"Hey, hey…"
As the thought formed, Lugart's assault suddenly slowed. A mocking glint surfaced in his eyes.
"You kid… don't tell me you don't actually know swordsmanship at all?"
"Heh."
Gern didn't answer. He simply took a shallow breath.
Lugart wasn't wrong.
Ever since obtaining the Heaven-Shaking Devil Fruit, Gern had never undergone any proper, orthodox combat training.
Before gaining the fruit, he had been nothing more than a logistics soldier with slightly above-average strength.
Afterward, the year he spent developing his ability amounted to little more than forcibly boosting his combat power through the Devil Fruit itself.
Against opponents with real experience, that flaw was impossible to hide.
That was precisely why Gern always studied his enemies' intelligence with extreme care before every battle.
Without a system, without a safety net, he only had one life.
"Hah! Just as I thought!" Lugart burst out laughing.
"A fine blade in your hands, wasted on wild, untrained swings. What a disgrace!"
He flicked his spear, knocking Eight Desolations aside, then thrust forward in one smooth motion.
"Blood Beak · Throat Pierce!"
Gern twisted aside at the last second. The spear tip grazed his neck, drawing a thin line of blood.
Using the opening, he pulled back to create distance, his expression calm but heavy.
Lack of combat experience was indeed his weakness.
But now, he had also fully grasped the truth about the man in front of him.
Another pirate with no hidden trump cards.
Armament Haki at a basic level at best.
Someone who could be dealt with cleanly.
"What, scared already?" Lugart sneered, flicking the blood off his spear.
"Once a guy like you gets figured out, all that's left is despair."
After a brief silence, Gern's lips slowly curved into a dangerous smile.
"You're right…"
He reversed his grip on the black blade Eight Desolations. The dark red fissures along the blade erupted with blinding crimson light under the sun.
"I'm not a swordsman."
The blade began to hum.
Not metal vibrating—
but space itself screaming.
"But…"
Gern's left hand slid along the spine of the blade. In that instant, countless billions of vibration particles compressed, collapsed, and compressed again in a frenzied cycle.
The air around the edge twisted into spiraling vacuum bands.
"Your Haki…"
Gern suddenly looked up.
"Doesn't seem very refined either."
The blade fell.
For a single moment, the world lost all sound.
With Eight Desolations as its origin, the entire harbor floor overturned like a rug being violently flipped.
Hundreds of tons of rock disintegrated into dust the instant they rose.
Seawater was torn apart into crystalline cubes.
The air shattered into fragments like broken glass.
"Whitebeard…"
Lugart's face twisted in horror as buried memories finally surfaced.
This apocalyptic scene dragged something long forgotten back into his mind.
"So that's it…"
His pupils shrank violently.
"Bastard—what kind of Devil Fruit did you eat?!"
Armament Haki flooded over both his arms in an instant—his absolute limit.
"I don't know," Gern replied calmly,
"But I do know this. My Devil Fruit's destructive power… is terrifying."
He bent his knees slightly. The vibration particles on the blade compressed to their absolute extreme. The surrounding space began to warp and deform.
"Powerful enough…"
A manic curve lifted the corner of his mouth.
"To let me ignore—"
The ground beneath him collapsed.
"—even crush…"
"So-called gaps!!!"
As his words fell, Gern's figure blurred within the twisted space.
Only the black blade, swallowing waves of destruction, remained clearly visible.
"Heaven-Shaking · Void Rend!"
The instant the blade swung, space itself shattered like a mirror.
A heaven-piercing vibration slash tore through the sky.
Where it passed, everything was reduced to its most basic state—broken particles and dust.
Half the harbor's sky and coastline were split open by a hundred-meter-long crack,as if a god had dragged a fingernail across the canvas called the world.
Lugart's vision warped violently. He raised his arms on instinct to block—
—and in the next instant, an impact beyond imagination crashed into him.
His Armament Haki shattered on contact, fragile as thin ice.
Crack—BOOM.
In a single moment, Lugart's body was flung away by an invisible force.
Air detonated along his path.
The ground collapsed beneath him.
...
As the dust slowly settled over the ruined harbor,
Gern sheathed his blade.
The crimson fissures along Eight Desolations dimmed, though the surrounding space still trembled faintly, as if the aftershocks had yet to fade.
The harbor floor had completely collapsed, seawater pouring into the massive chasm.
"Urgh… cough…"
Lugart's mouth opened, but only broken sounds escaped.
His internal organs had already been reduced to pulp by the shockwaves.
Both arms—along with the Armament Haki he had once taken pride in—had been severed in a single strike.
Blood poured from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, pooling into a dark red swamp on the scorched ground.
"Your Haki…"
Gern looked down at Lugart's dying body.
"…is as thin as paper."
He bent down and picked up the blood-soaked spear Blood Beak.
"'Blood Spear' Lugart… bounty sixty-nine million."
With a flick of his wrist, the spear tore through the air, piercing Lugart's skull and pinning him beneath his own flag.
The sea wind wailed across the ruins, carrying away the last traces of blood.
"Hah… hah…"
Only after confirming Lugart's death did Gern finally collapse, crashing heavily onto the ground.
His chest heaved violently. Sweat mixed with blood soaked through his torn uniform.
That final strike had been his trump card—
the fusion of Eight Desolations and the Heaven-Shaking Devil Fruit.
By wrapping an ultimate compression of vibration particles around a Supreme Grade blade, what he unleashed wasn't just sharpness, but the trembling of space itself.
Its power was monstrous.
Its cost, just as severe.
At this moment, lifting even a single finger felt impossible.
His muscles screamed as if pierced by countless steel needles, even breathing burned.
"A sixty-nine million opponent…"
"…and I was pushed this far…"
Blazing sunlight fell across his face. Gern narrowed his eyes and touched the thin cut at his neck, where blood still seeped.
"I'm… still too weak."
...
Much later, having recovered slightly, Gern sat atop a chunk of shattered rock, slowly rewrapping Eight Desolations with the white bandages he carried.
In the distance, a Marine warship approached.
Soldiers stood on the deck, gazing in awe at the lone figure amid the ruins.
"Lieutenant Gern won!"
Cheers echoed across the sea, but there was no joy on Gern's face.
He looked up at the sky and murmured softly, the words Lugart had spoken resurfacing in his mind.
Haki—
is the proof of the strong.