"Seeing the future?"
Zaraki's voice was soft, but every word seemed to strike the last support holding Doflamingo's composure together.
"No. I just see more clearly than you."
He looked at Doflamingo's single bloodshot eye, where shock and fury twisted together behind the cracked frame of his sunglasses.
The faint pity in Zaraki's gaze disappeared, leaving only the cold appraisal of a man judging whether the enemy in front of him was worth cutting again.
"Your weakness is too obvious, Heavenly Yaksha. When the wind is at your back, you look like a king of the underworld. But the moment things turn against you, your arrogance clouds your judgment, and your techniques start filling up with openings."
Zaraki shook his head as if he were merely stating a fact.
"Observation Haki that can glimpse the future isn't invincible. A heart that can stay calm at all times is. Unfortunately, you don't have one."
Those words cut deeper than any slash before them.
They tore apart the image Doflamingo wore as a king and exposed the twisted soul beneath it, the one shaped by humiliation, hatred, and an obsession with standing above everyone else.
"What... do... you... know...?"
A beast-like growl forced its way out of Doflamingo's throat.
Each word sounded as if it had been dragged from his chest with the last of his strength.
The veins in his visible eye burst one after another, and the last thread of reason burned away.
"Shut up! Shut your mouth!"
Doflamingo let out a shrill roar.
"I carry the blood of those gods! A lower creature like you thinks you have the right to judge me?!"
Several Marines who were close enough to hear those words froze.
Even in the middle of a battlefield, that sentence carried a political weight none of them could ignore.
Boom!
A powerful blast of air erupted from Doflamingo.
The remaining rubble around him was crushed into powder, and Dressrosa's already-shattered ground trembled beneath the force.
Zaraki clearly saw the white strings spread across the battlefield rapidly retreating, surging back toward Doflamingo's hands.
A high-frequency hum filled the air, as though the pressure alone were grinding it apart.
The strings compressed, twisted, and hardened again and again until they gathered between his arms into sixteen vicious giant spikes flashing with a dark Armament sheen.
Every spike was coated in the strongest Haki Doflamingo could still muster, their tips spiraling into drills sharp enough to pierce through stone and steel alike.
This was his final trump card.
"I'm going to tear you... into pieces!"
Doflamingo's face had completely twisted. Laughing madly, he thrust both arms forward.
"Sixteen Holy Bullets: God Thread!"
Whoosh—!
Sixteen shrieks tore through the air at the same time.
The black spikes shot toward Zaraki like streams of dark light, sealing off every obvious path of escape.
Their speed ripped through the air with a piercing scream, and the pressure they dragged behind them made even Yamakaji and the others in the distance feel as if their lungs were being squeezed shut.
Yet facing that attack, Zaraki's expression barely changed.
He did not even seem to intend to dodge.
Under everyone's stunned gaze, he made a move no one could understand.
His hand settled on the hilt at his waist.
The blade there was no longer Murasame.
Since the battle with Jack, Nozarashi had returned to a sealed shape, rougher and heavier than the broken demon blade had ever been.
Even hidden in its scabbard, it carried a hungry weight, as though it were only waiting for the next thing to bite into.
Zaraki reversed his grip, then slowly pushed Nozarashi back into its sheath inch by inch.
Click.
The small sound should have been buried beneath the deafening roar of Doflamingo's attack, but it somehow rang out clearly.
Doflamingo froze for a heartbeat when he saw it.
Then a sick, manic laugh burst from his hideous face.
"Fuhahahahaha!"
He threw his head back and laughed until tears nearly spilled from his remaining eye.
"You sheathed your sword? You actually sheathed your sword?! Arrogant! You stupidly arrogant bastard!"
He could already see it.
Zaraki pierced by sixteen deadly spikes, torn apart until nothing recognizable remained.
"Go to hell with that laughable arrogance of yours!"
Zaraki ignored him.
He slowly closed his eyes.
The moment his vision disappeared, the world became clearer in another way.
The flow of the wind, the tremble of the air, the paths of the sixteen attacks, Doflamingo's frantic heartbeat, and the brief flashes of the next instant given by his newly awakened Observation Haki all settled into one quiet picture.
