“This feeling…”
Gringo Saint’s pupils slightly constricted, the scene before his eyes eerily overlapping with a moment from his memory.
Under the twilight of God Valley back then, the man named Rocks had also stood like this, holding a blade, its edge wreathed in darkness that devoured all.
And at that time, he himself had charged forward with unparalleled confidence and pride…
The result, however, was that all his arrogance was shattered by that man’s single strike, forcing him to retreat in disarray to the secondary battlefield, no longer daring to approach the core combat zone.
And now…
Gern stood in the center of the shattered plaza, black blade eight desolations wreathed in purplish-black lightning.
Haoshoku arcs of electricity moved across the blade like living things, and the vibrating particles subtly warped the surrounding space.
That oppressive feeling… it was identical to what he had felt back then!!!
“What a joke…” Gringo Saint’s breathing suddenly quickened, fine beads of sweat oozing from his forehead, only to be instantly evaporated by his boiling Haki.
His face twisted like a demon, his once towering golden hair, like a crown, scattered in the violent air currents.
Every strand of hair was entwined with dark red electric light, dancing wildly like living things.
The ground beneath his feet began to crack, and shattered stones floated defying gravity.
“This time…” He slowly raised his rapier, the trajectory of its tip leaving a scorching afterimage in the air.
“You won’t scare me away!!!”
“Boom!” Gringo Saint erupted with a monstrous aura, dark red lightning, identical to Shanks’s Haki in the future, shot skyward like a volcanic eruption.
The sky was instantly cleared, clouds torn open to reveal a massive chasm.
The rapier in his hand glowed with a dazzling, blood-red light.
The blade hummed under the overwhelming Haki, and the surrounding air twisted into visible ripples.
“In front of me…” Before his words finished, Gringo Saint’s figure had already vanished, leaving only a spiderweb-like collapsed crater where he stood.
Before the sonic boom could spread, the sword edge, imbued with destructive energy, had already torn through space, aiming directly for Gern’s throat!
“You are not that man!!
After you die, I will collect this weapon as my Figaland Garland’s trophy!!
Gern Reginald Sigma, bow your head before the World Government! Scum!!!”
Wherever the blade passed, space shattered like fragile glass.
The dark red lightning condensed into a materialized giant dragon, its gaping maw large enough to swallow the entire plaza.
The tip of the sword even ignited with incandescent flames due to extreme friction with the air, dragging a hundred-meter-long fiery meteor trail behind it.
“Divine Strike!!!”
“This battle won’t be about right or wrong…” The light of approaching death reflected in Gern’s pupils, yet a nearly deranged smile slowly spread across his lips.
“We only acknowledge strength and weakness!!”
Gern stood unmoving, merely sinking his stance and gripping black blade eight desolations in a backhand grip, the blade held horizontally.
Compared to Figaland Garland’s sword, which groaned under the strain, his own black blade eight desolations trembled slightly, but it hummed with joyous excitement.
“Swish!” What seemed like a casual horizontal slash, at the moment of its execution, caused a sudden change in the heavens and earth.
Black-purple energy erupted from the blade like a volcanic eruption, countless fine vibrating particles outlining vein-like patterns in the air.
These energy threads wildly intertwined, finally converging into a rainbow light that spanned heaven and earth, distorting and devouring even light in its path.
As the blade sliced through, space was neatly cut open by a pitch-black crack, like a wound torn in the world, slow to heal.
“Heavenly Tribulation.”
At the instant the two world-destroying forces collided, time seemed to stand still, followed by
“Rumble Rumble Rumble!!!”
Purplish-black and dark red lightning transformed into countless entangled giant pythons, and the shockwave spread spherically.
The ground within a hundred-meter radius instantly vaporized, and the massive stone pillars of Marineford’s central plaza collapsed like building blocks.
The Marine generals watching were blown hundreds of meters away by the air currents.
Even Sakazuki had to stand up and seriously resist, while Kuzan’s ice wall evaporated the moment it touched the aftershock.
Meanwhile, at the center of the storm,
Gringo Saint’s sword edge solidified and stopped before Gern, blocked by the Black Blade and unable to advance even an inch.
His pupils trembled violently as he stared in disbelief at his shaking blade.
“Crack… crackle…” The blade hummed and trembled; the clash of their weapons was not an evenly matched stalemate, but an absolute crushing!
His Conqueror's Haki was like waves crashing against a reef, being incrementally crushed by a more violent, more primitive, and pure force.
