Marshall D. Teach—the man who called himself Blackbeard—was an exceptionally patient, ambitious pirate who embodied the true, ruthless essence of the era.
Compared to the Blackbeard Pirates, crews like the Straw Hats were practically playing house. Teach had bided his time for decades under Whitebeard's banner, hiding his fangs and playing the harmless fool just to wait for a single Devil Fruit. The moment he consumed the Dark-Dark Fruit (Yami Yami no Mi), he genuinely believed fate had crowned him the next ruler of the seas.
Yet today, Darian shattered that delusion in a matter of seconds.
The core subordinates Teach had painstakingly gathered—the key pieces required to infiltrate the World Government and raid Impel Down—were being systematically butchered before his grand plan could even begin.
"You... you bastard!"
Teach's jovial, boisterous facade completely shattered. Thick veins pulsed across his forehead, and pure, volcanic fury contorted his toothless face.
In Darian's expanding Observation Haki, Teach's aura erupted like a boiling volcano.
BANG!
With a furious roar, Teach's thick legs drove into the cobblestones, cratering the street as his massive, heavy frame launched toward Darian like a fired cannonball.
Darian was entirely prepared. Operating in Third Gear, his physical attributes were amplified thirtyfold. He casually shifted Kiyotsuki from his right hand to his left, cocked his right fist back, coated his knuckles in a visible sheen of Armament Haki, and met Teach's incoming blow dead-on.
BOOM!
A catastrophic, deafening blast tore through the district. The kinetic impact created an invisible shockwave that instantly leveled surrounding buildings, turning wood and stone into fine powder. Weaker pirates watching from nearby alleys collapsed, blood leaking from their ears and noses from the atmospheric pressure alone.
Teach's eyes bulged in utter disbelief as an overwhelming kinetic force pushed through his guard. His massive body was violently repelled backward, hurtling through multiple city blocks and crashing straight onto the distant sandy beach in a cloud of dust tens of meters high.
"Damn... that hurts!"
Hundreds of meters apart, both fighters cursed simultaneously. Darian shook out his stinging hand; his nascent Armament Haki was still developing, and hitting Teach's dense, abnormal skull felt like punching solid bedrock.
Meanwhile, buried in the crater on the beach, Teach was writhing in agony. Because of the unique curse of the Dark-Dark Fruit, all physical pain inflicted upon him was absorbed and magnified more than twofold.
Two streets away, Jesus Burgess stood completely paralyzed, his jaw dropped. "The Captain... got blown away in a single punch?! White Emperor... how is this rookie this strong?!"
Darian flexed his fingers, assessing his opponent. Teach possessed terrifying physical endurance, but his reliance on staying hidden aboard Whitebeard's ship for decades had left his fundamental combat habits stagnant. While monsters like Red-Haired Shanks had continually honed their swordsmanship and Conqueror's Haki to reach the pinnacle of the New World, Teach had relied almost entirely on the cheat code of a Logia fruit. Against Darian's 30x kinetic multiplier, raw fruit power alone wasn't enough.
Glancing down the ruined street, Darian's Observation Haki locked onto another target.
Doc Q and his sickly horse, Stronger, were lying dazed in the rubble, disoriented by the shockwave of the initial clash.
Darian didn't hesitate. Flapping his electromagnetic iron-sand wings, he closed the distance at supersonic speed.
Before Doc Q could even register the shadow falling over him, Kiyotsuki sliced cleanly through the air. In a single, cold arc of steel, both the sickly horse and its rider were bisected, collapsing into a pooling puddle of crimson on the cobblestones.
Before Darian could turn his attention to Burgess, a thick, pitch-black darkness began spreading rapidly across the ground from the direction of the coast.
Black Hole!
Teach slammed his open palms into the sand, releasing waves of gravitational darkness across the terrain, sucking in debris, trees, and buildings to compress them into nothingness. Teach hoped to catch Darian's allies in the gravitational pull to secure hostages, unaware that the Little Fish remained stationed miles out at sea.
Hovering safely in the air on his iron-sand wings, Darian looked down at the ground-based gravitational wave with cold indifference.
"Targeting the ground when your opponent has wings?" Darian scoffed.
Locking his gaze onto Teach's silhouette on the beach, Darian engaged his frictionless skin and dove from the sky, instantly breaking the sound barrier with a sharp sonic boom.
Unlike traditional swordsmen who aimed for the torso or limbs to test their blade-work, Darian fought with absolute, predatory efficiency. He aimed Kiyotsuki straight for the base of Teach's neck.
Teach looked up, his eyes widening in pure horror as a supersonic blur descended directly upon him.
SLASH!
The blade tore through the air. Teach desperately threw his head back at the final millisecond, barely avoiding decapitation. Kiyotsuki sheared cleanly through his left ear and carved a deep, bloody furrow across his neck and shoulder.
"GAAAAAH! IT HURTS! IT BURNS!"
Teach's agonizing screams echoed across the blood-stained beach as his severed ear spun through the air, hitting the sand below.