Inside the roiling steam, visibility dropped to less than half a meter.
Three figures converged at breakneck speed and sprinted madly toward the edge of the Red Line.
"Yo, Dragon. Been a while!"
Kael's voice rang out. His breathing was a little unsteady, but his tone was still as cocky as ever. "Ginny and Kuma got out, right?"
Monkey D. Dragon answered in a low voice, "They're safe."
With that confirmed, Kael turned his head to the side. His gaze landed on Dracule Mihawk, and a huge grin split the blood-smeared face.
"Pffhahahaha! Hawk-eye, look at you!"
Kael laughed without restraint, pointing at Mihawk's noble formalwear, shredded into strips and barely still hanging onto his body.
"Someone who didn't know better would think some beggar from a random kingdom ran to Mary Geoise to ask for scraps!"
Mihawk never slowed down. Only the corner of his eye twitched.
Dragon also glanced over out of habit, then their eyes shifted, in perfect unison, to Kael himself.
There was barely a single intact piece of cloth on him. At best, he was wearing a few scraps draped over a hard, lean frame.
The wounds across his chest and abdomen were deep enough to show bone, blood still seeping out.
The worst part was the back of his head. A bloody gash ran from his temple, and right now it was spurting in rhythmic pulses like a tiny fountain.
Dragon and Mihawk: ...
Boom!!!
Behind them, a roar packed with endless rage detonated, and the entire earth shuddered.
A mountain-sized black silhouette smashed through every obstacle in its path, charging with the momentum to grind all things into dust.
Warcury, in his Fengxi form, eyes crimson, nearly beyond reason.
Above, a streak of black flame dragged a tail of thick smoke as it flapped its tattered wings and chased relentlessly.
And in front of those two, a faster, sharper figure surged ahead, killing intent so cold it nearly froze the air.
Nasjuro!
"Damn it!"
Kael cursed, and his speed spiked again.
The cliff was right there!
And at the instant the three were about to break off the Red Line, the three pursuing Elders moved at once.
Warcury opened his maw and spat out a high-pressure water dragon.
Mars beat his wings and unleashed a tide of underworld-black flames.
Nasjuro swung the Shodai Kitetsu and carved out an icy slash cold enough to freeze the soul.
Water dragon, black flame, ice slash.
Three utterly different powers showed no rejection at all. Instead, they twisted together, fused, and became a savage energy dragon with ice horns and a body wreathed in black fire, lunging to devour the three of them!
That annihilating aura made every hair on Kael's body stand on end.
"Dragon! Hawk-eye! You're up!"
Mihawk shot him a look that plainly said, Are you kidding me?
He and Kael were both at their limits already.
A bead of sweat formed at Dragon's temple. If he could frontally tank something like this, the flames of revolution would have already burned across the whole world.
But he did not hesitate.
He whirled around, right hand half-clenching.
Gale-force winds gathered, turning into tens of thousands of fine wind blades. They formed a green tornado and met the ice-and-fire energy dragon head-on.
Szzzt, szzzt, szzzt...
The wind-blade cyclone only managed to shave away some of the outer black flame and frost before it was torn apart by the unstoppable force.
No time.
The three exchanged a look and jumped without hesitation, diving off the Red Line's ten-thousand-meter cliff!
Weightlessness hit. The wind screamed in their ears.
And above them, that dragon of destruction had already surged past the cliff, adjusted its trajectory, and chased them like a curse that would not let go.
Just as the annihilating light was about to swallow them whole...
Something changed.
The night beneath them suddenly became deeper than anything before, thick and heavy.
A pure darkness, without the slightest impurity, climbed upward with no warning, like an abyss opening its jaws.
The ice-and-fire energy dragon plunged into that darkness.
No sound.
It simply vanished.
The next second, thousands of meters away over the sea, a pillar of light that pierced heaven and earth exploded, raising a monstrous wave a thousand meters high!
The ocean's surface was blasted into a terrifying crater thousands of meters wide, refusing to settle for a long, long time.
Kael looked down at that familiar darkness and burst into laughter.
"Beautiful! That's my boy, Moria!"
The wind howled. Dragon summoned a gentle yet powerful current that caught the three of them and shot them toward the distant sea horizon at high speed.
At the cliff edge of the Red Line, the wind moaned.
The scorching steam slowly thinned, revealing three gigantic shadows cast by three towering monsters.
They stood there in silence, staring down at that bottomless darkness, and at the endless ocean beyond it.
Warcury's chest heaved violently, two streams of hot air blasting from his nostrils.
Mars flapped his ragged wings, making a harsh fwoosh-fwoosh sound. In his razor-sharp bird eyes burned an unwilling fury.
"Chase?" Mars's voice was hoarse, scraping like metal. "All three of them are on their last legs."
He spread his wings, ready to launch, but Nasjuro raised a hand and stopped him.
The Elder who wielded the Shodai Kitetsu had already returned to human form, though his white ceremonial robes were now stained with dust and blood.
He shook his head, gaze deep as he looked into the distance.
"Don't chase a cornered enemy."
"Aaron Kael always has another card to play." Nasjuro's voice was calm, but the weight in it was undeniable. "If we push them into a dead end, their final counterattack may cost us something we can't afford."
Even they were not truly eternal and unkillable.
Warcury fell silent.
He remembered the golden armored divine general, the light sword that could boil seas and burn mountains, and that eerie domain called "Silence."
Yes. If they continued, even if they killed the enemy, who could guarantee they would not be dragged down with him?
Mars said nothing more.
Three of the World Government's highest authorities stood at the cliff, watching their enemies leave at leisure.
It was a humiliation unlike anything before.
The air was dead silent.
Then, a nearly imperceptible sound of something tearing through the air came from the far horizon where sea met sky.
It was too faint, too fast, almost impossible to notice amid the screaming cliff winds.
But what were the Five Elders?
Nasjuro's brow tightened by the slightest degree.
Warcury's beast pupils snapped smaller.
Mars lifted his head instantly.
A dark streak, wrapped in black-and-red arcs of lightning, crossed thousands of meters in an instant and arrived at the cliff!
Too fast.
So fast they could barely register its trajectory, let alone mount any real defense.
Its target was Warcury, the largest of them all.
Pft.
A dull, soft sound.
Warcury's massive body jolted, then froze.
Mars and Nasjuro's eyes landed on Warcury's left tusk.
There was a tiny hole there.
The next instant.
Crack!
A crisp fracture rang out.
From that tiny hole, spiderweb cracks raced across the entire tusk.
Then half of the massive tusk, several meters long, snapped off and tumbled into the abyss below.
The damage was small.
You could even call it negligible. For Warcury's enormous body, it was like chipping a tooth.
But the humiliation was absolute.
Warcury lowered his head, inch by inch, staring at the jagged stump, feeling the pain from the break. Not severe, but painfully clear.
His body began to tremble.
Not from fear.
From rage.
A terrifying fury, strong enough to change the color of heaven and earth, was brewing violently inside him.
Nasjuro's face went completely dark.
Mars's enormous talons tightened unconsciously, crushing the rock beside him into powder.
They did not even need to look to picture it.
Thousands of meters away, that man was definitely wearing the most arrogant, the most brazen grin imaginable.
That silent mockery was sharper than any insult.
High in the sky, several kilometers away.
A gentle wind carried three figures as they sped toward the distance.
Kael withdrew his gaze, then slid an antique silver pistol back into his waistband. The gun's body was etched with intricate patterns.
He raised his hand and lightly blew on the still-warm muzzle.
"Hahaha. Roger's pistol, 'Anne,' after Old Beckman's upgrades... really hits different."