It wasn't that Newgate had taken the full force of the blow. In the instant he fell from the air, he unleashed his tremor power at maximum output, using counter-vibrations and other techniques to neutralize much of the Lightning Self Bomb's destructive force.
Otherwise, even with Whitebeard's physique, he truly might not have been able to endure that strike.
As for Ortoren, he didn't care. If you could deal with it that way, that was your skill. As long as he had fully landed the Lightning Self Bomb, then in his book, it counted as taking the hit. That was all that mattered.
"Kh—"
Just as Newgate was about to speak, a mouthful of dark blood spilled out.
But after coughing it up, his breathing immediately became much smoother. His previously waning presence gradually recovered. He pushed himself up from the ground and stood, looking at Ortoren with a complicated expression.
...
Let's shift the focus for a moment.
Rewind slightly, back to the instant when Ortoren dragged Whitebeard down from the sky with that Lightning Self Bomb.
The island shook violently, and the entire battlefield's attention was drawn there at once.
There was no doubt about it. The battlefield was interconnected. Any single change could ripple across the whole conflict.
With Whitebeard heavily wounded by Ortoren, Marine morale surged, while the pirates fell into visible panic.
The massive explosion threw up thick clouds of dust, blocking everyone's vision. At the same time, within Observation Haki, Newgate's presence suddenly dropped sharply.
That alone was enough to shake the pirates' focus.
Among those affected was Kozuki Oden, who was locked in battle with Sakazuki.
"Brother!"
Kozuki Oden saw Whitebeard get hit head-on by Ortoren's Lightning Self Bomb. Instinctively, worry surged in his heart, and for a brief moment, his mind slipped during the fight.
Between top-tier fighters, even a split-second mistake could lead to earth-shattering consequences.
Earlier, Newgate himself had been flung into the air because of a momentary lapse, and that single instant had nearly cost him everything.
In the original events, Jozu had also been distracted by Whitebeard. While fighting Kuzan, that brief loss of focus allowed Kuzan to instantly defeat him and sever one of his arms.
And now, Kozuki Oden was facing Sakazuki, a Marine Admiral.
Sakazuki was infamous for his ruthlessness. When fighting pirates, if he could use ten parts of strength, he would never settle for nine. And now, with Oden distracted and exposing an opening, there was no chance he would let it go.
More importantly, Sakazuki was completely single-minded. When he fought pirates, his goal was simple: kill them. Nothing happening elsewhere on the battlefield could shake his focus.
So even with the massive commotion on Ortoren's side, Sakazuki didn't spare it a single glance. His eyes were locked firmly on Kozuki Oden.
Which meant that in the instant Kozuki Oden lost focus, Sakazuki was fully concentrated.
Completely focused.
After exchanging blows with Kozuki Oden, Sakazuki had already realized something unsettling. Oden was far stronger than he had expected. In fact, Sakazuki wasn't even entirely confident that he could win this fight.
That realization shocked him.
If he remembered correctly, hadn't Ortoren once crushed Kozuki Oden with overwhelming force, defeating him in an extremely short time?
That incident had caused quite a stir back then. If Whitebeard hadn't arrived on the battlefield at just the right moment, Kozuki Oden would have been killed by Ortoren on the spot.
So why was it that when Ortoren dealt with him, it looked effortless, but now that it was Sakazuki's turn, Kozuki Oden seemed to have completely exploded in strength?
Was he deliberately targeting me?
Or had the gap between my strength and Ortoren's already grown this large?
Because Sakazuki recognized how dangerous Kozuki Oden was, he maintained absolute focus, without the slightest hint of underestimation.
So the moment Kozuki Oden's attention wavered, Sakazuki seized it instantly and roared,
"You dare lose focus while fighting a Marine Admiral!?"
That shout snapped Kozuki Oden back to his senses. Of course, a fighter of his level wouldn't stay distracted for long even without it.
But by the time his focus returned, the danger had already arrived.
The instant Kozuki Oden turned his head, Sakazuki's heavy strike, wrapped in raging, searing magma, was already right in front of his face.
At that moment, Sakazuki shaped one hand into a claw. Haki wrapped around his fingertips as scorching magma surged forth, its pressure overwhelming like a volcanic eruption. A terrifying force burst from within his body, driving his arm forward with even greater speed.
