"ROAR!"
Whitebeard swung Murakumogiri with all his might.
The razor-sharp shockwaves compressed into a line and cleaved straight toward Sengoku's Great Buddha form.
Bzzzt!
Armament Haki instantly coated the Buddha's massive fist, erupting outward together with the impact.
Crack crack crack!
The moment the two forces collided, the surrounding air shattered like a mirror, splintering violently as terrifying power burst in every direction.
Half of the harbor ground collapsed completely.
Cough!
At that instant, Whitebeard spat out a mouthful of blood.
A blade through the chest.
A sneak attack to the head from Akainu.
Even for Whitebeard, he had reached the end of his rope.
"Whitebeard! You're dead today!" Sengoku roared.
Ace had already escaped.
Whitebeard had to die.
Otherwise, this entire Paramount War launched by the Marines would become the biggest joke in history.
"Gurararara! If you want to kill me, then be ready to be buried with me!"
Whitebeard didn't care in the slightest.
He never planned to leave Marineford alive.
With his strength, dragging at least one person down with him would be easy.
"Hey! Rayleigh, it's time we leave!" Gaban growled.
They came here to save Ace.
Now that Ace had withdrawn successfully, there was no reason to keep fighting the Marines for Whitebeard.
Rayleigh fell silent for a moment, then sighed.
"Considering how long Whitebeard took care of Ace… let's see him off one last time."
If they retreated now, Whitebeard would certainly die under the Marines' encirclement.
A hero like him didn't deserve such a suffocating end.
Gaban said nothing more.
There were fewer and fewer old comrades left from their era.
On the battlefield, Whitebeard coughed up another mouthful of blood.
The aura around him grew increasingly weak.
Buggy finally finished setting up the Visual Transponder Snail.
Watching Whitebeard on the verge of death, Buggy laughed smugly to himself.
"When Whitebeard loses, I'll chop his head off myself!
Then Buggy-sama will become famous across the world! Hahaha!"
Aizen Sōsuke gradually withdrew his hypnosis and reengaged Soi Fon in combat.
The battlefield descended into its most chaotic phase yet.
"Get lost!"
Whitebeard punched away a Marine vice admiral who tried to sneak attack him.
The powerful shockwave slammed straight into the Marineford fortress behind them.
The foundation had already been damaged earlier by Whitebeard's full-power strike.
This blow caused one-third of the fortress to collapse.
And in that collapse, something massive was revealed behind the fortress.
"T-that thing… what is it?!"
A Marine shouted in disbelief.
"Oh? We've been discovered already?"
A giant with a golden afro and a head shaped like a squash stood there, grinning.
"Since we've been found out, we might as well come out.
The timing's just about right anyway."
Another voice followed, arrogant to the extreme.
Only then did everyone notice —
At some point, a group of people had gathered beneath the execution platform.
"H-how is this possible?!"
A well-informed Marine cried out in horror.
"Those are infamous criminals from legend!"
"Former Impel Down Head Jailer — Shiryu!"
"'Crescent Moon Hunter' — Catarina Devon!"
"'Corrupt King' — Avalo Pizarro!"
"'Colossal Battleship' — Sanjuan Wolf!"
"'Heavy Drinker' — Vasco Shot!"
"They're all criminals who should be rotting in Impel Down for eternity!"
At the center of them all stood Marshall D. Teach, Blackbeard himself.
Faces everywhere filled with disbelief.
"It's the Blackbeard Pirates!"
Sengoku's face turned ashen with rage.
The moment he saw Bullet earlier, he knew Impel Down had gone wrong.
He just didn't expect something this catastrophic.
The entire Level Six… had escaped.
Not a single one of these criminals was harmless.
Any one of them alone could plunge the seas into bloodshed.
What would happen if Blackbeard gathered them all together?
No one could predict it.
Blackbeard burst out laughing, looking smugly at Whitebeard.
"Zehahahaha! You don't look so good, old man! Guess you really are past your prime!"
"Teach!"
Whitebeard's withered body seemed to surge back to its peak in that instant.
Terrifying pressure poured out of him.
"You're the only one… who can never be forgiven!"
Killing a crewmate was the one unforgivable crime in the Whitebeard Pirates.
And if Ace was included, Teach had committed it twice.
Whitebeard raised his left arm.
The muscles swelled violently as a horrifying vibration spread outward.
The killing intent was so dense that even Sengoku, knowing it wasn't aimed at him, felt his heart tremble.
"Go to hell and repent to Thatch! You bastard!"
Whitebeard swung his arm.
Dense cracks appeared in the air, spreading like a spiderweb.
HUM!
The shockwave was forcibly compressed into a massive sphere several meters tall, screaming forward toward Blackbeard.
"Watch out!"
Sengoku shouted while retreating, warning nearby Marines.
Even so, some Marines failed to react in time and were swept into the air like trash being swept away.
"Teach, run!"
Someone screamed.
BOOM!
The shockwave detonated beneath the execution platform.
Everything nearby was annihilated in an instant.
The Blackbeard Pirates vanished from sight.
"Did… did that get them?"
A Marine asked instinctively.
The next second, several figures slowly emerged from the smoke.
"Yikes! That was almost bad!"
Jesus Burgess, one of Blackbeard's earliest crew members, laughed.
A slab of stone was shoved aside as Blackbeard climbed out from below.
"No mercy at all, huh?
But yeah… I didn't expect you to hold back anyway!"
Under that terrifying attack, the Blackbeard Pirates were completely unharmed.
Whitebeard raised Murakumogiri and pointed it at Blackbeard.
"You're not fit to be my son!
Let's end this, Teach!"
Blackbeard laughed wildly.
"Zehahahaha! Just what I wanted!
I've been waiting a long time for this moment!"
He slammed both hands onto the ground.
Pitch-black darkness surged outward like a tide, swallowing the entire area.
"What… what is that?"
That question echoed in most people's minds.
After all, very few people besides Blackbeard knew about that power.
"Dark-Dark Fruit… Black Hole!"
Blackbeard slowly stood up.
The darkness wrapped around him like a cloak, sinister and terrifying.
Whitebeard felt it immediately —
The ground was sinking.
Everything within the darkness was being slowly devoured.
Blackbeard raised both arms and laughed triumphantly.
"See it, old man?!
This is the power I gained after killing Thatch — the Dark-Dark Fruit!"
***
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