"I'll enjoy the moment that look breaks."
The words didn't come with rage or haste. They came like a promise forged in steel. And as with everything Riser spoke on that battlefield, they weren't said in vain.
What followed changed the very air.
The transformation began at the center of his chest, like a mute vibration.
Magic surged from within him without warning, pulsing in crimson waves. It wasn't light. It wasn't shadow. It was something between the two. Dense. Alive. Aggressive.
It poured from his pores, as if the Emperor's blood itself had decided to show the world.
His arms were the first to change.
Thick red markings, like hot ink, crawled from his hands up to his shoulders, tracing the natural lines of his muscles. His veins swelled. The Haki already coating him was layered over with a new pattern — incandescent runes spiraling across hardened skin.
His coat began to ripple, reacting as if under extreme heat. Its edges quivered with the flow of energy. The collar rose, the fabric glowing in dark red, nearly black.
The magic climbed further.
His neck was wrapped in lines branching into symmetrical marks across his face. Chin, jaw, under the eyes — all traced by patterns that seemed alive. Riser no longer looked like a noble warrior. He looked like the heir of ancient demons, awakened and unbound.
His hair floated softly, though no wind blew. Each strand glowed faintly at the tips, as if dragged through bloody lightning.
His legs and torso were the last to adapt. His feet hovered above the air, but the space around him trembled. The heat of his red magic warped the light itself, like mirages in open sky. Everything nearby seemed to melt in reverence.
And still…
Marco wasn't touched by any of it.
The grip on his neck stayed the same. The blood dripped at the same pace. The pain unchanged.
But now there was something more: foreboding.
Riser, cloaked in demonic magic, was no longer a warrior.
He was a verdict.
Marco took a moment to understand what he was seeing.
The red around Riser wasn't blood. Nor aura. Nor heat.
It felt wrong.
It was as if his entire body had been drenched in living, pulsating, ancestral paint. The lines across his skin shifted subtly, and Marco's eyes faltered for a second. Pain, exhaustion, blood — all of it paled before the realization that this was unnatural.
And then Riser spoke.
"Let's go for a dive."
The phrase came without transition. Without threat. Without warning.
And what followed was immediate.
Riser tilted in the air and plunged — with Marco still locked in his grip.
The sky vanished in an instant.
The sea shattered like a mirror.
SPLAAAASSHHHH!
The water swallowed them whole, as if the ocean had been waiting for the exact moment. The impact sprayed foam in every direction. Waves rippled from the point of descent, splashing salt over the nearest wreckage along the shore.
Beneath the water, everything changed.
The Zoan's blue glow vanished in seconds. Feathers wilted. Wings dissolved into flesh and blood. Marco's transformation unraveled in reflex to the saltwater. His body weakened instantly.
His eyes widened.
Not from pain.
From terror.
The first true sign of fear appeared on the face of Whitebeard's former commander. His lungs burned, his chest strained with no response, his muscles froze.
He knew what was coming.
Devil Fruit users were cursed by the sea. The weakness was absolute. No resistance, no training, no exceptions. Once submerged, the body collapsed. Strength evaporated. Consciousness slipped.
But something was wrong.
Marco kept sinking — and Riser sank with him.
The difference was brutal.
Riser's body didn't thrash. Didn't weaken. The crimson aura didn't fade. His skin didn't pale. His movements didn't slow. His grip on Marco's neck stayed firm as ever.
He sank as if the ocean didn't exist.
Because for him, it truly didn't.
Riser wasn't a Devil Fruit user. Nor bound by mortal breath. His demonic magic was more than combat. It was adaptation. Transcendence. His body could exist in places humans were never meant to.
The ocean was just scenery.
The runes still glowed. His eyes still burned. His blood remained calm.
Darkness deepened. The sky's light faded above. The seabed stretched wide and cold beneath them. Fish scattered from the spiraling red, instinctively fleeing something beyond the physical.
Marco began to struggle.
Weakly, but visibly.
His hands shook, pushing against the arm that bound him. His legs spasmed. Short, jagged bubbles escaped his mouth. His wide eyes begged — but no sound came.
Riser watched.
His smile was faint.
Not mocking. Not rushed. Merely clinical curiosity.
"This is where your gaze will break."
His voice carried clear in the water, as though the waves themselves bent to let it pass.
Marco heard it. His body betrayed the reaction. One last attempt to break free. A weak pull. A failed kick. More bubbles.
Then the spasms shifted rhythm.
His hands stopped pushing — only trembling.
His legs slowed.
His eyes, once defiant, began to lose focus.
And his mouth opened — not to speak, but to gasp for what he could no longer reach.
Water rushed in.
Despair sank into his skin. His body reeled like a ship adrift, dragged down by its own weight. Marco's life force slipped away, second by second.
Riser didn't blink.
Didn't loosen his grip.
Didn't rise.
The seabed awaited. And Marco ceased moving.
His eyes stayed open. But they focused on nothing.
His body floated, weightless. Lifeless.
The silence around them was absolute.
And Riser's smile — gentle as a death sentence — was the only trace of warmth in the endless blue.
For long seconds, nothing changed.
The water cloaked them both like a heavy veil. The crimson magic still radiated from Riser's skin, cloaking him in silence beneath the ocean's weight.
Then, he released Marco's neck.
The corpse didn't respond. It only drifted downward, pulled by weight and the absence of a soul. Feathers spiraled around like fragments of an extinguished dream. The Zoan was sealed. The symbol of immortality sank like any ordinary man.
Riser lifted his right hand, fingers spreading calmly.
"Extract."
The command was given like one collecting payment after a clean job.
A notification appeared before his eyes, visible only to him.
[Target confirmed: Marco, former 1st Division Commander of Whitebeard's Fleet.]
[Status: Dead.]
[Fruit Type: Tori Tori no Mi – Model Phoenix (Mythical Zoan).]
[Initiate Extraction Procedure? Cost: 0 Luck Points.]
"Confirm."
The reply came without hesitation. Clear. Cold.
[Process initiated.]
The System's magic coursed through the water, unhindered by density or pressure.
Riser remained still, watching.
Marco's body twitched one final time — a postmortem spasm. From the center of his chest, where blue flames once burned, a faint glow began to pulse. Subtle, but distinct. A fragment of pure energy separated from the dead flesh.
The Devil Fruit didn't reappear in physical form. The System didn't need it to. It captured at the source — the very instant of release.
The glow was drawn into Riser's palm.
The light vanished into his hand like a swallowed breath.
[Extraction successful.]
[Tori Tori no Mi – Model Phoenix added to Inventory.]
Riser closed his hand slowly.
Above, the surface still rippled with the battle's echoes. But here, at the ocean floor, everything was resolved.
Marco was dead.
The Phoenix would not rise again.
And the throne of the New World remained in Riser's hands.
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