"It's over!"
Doflamingo's laughter echoed above the ruins.
But in the next second, that laughter stuck in his throat.
Behind his broken sunglasses, his remaining eye contracted sharply.
Within the white sea of strings, a black figure moved through the gaps between countless threads.
His movements were not fast. In fact, they almost looked leisurely.
A step, a turn, a lean, a dip—every movement avoided the incoming strings at exactly the right moment.
It looked more like a stroll than a battle.
Zaraki's future sight did not give him everything. It came in short flashes, fragments of the next moment layered over his instincts. But for him, that was enough.
A few strings grazed his coat and left thin cuts along his shoulder and arm, but none landed cleanly.
"Impossible!" Doflamingo shouted, unable to believe what he was seeing. "My attacks have no blind spots! How can you dodge them?!"
Zaraki answered with an amused look.
"Blind spots?" His voice was calm, yet it clearly pierced through the roar of the string waves. "Your world is full of openings."
That sentence made Doflamingo's expression twist.
"Stop talking nonsense!"
He slammed both arms together, and the surging sea of strings instantly changed form. Countless white strings condensed into sharp spears that shot toward Zaraki's vital points from every direction.
"Billow White!"
The density and speed of the attacks rose more than tenfold.
Even so, Zaraki continued weaving through the forest of spears. White string spears howled past the hem of his coat and the tips of his hair.
A few left shallow cuts across his skin, drawing thin lines of blood, but none of them struck deep.
Veins bulged at Doflamingo's temples. He controlled everything around him, turning the ground and walls into even more string spears and unleashing wave after wave of attacks.
But the result was always the same.
Zaraki was like a phantom. Every attack that should have cornered him missed by a hair's breadth.
"Why... why can't I hit you?" Doflamingo's breathing grew heavy, and his voice carried a trace of trembling.
"What the hell are you?"
"Because you're too easy to read."
Zaraki's voice sounded beside his ear without warning.
Doflamingo stiffened and whipped his head around, only to see an afterimage.
At some point, Zaraki had already passed through the forest of spears and appeared outside his attack range, looking at him with the eyes of someone watching a clown.
"Your attacks, your rhythm, the way your body moves before you strike... I can see enough of it."
That feeling of being completely read made Doflamingo's body begin to tremble.
"Bastard!"
He gave up on wide-area attacks. All the strings gathered and compressed in his hands once more before being dyed an ominous black.
That was Armament Haki pushed to its limit.
"If you can see it, then watch as much as you want!"
"Thousand Arrows: Flap Thread!"
In an instant, more than a thousand hardened black strings turned into a rain of arrows, shooting faster than sound and sealing off every inch of space around Zaraki.
This time, there was nowhere left to dodge.
Facing this killing move, Zaraki's smile grew wider.
"Now that's more like it."
He slowly breathed out, and the thumb of his right hand gently pushed Nozarashi an inch out of its sheath.
Hum—
The world seemed to slow.
In his pitch-black pupils, the trajectories of the black arrows appeared as brief flashes, enough for his body to choose a single path through them.
Every muscle tightened slightly, and dark-gold Reiatsu sparked around him in arcs that looked like lightning.
"Thunder Breathing, First Form..."
"Thunderclap and Flash."
Boom!
A dark-gold flash exploded across everyone's retinas.
The light was so sharp that it swallowed every color between heaven and earth.
Yamakaji, Smoker, and the others saw only white.
A thunderclap rang in their ears, and their minds blanked for an instant.
When their vision returned, the rain of black arrows was still collapsing in midair.
But their target had already vanished.
That dark-gold flash had crossed hundreds of meters and appeared behind Doflamingo.
Zaraki stood with his back to him, slowly pressing the inch of blade back into its sheath.
Click.
A soft sound rang out.
Pssht!
A deep, dark-edged line of blood burst open across Doflamingo's chest.
He lowered his head and stared at the wound, blood spraying out violently.
The pain arrived a moment late, finally rushing into his nerves.
"AAAHHHHHHHH—!"
With a scream, his body flew backward and smashed into the King's Plateau once again, his fate unknown.
The thousand black arrows suspended in the air lost control and scattered weakly across the ground.
Silence.
Every Marine present stared blankly at the sword-wielding figure, even forgetting to breathe.
What had just happened? No one had seen it clearly.
They had only seen a flash of pressure like lightning.
And then the Heavenly Yaksha, one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, had fallen.
"Gulp."
Smoker swallowed with difficulty. At some point, the cigar in his mouth had fallen to the ground.
"What kind of joke is this... That speed..."
From deep within the ruins came the sound of rolling stones.
Doflamingo actually struggled back to his feet again.
The wound across his chest had almost split his torso open, and blood stained his whole body, making him look like a demon.
He paid no attention to the injury.
His bloodshot eye remained locked on Zaraki's back, and his voice twisted from overwhelming shock.
"No... That wasn't just speed..."
"You can see it... You can see the future!"
"Just like... just like that bastard Katakuri! Your Observation Haki... has reached the level of predicting the future!"
Katakuri?
Hearing the unfamiliar name, Smoker instinctively looked toward Vice Admiral Yamakaji beside him.
Yamakaji's expression had turned extremely grave. He lowered his voice and explained with a faint tremor.
"Charlotte Katakuri. The strongest of Big Mom's Sweet Commanders, a monster with a bounty of over one billion berries. It's said that he trained his Observation Haki to the peak and can briefly... see the future."
Observation Haki that could see the future?
Everyone present drew in a sharp breath after hearing that explanation, a chill shooting from the soles of their feet to the tops of their heads.
Was that not a power said to belong only to a handful of monsters standing at the very top of the sea?
No wonder.
No wonder all of Doflamingo's attacks had failed to land cleanly.
How were you supposed to fight an opponent like that?
Listening to the discussion behind him, Zaraki slowly turned around and looked at Doflamingo, who was swaying on his feet yet still staring at him.
A trace of cold pity appeared on Zaraki's face.