"Ugh... Ghk!"
Esdeath choked out a ragged gasp, her upper body collapsing forward onto the snow. Yet, the unseen projectile barrage didn't cease. Two successive, high-caliber rounds tore through her right thigh and left ankle, leaving her limbs torn and drenched in blood.
Thud!
Esdeath crashed heavily onto the frozen ground. Forcing herself upright with the last of her remaining strength, she cast a frantic glance backward. Her mind reeled in absolute shock, her ultimate trump card, Mahapadma, had not yet fully dissipated, yet Alucard was already standing directly behind her. He held his white pistol casually in one hand, his crimson eyes glowing with a sinister radiance beneath the brim of his hat, a mocking smirk playing on his lips.
"You... How is this even possible?!"
Esdeath snapped her head forward, only to find that the frozen silhouette of Alucard she had been targeting mere seconds ago had completely vanished into thin air.
A moment later, the spacetime freeze of Mahapadma dissolved completely. Alucard stepped over her bleeding form, looking down with an idle, detached expression. "A magnificent ability indeed. For a single fraction of a second, the localized absolute zero of your technique genuinely eclipsed the sheer output of that fool Kuzan."
"However... a parlor trick of this level is entirely incapable of killing me."
Alucard brought his boot down heavily onto Esdeath's freshly ruptured right thigh. A sickening, bone-grating crunch echoed through the silent wasteland. Bending his torso slightly, he leveled the cold muzzle of his pistol directly against the back of her head. "So, do you possess any other hidden techniques? I am generously giving you one final opportunity to display them... the Strongest."
Alucard dragged out those final words, emphasizing his mockery with an incredibly biting, sarcastic drawl.
The strongest? Could a pathetic wretch pinned beneath someone else's boot, utterly defiled and broken, truly dare to call themselves the strongest?
Esdeath gritted her teeth, forcing her head to turn slightly to glare at him. "Since even Mahapadma proved utterly futile against you, I have no more cards left to play. Kill me."
Alucard's pupils contracted slightly. He hadn't anticipated that this fragile, low-tier woman would possess such an unyielding warrior's resolve. She was entirely different from those standard, soulless rabid dogs who possessed nothing but raw power.
She was certainly nothing like that disgusting pile of filth, Blackbeard.
"What are you hesitating for? It is only natural for the strong to slaughter the weak. Do it," Esdeath urged, "reminding" him once more as if she was terrified he might actually let her live.
BANG!
A solitary bullet erupted from the barrel, cleanly severing a long strand of blue hair right beside Esdeath's ear before burying itself deep into the snow.
Faced with this unexpected outcome, Esdeath froze in utter bewilderment. She could only watch in stunned silence as Alucard stepped off her mangled legs and casually holstered his custom firearm back inside his signature trench coat.
"Why?! Why did you spare my life?!" Esdeath screamed out into the howling wind. To her, a warrior defined by absolute dominance, such mercy was nothing short of charity, a profound, unforgivable humiliation.
"You are quite entertaining," Alucard replied, keeping his back turned toward her. "You are a genuine human being. Though you are pathetically weak right now, I have a feeling your future will provide a spectacular source of amusement."
The moment his words fell, a vast, eternal river of spacetime swept across his consciousness, and Alucard vanished from the spot without a trace.
To an ordinary mortal like Esdeath, the reality-warping currents of the multiverse were entirely invisible. In her eyes, Alucard's physical form simply began to blur and pixelate, fading into nothingness until he dissolved completely into the atmosphere.
A few seconds later, the crushing agony radiating from the three severe entry wounds across her body finally brought her crashing back to reality. Casting her gaze across the battlefield, the absolute weight of her loss settled in. Whether it was her elite officers, the Three Beasts, or the tens of thousands of imperial soldiers she had personally marched into the northern wastes, every single one of them had been slaughtered. Effortlessly eradicated down to the last man.
"I will find you... I swear I will hunt you down to the ends of the earth! And when I do, I will drag you into my deepest torture chambers and break you until there is nothing left!" Esdeath hissed through her teeth, her voice trembling with a cocktail of absolute fury and a lingering, desperate awe toward the terrifying might that had bypassed her ultimate technique.
Quickly manifesting her icy powers to flash-freeze her bleeding wounds to stave off hemorrhagic shock, she realized her mangled legs could no longer support her weight. Left with no other choice, the supreme commander of the Empire was forced to pull her body across the frozen ground, crawling back toward the fort's medical bay.
