"Ah... Jack the Drought!" The Kyoshiro family pirates scrambled back a few paces, terror freezing their joints.
"Since you're here, you can all rot at the bottom of the sea!" Jack snarled, his eyes bulging. In a flash, a pair of giant shotels appeared in his hands, his massive frame radiating raw menace.
Shing!
Clang!
Sparks flew into the dark sky, and Bell slowly raised his head.
"Jack, an All-Star of the Beast Pirates. Perfect. Let's see what you've got."
Bell threw his weight into both arms, twisting his katana to drive the blade straight toward Jack's throat. Swift, ruthless, precise.
"What?!" Shock slammed into Jack. He jerked his head aside, but Bell had already anticipated the evasion and brought his blade down hard.
With a sickening tear, a massive, crescent-shaped ivory tusk flew into the air.
"Gale Flurry!"
A sharp glint flashed in Bell's eyes. In an instant, a storm of slashes erupted, every single strike driving ruthlessly toward Jack's vitals.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Jack could do nothing but frantically block. Under the sheer speed of Bell's barrage, he was pinned entirely on the defensive, unable to mount a single counter-attack.
The surrounding pirates stared in utter disbelief. No one expected this ordinary-looking youth to possess such terrifying strength. Even Jack, an All-Star of the Beast Pirates, was being utterly suppressed and beaten back. What was wrong with the world? Since when could a mere teenager wield such monstrous power? Or had the title of All-Star simply become a joke?
"An All-Star of the Beast Pirates... nothing special," Bell said coolly. He planted his foot, focusing his strength into his sword.
Unseen to the naked eye, the air began to warp, swirling and funneling directly toward the edge of his blade.
He had mastered the ultimate secret of the Gale Blade. He knew that Haki wasn't the only way to multiply a sword's destructive power in this world. From the moment he set sail, he knew Armament Haki was his biggest weakness. He didn't have a natural affinity for it.
For the longest time, his low destructive power had been his undoing. Whenever he faced a true powerhouse, he would be decisively defeated, entirely unable to inflict even a single scratch on his opponent.
But he knew that to forge his own path, he had to double down on his strengths. For two years, he had pushed his Observation Haki and his speed to their absolute physical thresholds, slowly unlocking the true essence of the Gale Blade.
Speed, precision, and lethality. That was his formula.
Every living thing had a breaking point, even an invincible monster like Kaido. As long as he concentrated his absolute maximum force to shatter that defensive limit, he could deliver a devastating wound. That was his absolute confidence.
"Ultimate Secret of the Gale Blade: Torrential Convergence!"
Bell focused his grip. Layer upon layer of atmospheric currents coiled tightly around his blade, compressing until the wind itself turned completely silent.
He swam the blade through the air. The strike unleashed an invisible storm of vacuum blades that ripped through the night with a terrifying, high-pitched screech.
Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!
The wind slashes left zero visual traces. Unless a fighter's Observation Haki had reached the legendary level of seeing the future, dodging the onslaught was impossible.
Within seconds, countless deep lacerations spiderwebbed across Jack's massive body, spraying bright streams of blood into the air.
"Arrgh!" Jack frantically swung his dual shotels to establish a defense, but Bell's slashes were simply too fast, too dense. Even with Jack's high reflexes, at least half of the invisible blades ripped straight through his guard and tore into his flesh.
When the fight began, everyone thought the outcome was obvious. Jack was an All-Star of the Beast Pirates, after all. Now, the battle was indeed completely one-sided—except the roles of winner and loser had been flipped entirely.
Thud! Bell took a sharp breath, stamping his foot hard as a swirling vortex of pressurized air condensed at the tip of his sword.
"Tempest Shatterer!"
The immediate air seemed to freeze. To the onlookers, Bell simply vanished, reappearing before Jack like a phantom.
He thrust his sword forward—a seemingly ordinary jab. But the moment the blade punctured Jack's chest, an explosion of razor-sharp force erupted, violently shattering the space around them.
BANG!
A heavy mist of blood rained down.
Everyone froze in absolute shock, including Kaido, who was currently locked in a fierce battle with Kin'emon's unit.
Seizing the Emperor's split-second distraction, the retainers of the Akazaya Nine swarmed him simultaneously. A barrage of high-intensity techniques erupted, every single strike slamming squarely into Kaido's massive form.
The deafening explosion drew every eye. Okiku clamped a hand over her lips, her gaze locked onto Jack, who was enveloped in a fine red mist. This was an All-Star! One of the absolute pinnacles of the Beast Pirates!
Thud.
Jack's eyes went entirely blank, his colossal frame dropping heavily onto his knees against the wooden deck.
A lone katana protruded from his chest, slowly dripping blood. Driven by deep-seated reflex, Bell's execution strike had pierced straight through his heart.
The explosive pressure of the compressed air currents had blasted a massive cavity completely through his chest. Where his heart should have been, there was nothing but a gaping, hollow void. Only the blood-slicked tip of Bell's sword remained, radiating a freezing, terrifying chill.
While the onlookers stood paralyzed by the sight of an All-Star falling, Bell leaned on his sword, panting heavily. To them, it looked like a clean, effortless slaughter. In reality, it had taken every ounce of his focus. Every single move, angle, and strike from the moment their blades first crossed had been a desperate gamble calculated down to the millimeter.
He had chained his attacks seamlessly, refusing to give Jack even a single second to breathe. He knew that if Jack managed to brace himself and swing back just once, all his efforts would collapse.
Was Jack weak? Hell no. He was a monster.
An ordinary man hit by Bell's Gale Flurry would have been reduced to mincemeat on the spot. Yet despite bleeding from dozens of deep wounds, Jack had kept his footing. His freakish resilience and pain tolerance were well beyond anything a normal human could muster.
That final thrust had been Bell's ultimate gamble. If Jack had managed to parry it, he would have lived, and Bell would have been left defenseless. If he failed, he died. Jack knew it too, but under the suffocating pressure of Bell's relentless onslaught, his body simply couldn't move fast enough to save him. That was the terrifying truth of Bell's style—a razor-thin margin of perfection where a single mistake meant death.
But the crowd saw none of that hidden struggle. To the roaring pirates, a nameless kid had just effortlessly cut down one of the three strongest disasters on the sea.
RUMBLE... BOOM!
At the same time, a series of earth-shattering explosions tore through the docks near Onigashima.
Marco and Kenshin ripped through the frontline defenses like a hurricane, completely obliterating the primary outpost guarding the harbor. The fortified base, once bristling with heavy artillery batteries, was reduced to a smoking wasteland within minutes.
"Marco!" Kenshin nodded to the Phoenix, his eyes dropping to the pale, bloodless face of the child in his arms.
Momonosuke was drenched in blood, his right arm completely gone from the shoulder.
There was no saving it, let alone sewing it back on. Kanjuro had infused his final attack with a crushing blast of Armament Haki, obliterating the severed limb into fine dust before it could even hit the ocean.
"Momonosuke..." Marco's eyes narrowed as he landed beside them.
Brilliant blue flames of rebirth erupted from his hands, washing over the jagged, heavily bleeding shoulder wound to force the blood to clot.
"Momonosuke, open your eyes! Hang on! You can't die here!" Marco roared, gritting his teeth. After all, he had watched this boy take his very first breath decades ago on the deck of the Moby Dick.