Saturn's severed limbs had already regenerated. That grotesque healing power made one thing clear. This fight was far more troublesome than anyone had imagined.
Kael and Mihawk stood back to back, feeling the crushing pressure coming from all directions, so heavy it seemed ready to collapse space itself.
"Oi. Scared, little Hawk-Eye?"
Kael's voice was light, laced with teasing, cutting through the suffocating silence.
Mihawk did not answer.
He simply lowered the edge of Yoru a fraction, and the fingers of his right hand tightened around the hilt until the knuckles went pale.
No words were needed. His action was the only answer.
Silence was not an apology. It was proof there was nothing left to say.
A swordsman should only move forward.
If he retreated even half a step out of fear today, his sword heart would be stained with dust forever. How could he speak of standing atop the blade's path then?
"Hahahaha!"
Kael roared with laughter, his bold voice echoing inside the ring of five monsters.
"Then focus up. That bald old guy with the Shodai Kitetsu is yours!"
"As for the other four… I'll handle them."
The instant the words left his mouth, both of them moved.
Mihawk became a straight line of darkness, charging toward Saint Nusjuro in the distance.
But Kael moved faster, arriving first and flashing directly in front of Nusjuro.
He did not swing his weapon. Instead, he sheathed it in one smooth motion, clenched his right fist, and compressed Haki and shockwave power into a single point on his knuckles before driving it forward.
"Fist Bone, Galaxy Impact!"
A crimson cross of light bloomed in his palm, then exploded into an unstoppable torrent of destruction, slamming straight into Nusjuro.
He'd been chased by that old man Garp together with Roger for decades. Picking up a trick or two was normal, right?
Nusjuro's pupils shrank. He had not expected Kael's target to be him.
He raised his blade in a hurried block. The Shodai Kitetsu met the crimson impact head-on.
Boom!
An overwhelming force surged through the sword. Nusjuro felt like he'd been struck by a siege hammer in the chest. His entire body turned into a streak of light and was blasted away, vanishing beyond the horizon a thousand meters out.
Before he could even stabilize, a razor-sharp line of black light was already on him.
Hawk-Eye Mihawk had caught up.
Two swordmasters standing at the summit of the world's blade path collided on the Red Line in a duel that felt like fate.
Steel flashed. Shadows split. Every clash tore open the sky.
On the main battlefield, with Nusjuro forcibly kicked out of the fight, the situation became four versus one.
Fengxi. Sandworm. Gyuki. Itsumade.
Four monsters closed in from all directions, boxing Kael in.
"Come on, you old bastards!"
Kael bellowed, raising the black-gold naginata Nidhogg toward the heavens.
"Collapse of All Things, God-Calling Sweep!"
The sky answered.
The night, once stained red by firelight, was swallowed in an instant by endless storm clouds. A massive black vortex spun madly inside the cloud layer.
At its core, lightning flickered.
A spear of pure thunder, like a judge's weapon, slowly emerged.
Then the divine punishment fell.
The lightning spear detonated, splitting into hundreds, then thousands of rampaging thunder dragons. Their roar shattered the heavens as they plunged down, turning a zone hundreds of meters wide into a sea of killing lightning.
It was like Zeus himself hurling thunder from the throne of gods, a power that made every living thing tremble down to the soul.
Even the Five Elders did not dare take it head-on.
Roar!
Warcury howled and exploded sideways with shocking speed, dodging away.
Mars beat its wings, becoming a streak of black flame as it shot upward.
Peter did the simplest thing. The enormous sandworm body shrank back underground and vanished.
Only Saturn remained.
Maybe it was slower. Maybe it trusted its regeneration too much.
It simply lifted its pincers to shield its head and endured several thunder dragons slamming down on it.
Crackle. Crackle.
Lightning danced wildly across its body. Even with Armament Haki guarding it, the terrifying voltage still made it convulse. The proud beard was burned into black, curled strands, releasing that bizarre stench of scorched protein.
Saturn was truly enraged.
On that ugly spider face, its eyes flared with murderous light. Two sinister red points suddenly blazed brighter.
Kael tried to press the advantage.
Then, without warning, a tearing pain ripped through his skull, as if countless steel needles had been driven into his brain at once.
"Ghk!"
He grunted, the world spinning. His body staggered midair, almost falling.
That single instant of weakness was all they needed.
Rumble!
Warcury seized the opening. The massive body became a black meteor, and the two huge tusks, gleaming with cold light, smashed into Kael's chest.
Pff!
Kael felt his ribs about to shatter. Blood sprayed from his mouth as he was sent flying.
He had not even stabilized when the sky above him darkened.
Mars shrieked and dove from high altitude. Its talons, wrapped in black flame, raked straight for Kael's head.
Kael forced himself through the brain-splitting pain and the crushed chest, roaring as he swung Nidhogg backhanded into the strike.
Clang!
The recoil slammed him downward like a hammer.
And waiting below, Peter had already opened its abyssal maw.
Sand erupted. The earth split.
A ringed mouth packed with layered fangs burst from the ground and, before Kael could react at all, swallowed him whole.
The world fell into darkness and dead silence.
Peter writhed across the ground in satisfaction, the colossal sandworm body undulating as if it had finally enjoyed a proper meal.
Then the next second.
Its body stiffened.
At the center of its massive torso, a dazzling circular streak of light flashed into existence, gone in an instant.
"DIE!"
A rage-packed roar exploded from inside the sandworm's body.
Pshk!
With that roar, Peter's mountain-sized body was cleaved in half at the waist by a ring-shaped blade of light.
Fetid blood and entrails sprayed like rain.
Kael, drenched in gore, burst out of the severed body and shot into the open sky.
He hovered there, panting hard.
Golden eyes burned with an anger fiercer than ever.
A savage wound split his chest, deep enough to show bone. His entire body was etched with damage from digestive fluids, his state miserable beyond words.
Above, Mars circled.
On the ground, Warcury and Saturn stared like predators.
Peter, sliced into two, twitched and writhed at the cut, already trying to reconnect.
Kael slowly lifted his head, gaze sweeping across the four monsters.
On that face smeared with blood and filth, an eerie smile suddenly appeared.
He raised his left hand, slick with mucus and blood, and pressed his index and middle fingers together, forming a strange seal in front of his chest.
"Domain Expansion."
His voice was calm, but it carried the weight of an absolute final decree.
"Still."
Hum.
There was no earth-shattering sound.
No world-ending light.
The moment Kael's last syllable fell, the world around him… vanished.
Sound vanished.
Light vanished.
The heat of fire, the flow of air, electromagnetic sense, even the tiniest vibration of space itself.
All forms of "waves" were ripped away in that single instant, drained clean by a power that could not be understood, could not be resisted.
An ultimate void descended.
Absolute stillness.
Absolute darkness.
Absolute silence.
From the battlefield outside, on the Red Line below Mary Geoise, a pure black sphere thousands of meters across appeared out of nowhere. It swallowed all light and all sound, expanding at terrifying speed.
Like a black hole falling from deep space, it devoured everything in its path without a whisper.
Fire died the instant it touched the sphere's edge.
Dust froze midair the moment it met the boundary.
And inside the domain…
It was as if someone had pressed pause on time.
Warcury's charge locked in place.
Mars's dive froze in midair.
The shock on Saturn's face became a permanent mask.
They lost every sense.
They could not hear, could not see, could not feel anything at all.
Even thought itself seemed trapped, frozen in an endless nothing.
All except the domain's owner.
Kael Grylls.
In this slice of heaven and earth, all motion returned to stillness.
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