Chapter 66: A new level
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[Blood current!]
A giant crimson-colored hurricane enveloped the straw-hats and sent them flying into the air, soon their bodies got engulfed into the rapidly moving winds of the bloody tornado and started cutting their skin rapidly. Dealing an enormous amount of damage to them.
[Tatsumaki!!]
Zoro, that was the first one to react, countered this technique with his own and broke through the Giant bloody hurricane with many injuries on his body before he lunged towards Asura and prepared to chop him apart with his three katanas.
However, when he tried cutting through Asura, he noticed that the man had already disappeared from his previous spot and reappeared right behind him.
"Bastard- Gah!"
Suddenly, Asura grabbed his head tightly and slammed it into the ground with incredible strength. Burying him into the ground, and making him lose briefly his consciousness due to the force behind the impact with the ground.
"Zoro!!" Luffy, who was freed by Zoro after he used his Tatsumaki to cancel the hurricane created by Asura, yelled in anger after seeing his friend get pinned down on the ground with such violence.
Soon enough, he launched himself towards Asura and launched a rapid punch that was barely visible to the naked eye. However, even at that speed Asura grabbed it with ease, before he pulled Luffy towards him with great strength.
*Bam!!!*
Asura punched Luffy's face with his fist and created an enormous shockwave that made the entire battlefield shake briefly.
*Gah!!*
Luffy almost lost consciousness due to the force behind that punch, and even though his body shouldn't be affected by blunt attacks like that, he was still somehow injured after receiving such a powerful hit directly on the face.
"B-bastard...! Gomu gomu no... Gatling!!"
Luffy retreated briefly when he noticed that Asura was far from being tired, and decided to attack him with one of his fastest techniques.
Dozens of punches traveled rapidly towards Asura, each of them was so fast, that many of them started generating afterimages due to how fast they were.
However, as if not affected by the monstrous speed of Luffy's attacks, Asura just dodged the punches with a bored look in his eyes and slowly started approaching Luffy with his short sword prepared to attack at any given moment.
However, when Asura was just about to attack Luffy, a giant shadow appeared above him and tried to punch him.
"Heavy point!"
Chopper's enormous fist struck the ground where Asura was standing, shattering the ground, and making the ground shake sightly due to his enormous strength. However, before he could notice, Asura appeared above him and swung his short sword in his direction with an enormous speed.
However, before Asura's attack could connect, his short sword was stopped by an incredibly fast kick that struck Asura's shortsword and sent it flying high into the air after that, another kick tried to hit directly Asura's head and knock him up in one go.
Asura rapidly blocked the kick with his leg and countered with an incredibly faster kick that sent flying the figure several meters away and made it crash with one of the buildings.
Soon, however, Sanji came out of the debris and looked angrily at Asura who only looked at him with his red glowing eyes.
Robin soon appeared behind Asura and created several arms around his body that clutched him and tried to immobilize him completely. While this was happening, Nami created several dark clouds with her Clima-Tact and prepared to shoot a bolt of lightning to the immobilized Asura.
However, when she was about to attack him, she accidentally looked into Asura's eyes and a familiar feeling struck her immediately. It was like she had already seen his eyes somewhere else. Unfortunately, she didn't have time to think about it, as Asura freed himself from the clutch and tried to attack Robin right away.
This time, however, Sanji and Zoro stopped him and made Asura retreat a few meters with their strongest attacks.
"Shit, this guy is crazy... Even both of our attacks combined only made him retreat a bit..." Zoro raised his swords and looked angrily at Asura, seeing that this one was barely trying.
"He tried to attack Robin-chan, this is simply unforgivable...!"
Around Zoro, a demonic aura started forming and took the shape of another two Zoros, making his swords multiply, and his power increase drastically. On the other hand, Sanji started spinning at an enormous speed on one foot, and due to the enormous friction around it, the feet soon got caught in incredibly bright flames that seemed to burn everything around it and aimed directly towards Asura.
[Kiki kyutoryu: Asura!] (A/N: Yes, I forgot about the name of this attack, and Asura's name was actually in it... So... Just ignore it)
[Diable Jamble!!]
