Chapter 14: Sky-Tremor: Void-Crack
"Hey, hey..." At that thought, Lugart's assault suddenly faltered. A look of pure mockery entered his eyes.
"You... You don't know how to use a sword at all, do you?"
"Hah." Garon didn't answer. He just took a shallow, steadying breath.
Lugart was right. Ever since he had obtained the Sky-Tremor Fruit, Garon hadn't undergone a single day of proper, formal training. Before the fruit, he was just a logistics soldier with a bit of extra brute strength. After getting the fruit, he had spent a year developing its power, but it was all just using the Devil Fruit to forcibly increase his combat ability.
Faced with a truly experienced powerhouse, his flaws were glaringly obvious.
This was why Garon always studied his opponent's intel so thoroughly before a fight.
After all, with no system to back him up, he only had one life.
"Ha! I knew it!" Lugart roared with laughter. "You're just hacking away with a legendary blade! What a complete waste of a good sword!"
He flicked his spear, knocking Garon's blade wide, and thrust the tip of Blood Beak straight at his throat. "Blood Beak: Throat-Pierce!"
Garon scrambled to the side, but the spear-tip still grazed his neck, drawing a thin line of blood. He used the opportunity to create distance, his expression grim. His lack of combat experience was, indeed, his greatest weakness.
But, he thought, it seems I've figured out your true level, too.
Another pirate with no real trump card. His Armament Haki was just at the basic level. This... was completely manageable.
"What? Given up already?" Lugart noticed Garon's pause. He flicked the blood off his spear and sneered. "For a guy who acts tough with a Devil Fruit and a famous sword, once your tricks are seen through... all that's left is despair!"
After a moment of silence, Garon, having seen everything he needed to see, let a dangerous smile spread across his face.
"You're right..." He shifted his grip on Eight Desolations. The dark-red, cracked patterns on the blade flashed a blinding crimson in the sun.
"I'm no swordsman."
The blade began to hum.
It wasn't the vibration of metal. It was the wail of space itself.
"But..." Garon's left hand slowly stroked the flat of the blade. In an instant, billions upon billions of vibration particles compressed, collapsed, and re-compressed onto the steel!
The very air around the blade's edge twisted into a spiraling, visible vacuum.
"Your Haki..." Garon suddenly looked up, his eyes cold. "...doesn't seem all that impressive, either!"
The blade fell.
In that one instant, the world lost its sound.
With Eight Desolations as the epicenter, the entire port's ground flipped upward, as if it were a carpet being violently shaken. Hundreds of tons of rock and earth were pulverized into fine dust in mid-air. The seawater was torn apart, flash-frozen into crystalline, cubic blocks before shattering. The air itself cracked like glass.
"Whitebeard..."
Seeing this apocalyptic, cataclysmic scene, Lugart's face twisted in terror, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks. The world-ending display had finally unearthed a deeply buried memory. He finally remembered... who Garon's power was so horrifyingly similar to.
"Dammit, what kind of fruit did you eat?!"
Lugart frantically coated his hands and arms in Armament Haki. This was the absolute limit of his ability.
"I don't know," Garon replied. "But I know... that my fruit's power, its sheer destructive force... is terrifyingly strong.
"Strong enough..." He bent his knees, the vibration particles on his blade now compressed to their absolute limit. The space around him began to warp. "...to let me briefly ignore..."
A wild, manic grin spread across Garon's face.
"...and even crush..."
The ground beneath his feet imploded.
"...this so-called 'gap' between us!"
As Garon's words rang out, his very figure became a blur within the distorted space. The only thing that remained clear was the black blade in his hand, pulsing with the power of annihilation.
"Sky-Tremor: Void-Crack!!"
The moment the blade slashed, the entire expanse of space in front of him shattered like a mirror!
A sky-rending, world-sundering shockwave tore through the atmosphere. Everything in its path—the air, the sea, the land—was disintegrated into its most basic, shattered, particle-sized dust.
Half the port, the sky above it, and the coastline itself... were all cleaved by a massive, hundred-meter-long fissure, as if a god had dragged a fingernail across the canvas of the world.
Lugart's vision twisted. He instinctively raised his Haki-coated arms to block, only to be struck by an impact beyond his worst nightmares.
The instant the vibrating slash touched his Armament Haki, his "impenetrable" defense shattered like a thin sheet of ice.
Krak... BOOM!!!!
In less than a second, Lugart's body was sent flying backward by an invisible, incomprehensible force. The air boomed in his wake, and the ground caved in, forming a trench from the force of his trajectory.
...
The smoke and dust slowly settled, revealing the utterly annihilated port.
Garon slowly sheathed his sword. The crimson cracks on Eight Desolations gradually dimmed, but the space around him still shimmered, as if the aftershocks had not yet faded.
The port's ground was gone, replaced by a massive, gaping canyon that the sea was now violently rushing into.
"Urk... kgh..." Lugart's mouth was wide open, but he could only force out a broken, wet gasp.
His internal organs had been turned to a bloody slurry by the shockwave. Both of his arms, along with his "vaunted" Armament Haki, had been completely severed by the slash. Blood poured from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, forming a dark red swamp on the charred earth.
"Your Haki... it's as thin as paper."
Garon stared down at Lugart's dying body. After a long moment of silence, he bent down and picked up the bloody spear, "Blood Beak."
"Bounty: 69,000,000 Beri. 'Blood-Spear' Lugart..."
With a single, dismissive motion, Garon thrust the spear downward, impaling Lugart's head and pinning the once-feared pirate captain to his own tattered, bloody flag.
The sea wind moaned as it passed through the ruins, carrying away the last of the stench.
"Hah... Hah... Hah..."
Only after confirming Lugart was well and truly dead did Garon's strength finally give out. He collapsed heavily to the ground, his chest heaving. Sweat, mixed with his own blood, soaked his tattered uniform.
That last attack was his trump card, a technique he had developed by combining Eight Desolations with the Sky-Tremor Fruit. He had compressed an unthinkable amount of vibration particles onto the Supreme Grade Sword, unleashing a slash that tore not just through matter, but through space itself.
The power was immense. The cost was just as heavy.
Right now, he couldnGaro't even lift a finger. His entire body felt as if it were being pierced by millions of steel needles. Every breath was a burning agony.
"A 69 million bounty... and he pushed me this far..."
The harsh sunlight beat down on his face. Garon squinted, his fingers finding the thin, still-bleeding scratch on his neck.
"I... I'm still too weak."
...
A long time later, Garon, having recovered a fraction of his strength, was sitting on a jagged piece of rubble. He was using the roll of white bandages he always carried to slowly, meticulously re-wrap Eight Desolations.
In the distance, the warship slowly approached. The Marines on deck stared in pure awe at the lone, unmoving figure sitting in the center of the total destruction.
"Warrant Officer Garon won!"
The cheers echoed across the water, but Garon felt no joy. He looked up at the sky, whispering to himself, his mind replaying Lugart's taunt.
Haki... is the proof of a true powerhouse.