The moment Zaraki finished speaking, the frozen air of Eternal Hell ignited.
The gloom on Shiryu's face stiffened, twisting into the expression of a man deeply humiliated.
He stared at Zaraki with eyes practically overflowing with killing intent, looking ready to devour the Marine alive.
"You…" Shiryu forced the word through clenched teeth.
"Good."
Raiu hung at his side, still wet with Magellan's poisonous blood.
Under the dim green light of Level Six, the blade reflected a cold, ghostly gleam, mingling the smell of rust with the heavy scent of blood.
"Looks like Garp protected you too well. You know nothing about how cruel this world really is." Shiryu's voice dropped, carrying a trace of sick excitement.
"But that's fine. I'll crush that confidence of yours inch by inch, right along with your bones."
His gaze shifted past Zaraki, landing on another silent cell.
"Sir Crocodile," Shiryu said, his tone turning enticing. "Are you really content to rot in this place? Join hands with me, There will be a place for you on these seas."
Behind Zaraki, Magellan's breathing grew heavier.
The Chief Warden had just skirted the gates of death, yet that single name made his body tense.
If Crocodile joined the chaos, the situation would truly spiral beyond what Impel Down could suppress.
Inside his cell, the man in the torn coat slowly raised his head.
In the gloom, his scar-marked face looked sinister and unruly. Everyone's gaze focused on him, waiting for his answer.
Crocodile took a deep drag from his cigar and exhaled a thick column of white smoke, his voice hoarse and dripping with contempt.
"Hmph… You want me to become the subordinate of a bastard who only knows how to stab people in the back?"
He laughed mockingly before turning his sharp eyes toward Zaraki.
Everyone froze.
Even Zaraki raised a slight eyebrow. This guy really doesn't play by the usual rules!
"You wanna die?!"
Crocodile's refusal snapped the last thread of Shiryu's patience.
His composure vanished, replaced entirely by twisted killing intent.
Wasting no more words, Shiryu stomped the ground, cracking the stone beneath his boots, and shot toward Zaraki like a black arrow meant to pierce through everything.
"Careful! His slash—!"
Magellan's warning rang out, only to be drowned by the shriek of tearing air.
Too fast.
To most of the prisoners present, all they saw was a blurred black shadow and a flash of steel illuminating the depths of Level Six.
Raiu, driven by Shiryu's furious strike, became a scythe harvesting life. It came down from a vicious angle, cleaving straight toward Zaraki's head.
Boom!
A deafening explosion rang out.
The spot where Zaraki stood was carved into a deep crater, sending smoke, dust, and shattered stone surging upward to swallow his figure.
"Oh-ho-ho-ho! It's over!" Catarina Devon let out a shrill laugh.
"Hic… useless little brat," Vasco Shot slurred, shaking his wine gourd.
Their faces were filled with undisguised excitement.
In their eyes, a young Marine taking a full-power strike from Shiryu of the Rain head-on only had one ending.
The laughter died in the next breath.
An invisible gust exploded from the center of the dust cloud, blowing away the smoke and rubble. Clear sight returned.
The savage grin on Shiryu's face froze.
Behind him, Catarina, Pizarro, and Vasco's pupils contracted to pinpricks.
Zaraki still stood in place.
The blade of Raiu was blocked cleanly by his left forearm. Where the steel met his skin, a layer of pitch-black Armament Haki gleamed like solid metal.
The edge had bitten just enough to leave a pale line across the hardened surface, but it hadn't cut through.
In that moment, his arm looked sturdier than most famed blades.
"That's all the strength you have?" Zaraki slowly raised his head.
His calm gaze met Shiryu's horrified eyes, and a cold smirk curved the corner of his mouth.
"That isn't even enough to scratch an itch."
Zaraki moved before the words even faded.
He brought Murasame down from his shoulder with an almost careless swing—the kind of movement used to swat a fly.
Yet the moment the blade moved, Reiatsu surged through Eternal Hell.
Buzz!
The air screamed, and the entirety of Level Six seemed to freeze.
A crescent-shaped golden slash condensed from raw pressure left the blade, tearing through the dimness at an impossible speed to cleave straight toward Shiryu.
"What?"
The savagery on Shiryu's face dissolved into pure horror. He had expected a counterattack, but nothing this direct, simple, and brutally heavy.
There was no time to think; the golden arc had already sealed off his retreat.
A swordsman's instinct made him roar.
He poured every bit of his strength and Armament Haki into Raiu, gripping the hilt with both hands to raise it horizontally across his chest in a last-ditch guard.
Clang!
Metal striking metal rang out like a war drum.
Blinding sparks exploded the instant the forces collided, illuminating the frozen expressions on every prisoner's face.
Catarina Devon's laughter choked off as if someone had seized her throat. The drunken haze in Vasco Shot's eyes cleared.
The scene they had imagined did not appear.
What happened instead made even these veteran monsters feel their nerves tighten.
Shiryu of the Rain, former Head Jailer of Impel Down and a swordsman feared for his lethal strikes, blocked the golden slash head-on.
Instantly, his body was struck as though by a siege hammer.
His boots carved two deep trenches through the stone floor as he shot backward, completely out of control.
Rumble!
With a deafening crash, Shiryu's burly body smashed into the deepest wall of Eternal Hell. The sturdy stone cracked outward in a massive spiderweb.
He coughed, spraying a mouthful of blood. The skin between his thumbs and index fingers had split open, leaving both hands drenched in red.
Level Six fell silent as death.
One slash.
With a single strike, Shiryu of the Rain—who had seemed overwhelmingly powerful moments ago—had been utterly crushed.
And yet, it wasn't over.
The instant Shiryu's body embedded itself in the wall, a figure appeared before him like a ghost.
Zaraki.
His speed was so fast it seemed to ignore distance entirely.
One moment he stood across the corridor; the next, he was close enough for Shiryu to see the golden light burning in his eyes.
"Too slow," the cold voice rang out.
Zaraki raised his blade. Once again, it was a plain, unadorned slash.
This time, wrapped around the steel was an even deeper layer of Armament Haki, perfectly merged with a condensed stream of dark-gold Reiatsu.
"Don't even think about it!"
Shiryu sensed the immediate threat of death.
He used the last of his balance to raise Raiu, desperately trying to block once more.
But the force behind this slash was entirely different from what he expected.
Crack!
A crisp breaking sound echoed. Under everyone's horrified gazes, Zaraki's blade tore through Shiryu's defensive Haki as if splitting rotten wood.
Then, it struck heavily against Raiu.
The two blades collided, but they didn't bounce apart.
Zaraki's slash continued downward with crushing force.
A wound deep enough to expose bone stretched from Shiryu's left shoulder down to his right ribs.
Hot blood instantly dyed his uniform red.
Raiu wasn't cut in two, but the terrifying force of the strike pressed the famed blade back into Shiryu's own chest.
"Urgh… ahhh!"
Agony ripped a beast-like roar from Shiryu's throat, yet the shock in his heart far exceeded the pain in his body.
He lowered his head, staring fixedly at Murasame pressing down on his beloved blade.
The Haki wrapped around it… that level of condensation.
That tyrannical texture.
How was this possible? The Armament Haki he had spent his entire life tempering felt as fragile as wet paper against this young man.
It made no sense.
For the first time, cruelty and bloodlust faded from Shiryu's sinister eyes.
In their place came pure, absolute confusion.
Forgetting the pain, he merely stared blankly at Zaraki, looking at a monster who had just shattered his entire worldview.