Chapter 21: A Single Slash That Shook the Entire Sea!
"KRA-CHA, VOOOOOM!!!!!"
The instant the blades met, the world fell eerily silent for a ten-thousandth of a second... followed by the complete and utter collapse of space.
Two vibrational forces, born of the same origin yet fundamentally opposed, madly clashed, devoured, and annihilated one another between the blades!
Garon's vibration particles, carrying the properties of high-frequency cutting and collapsing annihilation, tried to drill through and disintegrate Whitebeard's vast, boundless, all-crushing shockwave.
And Whitebeard's tremor, like an endless tsunami, simply pressed forward with absolute power, intending to completely crush Garon's hyper-condensed "point" of force!
The atmosphere was compressed to its limit, forming an instantaneous, light-distorting sphere of absolute vacuum around the two of them.
Garon and Whitebeard roared in unison, their voices seeming to detonate from the depths of their very souls: "Break for me!!"
A blinding light—not white, but a chaotic, primal color that leaked from space itself as it failed to contain the power—erupted outward. A devastating shockwave expanded in a perfect, silent sphere.
"BOOM, VMM!!!"
Only after the shockwave had already passed did the sound belatedly arrive.
The entire sea fell into an absolute silence, followed by a terrifying, perception-shattering sight.
The ocean's surface had been "erased," leaving a perfectly smooth, bottomless abyss several thousand meters in diameter. The surrounding seawater, as if lifted by a formless, giant hand, was drawn up into a towering, circular waterfall that curled back towards the sky!
This single clash... had shaken the entire sea!
...
"Dammit...!" The muscles in Garon's arms bulged. Eight Desolations trembled violently, the particles on its blade flickering wildly as he tried to suppress the power of the Murasakumogiri.
But Whitebeard's naginata was as steady as a mountain, the white halo of its tremor growing ever brighter!
The two opposing forces of vibration continued their insane clash, pushing the atmosphere to its breaking point.
Shockingly, as Garon pushed his power to the absolute limit, his hyper-condensed, collapsing vibration particles... actually began to act like a drill, reverse-eroding and disintegrating Whitebeard's Gura Gura power!
At the point of contact on the Murasakumogiri's blade, the white, crystalline coating of power actually began to show faint, spiderweb-like cracks, as if from billions of high-frequency impacts!
Whitebeard, sensing this, had his eternally boisterous smile freeze on his face for the first time. A trace of true, profound astonishment flashed deep in his eyes.
"This Marine brat's ability... is it a Logia?! The power of vibration... became a Logia?"
Before he could finish, the ship Marco was on—now several nautical miles away—let out a horrifying, bone-chilling groan as its keel threatened to snap.
Seeing this, Whitebeard's eyes sharpened. "Marine brat... your power is far more terrifying than mine! And... I'll be in a lot of trouble if I lose my ship."
"So, my apologies!!"
As he spoke, a crimson light exploded from the depths of Whitebeard's pupils, becoming almost tangible. It was no longer just formless pressure. It had become a thick, viscous torrent of destruction, wreathed in dark red lightning, which instantly coiled around the Murasakumogiri's blade!
Conqueror's Haki Infusion!
The pure white halo of vibration was instantly dyed a swirling, chaotic black and red.
"BANG, KRA-CHA!!"
The very instant of contact...
BOOM!
In that one moment, Garon felt an unprecedented, cataclysmic force press down on him.
Eight Desolations let out a piercing wail, its vibration particles shattered and dispersed by the raw Conqueror's Haki!
There was no chance to resist. Garon's body was sent flying backward like a broken kite, carving a thousand-meter-long trench in the sea's surface. He was finally, forcibly, slammed back onto the deck of his own warship like a cannonball—surviving only thanks to his elementalization and the fact that Whitebeard had not dealt a killing blow. He plowed two deep, charred trenches into the deck, all the way down to the ship's ribs, before barely managing to stop his collapsing body.
...
On the warship, Garon was on one knee, his legs deeply embedded in the shattered deck. The uniform on his entire right arm had been vaporized, revealing a mangled ruin of torn muscle fiber, cracked bone, and streaming blood, as if it had been stuffed into a meat grinder.
Eight Desolations was stabbed deep into the molten steel of the deck, its light completely dimmed.
"Kgh-AH!" Garon violently coughed up a mouthful of blood, mixed with visceral fragments. His body swayed, blood pouring from his lips. He struggled to lift his head. His vision was blurry, but he could just make out the mountain-like silhouette in the distance.
Far across the water, Whitebeard stood proudly on his bow. His Murasakumogiri, still wreathed in fading black-red arcs of Haki, was slammed onto the deck with a heavy thud. The aftershocks of his Conqueror's Haki still crackled in the air like a thousand tiny, dark-red snakes.
"Gurararara! To make me get serious... and even use my Conqueror's Haki Infusion..."
Whitebeard's thunderous laugh carried across the sea, his eyes shining with undisguised approval.
"You're... a very interesting brat!"
"My all-out attack... was just... 'interesting'?"
In the dizzying fog of blood loss and the suffocating pressure of the residual Haki, Whitebeard's figure slowly faded from Garon's vision.
...
As Whitebeard's ship departed, a dead silence fell over the Marine warship.
Every soldier was frozen in place, their eyes locked on the figure kneeling on the deck: Garon Reginald Sigma.
Just moments ago, they had personally witnessed this young Warrant Officer... engage in a head-on clash with the legendary monster "Whitebeard" Edward Newgate, a man on par with Roger and Golden Lion.
He had even... forced Whitebeard to use his Conqueror's Haki!
"Is... Is that really... Warrant Officer Garon? Not Vice Admiral Garon?" a soldier stammered, his rifle shaking. In his mind, the only ones who could fight those monsters were the absolute top-tier Vice Admirals, like Sengoku, Garp, and Zephyr.
"It's real... He... He traded blows with Whitebeard..." another murmured, his eyes full of disbelief.
"No, not just traded blows..." a higher-ranking officer said, his voice low and awed. "Didn't you hear what Whitebeard said? He admitted that Warrant Officer Garon made him get serious."
In that instant, the way every Marine looked at Garon changed completely. From the initial contempt and doubt they'd felt when picking him up from a branch base... to, now... awe.
And mixed in with that awe... was an undeniable, fanatical zeal.
But Garon seemed not to notice their stares. He slowly raised his right hand, blood dripping from his fingertips. The entire arm was still shaking uncontrollably.
"The gap... is still... too big, isn't it?" he muttered, his voice hoarse, but clearer and more awake than it had ever been.
But, surprisingly, his eyes were brighter than ever.
It wasn't defeat. It was... excitement!
"I saw it... I saw it..."
"The level I've been waiting to see..."
Before he could finish, his body finally gave out. He pitched forward and collapsed.
"Warrant Officer Garon!!"
Seeing Garon fall, the Marines snapped out of their stupor and panicked, several medics frantically rushing forward.