Inside the imposing and radiant Ryugu Palace, an abrupt silence exploded the moment Tiberion Hanma burst through the main doors, walking in with heavy steps and an indifferent gaze, as if everything in that place was worth no more than the dirt beneath his feet.
In his hand, he dragged the corpse of Namur, the commander of the Whitebeard Pirates' Eighth Division, and dropped it with disdain in the center of the grand hall, letting the lifeless body crash against the floor.
The impact wasn't just physical—it was symbolic.
From atop the throne, King Neptune, his three sons, and the left and right ministers stared wide-eyed, completely terrified, unable to utter a single word. The blood drained from their faces.
But the first to react wasn't the royal family—it was Whitebeard's men.
In a matter of seconds, Jozu, the captain of the Third Division, stepped forward with an expression filled with pain, rage, and an uncontrollable desire to kill.
Beside him, members of the Third and Eighth Divisions unleashed a killing intent so dense it made the air feel thick like water, and the weaker ones nearby felt nauseous just from being close.
Swords were drawn and rifles raised in unison. Tiberion stood surrounded by dozens of pirates ready to leap at him with a thirst for revenge that was almost palpable.
One of Namur's subordinates, eyes glassy and voice cracking, stepped forward, pointing desperately.
"Captain Jozu…!" he cried. "Captain Namur… is dead! That bastard killed him! He took our leader, our brother!"
Jozu clenched his teeth so tightly his jaw cracked. Though his fury was immense, he raised a hand, signaling his men not to act hastily.
He knew that acting on impulse could be costly, even in a moment like this. The enemy in front of them was unknown, and clearly not ordinary.
However, reason only lasted a few seconds.
When his eyes landed again on Namur's lifeless body—his brother—something inside him collapsed.
A part of his soul burst, and without another word, he charged forward with such force that the floor cracked under his step, roaring like a caged beast:
"DAMN YOU! HOW DARE YOU KILL NAMUR!?"
With a single leap, he crossed the distance between him and Tiberion and launched a colossal punch.
But Tiberion didn't move.
He didn't defend himself, nor did he dodge.
He simply raised his right arm and caught Jozu's gigantic fist with one hand—as if he had just caught a stone thrown by a child.
The entire hall fell into stunned silence.
Jozu's fist… was completely halted by the bare palm of a human.
A slow smile crept across Tiberion's face—a sinister smile, filled with a strange emotion that bordered on excitement.
"I've heard about you…" he said quietly. "The famous Diamond Man… user of the Kira Kira no Mi, a Paramecia-type."
And then, his eyes gleamed with a wild spark.
"I wonder… with a grip strength of three thousand tons… can I break your fist?"
With those words, his arm began to tense.
It wasn't just brute strength. It was technique.
It was complete control over every microfibril of muscle, mastery of his tendons, of the connections between bone and flesh, of the exact pressure points to multiply his strength to absurd levels.
The power of Yujiro Hanma, in its purest form.
And he unleashed it.
From his palm, through his elbow, across his back and into the core of his abdomen, hundreds of muscles contracted in perfect sequence, channeling all that power into a single point—the clench of his grip.
When Jozu felt Tiberion's aura shift radically—like an even more monstrous presence awakening within an already aberrant body—something inside him flared up.
This man in front of him wasn't joking.
His fist, though much larger, still felt trapped in Tiberion's hand—and it was being squeezed so tightly that, for a moment, he felt his bones crack.
And yet, he forced himself to remain calm. As a Paramecia-type user of the Kira Kira no Mi, known as "Diamond," he was famous across the world for his nearly invincible defense.
Confident, with a scornful grin, he spat arrogantly:
"Hmph? Ridiculous. You really think your grip strength can break my fist? Who the hell do you think you are?"
With a thought, he covered his entire arm—from shoulder to fingertips—in a dense, gleaming layer of pure diamond.
But Tiberion didn't care one bit about that change.
In fact, his smile only grew more excited.
And then—he squeezed harder.
His grip strength suddenly surged to two thousand tons, focused precisely through the fine-tuned clenching of his muscles.
Instead of dispersing, that energy concentrated—channeled through his fingers, tendons, and joints like a localized earthquake aimed at a single point: Jozu's fist.
"W-What…!?" Jozu growled, feeling an unfamiliar vibration.
The next instant, the cracking sound was unmistakable.
The diamond began to fracture.
Microscopic fissures at first. Then visible lines that spread like spiderwebs. The indestructible diamond arm of the Third Division commander… was breaking. Something that had never happened before.
And it was happening under the bare hand of a human.
!
The surrounding pirates were petrified. No one could believe what they were seeing. Their expressions shifted from astonishment to terror in a matter of seconds.
"No way…! He's breaking diamond… with his hand!"
"This is insane…! Not even the Admirals have ever managed to hurt Captain Jozu like this!"
"Who the hell is this guy!?"
But the pressure didn't stop.
And from the way Tiberion's arm muscles kept tensing, as if they were about to explode, that wasn't even his maximum strength.
