The descending shadow of the giant greatsword swallowed the gray light of Elbaf.
Yoru withdrew from Giovanni's throat and rose in the same smooth, single motion, turning instantly toward the shadow descending from above.
Loki's strike carried the full, unbridled weight of royal Elbaf blood, amplified by a torrential, unstable storm of Conqueror's Haki. The air cracked like splitting timber as black bolts of electricity coiled around the massive weapon, driving a pressure wave downward that crushed the tundra floor into powder before the iron ever made contact. It was not a duel's blow; it was an execution, designed to pulverize everything beneath its path.
Dracule Mihawk did not move his feet. He did not brace his shoulders.
As the colossal mountain of iron crossed the final ten feet, Yoru met the descending edge at a shallow angle. The swordsman did not attempt to match brute strength with strength; he stepped inside the giant's center line and turned his wrist, catching the colossal greatsword just before Loki's immense weight fully committed.
For a heartbeat, the sound vanished entirely from the high tundra. Then the pressure broke outward.
Mihawk's tightly controlled coating crashed into Loki's uneven Haki, and the wild black-red lightning around the giant blade scattered at the point of contact. Using the giant's own downward inertia against him, Mihawk guided the massive blade aside. The iron scraped down the dark spine of Yoru with an ear-splitting scree of metal on metal, plunging deep into the frozen earth beside Mihawk's boot and burying itself yards into solid granite.
Loki's momentum threw his upper body violently forward, his guard collapsed, his ribcage exposed, his center of balance entirely gone.
Mihawk stepped through the opening.
Yoru flashed across both of Loki's wrists in a dark blur, opening shallow, exact cuts that broke the giant's grip on his hilt. Before the giant could attempt to recover or pull back, the blade drew a blinding black line through the air.
"Kokutō: Taka no Tsume"
The edge carved a controlled diagonal across Loki's chest armor, slicing clean through leather and brass to leave a precise stroke across his chest. The wound was shallow by design. Opening the skin without reaching deep muscle or bone, but the concentrated Armament and Conqueror's force behind the stroke struck through Loki's ruined balance like an iron ram.
The impact emptied Loki's lungs in a single, agonizing gasp. The light in his eyes flickered as his body convulsed around a breath that would not come.
The kinetic wave hurled his colossal frame backward off his feet.
Loki tore through the first granite ridge shoulder-first, sending tons of stone cascading into the abyss. The second ridge collapsed beneath his back in a cloud of blinding white dust. He smashed across a third frozen shelf before his momentum finally dragged him toward the outer precipice of the high plateau.
Silence returned to the high pass.
Loki lay near the edge, his body trembling as he fought desperately to drag freezing air back into his chest. His prior rib wound from Mihawk's Burakku Hōku throbbed alongside the fresh sting of the chest cut. Yet worse than the physical pain was the realization settling over him.
For the first time since encountering Rocks D. Xebec, the Prince of Elbaf had brought every ounce of his legendary strength, his royal bloodline, and his Conqueror's Haki to bear and a tiny human had dismantled him through complete, terrifying technical mastery. The humiliation was worse because there was no excuse left to hide behind.
Above him, Mihawk stood with Yoru lowered at his side. The edge bore not a single notch or scratch. Mihawk's breathing remained steady as he looked down at the sprawling giant.
"Wasteful," Mihawk said softly, the single word cutting through the whistling wind.
The damaged shelf beneath Loki began to split. The blunt force of the giant's passage had shattered the structural limits of the outer ledge. Stone groaned, massive fissures tearing across the shelf until the rock dropped away beneath him, exposing the abyss far below.
Directly below him, the exposed, iron-hard roots of the Treasure Tree Adam jutted from the shattered mountainside like giant, jagged spears. Falling onto those spires while winded and uncoordinated would drive them straight through his body.
Loki twisted violently, trying to turn his frame, but his lungs still refused to fill and his limbs dragged like lead. The roots rushed toward him faster than he could recover.
A sharp crack echoed through the freezing air.
Giovanni shot beneath Loki's falling shoulder.
His right arm hung slightly lower, the shallow shoulder cut Mihawk had opened earlier bleeding again and darkening his coat sleeve, but his dark eyes were locked on the falling giant. Dark Armament Haki hardened his forearms as he braced himself against Loki's fur mantle and massive shoulder.
BANG!
Sky Walk detonated beneath Giovanni's boots, driving a concussive air-blast against the sky. Loki's colossal descent barely shifted.
BANG! BANG!
Giovanni kicked the empty air again and again, his muscles screaming under the extreme strain as he drove sideways instead of trying to stop the giant's weight outright. By degrees, the trajectory of the fall changed.
The angle shifted just enough. Loki's skull missed the iron roots of the Adam Tree by inches, his heavy shoulder smashing hard into a snowy ledge thirty feet to the side instead.
The cliff edge collapsed behind them, tons of rock smashing into the ancient roots with a thunderous roar.
Loki rolled onto his side, coughing raggedly, dragging air back into his lungs as his sight cleared. He looked up to find Giovanni standing on the ledge beside him, heaving for breath, his cutlass, Ace, held steady at his side.
Loki's mouth opened. He stared at the human who had just risked his life to alter his fall. "Why...?"
Giovanni didn't look down at the prince with pity. His expression was cold, flat, and unimpressed.
"Because protecting an idiot from his own stupidity is what a leader does," Giovanni said, his voice hard as iron. "It's what you should've done for your village."
Loki flinched as if struck. His jaw clamped shut, his knuckles sinking deep into the snow. The grand royal excuses he had rehearsed all his life died in his throat, replaced by a raw, burning shame. He looked away, jaw trembling with anger and embarrassment, unable for once to find an answer.
Above them, standing on the lip of the high plateau, Dracule Mihawk looked down at the two of them. His golden gaze lingered on Giovanni's bleeding shoulder, then flicked to the thin line of red still drying on his own cheek.
Then, the mountain began to tremble.
The accumulated stress of the entire engagement. Loki's violent, unrefined Conqueror's swings, Mihawk's mountain-slicing shockwaves, and the kinetic impacts of the colossal giant crashing through multiple granite ridges finally breached the limits of the plateau.
Deep, thunderous cracks echoed from the roots of the island up to the highest peaks. Huge fissures, wide enough to swallow ships, ripped across the stone floor beneath Mihawk's feet and tore down the cliff face toward Giovanni and Loki's ledge.
A vast section of granite snapped loose from the mountain's spine.
"The ridge is coming down!" Giovanni shouted, bracing his footing as the ledge beneath him shattered.
With a deafening roar that shook the island to its core, the entire battlefield ruptured, breaking apart into an avalanche of sliding stone and tumbling debris, sweeping all of them down toward the dark valley below.
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