The connection was gone.
Across the battlefield, every Marine—from the newest recruit to the legendary Admirals—felt the power within them gutter and die.
Kizaru, who had been a being of pure light just moments before, froze in mid-air and began to fall, only managing to save himself with a clumsy Moonwalk.
Aokiji, Fujitora, Ryokugyu—all of them were now just men, stripped of the power that had made them legends.
The green rain had done its work.
"Ahahahaha! Don't look so glum!" Rocks's voice boomed with mock sympathy.
"I was in a bit of a hurry, so I had to use a diluted solution. It will only seal your powers for two hours!"
He raised his blood-soaked cutlass, pointing it directly at Akainu.
"But two hours," he said, his voice dropping to a menacing growl, "is more than enough time for us to paint this entire continent red with your blood."
As if on cue, Whitebeard stepped forward and slammed his fist into the air.
A wave of pure, destructive force erupted, shattering a massive portion of the Seraphim's laser barrage.
Almost simultaneously, Shanks and Marco took to the sky in their fiery bird forms, their combined crimson and blue flames creating a shimmering heat shield that absorbed even more of the incoming lasers.
Then came the others.
The Golden Lion. Kaido. Big Mom.
A symphony of destruction erupted from the pirate armada, their combined power completely overwhelming the Marines' defenses.
From the very first second, the battle was a slaughter.
The pirates' power was simply on another level.
The tens of thousands of Seraphim, now stripped of their own Devil Fruit abilities, were reduced to simple laser cannons, their once-unstoppable barrage now easily countered.
After thirty minutes of brutal, one-sided combat, the Marine line was collapsing.
Kaido, in his full dragon form, was on a rampage, tearing through the Seraphim ranks like they were made of paper.
His claws shredded their frames, his teeth crushed their reactor cores, and with a single sweep of his massive tail, he sent dozens of the billion-berry war machines crashing to the earth in heaps of ruined scrap.
As another quarter of his Seraphim forces were annihilated, the gloom in Akainu's eyes deepened into a black despair.
"Enough playing," Rocks's voice echoed, bored and indifferent.
"Our time is limited. Break their lines and find me the boy genius, Leon!"
At his command, the rest of the pirate army surged forward.
Seeing the fresh wave of thousands of elite pirates pouring onto the battlefield, even Akainu felt his scalp tingle with dread.
He wasn't afraid to die, but the sheer, overwhelming power of the enemy was suffocating.
He now realized, with a sickening certainty, that they had been fighting less than half of the pirates' true strength.
Their tens of thousands of Seraphim were already struggling to hold back a few dozen top-tier commanders.
Against thousands of elite pirates, many of whom wielded multiple Devil Fruits, their line would not just break; it would be annihilated.
They wouldn't last fifteen minutes.
Akainu's mind flashed back to Leon's parting words, a cryptic message he hadn't understood at the time.
"Sakazuki-san, just hold on. Hope can arrive at any moment."
Looking at the tsunami of death bearing down on them, Akainu could see no hope at all.
All he felt was a profound, soul-crushing exhaustion.
Rocks watched from his flagship, not even bothering to join the fight.
Why would he? The outcome was already certain.
"Hey! Sakazuki!" he mocked from across the battlefield.
"Do you worthless Marines really think you can stop us?!"
Akainu ignored him, clenching his fists as he barked orders, trying desperately to salvage a defense that was crumbling by the second.
"Hmph. So stubborn," Rocks sneered. "Perhaps you should worry about yourself."
In the chaos of the battle, as Akainu was directing a squadron of Seraphim, a shadowy figure emerged from the smoke behind him.
"Zehahahaha! Admiral Sakazuki! The reign of the Marines is over!"
Akainu spun around, raising his arms just in time to parry a clumsy, but powerful, blow.
"This is the age of pirates! The age of dreams! The age of chaos!" Blackbeard cackled, the power of darkness swirling in his palm.
A surging gravitational vortex erupted from his hand, pulling the powerless Akainu toward him.
Against Blackbeard—the master of the most vicious Logia and two other powerful fruits—the now-powerless Akainu stood no chance.
He was helpless, his body dragged inexorably toward his grinning foe.
As he was pulled into Blackbeard's grasp, Akainu saw the man's other hand begin to glow with the white, crackling energy of the Tremor-Tremor fruit.
