"Fine, no problem," Kenshin halted the vessel and agreed without hesitation.
"Ain, I'll move him to a relatively safe location shortly so you can administer emergency triage. You haven't fully recovered yourself, so do not push past your limits."
"Just make sure he doesn't die."
The crew's lips twitched in unison.
Good grief... The man had only one condition, and you won't even give him full treatment!
In truth, Kenshin hadn't overcomplicated his reasoning. To the Dragon Flag Pirates, Ain was the ultimate linchpin in neutralizing Im; ensuring her well-being was of absolute priority.
With her vitality still depleted, he naturally refused to let her compromise her own health for the sake of an unrelated outsider.
Had the rest of the crew weighed the situation, they would have made the exact same choice. Yet right now, with Kenshin running the calculations, they naturally viewed his instructions through the lens of his earlier cutthroat negotiation.
"Understood!" Ain nodded with grim resolve. This was their most perilous hour.
The Demon Warder's annihilation of the shadowy swarm had clearly pushed Im into outright fury. High across the East Blue, the blanket of black mist was churning with violent urgency, expanding outward at visible speed.
The suffocating gloom surged anew.
She was clearly moving to swallow the entire East Blue in the shortest possible time.
"We fall back for now!" Piloting the Demon Warder, Kenshin hurtled toward a secluded island to the east.
Clutched firmly in the vessel's mechanical grip was a completely defeated Shiki, his face devoid of any will to live.
BOOM!
A towering colossus of black mist materialized directly behind the Demon Warder.
A colossal shadowy foot stomped downward from the heavens, slamming squarely into the ship's dorsal plating.
The hull jolted violently from the impact. Mid-descent, the vessel engaged its spatial drive and vanished into thin air.
"Hm?" A flicker of perplexity crossed the misty titan's eyes. It swept its gaze across the perimeter, finding not the slightest trace of the mechanical vessel.
Within the swirling vapors, Im's figure gradually coalesced. She surveyed the empty sky, her brow knitting into a sharp frown.
By all logic, with her stepping onto the field so overtly, Drake should have unleashed everything to bring her down. Why had they fled instead?
Probing her physical vessel, a satisfied smirk curved Im's lips. This body was truly sublime.
It exceeded the baseline parameters of the D-bearers she had hunted in the past. In such a short span of time, not only had it presented none of the complications she anticipated, but it had elevated her combat strength straight back to the apex of her prime.
It was far more complete than her previous physical shell.
A modified vessel truly made all the difference—it granted her the intoxicating sensation of a total rebirth.
"Hmph. Regardless of what petty schemes you harbor, all of it will be reduced to ash." Im spread her arms wide, savoring the cool wind brushing against her skin.
Around her, the black mist billowed outward without end.
"Once I sink the entire East Blue to the bottom of the sea, every calculation you made will drown with it."
"And once you are out of the way, who beneath the heavens will be left to stand in my path?"
"Not even Joy Boy himself!"
"AHAHAHA...!"
Meanwhile, on the outer rim of the East Blue lay Loguetown—the Town of the Beginning and the End.
The homeland of the Pirate King, Gol D. Roger.
Only now did the inhabitants on the island witness the wall of black mist surging from the heart of the East Blue, rolling steadily toward their shores.
Pandemonium seized the town in an instant.
Those with even a shred of confidence in their survival scrambled toward the docks, desperate to take to the sea. Whatever came next, preserving their lives took precedence over all else.
The elderly and young children who lacked the means to flee were left behind, weathering the suffocating dread of the encroaching end in isolation.
Sensing the expansion rate of her dark canopy, Im nodded in quiet satisfaction. At this velocity, smothering the entirety of the East Blue would take very little time.
When that moment arrived, the survival of this entire ocean would hinge entirely on a single whim of hers!
Several island-lengths away from Im's coordinates sat a tranquil, uninhabited landmass.
The Demon Warder materialized abruptly within an isolated mountain ridge. Concealed beneath the dense wilderness, their presence remained shielded from prying eyes.
"Ain, administer emergency stabilization immediately. We need to get back to the battlefield as quickly as possible to stall for time," Kenshin commanded the moment they touched down.
"On it!"
Ain stepped swiftly out of the Demon Warder, arriving beside Shiki, whom the mechanical arm had just set down. She immediately conducted a diagnostic sweep of his vital signs.
To her astonishment, she discovered that despite bearing fatal, catastrophic trauma, the man maintained an eerily impassive countenance, as though completely unaffected by the agony.
On that metric alone, she recognized that a legendary figure truly lived up to his reputation.
Petals of luminous azure light drifted upward from Ain's palms, focusing their brilliant radiance directly onto Shiki's frame.
The gushing wounds across his flesh began to knit together at a pace visible to the naked eye. His internal trauma repaired itself with unnatural velocity.
Drawing her hands back, Ain smoothly drew three silver needles and drove them with surgical precision into three distinct acupoints along Shiki's meridians.
Shiki's lifeless eyes snapped wide.
In that exact breath, Ain withdrew the silver needles in a fluid motion.
"It is done. His life is temporarily out of danger. Furthermore, I have stimulated the latent potential dormant within his body," Ain said, walking back toward the Demon Warder with practiced calm.
"Provided he does not suffer severe concussive trauma again, he is fully cleared for combat."
Her swift, clinical efficiency left Bell utterly stunned. He hadn't caught the technical details of her diagnosis, but one sentence had registered with crystal clarity:
Cleared for combat!
He might not have grasped the full extent of Shiki's injuries, but judging by his half-dead state earlier, he could deduce the baseline.
The man had literally been knocking on death's door.
Yet in a matter of minutes, Ain had declared him fit to fight.
That was ruthless beyond words.
To think that Big Sister Ain—who was usually as gentle as calm water—possessed such an unyielding, merciless edge. The mere thought sent an icy shiver down Bell's spine.
It was downright terrifying!
"Right, in that case, we move out!" Bell urged immediately.
Whatever Shiki felt about the arrangement was tossed entirely out of his mind. An ominous premonition gnawed at his instincts, whispering that something catastrophic was brewing.
"Alright, Golden Lion. We've treated your injuries as agreed. You should know your own physical limits best. Move out—from this moment forward, our alliance is officially in effect!"
Leaving those words behind, Kenshin vaulted the Demon Warder into the sky, plunging straight into the churning sea of black mist.
Shiki had barely shaken off the initial shock of his rapid stabilization. Before he could even register how Ain had vanished, the Demon Warder had disappeared from the ridge.
"If that's how it's going to be, I have an old score to settle myself!"
With a savage sneer, Shiki shot straight into the cloud line.
The outer frontier of the East Blue.
Above the placid, glassy swells of the open sea, a solitary figure flickered into existence. Crimson radiance flared within his eyes as he cast a piercing gaze toward the dark storm choking the distant sky.
"It seems I'm not too late after all. Let's see if I can make it in time..."
[Stop sightseeing. Instead of wasting time staring, get moving—otherwise you really will be too late,] the System barked in his mind.
Drake nodded.
At a critical juncture like this, not a single second could be squandered.
In a fraction of a heartbeat, Drake vanished from the surface of the sea once more.
By sheer coincidence, a pirate vessel happened to be cruising across those very coordinates. The entire crew aboard froze solid, their hair standing on end as if they had just witnessed an apparition.
"Rat, tell me I'm hallucinating... Did a guy just pop out of thin air right over there...?"
"Gah! Captain, you saw it too?! We're cursed, I know it! Let's turn back right now! This ocean is a death trap... Captain!"
"Shut your damn mouth! What kind of idiot believes in curses?!"
"We clearly just blinked at the same time!"
"Aaargh..."