And Jozu realized it instantly.
"Captain, stop playing around! Let's finish him first!" shouted one of his subordinates, already on the verge of panic.
"That's exactly what I was about to do!" Jozu roared, releasing all his energy as he raised his other arm.
He raised it with murderous intent and coated it in diamond as well. But this time, he added a dark layer—Armament Haki.
But Tiberion already knew all his moves.
Before Jozu could complete the motion, the hand still holding him exploded with strength.
His grip strength increased to three thousand tons.
A force so dense, so concentrated, so lethally focused that it no longer just threatened to break the diamond—it was about to turn it into dust.
"AAARGHHH!" Jozu screamed in pain, feeling his entire arm begin to deform under a pressure he wasn't prepared for.
Despite the extreme pain tearing through him, he didn't yield.
He gritted his teeth, ignored the agony, and with his free arm now fully charged with Armament Haki and reinforced by his Devil Fruit, he launched a punch straight toward Tiberion's left cheek, throwing in the full weight of his body.
The speed of the blow was extreme, with a gathered force capable of pulverizing a ship. However, just before the impact, Tiberion released his grip on the other arm and slightly tilted his head, dodging the attack with absolute ease, as if he had foreseen the movement long before it happened.
Even so, feeling the air sliced by the punch that grazed his cheek, he smiled. Inside, he acknowledged that the blow had power. But he also knew, in that instant—it wasn't enough.
Jozu stepped back, withdrawing his arm. His face, twisted with rage, could barely hide the pain coursing through him. Had he not reinforced his fist with Haki at the last moment, that arm would've been completely destroyed during the previous grip.
"Very well," he growled through clenched teeth, "With explosive power as damn insane as yours, no wonder Namur fell... But for killing him, I swear to you, no matter what happens today... you're going to die."
His torso hardened completely, coated in diamond from his neck to his waist, and from shoulders to wrists, his arms were clad in a double layer of Armament Haki—so dense it pulsed with black waves.
He was using everything he had. He was going all in.
Tiberion, for his part, remained still.
And then—he activated the Demon Brain.
In that instant, the world stopped.
Everything around him—the tension in Jozu's muscles, the shouts, the trembling of the floor, the movement of the air, even the heartbeat of others—seemed to enter absolute slow motion. From his perspective, each second stretched into an eternity, allowing him to analyze everything with crystal clarity.
Now, his mind split into multiple branches of simultaneous thought. While one sector analyzed the joint movements of Jozu and how his weight was distributed between his legs to launch the next attack, another calculated the most probable trajectory of his fists, based on micro-gestures in his shoulders, neck, and hips.
A third process was already evaluating the entire battlefield: obstacles, hostile presences, escape routes, impact points, wind pressures.
And on top of all that, a complete combat simulation kicked in. In less than half a second, Tiberion executed over 10,000 full tactical simulations, each with possible variations in reaction, defense, and offensive response from Jozu.
He analyzed them, discarded the inefficient ones, refined the viable ones, and synthesized the perfect line of action.
Probability of victory: 100%.
He returned to the present. And felt no emotion. Only a certainty: Jozu had been doomed from the start.
Jozu charged in with everything.
Each of his punches was terrifying. Each strike unleashed shockwaves that made the palace tremble.
In terms of pure physical combat, Jozu was a monster. One of the toughest in the world.
But in front of Tiberion Hanma, the difference was abysmal. Because if the fight came down to hand-to-hand combat… Tiberion was the strongest.
Not among them.
Of the world.
And he proved it without flashy techniques.
He didn't use Haki.
He didn't reveal any Devil Fruit ability.
He didn't defend.
He simply stood firm, letting the attacks hit him directly… and activated his ultimate impact dispersion skill:
Defensive Xiaoli.
At the exact moment of impact, Tiberion would contract, expand, or release specific muscle fibers, redistributing the energy of each blow before it could harm him.
In just a few breaths, he received more than eighty punches from Jozu—each one at point-blank range.
And though every single one of those eighty strikes carried enough force to obliterate more than ten mountains, not a single one managed to hurt him.
Because upon contact, the force was redirected, absorbed, or its damage dispersed into non-lethal zones, as if his body were a flexible, indestructible wall.
…?
The pirates surrounding the scene could barely comprehend what was happening before their eyes. The speed with which their captain's fists were flying at Tiberion was so extreme that many could only see flashes.
And yet, some of the older ones—those with sharper perception or Observation Haki training—noticed the impossible.
"What the hell is going on…?" one murmured, eyes wide, "Captain Jozu's punches are absolutely monstrous, but… they're not affecting him the way they should!"
"I'm seeing it!" exclaimed another, still not understanding, "His body is taking every hit—but he's not bending, not bleeding…!"
"What is that guy? Does he have a special Devil Fruit?"
Another shouted, shaking his head in disbelief:
"Impossible! Armament Haki causes real damage! Not even Logia types can ignore it! This makes no sense!"
