Faced with the devastation unfolding above the G1 Branch—an event rare even in the chaotic New World—Akainu had no interest in appreciating the spectacle.
Bang!
Suddenly, a massive force slammed into his face. It felt as if the entire Red Line had collided with his skull. His mind went blank. Blood surged up his throat as internal organs trembled. His spine bent violently, his body curling like a boiled shrimp.
Without time to scream, he was swatted like an insect. Ragnar's palm crushed both the Admiral and the thick icicle beneath his feet in one brutal blow. Akainu's body hurtled downward.
Boom!
He smashed into the G1 base below.
The island convulsed.
Crack!
A colossal shockwave erupted. Smoke and debris billowed toward the sky. Mountains collapsed. Earth shattered. From the point of impact, hundreds of enormous fissures—like titanic serpents—slithered outward, splitting the entire island.
One slap.
That's all it took.
The G1 Branch—Akainu's strategic fortress in the New World, a symbol of Marine dominance—was not only reduced to rubble, the island itself was torn asunder.
Boom!
Akainu's body had become a falling meteorite, and the scale of destruction was unimaginable. The prison ship docked nearby was engulfed by the shockwave.
Its massive hull was blown off the sea.
The underside of the ship scraped across the frozen ocean—skidding nearly 800 meters in the opposite direction before grinding to a halt.
"Admiral Akainu!"
"The G1 Branch... No, the entire island is gone!"
"He shattered an island... with one strike?"
The Marines on the deck had only just recovered from the initial blast when they witnessed the impossible.
Despite seeing it with their own eyes, they couldn't believe it. One man had turned a Marine stronghold into dust with a single blow.
"Ice Age: Pheasant Beak!"
Aokiji exhaled sharply.
A massive ice phoenix materialized from the air, flapping high above the disintegrating island before crashing down.
Crack-crack-crack!
The frozen wings spread outward, locking the fragmented island in a thick layer of ice. Even the seawater rising through the island's base froze instantly.
Aokiji finally let out a long breath—but his heart remained tense.
"Freezing the island… freezing the sea too. Are you trying to rescue Akainu?"
A cold, mocking voice drifted past Aokiji's ears.
A vast shadow fell over him like a storm cloud.
He didn't need to look back. Ragnar stood directly behind him.
He could feel it—the oppressive weight of absolute power.
If he moved, even slightly, the next thing he'd feel would be the same world-shattering palm that crushed Akainu.
"And if I say yes?"
Aokiji's voice was calm, soft—but laced with a steely confidence.
"Can you stop me, little brother?"
"Didn't plan to."
Ragnar answered lightly.
"That would be a hassle."
"Instead—if I beat you, I decide whether Akainu gets flattened or rolled."
He spoke as if defeating a second admiral was no more difficult than brushing dust off his sleeve.
Given what had just happened to Akainu, none of the surrounding Marines dared to laugh at the remark.
In fact, they wondered whether Aokiji could even survive.
"Brother," Aokiji exhaled slowly, "you seem to have some misconceptions about the Admirals of the Navy."
"Sakazuki—the Akainu you just faced—was already wounded by your father. His strength today was likely less than fifty percent of his prime."
"In other words, the man you just defeated... was little more than a slightly stronger Warlord of the Sea."
The moment he finished speaking, a glacial chill burst forth.
The air around Aokiji began to crystallize.
Without lifting a finger, the moisture in the air froze—frost spreading outward as if the very world itself was preparing for war.
The fragmented ice beneath Aokiji's feet and the cracks where seawater surged were instantly refrozen, seamlessly sealed by a creeping frost.
"If you think you can measure an admiral's power by Sakazuki's state during your last fight…" Aokiji's voice was calm, but laced with icy contempt. "Then you're mistaken."
"Brother, you were just lucky."
"You caught him wounded—what you got was a discounted version of hell."
As his words faded, a freezing aura—colder than his tone—erupted outward, howling across the sea like a polar tempest.
In a matter of seconds, the entire sea area within a ten-kilometer radius was entombed in glacial ice. The surging tides froze mid-motion, their chaotic currents suspended in solid crystal. Farther out, the sea's violent surface stilled as massive ice sheets expanded outward like silver wings unfolding across the New World.
Glaciers pierced the sky.
Icebergs rose like mountains from the abyss.
An arctic landscape took shape where ocean once reigned.
It was as if a new glacial age had descended upon the world.
The awe-inspiring ice formations—the frozen waves, the jagged pillars, and the monstrous spires of frost—were not the work of a natural phenomenon.
They were the result of a single man.
"Hie Hie no Mi—Awakened."
Standing at the heart of the blizzard, Ragnar narrowed his three eyes, the vertical pupil at the center of his brow gleaming faintly. Though his expression remained calm, a flicker of wariness crossed his features.
He understood what Aokiji meant.
Despite Akainu's ferocity during their last clash, Ragnar knew Sakazuki had already been critically injured—not by him, but by Kaido's onslaught at the G1 base. The magma admiral, though fierce, had only been fighting at half his peak strength.
After all, the Akainu of Marineford took on multiple Yonko-level attacks from Whitebeard, was smashed into the earth hard enough to reshape the battlefield, yet rose again to challenge the Whitebeard Pirates' strongest captains.
And that was when Whitebeard was sick, aged, and burdened with betrayal—a far cry from his prime.
But this time?
Akainu had faced Kaido of the Beasts, in his prime—a monster of endurance, with layers of Haki, Zoan regeneration, and an indomitable will.
Even flanked by Vice Admiral Chaton, Aokiji, and a squadron of seasoned Vice Admirals, victory came at a cost.
Akainu paid in blood and flame.
But Aokiji—Kuzan—remained unscathed.
Here and now, the man standing before Ragnar wasn't a battered warrior barely holding together his magma frame.
He was a full-force admiral, an awakened Logia with the power to shift entire climates—a man worthy of the title "Supreme Military Power of the Marines."
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