Seeing his strongest attack dissolved so effortlessly, a look of absolute madness flashed through Doflamingo's eyes. He would never wait meekly for death!
"Fufufufu… it's not that simple! Goodbye!" he roared hoarsely as he yanked both hands inward with savage force!
"Parasite String!"
"Crack—!! Ruuuumble—!!!"
The entire stronghold—long since laced with countless threads he had secretly embedded—let out an ear-splitting groan under his frantic pull!
Load-bearing pillars snapped. The ceiling and walls were torn inward as if seized by invisible giant hands, collapsing violently!
Massive chunks of stone, beams, and furniture poured down like a torrential rain, smashing toward Gern from all directions—an attempt to bury him alive!
At the same time, Doflamingo seized the chaos he himself had created. Thin threads instantly sprang from beneath his feet, latching onto the remaining roof beams above!
"Sky Path!"
Like a spider, his body swung nimbly through the air, shooting toward the gaping hole torn open in the roof!
Run—! He had to escape this monster immediately!
Faced with the avalanche of rubble crashing down from above, Gern didn't even lift his head.
He merely opened his left hand casually.
"Wooooom—"
Countless high-frequency vibrating particles instantly condensed and compressed in front of his palm, emitting a deep, ominous hum that made the heart seize.
Then he gently closed his fingers.
"Heavenquake · Annihilation."
No deafening roar.No explosion.
The massive stone blocks, beams, and every fragment of the collapsing building—
The instant they entered a certain radius around him—
Were as if fed into an invisible, high-speed grinder.
Silently reduced to the finest powder—like flour—without even the faintest resistance!
They drifted down gently, without raising so much as a wisp of dust.
It was as though the entire collapse had been erased—deleted outright.
Around Gern, the space was left perfectly empty, utterly spotless.
And in that almost negligible instant while Gern dealt with the falling debris—
At the same time, Crocodile, who had been sweating bullets and desperately searching for an opening, moved!
His mind raced, arriving at a crystal-clear conclusion: Gern was a complete madman—a walking natural disaster! He wouldn't hesitate just because Crocodile was a Shichibukai!
Staying here to fight alongside Doflamingo was a guaranteed death sentence! Whether he lived or died now depended entirely on his own skill—and… luck!
Now! He had to move now—while Gern's attention was split between Doflamingo and the collapsing ruins!
"Heavenquake—this is for that kick back then!!" Crocodile's eyes flashed with vicious intent as his entire right arm instantly transformed into a massive, razor-sharp blade of highly compressed sand!
"Desert Greatsword!!"
He slammed the sand blade into the ground. Like a living thing, it surged through the earth along an eerie, unpredictable path—silent, yet lightning-fast—straight toward Gern!
He seized that fleeting, razor-thin opening!
"Pshhk!"
In the blink of an eye, the massive sand blade burst up from beneath Gern's feet—
Slashing diagonally upward from the waist with flawless precision, cleaving nearly half of Gern's body apart in an instant!
Did it hit?! Crocodile's heart leapt with wild hope!
But the very next second, he heard Gern's voice—tinged with playful amusement.
"Oh dear… looks like I got 'killed'~"
The bisected Gern showed no blood, no organs at the severed edge—only shimmering white particles like shattered mirrors, his body wavering and distorting slightly.
"Damn it!!" Crocodile's scalp went numb, every hair standing on end. "I forgot—this bastard's a Logia too!!"
No hesitation. The instant his strike failed, he abandoned all thoughts of further attack!
His entire body exploded into countless grains of sand, surging like a sandstorm toward the hole Doflamingo had smashed open in the roof!
Run! He had to escape—now!
The restored Gern couldn't even be bothered to look at Crocodile fleeing as sand.
Instead, he casually waved at Dracule Mihawk, who was still seated on the sofa, unmoving, as if everything unfolding meant nothing to him.
His tone was that of someone soothing a bored child.
"Be good and stay here for a bit. Play by yourself. I'll go take out some trash—won't take long."
Before the words even finished—
Wooooom!
Gern activated Quake Flash. His form blurred instantly, as though composed of countless high-frequency vibrating particles.
In the next moment, he dissolved into the vibrations of the air itself—vanishing without a sound!
Almost at the exact instant Gern disappeared, an intensely condensed dark-green slash flashed through the space he'd just occupied, cutting the air with a faint hiss.
The one who struck was Mihawk.
He remained frozen in his finishing stance, eyes on the empty space where Gern had stood, then glanced at the slash that had missed.
On his eternally stoic face, the corner of his mouth twitched almost imperceptibly.
"That bastard…" he muttered under his breath. "Does he take me for a child to be brushed off like that?"
He truly hadn't intended to interfere—but Gern's 'Dad's going out, stay here and don't move' attitude left him inexplicably… irritated.
Elsewhere—
Using Quake Flash for movement bordering on spatial teleportation, Gern had already materialized directly in front of the sandstorm that was Crocodile, rushing madly toward the rooftop breach!
"What—?!" The sandstorm lurched violently, reforming into half a body, Crocodile's face filled with shock and disbelief!
His Logia elemental movement—In front of this near-bug-like mobility—was slow as a crawling tortoise!
Gern hovered in midair, looking down at Crocodile's quake-stricken pupils, a smile on his face that seemed apologetic but held not a shred of sincerity.
"Sorry about that, Mr. Sand Crocodile. Just remembered—you're also a major criminal who stirred up civil war and tried to overthrow a kingdom, right?"
"As a Marine Admiral, since I ran into you… I guess I should carry out a bit of 'quake justice.'"
Crocodile frantically tried to fully disperse his elemental body and flee!
But Gern's next words made him freeze mid-motion.
"Don't be nervous. Just remember how it felt back at Sabaody."
"Relax—I won't use Haki."
Won't use Haki?!
An absurd thought—and a razor-thin sliver of hope—flashed through Crocodile's mind.
Without Haki, how could he hit a Logia?
But before that thought could fully form—
Gern's left leg had already risen.
From his foot up to his calf, everything was enveloped in an extremely compressed, blindingly pure white high-frequency vibration!
This light wasn't simple energy release—it was vibration compressed to its absolute limit, so intense that even light and space themselves wailed around it!
Like a miniature stellar core on the verge of detonation!
And at some point, that foot—condensed with annihilating power—had already appeared beside Crocodile's temple, as if by teleportation.
In Crocodile's pupils, there was only that despair-inducing white.
This kick… was called memory.
"CRACK—!!!"
Gern's left leg swung sideways like a battle axe!
The sound wasn't a dull impact against flesh—
But an utterly bizarre fusion of a body being penetratedand glass or crystal shattering in an instant!
"GRAAAH—!!"
In the reflection of Crocodile's eyes, blown wide in terror, he didn't see Gern's foot—
He saw the air, the light, even space itself around his head erupting into countless spiderweb-like cracks, as though the world had been shattered by that single kick!
Put another way—
Our Sand Crocodile… was kicked into distortion itself.
"BOOOOM!!!!"
Crocodile was launched backward like a fired cannonball, flying several times faster than when he'd been escaping!
He smashed straight through multiple floors and walls below, finally slamming deep into the ground floor of the base with a thunderous crash, kicking up clouds of dust!
Once more, the entire stronghold fell into deathly silence.
Only Gern descended slowly from the air, lightly brushing nonexistent dust from his pant leg.
"…One down."
...
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