"Secondary evolution?"
Smoker bit down on his cigar, his brow furrowed deeply.
"Mutations that organisms undergo to adapt to their environment."
Abel looked coldly at the ice field beneath his feet, his tone devoid of emotion.
"Extreme cold kills the weak, but for 'Blacklight,' it's merely a catalyst to filter for superior genes."
Kuzan's fingers tapped lightly on the railing.
Tap, tap, tap.
The crisp sound echoed across the deathly silent ice field.
"Are you saying my attack just now actually helped them?"
"You could put it that way."
Abel turned around, the black tattoos standing out sharply against his pale skin.
"Low temperatures reduce cellular activity. To survive, they devour their own kind, compress their density, and evolve shells and fat layers resistant to extreme cold."
Crack.
An extremely faint cracking sound abruptly interrupted the trio's conversation.
The sound came from beneath the ship.
From deep within the ice, which was dozens of meters thick.
Smoker suddenly looked down.
"There's something down there!"
Rumble—!
The entire frozen sea began to tremble violently.
The ice surface, previously as flat as a mirror, was now surging wildly like boiling water.
The ten heavy warships anchored on the ice were tossed about like fleas on a drumhead.
The Marines on deck grabbed the ropes in panic.
"What's happening? An earthquake?!"
"No... the source of the tremor is directly below us!"
Kuzan's expression changed slightly.
Within the perception of his Observation Haki, a life form so massive it was suffocating was rushing up from the seabed two thousand meters deep at a speed he had never seen before.
Like an intercontinental missile launched from the deep sea.
"Everyone, hold on tight!"
Kuzan roared.
Before his voice could fade...
The world, which had turned pale due to "Ice Age," was suddenly shrouded by an even more piercing black shadow.
Boom!!!
The ice field five hundred meters in front of the warship exploded.
It didn't just shatter.
It was pulverized.
Countless ice fragments mixed with black seawater shot into the sky like a volcanic eruption.
A massive black shadow tore through the ice, soaring into the sky with unmatched kinetic energy.
It was a monster.
Over two hundred meters long, its entire body was covered in a black-red shell with a metallic luster.
The slender body that originally belonged to a sea eel was now covered in hideous bone spurs, and its head looked like a combination of a heavy armored vehicle and a deep-sea behemoth.
On its belly, dense appendages were still wiggling frantically—genetic traits plundered after devouring armored crabs.
Leviathan!
Seawater fell like a rainstorm, drenching the stunned Marines.
Everyone looked up at the behemoth that blotted out the sky.
The Navy warships looked like tiny toy models in front of it.
"What... what the hell is that..."
A Lieutenant's gun clattered onto the deck.
However.
An even more eye-popping sight was yet to come.
On top of this terrifying behemoth's head.
Atop that hideous bony ram.
There was actually a person sitting there.
A freak wearing a red and black skintight suit, carrying twin katanas, waving a severed hand like a cowboy.
"Yeeeee—Haw!!!"
The freak let out an incredibly flamboyant cry that echoed across the vast ice field.
"The Deep Sea Express has arrived on schedule! Passengers, please do not stick your heads or hands out of the window, or you'll be eaten!"
Deadpool clamped his legs around the Leviathan's skull, one hand gripping the monster's dorsal fin while the other tossed a frozen severed hand into the crowd.
That was his left hand that had been frozen off earlier; a new one had already grown back.
"Received astonishment value from Smoker +289!"
"Received astonishment value from Kuzan +541!"
"Received astonishment value from the Marines +1200!"
Mordred looked at the data flooding the background, and the corners of his mouth practically reached his ears.
This entrance was a perfect ten!
"You bastard!"
Smoker's pupils contracted sharply as he stared at the figure atop the behemoth.
"Are you the one who brought the virus?"
"Bingo! You got it right! Unfortunately, there are no prizes!"
Deadpool performed an incredibly exaggerated salute a hundred meters in the air.
"Let me introduce everyone! This is my new pet, Little Loach! It's a bit shy and has a terrible morning temper!"
As soon as he finished speaking...
The Leviathan's massive tail slammed onto the ice.
Boom!
The ice within a hundred-meter radius collapsed instantly.
The massive reaction force propelled its enormous body forward like a collapsing black mountain, crashing heavily toward the flagship.
The two-hundred-meter-long body, carrying thousands of tons of kinetic energy, smashed down toward the tiny warship like a falling mountain range.
The air pressure changed abruptly, and the gale-force winds bent the masts first.
Abel slowly raised his right hand, reaching into the empty air beside him.
Hum—!
Space let out a groan as if it were under unbearable strain.
A pitch-black, ink-like rift tore open out of thin air in his palm.
Abel's hand reached into the rift and grasped a pitch-black pole.
It was a naginata with an ancient design, emitting a thick scent of blood.
The blade was three meters long and entirely black, with only the edge flickering with a heart-palpitating red light, as if it had just drunk its fill of blood.
The next second.
Abel moved.
No fancy power-up, no shouting of technique names.
He simply swung his arm in an upward slash.
The black naginata traced a perfect half-moon arc through the air.
In that instant, time seemed to slip.
Everyone only felt a flash of black light before their eyes, leaving a lingering afterimage on their retinas.
Sshhh—!
In mid-air.
The Leviathan, covered in a shell harder than steel, suddenly froze.
Immediately following that.
A thick line of blood appeared about a third of the way from its tail.
Boom!
That massive tail, capable of leveling a town, was actually severed clean off!
The cut was as smooth as a mirror.
The behemoth's massive body veered off course due to inertia and crashed heavily onto the ice field to the left of the warship.
Crash—!
The ice, dozens of meters thick, was smashed to pieces, and countless ice shards mixed with black blood shot into the sky, falling as a foul-smelling rainstorm.
"Damn it... that hurts!!"
An incredibly annoying voice came from the dust.
Then, a red and black figure ejected from the swirling ice fragments.
He did three somersaults in the air and finally landed on the warship's deck in an extremely ungraceful posture—face first.
Splat.
It sounded painful.
But a second later, the figure bounced up as if nothing had happened and brushed the ice chips off his butt.
Deadpool tilted his head, the white eyes of his mask contracting unevenly, his gaze passing over the prepared Marines and landing on Abel.
His movements and demeanor were like seeing a relative he hadn't seen in years.
"Oh! My god! Oh my god! Satan!"
Deadpool covered his mouth with both hands and let out an incredibly exaggerated scream, even wiggling his hips.
"Look who it is! Am I seeing this right?"
He pointed at Abel, his voice trembling with excitement.
"Abel! My good brother! Did you come all this way just to see me?"
"I knew it! You still have me in your heart!"
Deadpool opened his arms and rushed forward with a swaggering stride, intending to give him a hug