Chapter 608: Severing Hela! Doflamingo Ascends to the Throne with Three Gems

High above the ruins, purple and red light were still furiously clashing.

Hela's right arm had been blown open, dark blood pouring from the mangled flesh. Imu bore a jagged tear across her chest, her breathing noticeably erratic. Yet, neither of them backed down. Whoever yielded first would be torn apart by the other.

"Hand over the stone." Imu raised her hand, heavily compressed energy swirling into a localized ki blast in her palm.

Hela sneered, blood staining her lips. "Do you think you're worthy?"

As soon as she spoke, the ground beneath her completely shattered. The Power Stone burned scalding hot in her grip, its purple radiance vibrating in tandem with the ruins. She was just about to unleash another blast when a very faint sound echoed from behind her.

It was incredibly soft, almost entirely drowned out by the distant artillery fire. But Hela heard it.

The moment she spun around, her entire field of vision became chaotic. Imu was on her left. Imu was on her right. Imu was directly in front of her. Even the torn spatial rift above seemed to reflect that same cold, emotionless face.

Hela's pupils contracted. An illusion?

Imu also realized something was deeply wrong. The ki blast in her hand paused for half a second as she shot a freezing look toward her flank. "Doflamingo. You're still alive?"

From the shadows of the ruins, a pink feathered coat slowly drifted upward. Doflamingo's signature laugh echoed out before he even fully emerged.

"Fuffuffuffuffu... What a shame to disappoint you. I'm the kind of man who excels at surviving until the very end."

He stepped out of the shadows, walking on thin, translucent strings. There wasn't a single scratch on him, and his smile was unnervingly relaxed. But no one dared to underestimate him now.

Hela locked onto him, her expression turning lethal. "You want to interfere?"

"Interfere?" Doflamingo tilted his head, his grin growing wider and more arrogant. "I'm merely here to claim what rightfully belongs to me."

Imu's eyes turned glacial. "You haven't earned the right to stand on this battlefield."

"The right?" Doflamingo raised a hand, twitching a single finger. "I absolutely despise hearing words like that."

As his voice fell, the entire battlefield suddenly darkened. It wasn't a change in the weather; reality itself had been warped.

The gravel beneath Hela's feet abruptly flipped. She was still standing in the exact same spot, but her senses screamed that she had been violently shoved to the left. At the exact same time, a razor-sharp, chilling intent materialized just behind her right shoulder.

Pure instinct drove her to raise her arm to block.

Squelch!

Blood sprayed into the air. Hela looked down, only to see her entire right arm—shoulder included—cleanly severed from her body. The cut was surgically precise. Before the severed limb even hit the ground, it was shredded into bloody mist by a flurry of invisible strings.

"What—" She looked up, genuine shock and fury flashing across her face for the first time.

But Doflamingo was already right in front of her. "What you see right now isn't necessarily real. And what you think in your head... isn't necessarily real either."

He reached out, chuckling, revealing the gently spinning yellow glow of the Mind Stone in his palm. It was just an aftershock of its power, but Hela's expression completely warped.

She tried to retreat, but a chaotic, invasive suggestion forced its way into her mind. Imu is ambushing from the side. Loki is about to stab you in the back. Everyone on this battlefield is coming for you. Her vision dissolved into pure panic.

"Get away from me!" Hela roared, slashing out with the dark blade in her remaining hand.

But the moment the blade swung, reality rewrote its trajectory. The black blade narrowly brushed past Doflamingo's ear, obliterating half a stone pillar behind him. Doflamingo didn't even flinch. He simply reached out and plucked the Power Stone right as it slipped from Hela's grasp.

"Got it."

Hela's face twisted in horror. She lunged forward to snatch it back, but just as the searing agony of her amputated arm registered, a thin string coiled tightly around her chest.

"How dare you!" she snarled, her body shaking with sheer rage.

Doflamingo caught the Power Stone single-handedly, the purple light immediately bleaching his palm white. The berserk, destructive energy surged frantically up his arm, warping the space around him.

But his grin only grew wider. "Fierce, aren't you? This kind of thing... I love it."

He forced the Reality Stone's power down onto it. Just as the purple light was about to detonate, he suppressed it back into his palm. In the next blink, the metallic button on his coat cracked open, and he embedded the cracked stone right into his chest.

A blinding pillar of purple light erupted. Everyone on the battlefield froze for a split second.

Far away, Whitebeard looked up, his smile vanishing. "That brat... he really does have some nerve."

