The aftermath of Hody Jones's brutal, instantaneous demise hung heavy in the air, a silent testament to the sheer, terrifying power of the Devil Swordsman.
Bodies lay strewn across the pristine coral plaza, their blood a stark, dark contrast against the luminous architecture of Fish-Man Island.
The initial shock among the surviving Fish-Man supremacists and the hidden citizens was profound.
But in the silence, something else began to fester.
Whispers of the deceased queen and the revered Fish-Man Tiger, legends of their suffering at human hands, began to ripple through the terrified crowd.
The deep-seated hatred, a poison carefully cultivated over generations, began to curdle and rise, beating down the primal fear Guts had just instilled.
From every alleyway, every shimmering coral archway, more figures emerged.
Not just the remaining supremacists, but soldiers of the Ryugu Kingdom, their scales glinting with a grim resolve, and ordinary citizens, their faces contorted with a righteous, furious grief.
They were many, their numbers swelling rapidly, forming an encircling wall around Guts.
They pointed their tridents, their harpoons, their water pistols, their hands shaking with a mix of terror and burning indignation.
Guts felt it instantly.
The Brand of Sacrifice on his neck, which had momentarily calmed after Robin's safety was secured, now began to throb.
Not just throb, but burn.
It pulsed with an agonizing, searing heat, bleeding profusely, the dark crimson seeping into his armor, warning him of the collective malice, the unified threat that was now directly aimed at Robin.
Danger.
Her.
Now.
The warning shrieked in his mind, echoing the unseen horrors that always followed him.
His muscles coiled, his joints groaned, and a familiar, terrible darkness swelled within him.
The air around him began to warp, distorting the vibrant light of Fish-Man Island.
The Berserker Armor, responding to the Brand's agony and the overwhelming threat to its charge, began its grotesque manifestation.
Blacker than pitch, jagged plates of hardened nightmare erupted from his existing armor, engulfing his entire body, reshaping him into a more demonic, predatory form.
Spikes elongated, the helm's eyes glowed with an infernal, crimson light, and his roar, when it escaped his throat, was less human and more beast.
Suddenly, a massive, echoing howl tore through the water, vibrating even through the bubble.
ROOOOAAARRR!
It was Gargar.
The colossal shark-kraken, sensing the escalating danger to Robin, was moving.
With speed almost impossible for his gargantuan size, he crawled from the pier, his immense body slithering over buildings and through streets, heedless of the destruction, his tentacles flailing with desperate urgency, churning the water and scattering the terrified crowds even more.
He was a living mountain of protective fury, barreling towards them.
Guts, his vision already blurring around the edges, his mind beginning to fray at the edges of the Berserker Armor's influence, registered Gargar's approach.
With a primal grunt, an act of sheer, desperate will before the armor completely consumed him, he twisted and, with surprising gentleness for his monstrous strength, threw Robin.
Robin, caught off guard, flew through the air, her cloak billowing.
Gargar, already close, opened his enormous, cheerful maw just enough, catching her with a cushioned tentacle and gently, carefully, placing her on his vast, flat head, away from the impending maelstrom.
The surrounding Fish-Men, who had been bracing for Guts's monstrous counter-attack, watched in absolute, stunned silence.
Their weapons trembled in their shaking hands.
A Sea King, a creature of legend, guarding a human?
The sight shattered their understanding of the world.
From her vantage point high on Gargar's head, Robin looked down.
Her presence, now fully protected, caused a subtle shift.
Guts's Brand, recognizing that the immediate, overwhelming danger to her had passed, began to cool.
The agonizing bleeding slowly eased, and the terrifying, chaotic energy emanating from him momentarily receded.
Guts, still encased in the Berserker Armor, felt the overwhelming madness begin to ebb, replaced by a cold, calculating fury.
Good.
She's safe.
His focus shifted. They needed to finish whatever Robin sought on this "seafood island" quickly and leave.
Now.
But just as Guts began to regain control, a new presence asserted itself.
The terrified, bewildered crowd began to split, forming a reluctant pathway.
A towering figure emerged, regal and grim, his royal uniform immaculate even amidst the chaos.
