This novel is finished, and I have posted all the advanced chapters on my Patreon https://www.patreon.com/darkshadow6395
On the distant line where sea met sky, a black streak rapidly expanded in everyone's field of vision. Wherever the surging seawater passed, even the clouds overhead were instantly smashed apart.
That wasn't an ordinary tsunami; it was the Adrian Sea Howl!
With a height exceeding five thousand meters, rivaling a Knock Up Stream; stretching tens of thousands of meters in length; wave crests layered upon crests with no end in sight, this was a truly world-destroying natural catastrophe!
Compared to it, Water 7's Aqua Laguna was laughable, nothing more than a hundred-meter waves.
"Impossible! Doesn't the Adrian Sea Howl only occur once every twenty or thirty years?!" Chaton shouted, his voice cracking with disbelief.
The last Adrian Sea Howl had appeared only a few years ago, when Rowen and Kizaru were ordered to capture Rayleigh. The losses had been devastating, with casualties exceeding ten thousand. The Marines could hardly forget it.
Only a few years had passed, why had it appeared again?!
Everyone wanted to know the answer, including Rowen himself, who had merely calculated using the worst-case, lowest-probability scenario. After all, the Adrian Sea Howl had left a deep impression on him as well.
As for how the Sea King managed to trigger it, no one knew.
"Notify all forces, withdraw!"
Momousagi issued the order decisively, her voice ringing with urgency. In truth, no reminder was needed; the moment the colossal tsunami appeared, all battleships executed desperate evasive maneuvers, retreating from the massive tide.
Buzz!!
Hundreds of power engines on Pluton overclocked simultaneously, coating the ship in a pristine white light shield. Under the protection of the Thunder Cloud Dragon-pattern, Pluton ignored the raging waters and pivoted into a high-speed charge.
Sea Kings weren't terrifying, this Sea Howl was.
Even a warship with Pluton's tonnage wouldn't fare well if dragged into those collapsing waves.
With shields up, Pluton's deck remained eerily calm.
Watching the scenery on both sides streak backward at breakneck speed, Aokiji spoke up, clutching his chest.
"Zero… did Soryu (Azure Dragon)-sama say anything else?"
Bald Zero shook his head grimly.
Before leaving, Rowen had said this was the worst, and most unbelievable, possibility. Minimize losses as much as possible.
The Poseidon knew her Sea King horde couldn't withstand Pluton's cannon fire, so what power could she possibly borrow?
Aside from the legend of the Mountain Ancestor, there seemed to be only one answer left: natural… disasters…
Wait.
Was it really a natural disaster?
A terrifying conjecture suddenly surfaced in Bald Zero's mind, overriding the shock of the tsunami.
The Adrian Sea Howl could not be man-made, not even by the Poseidon. If she had such power, she could raise tsunamis anywhere; even the Red Line would suffer. There would be no need to send Sea Kings to ram it.
Yet here it was, appearing in blatant defiance of the historical timeline!
Almost as if it were deliberately targeting…
"Perhaps… it's not targeting the Marines…!!"
Bald Zero lowered his head, his eyes widening. "It's targeting this ship!"
Seeing the terror on Bald Zero's face, Aokiji frowned.
"What's wrong?"
BOOM!!
The answer wasn't Zero's words, but a deafening, reality-shattering explosion.
Even within the deceptive calm of the shield, the concussive blast instantly dropped swathes of soldiers to the deck, clutching their ears and screaming in agony.
The ice mass anchoring Aokiji's left foot shattered under the violent tremor. He grunted and dropped to one knee. The shock alone, even through the shield, severely injured everyone present, including him and Zero.
Aokiji looked up, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth, eyes wide with disbelief.
"Is this… the end of the world?!"
The world abruptly dimmed into silence.
Though it was midday with blazing sunlight, heaven and earth suddenly plunged into a darkness like deep night.
Something had interposed itself between them and the sun.
The shadow it cast blotted out the sky, swallowing all things in absolute darkness.
Not just here, nearly half the New World's ocean, and even distant regions of the North Blue beyond the Calm Belt, were shrouded in sudden night.
If viewed from outer space, one would see a massive protrusion rising from the planet's surface, an indescribably colossal form, like a tumor growing from the world itself, so exaggerated it challenged belief.
Red Line, "Holy Land" Mary Geoise
The thunderous impact didn't stop at the Adrian Sea, it propagated across the entire ocean like a massive, unstoppable seismic event.
Rowen gazed at the towering "mountain" that had suddenly appeared on the horizon, his eyes narrowing slightly in cold recognition.
"So that was your objective all along?"
As the words fell, the sound waves reached Mary Geoise like ten thousand roaring Second-Grade Dragon Scrolls, instantly shattering every fragile pane of glass and ceramic item in Pangaea Castle.
There was no scene of people screaming and fleeing through the streets. Under this terrifying, focused impact, everyone lost consciousness in an instant, only a handful of powerful individuals managed to withstand it.
"Did it break free?"
The calm voice echoed directly inside his mind. Rowen thought for a moment, then grinned.
"It merely woke up, Imu. It seems I'll have to trouble you after all."
"…Traitor!" The voice quickly faded away.
With the Red Line acting as a barrier, the First Half of the Grand Line and the East and South Blues were not heavily affected. But the New World, along with the North and West Blues, suffered catastrophic casualties in an instant.
Even without investigating, Rowen knew that this single event alone had caused more deaths than centuries of warfare between Marines and pirates combined.
"No wonder the ancient people created the Ancient Weapons, they were meant to deal with you."
"Mountain Ancestor!!!"
Standing atop the Red Line, Rowen could clearly see the full picture.
That wasn't a "mountain" at all, it was merely a gigantic, unfathomably ancient claw, reaching up from the depths of the sea.
…
New World, Adrian Sea… Approximate Location
"Ugh… where am I?"
Momousagi gradually woke from unconsciousness. During the impact just now, she had blacked out instantly, only feeling a sudden, world-ending buzz in her head before losing all awareness.
"At least not in Heaven…"
Chaton chuckled, drawing a shaky puff from his cigarette, raising his still-intact left arm when he saw her wake up.
"Oh? You're awake?"
The blood-soaked state of Chaton's right arm snapped Momousagi fully alert. She rolled over and sat up, looking around in astonishment.
"This is… inside an iceberg?"
Pluton's shield had vanished at some point. All around them, above, below, left, and right, was nothing but solid ice.
The biting cold wind lashed against her body, making Momousagi frown slightly.
"I remember something rising from the sea… then I passed out. Yes, given its sheer size, the water it displaced couldn't possibly be held back by the shield. It was even more extreme than the Adrian Sea Howl. Then Admiral Aokiji intervened to protect Pluton… right?"
As a trained commanding officer, Momousagi quickly organized her fragmented thoughts and asked,
"What about the Poseidon?"
"Cough, cough, hey, I put in quite a bit of effort too, you know?"
Chaton muttered under his breath, then took a deep breath and replied,
"No idea. Maybe it already died in the sea. After all…"
Only then did Momousagi notice the extensive damage to Pluton. Large sections of its hull were torn apart, jagged gashes where the thick metal armor had shattered completely, leaving no way to even begin emergency repairs.
Clearly, this was the real reason Aokiji had frozen Pluton inside a massive ice sphere.
If the ship had been left floating on the surface in that state, it would have sunk before long.
Even Pluton had suffered such devastating damage, so what about the Sea King?
She was a living being of flesh and blood.
(End of Chapter)