Garp, having just buried Thanos into the crater, turned his head and shouted, "Hey, you with the feathers! Have you ever heard of first come, first served?!"

Kizaru, still holding the gauntlet, looked over lazily. "My, my, my. The workers today just have no respect for the rules whatsoever."

Akainu stared at Doflamingo, his eyes hardening into ice. "Scum like that should have been incinerated into ash long ago."

Doflamingo paid them no mind. He lifted his head, his gaze settling squarely on Imu. "King of the World? Weren't you acting pretty high and mighty just a moment ago?"

Imu remained completely silent, but her eyes locked onto the Power Stone, the coldness in her gaze dropping to absolute zero.

Doflamingo wasn't finished. He raised his other hand, the yellow light of the Mind Stone flowing smoothly between his fingers. "You all wanted to use me as a pawn. What a pity. I never play anyone else's game."

Hela stumbled back two steps, clutching her severed shoulder, her face an ashen mask of rage. She didn't care about the lost arm; she cared that she had been thoroughly played. "Doflamingo, you're courting death."

"Courting death?" Doflamingo laughed so hard he bent over backwards. "Looking the way you do right now, you really think you can threaten me?"

He flicked his hand, embedding a few nearly invisible strings into Hela's forehead. Hela's body locked up, her eyes glazing over for a fraction of a second.

"Kneel." Doflamingo's voice wasn't loud, but Hela convulsed, her knees genuinely buckling downward.

But in the next second, she roared, her death aura shattering the strings as her eyes burned with pure hellfire. "You dare try to control me?!"

"Don't get so worked up." Doflamingo flicked his fingers casually. "I just left a little mark on you, so you wouldn't get any bright ideas about taking it back."

Imu finally moved. She raised her hand, firing a heavily compressed ki blast.

BOOM!

A massive crater was blown into the center of the ruins. Doflamingo flickered, forced to shift horizontally to evade. But his grip on the Power Stone hadn't loosened for a millisecond.

"A sneak attack?" Doflamingo looked at Imu, his smile turning frosty. "Do you even have the right to talk about fighting fair?"

Imu wasted no words. The Five Elders behind her stepped forward in unison, their overwhelming presence causing the surrounding debris to tremble.

Saint Saturn spoke in a low voice, "Lord Imu, allow us to retrieve it first."

"Quiet," Imu commanded evenly. She stared at Doflamingo. "Put the stone down."

Doflamingo held the Power Stone up to his eye level, gently turning it. "Put it down? Do you take me for a fool?"

He stepped up, placing his foot on a broken wall, looking down at them from his elevated perch. "I thought you top-tier elites at least understood the rules. But it looks like I understand them better."

Before his voice faded, Hela lunged at him. Her right arm was gone, but her left hand gripped a dark blade, aimed directly at Doflamingo's throat.

Doflamingo didn't even tilt his head. A massive wall of string erupted from the ground, effortlessly blocking the blade. Immediately after, the Reality Stone flashed, and the ground beneath Hela suddenly vanished.

Losing her center of gravity, she fell forward. Doflamingo raised his fist and smashed it viciously into her face. Hela was sent flying backward, completely demolishing a stone platform upon impact.

Before she could even get up, Doflamingo had completely secured his hold on the Power Stone. His shoulders shook with laughter. "From today onward, the rules are going to be rewritten by someone else."

He looked down at the purple glow in his palm, then back up at Imu. "Didn't you want to be the King of the World? Such a pity. Today's victor... is me."

Imu's expression darkened. She stared at the three swirling lights orbiting Doflamingo, her voice chillingly hard. "You will blow yourself apart."

Doflamingo grinned widely. "Then let's wait until I've crushed all of you under my heel before we worry about that."

Far away, Garp burst into booming laughter. "Interesting, very interesting! This brawl is actually starting to look like a real fight!"

Whitebeard hoisted Murakumogiri, sweeping his gaze across the battlefield. "I'd like to see just how long this brat can keep up his arrogance."

Hela slowly stood up from the wreckage, black blood dripping continuously from her stump. She stared at Doflamingo, all traces of mockery gone from her eyes. "You will regret this."

Doflamingo raised his chin, laughing with pure madness. "Regret is something reserved strictly for losers."

The purple light in his palm pulsed, and the very air above the ruins grew heavy and suffocating. The auras of the three Infinity Stones intertwined, causing the entire battlefield to quake.

And in the center of that chaotic storm, Doflamingo slowly spread his arms wide.

"Bring it on."

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