It was Fukaboshi, the eldest son of King Neptune, his face etched with concern and authority.
He approached Guts, his voice deep, resonating with a practiced calm that barely masked his inner turmoil.
"My apologies."
Fukaboshi began, his gaze sweeping over the carnage, the shattered bodies of the supremacists.
"I am truly sorry I did not intervene sooner."
With his head held high, he continues.
"I was watching from afar, assessing the situation."
His words, intended as an apology, were delivered with a detached, almost casual air.
Watching from afar.
Assessing.
In that instant, a single, horrifying phrase, the very words of the Tired God, echoed with devastating clarity in Guts's mind.
My daughter... look at what they did to my daughter... while eating grapes and sipping wine.
The figure of God's previous daughter, overlaps with Robin's figure.
Broken and defiled, her body twisted and ravaged, her spirit utterly shattered, flickered vividly in Guts's mind's eye.
Her sorrowful cries, the maddening, joyful clapping of the crowd, the cold, indifferent gaze of the nobles watching from their balconies, casually eating grapes and sipping wine, all overlapped with Fukaboshi's detached posture, with the frozen expressions of the civilian Fish-Men watching from the sidelines.
A monstrous, unholy rage, far deeper than his usual fury, ignited within Guts.
This wasn't his rage alone; it was the raw, boundless despair of the Tired God, funneled through him.
His chaotic energy, momentarily soothed by Robin's safety, now exploded outwards, uncontrollable, an existential terror made manifest.
The vibrant, crystalline air of Fish-Man Island began to thicken, to warp.
The luminous coral buildings seemed to twist, their beautiful glow becoming sickly and sickly green.
The very water around them turned viscous, like clotting blood.
The surrounding Fish-Men, the soldiers, the citizens – they began to wail.
Not just scream, but a guttural, primal sound of absolute, soul-shattering terror.
They clawed at their throats, gasping, choking on air that had suddenly become thick with a phantom stench of decay and fear.
Their eyes, wide and bloodshot, reflected horrors that weren't there.
Twisted reflections of themselves, their scales peeling like rotting flesh.
The beautiful, sparkling water of Fish-Man Island morphed into an endless, churning void of crimson, filled with the ghostly, wailing figures of the dead, reaching out with skeletal hands.
Above their heads, where the vast, crystalline bubble separated them from the unimaginable pressures of the ocean, a sickening transformation occurred.
The distant light of the sun, usually a gentle shimmer, twisted into a colossal, bleeding red moon.
It hung there.
A monstrous, weeping orb, dripping spectral blood into the crimson void, illuminating a sky that wasn't there, making them forget, in their absolute terror, that they were under the sea.
Their minds broke, consumed by a fear so profound, so cosmic, that it tore at the very fabric of their reality.
They screamed, not knowing why, their souls consumed by the very image of death and the echoes of the tortured dead.
Guts stood at the epicenter of this nightmare, the Berserker Armor now completely dominant, its crimson eyes burning with the reflected horrors it had just unleashed.
He was the conduit.
The living embodiment of The God's despair, a terrifying, silent, and unstoppable force of pure, existential dread.
Lost in the maelstrom of The God's despair, Guts was drowning.
The cacophony of the Berserker Armor's primal urges, the screaming wrath of the God's anguish, the phantom cries of the tortured dead – it was a symphony of madness, pulling him deeper into an abyss of unreasoning fury.
Then, through the deafening roar, a single, faint note began to resonate.
It was impossibly gentle, a soft murmur at first, then slowly, steadily, it began to gain strength, overlapping the crushing weight of The God's voice, pushing back against the overwhelming tide of madness in his mind.
It was warmth.
A light.
A sound he had always longed for, yet never truly expected to hear.
Father.
The word, spoken with a child's innocent, desperate plea, cut through the static of his rage.
It wasn't his name, "Guts."
It was a calling, a title of belonging and love that shattered the illusion of his solitude.
Suddenly, the world solidified around him. The bleeding red moon above vanished.
The crimson void of the sea receded, replaced by the sparkling, natural light of Fish-Man Island.
The phantom stench of decay was gone, replaced by the fresh, clean scent of the ocean.