The last thing he felt was a violent, world-shattering shock and the searing agony of his body being torn apart from the inside out.
The pain was so intense, so absolute, that it nearly sent him into the black abyss of unconsciousness.
Trapped in Blackbeard's crushing grip, his body ravaged by the power of the Tremor-Tremor fruit, Akainu fought to remain conscious.
"Zehahahaha! Without your little magic fruits, you so-called 'Admirals' are weaker than stray dogs!" Blackbeard laughed, his grip tightening.
He channeled the full might of his three Devil Fruits, intending to execute the Fleet Admiral right here and now.
"Just give up and die! Don't make this difficult!"
"..."
Akainu could only grit his teeth, his eyes burning with helpless fury as another wave of seismic force tore through his body.
He knew he was finished.
A month ago, he would have incinerated this oaf, but now, injured and powerless, he was nothing.
The scene was a microcosm of the entire battle.
Across the field, the Marines' greatest champions were being systematically dismantled.
Kizaru, bleeding from a dozen cuts, stood before Shanks.
"What are you still fighting for, Kizaru?" Shanks asked, his voice soft but cold as steel.
The crimson flames of his Vermilion Bird fruit swirled around him as he leveled his sword at the Admiral's throat.
"You have no power left to stop us. Surrender, or I will take your head."
"Yooooo, scary stuff, Red-Hair," Kizaru drawled, a weak smirk on his face.
"If you think you can, come and get it. I'm so terrified~~~."
"Don't mock me," Shanks's eyes narrowed. "You've lost. Don't throw your life away."
Ryokugyu was faring even worse.
Having always relied heavily on his Logia powers, he was completely outmatched by the raw physical might of Douglas Bullet.
A massive, blood-soaked hole had been punched clean through his abdomen.
"Hahahaha! Green Bull!" Bullet roared with contempt. "Did you really think you could stand in my way without your fruit?!"
His body began to expand, merging with the surrounding debris to form a colossal golem of steel and stone.
A fist the size of a warship rose into the sky, wrapped in a terrifying aura.
The sheer pressure of the attack sent a hurricane-force wind across the battlefield.
For the common Marine soldiers, this was the final straw.
Despair shattered their discipline.
"It's over! We can't win!"
"Run! If we stay here, we're all going to die!"
A Marine Vice Admiral turned and fled, his courage broken.
Seeing a high-ranking officer rout enraged Bullet.
"You dare turn your back on me?! COWARD!"
With a deafening roar, the giant fist came crashing down, not on Ryokugyu, but on the edge of Mariejois itself.
The entire continent of the Red Line shuddered violently as a massive chunk of the Holy Land broke off and plunged into the sea, taking the fleeing Vice Admiral and hundreds of terrified soldiers with it.
A chilling silence fell over the battlefield, broken only by the crackling of fires.
With one blow, Bullet had proven their utter helplessness.
The pirates were simply too strong.
As Bullet raised his fist again, a cold smile on his face, ready to deliver another devastating strike, a single, thin ray of light descended from the heavens.
The remaining Marines, who had been falling back in a disorganized rout, suddenly changed direction, now fleeing with purpose toward the interior of the island.
The pirates paused, confused, and then raised their heads to see what had appeared in the sky.
Three small, sleek projectiles were falling silently from the clouds.
"Are you kidding me?" Rocks scoffed from the rear.
"After all that, they think they can stop us with a few cannonballs? The Marines have truly lost their minds!"
He watched with amusement, until his senses screamed at him.
The casual smirk on his face vanished, replaced by a mask of pure, undiluted terror.
His eyes widened as he felt the energy contained within those three small shells—an energy more vast, more dense, more utterly destructive than the combined laser fire of ten thousand Seraphim.
It was a power that didn't just destroy matter; it promised to erase it from existence.
He was the King of the World, a man who feared nothing, but he knew with ice-cold certainty that if he were caught in that blast, he would be instantly and absolutely annihilated.
"No... How?!" Rocks whispered, his voice trembling.
"How could the Marines have a weapon like this?!"
On the front lines, another legend recognized the falling stars for what they were, his face draining of all color.
"It can't be!" Whitebeard roared, his voice filled with a horror he hadn't felt since the days of God Valley.
"The Nuclear! That boy... he actually used them again!"