Both of them launched themselves towards Asura and attacked at the same time, ready to incapacitate or even kill him if necessary.
However, unlike what they expected, Asura's red eyes glowed coldly with a red light, before he blocked their attacks easily with another short sword that he was hiding inside his clothes.
With incredible mastery, Zoro's nine swords were stopped easily by covering the short sword with a layer of Haki, and Sanji's Diable Jamble was knocked away by a hit of equal strength and power.
But before Asura could counter-attack once again, A powerful lightning bolt struck him and made his body tremble slightly.
He turned to look at Nami that was looking at him with a slightly upset expression and dashed towards her with his sword raised in the air. But before his sword could hit her, Luffy appeared beside him at an incredible speed and launched an incredibly fast punch that was barely visible to the naked eye.
The punch struck Asura's ribs and knocked him away several meters away. It wasn't until Asura crashed against a house that his momentum finally stopped.
"How's that bastard?" Luffy snorted with an upset expression after seeing Asura fly away. However, he soon noticed the debris of the house started to move, and Asura came out of it with the same hostile gaze in his eyes as always.
The whole body of Luffy was emitting an enormous amount of steam, and his skin had a slightly more red tone to it, and not only were his movements incredibly more fast than before but his strength was also enhanced enormously in this state.
The eyes of Asura shone with a dangerous light as he looked towards the straw-hats that were looking at him and preparing themselves to attack all together the moment he moved.
Soon, however, to the shock of Zoro and all the other Straw-hats, Asura's body acquired a similar demonic aura to that of Zoro, and soon a giant Asura with eyes filled with rage and murderous intent appeared behind him and looked towards the Straw-hats with a terrifying look on his eyes.
"Z-Zoro, that's incredibly similar to your technique...!" Luffy pointed towards the giant Asura with a trembling finger because of the shock and looked at Zoro who was looking wide-eyed at the incredible materialization of Murderous intent that Asura had created.
'It can be used to such an advanced extent...? But that enormous amount of killing intent... It's not normal at all!' Zoro clicked his tongue and looked at Asura with a dumbfounded expression.
His technique was the materialization of his murderous intent combined with his spirit. However, it only allowed him to create two other clones of himself and use them to attack his enemies with multiple sword slashes.
But to create such a giant Materialization required an enormous amount of control of this technique and an incredibly deep murderous intent. For a human to have such an enormous amount of hatred was something incredibly shocking.
However, it didn't end there. Soon, the feet, hands, and arms of Asura got covered in an enormous amount of heat and got engulfed in very hot and dangerous-looking flames.
"Now it's my technique?!" Sanji looked towards Asura with wide-open eyes and gritted his teeth in anger seeing that his opponent was actually copying his technique.
However, unlike his technique, the flames on the feet of Asura had a light blue color on them that shone with intensity, and the flames were raging with an unprecedented fury that seemed to represent the hatred inside Asura's eyes.
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"Bwahahahaha!!"
Garp, who was on the sides of the battlefield along with Coby and Helmeppo, laughed heartily seeing what Asura was doing in front of the Straw-hats.
"He is copying their techniques and upgrading them, it's like he is mocking them!!" Garp continued laughing heartily while observing the battle with interest in his eyes.
"L-Luffy-san...!" Coby just ignored Garp's relaxed personality and looked at Luffy with concern in his eyes.
Back to the battle, the Straw-hats were just looking in awe at the incredibly advanced level of Asura's techniques and shuddered a bit in nervousness due to fighting such a strong foe.
However, without considering their feelings, Asura grabbed the short sword that had been sent flying away a minute ago and dashed towards them with the intention of ending this battle once and for all.
At that moment all the Straw-hats launched themselves towards him as well. Nami launched a powerful hurricane with her Clima Tact, Chopper prepared himself to punch Asura with all his might, and Robin created several hands and arms around the battlefield in order to restrict Asura's movements. On the other hand, Sanji moved rapidly in order to kick Asura's body with his full strength, Zoro started gathering strength in his feet to perform an incredibly rapid and powerful Oni-giri while the Asura is distracted, and Luffy used his gear third to expand one of his arms and smack Asura into the ground with his enormous strength.