“This is impossible…” Blood overflowed from Gringo Saint’s throat.
“My Conqueror's Haki… was actually suppressed by… this lowly fellow, how is this possible…”
“Crack… crackle…” The blade’s lament had not yet ceased when Gringo Saint’s pupils suddenly constricted to pinpricks.
The edge of black blade eight desolations had already pressed against his chest!
“What?!” Gringo Saint’s pupils abruptly constricted, cold sweat not yet sliding down before it was seared dry by the surging Haki.
He wanted to retreat violently, but his limbs felt as if they had sunk into a ten-thousand-fathom deep sea, every inch of muscle groaning under the oppression of Gern’s Haoshoku.
Invisible shackles tightly bound his body, preventing even his fingertips from trembling in the slightest.
“Move… Move for me!!!” He gritted his teeth, attempting to exert force.
But the only response was the “creak” of his spine.
At this moment, Gern’s Haoshoku had already materialized, like the entire sky pressing down, making even breathing a luxurious delusion.
“My power… is not just this much.”
Gern’s whisper was like a declaration from the Grim Reaper.
“Buzz—!” black blade eight desolations suddenly vibrated, an ear-piercing hum emanating from the blade.
The semi-awakened power of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit was completely unleashed at this moment.
Molecular-level vibration control!!!!
On the left half of the blade, the movement of spatial molecules approached infinite stillness!
Icy blue tremor patterns spread like glacial fissures, and the air condensed into suspended ice crystal dust, each particle enveloped in high-frequency vibrating death energy.
Before the cold even reached him, Gringo Saint’s eyebrows were already covered in white frost, and his blood congealed into ice in his veins.
On the right half of the blade, the movement of molecules in space accelerated wildly to their limit!
Scorching orange-red tremor patterns erupted like lava, and black smoke and ionized flashes burst from the hilt.
Ultra-high frequency friction turned the blade edge incandescent, and the surrounding space warped and collapsed due to the high temperature; before it even struck, Gringo Saint’s robes spontaneously combusted into ash.
Red and blue energies, like entangled giant dragons, coiled around the blade, finally converging into an eerie rainbow light.
The moment the blade struck,
The space on the left froze into an absolute zero prison!
The space on the right incinerated into a plasma-state inferno!
And Gringo Saint, caught in the center of the strike’s trajectory, could only watch helplessly as his body was simultaneously eroded by two extremes.
His right half-body’s flesh and blood vaporized and evaporated in molecular-level vibrations, while his left half-body’s bones embrittled and disintegrated under absolute stillness!
“This is… the true…”
“Divine Punishment!!!”
“Pfft!” The dull thud of the blade entering flesh was clearly audible in the silent battlefield.
A torrent of purplish-black energy poured out along the blade, like countless greedy venomous snakes, instantly piercing through Gringo Saint’s chest!
His luxurious robes turned to dust the moment they touched the blade, the flesh and blood beneath his skin were torn apart inch by inch by high-density vibrating particles, and his bones shattered with a mournful cry.
“Ugh ah ah ah!” Gringo Saint’s scream was not fully uttered before it was violently forced back down his throat by the raging energy impact.
His body flew backward like a broken kite, a hideous sword scar diagonally traversing his torso, deep enough to expose bone.
At the edges, flesh and blood curled into ice crystals, yet paradoxically, the flesh was charred black like charcoal, as if burned by hellfire.
Before blood could even spray, it was evaporated by the high temperature of Haki Infusion into scarlet blood mist and ice crystals, swirling along his backward trajectory like a tragic blood-rainbow.
“Boom!!!”
His body slammed heavily into the ruins hundreds of meters away, the impact completely pulverizing the remnants of half a Marine fortress.
Dust soared into the sky, obscuring the sun, leaving only that shocking sword wound still glowing with an eerie purplish-black ember in the darkness.
It corroded his body like a curse.
“Cough… cough cough…”
Deep within the ruins, Gringo Saint struggled to prop himself up, each breath bringing with it bloody foam from shattered internal organs.
At this moment, under the influence of Gern’s Haki, Gringo Saint’s body withered and cracked at a visible rate, crumbling inch by inch like parched earth.
And he himself looked down at his chest; the skin that once symbolized his supreme bloodline could no longer recover.
Then his trembling fingers tried to touch the wound, but at the moment of contact, they were vibrated so violently by the residual Tremor-Tremor Fruit power that his skin split and flesh tore.
“This… impossible…”