Even Jozu, in the middle of his attack frenzy, started to notice it. With every punch, he could feel his strength vanish the moment it made contact with Tiberion's body.
As if his power simply dissolved upon touching him.
'What the hell is this…?' he thought, brows furrowed. 'He's not even trying to block it… how can he make my strength disappear?'
Until finally, he understood.
!
"So this is the power of Haki, huh…?"
But before he could fully process it, Tiberion went completely still.
It lasted just a second. But in that second, everything changed.
His presence transformed.
A new, overwhelming energy began emanating from his body like an invisible wave of pressure that swept across the entire hall.
The more sensitive among them felt the air grow heavier.
It was Haki.
Not just any Haki. It was a purer, wilder manifestation of Armament Haki.
Jozu froze in place. His expression shifted instantly. He jumped back, holding his breath, his face filled with disbelief.
"What…!?" he muttered, barely able to comprehend it.
What he was witnessing… was impossible.
The man before him—who had already killed Namur and taken eighty punches without even blinking—had just awakened Armament Haki mid-battle?
Just from fighting him? In a matter of seconds?
Goddamn it… what kind of monster is this?
Jozu cursed internally. He couldn't accept what he was seeing. Tiberion didn't just possess absurd physical strength—he also had a terrifying learning speed.
His body was an aberration, yes, but his mind… was even worse.
And in that instant, Tiberion moved.
He simply activated Soru, vanishing from his position in an instant, leaving an explosion in his wake.
By the time Jozu located him again—it was already too late.
Tiberion was in front of him.
And without showing any emotion, he threw a casual punch, straight to the chest.
Boom
Jozu barely managed to cross his arms in time to defend himself, but the impact engulfed him like an avalanche.
His body was launched like a projectile, crashing through wall after wall of the palace, destroying columns—everything in his path. He flew over five hundred meters before violently crashing down in the middle of the rubble.
"G-GAH!" he coughed up blood instantly, the metallic taste burning his tongue.
His back arched from the impact, his ribs on the verge of collapsing, he dragged himself out of the broken stones, staggering, his breath ragged.
The diamond that covered his chest was cracked. Massive fractures ran across it like spiderwebs. And it wasn't from wear—it was from raw force.
"D-Damn it…" he muttered through clenched teeth, "Is this the kind of damage someone who just learned how to use Haki can cause?"
But he already knew the answer. Because what he was feeling from that monstrous body in front of him wasn't a simple awakening.
It was talent… brilliance and absolute mastery.
The Armament Haki emanating from Tiberion was just the surface.
Beneath it were those strange martial skills, the precision in movement, the learning capacity—and above all, a natural talent so overwhelming it felt unfair that such a being could exist.
Tiberion seemed like he was born to be a perfect creature of war.
And for the first time in years… Jozu felt the breath of death.
…
Inside the palace…
The impact of Tiberion's last strike still echoed through the walls, and the dust suspended in the air had only just begun to settle. But Whitebeard's men, loyal to their fallen captain and the will of their division, did not retreat.
One after another, they advanced without hesitation, roaring with courage, driven toward death by the weight of their loyalty.
Some already knew they had no chance—but still, they charged.
Tiberion didn't even blink.
They were mere insects.
With minimal movements—a spinning leg, a palm thrust into a stomach, an elbow shattering a jaw—five bodies were sent flying at once. In less than ten seconds, a dozen pirates lay lifeless on the floor.
And then, the silence was filled by a pulse that everyone heard:
DO‑KON… DO‑KON…
Each step Tiberion took produced that beat—deep and resonant—as if it rose from the very bowels of the earth.
He didn't move fast, but his advance was inexorable, as if space itself bent before him. And with every pulse, the air grew heavier, compressing further, crushing the will of those who still dared to hold their weapons.
Jozu, gasping, his torso cracked, stood upright, gathering the last of his strength. He turned on himself and raised a colossal fragment of the fortune wheel torn from the ground, hurling it at Tiberion as a final cry of resistance.
The steel flew, dragging wind and shadow along with it—but the drums did not stop.
DO‑KON… DO‑KON…
Tiberion reinforced his right arm with a coarse layer of Armament Haki, which sparked as it wrapped around his knuckles.
When the fragment was but a palm's width from his face, he unleashed a single punch:
Boom
The wheel shattered into hundreds of metallic streaks that burst like glass under thunder. And before the shards could even touch the ground, Tiberion vanished from his spot; the drums shifted rhythm, chaining into a frenzied roll.
DODODO‑DODODO‑DODODO—
A flash, a burst—and as the fragments fell with a deathly chime, an arm also fell: Jozu's, cleanly severed from the shoulder, soaked in dark blood.
Jozu remained standing, watching his own flesh separate from his body, unable to comprehend the precise instant Tiberion had reached him.
The chill of emptiness climbed up his spine like a cloak of ice.
"..."
His lips trembled, but no sound could break through the oppressive roll of the Drums—those heartbeats that did not celebrate freedom, but proclaimed that all will had been crushed by the power of a single man.
________
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