When Alucard's vision cleared, he found himself standing back within the grand, gothic throne room of Arderay Castle, the absolute epicenter of the Immortal Pirates' empire.
The debut operational test of his multi-world traversal capability had officially concluded, though the final results left him deeply unsatisfied. He temporarily designated this newly evolved facet of his ability as "The Stray Cat of Schrödinger."
Merely playing a brief, low-stakes game with a fragile woman had failed to provide even a fraction of the deep, exhilarating fulfillment he had experienced during his ultimate clash against Monkey D. Garp. Consequently, he didn't harbor the slightest intention of stopping to rest. Alucard fully intended to invoke the spatial ability once more to seek out a far more promising reality.
Pere pere pere...
Just as Alucard prepared to tear through the fabric of reality again, the distinct ringing of a Den Den Mushi echoed from a small mahogany table nearby.
Alucard idly flicked the speaker switch, and the digitized voice of Dr. Vegapunk filled the quiet room. "Ah, Captain. I attempted to reach you via two separate transmissions earlier, but you didn't answer. I am calling to deliver the official combat report. The cybernetic pacifist Weevil has been defeated; however, he successfully inflicted catastrophic, near-fatal trauma upon Big Mom. I have already successfully extracted our scientific divisions from Totto Land."
"And?" Alucard drawled, leaning back against his massive throne, his expression completely devoid of interest.
Originally, he had harbored a mild curiosity to play a destructive game with Charlotte Linlin, but after Garp had fundamentally derailed his momentum, that fleeting interest had completely evaporated. To put it bluntly, Alucard couldn't care less whether Charlotte Linlin lived or died.
"Kuzan has officially returned to active duty within the Navy. When my scouts spotted him during our retreat, he still possessed that standard, vagrant drifter aesthetic, but he was clad in the traditional Marine officer's mantle, standing upon the deck of a massive battleship to orchestrate their naval formations. It appears the Navy fully intends to exploit this golden opportunity to completely eradicate the Big Mom Pirates," Dr. Vegapunk reported methodically.
"Oh? Now that possesses a sliver of genuine amusement," Alucard chuckled darkly.
Dr. Vegapunk then proceeded to break down the latest intelligence from Whole Cake Island. A grand coalition of Worst Generation rookies had initiated a massive siege against the weakened Big Mom. The Navy's strategic goal was clear: wait for both factions to tear each other to pieces, then swoop in as the ultimate victors.
Simultaneously, prominent rookies like Trafalgar Law, Bartolomeo, and Jewelry Bonney had already breached the inner sanctums. Their primary objective was securing Charlotte Linlin's Road Poneglyph. If they ever hoped to navigate to the fabled shores of Laugh Tale, that ancient stone was an absolute necessity.
If Alucard had previously harbored a lingering desire to siphon the destructive potential of Whitebeard's Tremor-Tremor Fruit, he felt an absolute zero level of attraction toward Charlotte Linlin's signature ability. The Soul-Soul Fruit... could a pathetic conceptual power like that ever dare to stand on equal footing with the absolute, infinite depths of his River of Death?
Alucard poured himself a chalice of fine red wine. Yet, before he could even savor the vintage for ten minutes, a separate Den Den Mushi began to blare. This transmission originated from Ivalis, the supreme commander spearheading the massive operational offensive against Kaido's territories.
After listening to Ivalis's comprehensive breakdown of Kaido's current movements, Alucard set his chalice down, deciding to pay the battlefield a personal visit.
Kaido, was it? An "old friend," indeed.
Meanwhile, in that distant, isolated reality, several months had passed. When the elite sentries guarding the imperial capital witnessed General Esdeath riding through the main gates alone, her entire body wrapped in thick medical bandages, the entire nation was plunged into absolute, unadulterated shock.
Could the primitive Northern Tribes truly possess such terrifying power? To think they could reduce General Esdeath, the undisputed strongest warrior of the Empire, to such a horrific, broken state! And what of her elite Three Beasts and the tens of thousands of grand imperial soldiers who marched alongside her? Could they truly have been entirely wiped out?
Upon her return to the capital, Esdeath didn't seek out immediate medical treatment, nor did she deign to report her failure to the young Emperor. Instead, utilizing the absolute scope of her supreme military authority, she ordered the finest imperial artists to draft a highly detailed sketch based entirely on her memory, issuing a global bounty.
Find him. Even if you must flip every single stone across the entire empire, find this man!