was her final swan song.

A last, desperate strike fueled by eight hundred years of dignity!

However.

Piccolo didn’t even bother to look.

"Boring."

He simply waved his hand.

Like he was swatting away an annoying fly.

WHOOSH—!!!

A visible wall of white air pressure exploded from his arm!

It wasn’t a ki blast.

It was literally just... the wind pressure generated by a wave of his hand!

CRASH!!!

The terrifying gust of wind acted as a solid wall of force, instantly smashing Imu’s desperate net of spikes to pieces!

A split second later.

It slammed violently into Imu’s mangled body!

"Guh—!!"

Imu didn’t even have time to scream. Like a dead leaf caught in a hurricane, she was blown entirely away by the gale!

She traced a pathetic arc through the sky.

Soaring far over the ring.

Flying over the grandstands.

Until she turned into a tiny black speck and vanished over the horizon.

Ring, ring, ring—

The blonde announcer scrambled out from under the table, holding his microphone high:

"Ring out!!"

"The black contestant has fallen out of bounds!!"

"The winner of this match is—Contestant Majunior!!!"

The entire stadium erupted in thunderous cheers.

Piccolo remained expressionless.

He glanced briefly up at the sky, then turned on his heel and strode off the stage.

An opponent of that caliber wasn’t even qualified to serve as his warm-up.

Inside the pure white settlement space.

Dead silence.

GASP—!!!

A frantic, ragged inhalation suddenly shattered the quiet.

Imu’s eyes snapped open.

Within those crimson eyes, the arrogant, detached gaze of the past was gone.

Taking its place was an endless, suffocating terror.

And a bone-deep tremor she couldn’t shake off!

"Ah... Ahhh!!"

Like a drowning victim finally breaking the surface, she gasped greedily for air.

The black robes clinging to her body were completely drenched in cold sweat.

They stuck uncomfortably to her violently shivering frame.

"My chest... my chest..."

Imu reached out with trembling hands, pressing down hard over her left breast.

It was perfectly intact.

There was no terrifying hole.

Nor was there the hollow void of having her heart vaporized in an instant.

But in her nervous system.

The agonizing pain of being pierced by that golden beam felt so vivid it might as well have happened a second ago!

"An illusion... was it just an illusion..."

Imu muttered to herself, her teeth chattering uncontrollably.

No.

It wasn’t an illusion.

It was a despair more real than death itself!

That green-skinned monster.

"Too strong..."

"How can a creature like that even exist..."

Imu curled into a tight ball, wrapping her arms around her head.

For eight hundred years.

She had sat upon the Empty Throne, looking down at the world.

In her eyes, the so-called Yonko and Admirals were nothing but slightly oversized ants.

She controlled the Ancient Weapons.

She possessed the world’s strongest Haki.

She wielded a bizarre ability that rendered her nearly immortal.

She fancied herself a god.

The sole, supreme ruler of her reality.

But just now.

In that martial arts tournament crawling with freaks of nature.

Her pride.

Her dignity.

And the aura of invincibility she had cultivated for eight centuries.

Had been casually, effortlessly crushed to dust by a single finger from a green-skinned man!

Imu’s pupils shrank to pinpricks, her mind replaying that final scene on an endless loop.

Is this... the true strength of that world?

Imu felt a profound, crushing sense of powerlessness.

─────

Support this fanfict by leaving Positive Review, Comments, and Power Stones.

For Advance Chapters:

> Patreon.com/NegativeTranslations