His Berserker Armor, which had been fused to him like a second skin, began to retract, the jagged plates flowing back into themselves, the demon-skull helm softening, then dissolving, revealing his grim, sweat-streaked face.
The agonizing heat of his Brand on his neck cooled, the profuse bleeding easing to a mere trickle, then stopping altogether.
He was still Guts, but the monstrous fury had receded, replaced by a profound, disoriented exhaustion.
His unseeing eyes, still raw from the horrors he had just embodied, slowly focused on the figure before him.
Robin.
She had somehow, impossibly, descended from Gargar's head.
She was there, right in front of him, her small frame pressed against his armored chest, her arms wrapped tightly around him in a desperate embrace.
Her usually stoic face was streaked with tears, and her voice, raw and broken, kept repeating the same two words, over and over, like a mantra against the lingering darkness.
"Father... stop! Father, please, stop!"
As her cries echoed, a powerful, benevolent energy flared from her.
The Whisperer of the World.
Deeper, a pure, radiant warmth spread outwards in ripples.
It washed over the terrified Fish-Men, their forms trembling uncontrollably on the ground.
The madness that had gripped them, the visions of death, the choking fear, the raw malice that clawed at their very heart– it all simply erased.
Their eyes cleared, their bodies ceased their violent tremors, though they remained utterly stunned, staring blankly at the scene.
Guts, his senses finally clear, looked past Robin.
His gaze swept over the plaza.
The terror had lifted.
The Fish-Men were no longer consumed by it.
He looked at Fukaboshi, still collapsed and gasping for breath, clutching his head, his face pale with lingering shock.
And then, just beyond Fukaboshi, Guts saw him.
A colossal, regal figure, resplendent in gold and oceanic blue, lay on the ground, his immense head bowed low, his trident cast aside.
It was King Neptune himself, the monarch of Fish-Man Island. He was not merely shocked; he was utterly broken, his vast body shaking with profound, rattling sobs.
Neptune, seeing Guts's terrifying crimson eyes fixed on him, dropped to his knees. His massive head bowed even lower, pressing against the coral-strewn ground in a gesture of complete, unquestioning submission.
"Please... relieve your anger!"
His voice boomed—not with authority, but with desperation. Stripped of his crown, stripped of pride.
"I beg you—whatever they've done, I take responsibility! But please... have mercy on my people!"
Slowly, carefully, Guts's arms, still encased in what remained of his armored gauntlets, rose.
Not to strike, but to return the embrace.
He wrapped Robin tightly in his arms, pulling her closer, burying his face in her hair. The warmth of her small body, the trembling of her sobs against his chest, were anchor points, pulling him back completely from the abyss.
"Hmph," Guts grunted, a rough, almost inaudible sound.
Then, with a playful nudge, he pulled back just enough to look down at her tear-streaked face.
"So, kid." he rasped, his voice still a little rough, "Are you gonna keep calling me 'Father'... or can you try for 'Papa'?"
Robin's head snapped up.
Her weeping stopped abruptly.
Her eyes, still red-rimmed, widened in utter disbelief, then flashed with a mixture of shock, exasperation, and a tiny, blossoming joy.
The sheer audacity!
After all that, the existential terror, the near descent into madness, he was asking that?!
WHUMP!
Before Guts could react, Robin's small fist shot out, landing with a surprisingly solid thud squarely in his gut.
He barely flinched, but the intent was clear.
"You idiot, Guts!"
She sobbed, half-laughing through her tears, burying her face back into his chest, clutching him even tighter.
"Of course, Father!"
A soft, almost imperceptible smirk touched Guts's lips.
He held her, letting the sounds of the stunned, silent plaza slowly return.
King Neptune, still on his knees, his face a mixture of profound relief and lingering terror, finally found his voice again.
He rose, albeit slowly, and extended a hand towards them, his posture now one of genuine reverence and supplication.
"Please," the King boomed, his voice steadier now, though still hoarse, "Devil Swordman... the Royal Palace. You must allow us to offer you our deepest apologies and our hospitality. The Ryugu Palace... is open to you."
Guts looked at Robin, then back at the King, a silent, grim acceptance in his eyes.