He took a deep breath, his chest rising slightly.
Every stray thought fell away. His heart became still, and the power inside his body moved with the rhythm of his breathing.
Every muscle, every nerve, every drop of blood was mobilized in that instant, and dark-gold Reiatsu sparked around him in arcs that looked like lightning.
Thunder Breathing, First Form...
"Thunderclap and Flash: Godspeed."
Rumble—!
A dark-gold flash tore across the battlefield without warning.
The burst was so fast and sharp that everyone watching saw only burning white for an instant. For them, that moment simply vanished.
When the light faded and the echo still rang in their ears, the battlefield fell into silence.
The sixteen black bullets continued forward for a heartbeat after Zaraki moved, only to unravel as Doflamingo's will broke.
Their target was already gone.
After piercing across the battlefield, the dark-gold pressure faded behind Doflamingo and gathered once more into Zaraki's tall figure.
He still held one hand on his sword hilt, half-crouched against the ground, as if he had never moved at all.
The wild laugh on Doflamingo's face froze.
His single eye widened until it looked almost round, his pupil shrinking to a needlepoint. All that remained in it was incomprehensible horror.
He had seen nothing, he had only heard thunder.
And then there was nothing after that.
"..."
A strange sound squeezed out of his throat. He wanted to lower his head, but his body no longer obeyed him.
A cold sensation spread from his neck.
Then a fine line of blood appeared across his throat and quickly extended to both sides.
Pssh—!
Hot blood sprayed from the smooth cut.
Doflamingo staggered backward and instinctively reached up to cover his neck, but his hands could only grasp at the blood gushing out between his fingers.
The strings beneath his skin twitched, desperately trying to stitch the wound shut. For a moment, they wriggled toward the cut like living things.
Then the Reiatsu left by Nozarashi clung to the wound like teeth.
Every string that touched it snapped apart.
Doflamingo's life force drained away at a terrifying speed. He opened his mouth, wanting to release one final roar, but only cold air and his own blood poured into his throat, leaving behind a hoarse, rattling sound.
His vision began to blur.
In the final moment before his consciousness sank into darkness, he saw that figure slowly rise to his feet.
At the same time, he heard something breaking.
Crack... crack, crack, crack...
Along with the heavy thud of Doflamingo collapsing to the ground, a dense sound of shattering rang across Dressrosa.
The Birdcage was breaking apart.
The string prison covering the entire kingdom collapsed with its master's death.
One ray of sunlight pierced through the gaps, then thousands more followed, pouring light back over the country.
"Light... It's light..."
"The Birdcage... disappeared?!"
"We're... saved?!"
After a short silence, the surviving citizens of Dressrosa, pirates, and Marines all raised their heads toward the restored blue sky.
Cries and cheers erupted one after another, raw with disbelief and relief.
Gion did not let the cheers distract her for long. She immediately ordered the Marines to widen the evacuation routes and pull civilians away from cracked streets and unstable ruins.
Smoker spread his smoke through the outer district to guide people out, while Tashigi and Carina helped the newly restored citizens and toys-turned-human steady themselves and move away from the battlefield.
Farther away, Yamakaji and several Marine officers stared blankly at the center of the fight.
They did not even notice the Den Den Mushi receivers slipping from their hands and falling to the ground.
Their minds had gone completely blank.
"Warlord of the Sea, Heavenly Yaksha Donquixote Doflamingo... is dead?"
A captain muttered in a dazed voice, as if speaking in a dream.
Another officer jolted and threw himself at the fallen Den Den Mushi like a madman, shouting into the other end.
"Hurry! Contact Headquarters! Highest emergency battle report! Doflamingo has fallen! The Birdcage is down! War Demon Zaraki killed Doflamingo on the spot!"
At the center of the storm, Zaraki slowly straightened.
He flicked the last drop of blood that did not belong to him from Nozarashi.
Then, with a soft click, the sealed blade fully returned to its scabbard at his waist.
The surrounding noise and frenzy seemed far away from him.
Sunlight once again filled this shattered country.
But everyone understood that the storm about to sweep across the entire sea had only just raised its first wave.
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