It was a battle of 1 versus 7, yet for some reason, by the moment every one of them attacked Asura, the battle had already ended.
[Blood demon]
The moment the short sword of the giant Asura was thrust forward, the enormous face of a devil crying blood projected forward and struck the group with violence, shocking them momentarily before knocking them away right away.
Only Luffy was not affected by the projection, but unfortunately for him, it was all under Asura's expectations.
"Soru"
Before Luffy could notice what had happened, Asura was already above him pinning him down on the ground with a knife pointing towards his neck.
"Eh?"
Luffy looked towards the Knife with a surprised look on his face and tried to free himself, only to notice that Asura's strength was above his and that his restrain couldn't budge even one bit.
""Luffy!"" The Straw-hats recovered from the previous attack and looked at Asura that was about to cut Luffy's neck with obvious fear. However, unlike what they thought could happen, Asura just stood up, stored his weapons under his clothes once again, and went back to standing beside Garp.
"W-what the heck?" Sanji muttered dumbfoundedly seeing that the battle to death they were just having ended simply like that.
Finally, seeing everyone's reactions Garp exploded in laughter and started patting Asura's back with a bit too much strength.
"Bwahahaha!! You guys did not even last one minute after he got serious!"
"Grandpa, what the hell was that?!" Luffy looked angrily at Garp before he turned to look at Asura with an upset expression.
The other straw-hats did the same and looked at Asura with questioning looks. Nami kept focusing on his eyes though.
"You see, Asura here has quite a deep hatred for pirates because of something that happened in the past. I told him that you guys weren't bad people so that he couldn't try to kill you right away, however, it seemed that he wanted to test you guys personally before making a conclusion! Bwahahaha!!"
"He tried to kill us!!" Chopped yelled angrily at Garp, who kept laughing heartily at the situation.
"Oh no, he is much worse when really dealing with pirates, he usually deals with pirates of similar strength to you guys but he still obliterates them in matters of seconds, and doesn't even give them chances to retaliate. He didn't even go serious in this fight you know?" Garp stopped laughing and looked at Chopper with a serious look in his eyes, as he remembered how horribly did Asura deal with the pirates they found assaulting a village.
Even Coby who was next to Garp shuddered a bit remembering that.
Luffy, who was heard everything Garp said, nodded simply and had his face return to being neutral.
"Okay"
"It's not okay!" Zoro punched him in the head and yelled angrily at him for being so carefree.
"Then I assume we passed your test?" Robin who was frowning slightly at the behavior of Asura raised an eyebrow and asked with curiosity seeing Asura so silent while looking at them.
For the first time in a while, Asura opened his mouth and talked briefly while looking at Luffy.
"I concluded you guys aren't real pirates, but more like travelers. However, that's only in my definition of pirates though, because you're still pirates to the Marine or the World Government"
Hearing that he wasn't considered a pirate, Luffy furrowed his eyebrows and placed his hands on his hip before he looked at Asura with an upset expression.
"And why do you say that we are not real pirates?!"
"Pirates are supposed to murder, rape, ravage, steal, and destroy for fun. Although I believe you guys might destroy things for fun, I don't think you guys do anything besides that..."
Everyone looked shocked at his definition of pirates, not because it was something unheard of, but because it seemed to be directly related to his past.
'What could this man have happened to this man in the past?' That was what everyone thought at the moment. Except for Luffy that is, he just closed his eyes and tried to understand why his definition of pirates was so different from the one of Asura.
Soon after that, Garp and the other left for good. Leaving most of the straw-hats thinking about everything that had happened just now, and leaving Nami trying to remember why did Asura's eyes look so familiar to her.
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-At night, inside a marine ship...
"Bwahahaha!! Asura, you sure created some havoc this time!!" Garp entered the room of Asura and laughed heartily reminiscing everything that had happened during his reunion with Luffy.
*Gasp!*
However, when he entered his eyes opened wide, and a vein of anger appeared on his forehead.
On top of Asura's bed, there was a small piece of paper with some words on it.
{I'm leaving once again. See you later.}
"Asuraaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!"
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