"Meigo!" Sakazuki roared.
Kozuki Oden instinctively tried to dodge, but his moment of distraction had already cost him the best timing. It was too late.
In the next instant, Sakazuki's claw swept past Kozuki Oden's head. Violent magma exploded upward, blooming into a spray of blood. Before it could even fall, the blood was completely vaporized by the searing heat.
Immediately after, Kozuki Oden's body was sent tumbling away, blood scattering across the ground.
Having landed the hit, Sakazuki tilted his neck slightly. At this point, a deep slash wound was clearly visible on his shoulder, cut down to the bone, proof that his earlier exchange with Kozuki Oden had left him injured as well.
As Sakazuki moved, magma surged again along the wound, filling in the torn flesh.
He looked at Kozuki Oden, who rolled several times across the ground before struggling back to his feet, and said with open disgust,
"Are all you pirates this stubborn? Even with your head blown apart, you can still stand? You really are the vermin of the seas…"
From Sakazuki's point of view, although Kozuki Oden had forced himself upright, the entire left side of his head, starting from the eye socket, was gone.
Half of his skull had been blown away by that Meigo.
Kozuki Oden now looked horrifying, like a grotesque monster.
Blood poured continuously from the wound. Charred fragments of shattered skull were faintly visible, exposed to the air, while the edges of his flesh gave off the acrid stench of burnt meat.
In the original events, Sakazuki had blown off Whitebeard's head at Marineford, yet Whitebeard still managed to fight on for quite some time.
Now Whitebeard's opponent was Ortoren, but Sakazuki had once again blown off someone's head, this time Kozuki Oden. Was this some kind of cruel coincidence?
Kozuki Oden truly lived up to his reputation. He was the man who could be boiled alive and still shout defiantly without dying on the spot.
His vitality was genuinely terrifying. Even after having half his head destroyed by Sakazuki, he still hadn't fallen.
He opened his mouth as if to say something, but Sakazuki had no patience to listen. A cold, vicious glint flashed in his eyes as magma erupted beneath his feet, and his massive frame charged straight at Kozuki Oden once more.
Kozuki Oden tried to evade, but in the next moment, magma tore through the ground around him, erupting upward and sealing off all escape routes.
At the same time, he felt his control over his own body slipping away. With half his head gone, this was undeniably a fatal injury. The only reason he was still alive was because his extraordinary vitality had delayed the inevitable.
And once you were a step too slow, every step after that was lost.
With his retreat blocked by magma and his body no longer fully under his control, Kozuki Oden barely managed to raise Enma in his hand. He had no time for anything else.
Sakazuki was already in front of him.
A punch slammed straight into Kozuki Oden's abdomen.
Blazing magma power erupted, effortlessly tearing through the flesh of his stomach and punching clean through his body.
"Kh—"
Kozuki Oden coughed up a mouthful of dark blood as his abdomen was pierced.
Before the blood could even touch Sakazuki, the intense heat radiating from his body evaporated it completely in midair.
Sakazuki slowly lifted his arm, raising Kozuki Oden's impaled body with it. His expression remained ice-cold as he looked at him and said,
"From the day you chose to become a pirate, your ending was already decided. Trash like you has no place or reason to exist in this world."
Kozuki Oden clung to his final breath, his mouth opening as if he wanted to say something.
Seeing this, Sakazuki snorted.
"Last words?"
In the very next second, violent, rampaging magma erupted from his arm, instantly engulfing Kozuki Oden's body and burning it into a charred corpse.
Sakazuki casually flung the blackened remains to the ground, where they shattered apart.
"I have no interest in the last words of pirate scum," Sakazuki said coldly, crushing the charred half of Kozuki Oden's skull beneath his foot.
And so, because of a single moment of lost focus, Kozuki Oden—who had been locked in fierce combat with Sakazuki without showing any sign of defeat—was seized by the Marine Admiral. Sakazuki caught that fleeting opening and killed him in one decisive sequence.
This was the reality of battles between top-tier warriors who truly fought with killing intent.
Without outside interference or exposed flaws, they could slaughter each other for ten days or even half a month without a clear outcome.
But once even the smallest opening appeared and was seized by an opponent of equal caliber, it usually meant severe injury—or death on the spot.