"What?!"
Im's brow furrowed as she slowly turned around.
She and the Demon Warder locked eyes, both sides descending into dead silence. Inside the cockpit, Kuzan held his breath, bracing himself for the clash.
He was intimately familiar with how terrifying Im was, and based on how Kenshin and the Golden Lion had fared against her, her strength had not diminished in the slightest. If anything, she had grown even stronger!
Yet, feeling the violent, surging power coursing through his body, Kuzan felt there was still a chance to hold her off for a while.
The amplification provided by the Demon Warder surpassed even his wildest expectations. Perhaps they truly could pull this off.
"Come, then. Let us settle this once and for all—and decide whose hands this world will fall into!" Crimson and pitch-black light flared violently within Im's eyes.
Her gaze remained locked onto the Demon Warder.
Clearly, she had mistaken Kuzan for Drake.
It was an understandable assumption; after all, on the surface, the vessel looked entirely identical to when Drake piloted it.
"Come!" Seeing no reaction from the Demon Warder, Im flickered forward in a sudden burst of speed.
Since they wouldn't make the first move, she would strike first!
"Kuzan, we're leaving everything to you!" the Dragon Flag Pirates called out solemnly.
"Leave it to me!"
Kuzan's eyes narrowed. Plumes of white vapor vented from his frame as a cataclysmic wave of freezing cold poured outward.
The ambient temperature plummeted yet again. The Demon Warder raised a single mechanical palm, thrusting it forward with deceptive gentleness.
A torrential wave of absolute frost converged and blasted straight toward the incoming Im. The surrounding black mist was flash-frozen in its tracks, making it seem as though the entire world had ground to an icy halt.
Mid-charge, Im was instantly entombed in solid ice. Howling blizzards shrieked across the sky as the dark mist began to disperse bit by bit.
Within breaths, the freezing air high above began reaching the ocean below.
The surging, tempestuous waves began to freeze, frost spreading endlessly across the water.
A true descent of absolute winter.
This was the sheer amplification the Demon Warder granted to Kuzan's abilities. Not only had it elevated his combat prowess to an entirely new tier, but it allowed him to affect the sea from nearly ten thousand meters up in the sky.
Such a feat had been utterly impossible for him in the past.
Freezing the atmosphere itself, letting the falling snow alter the surface of the sea, and casting an unbroken shelf of ice across the water—only sustained snowfall combined with unimaginable sub-zero temperatures could accomplish such a miracle.
And now, he had pulled it off!
"Incredible, Kuzan-aniki!" Bell cheered in excitement.
Freezing Im the moment he took the helm was a display of absolute dominance.
"Here we go!" Kuzan stepped forward, and the Demon Warder mirrored his motion mid-air, closing the distance to Im in an instant.
He knew that hoping to inflict critical damage on Im with just this level of force was pure wishful thinking.
Sweeping a colossal arm forward, a surge of bone-chilling frost coalesced and slammed heavily into Im's frozen form.
The ice shattered into splinters. The gargantuan titan of black mist was impaled clean through by a massive, jagged spear of solid ice.
In the very same breath, a concussive mechanical fist drove forward.
The atmosphere itself seemed to tremble under the bitter frost that blanketed heaven and earth.
Breaking free from the ice, the corners of Im's lips curled into a faint smirk. Lunging forward to meet the blow, she threw a punch of her own.
BOOM!
Fist collided with fist.
A colossal shockwave of raw kinetic energy rippled outward. Fierce gales tore across the sky, churning the sea below.
Fissures began splintering across the unbroken expanse of ice on the ocean surface.
From a single collision, the sheer collateral damage reaching so far below left anyone watching breathless.
Caught in the outer perimeter of the blast wave, the Golden Lion was blown away in the blink of an eye, vanishing into the horizon.
No one could truly fathom the bitterness in Shiki's heart at this moment. He, the great Golden Lion, a legendary titan of the seas, had been reduced to someone who didn't even have the right to watch the battle from the sidelines.
It was the greatest humiliation of his entire life!
After being hurled through the air for who knew how long, Shiki finally managed to arrest his momentum.
Feeling the tremors and howling winds rolling continuously from the epicenter of the clash, an overwhelming sense of unreality gripped him.
How could those two be this monstrously strong?!
The power displayed by Kuzan and Im had completely shattered his understanding of combat. Even the strongest individuals he had ever encountered in his prime fell far short of their level.
Just the collateral shockwaves alone were enough to prevent a pinnacle pirate like him from even approaching.
A flicker of hesitation crossed Shiki's face. He began to wonder whether he should simply turn around and flee.
It was abundantly clear that there was no place for him in a fight like this. Furthermore, his grievous injuries hadn't been genuinely healed; they had merely been suppressed for the time being.
If he sustained another heavy blow, it would pose an immediate threat to his life.
At this rate, he was likely to throw his life away here for nothing...
In the end, Shiki let out a self-deprecating laugh.
Heh. To think that I, the Golden Lion, would become someone who clings so pathetically to life.
After all these years, perhaps it's long past time I drew the final curtain on this lifetime of adventure... Wouldn't you say, Roger?
He cast a glance at the dark mist blanketing the surroundings. This place, known as the weakest of the four seas, currently looked like a living hell.
It was also the most awe-inspiring spectacle he had ever witnessed in his entire existence.
Perhaps dying in a place like this wasn't so bad after all.
A faint smile touched Shiki's lips.
Picking out an arbitrary slab of floating stone, he sat down cross-legged. Pulling a gourd of liquor from who-knew-where, the old pirate discarded every shred of dignity and began chugging greedily.
It was as if he had suddenly let go of everything, treating the apocalyptic hellscape before him as nothing more than a grand, final play.
A fitting backdrop for the closing act of his life.
He drank gulp after gulp.
When one bottle ran dry, he produced another.
After an indeterminate amount of time, another colossal boom echoed across the sea.
A massive silhouette plummeted from the heavens, crashing straight through the frozen surface below, shattering an immense crater into the ice before sinking into the depths of the ocean.
"Is it finally over...?" Shiki let out a long, weary sigh.
Though he had anticipated the outcome, watching the Demon Warder get swatted out of the sky and swallowed by the sea still stirred a profound sense of melancholy within him.
Having watched the battle unfold for so long, he had finally come to terms with an undeniable truth:
Im was an insurmountable existence!
Even though the power unleashed by the Demon Warder was capable of shattering the world, standing against Im was like an infant trying to wrestle a grown man.
They simply weren't in the same realm!
"Roger, it seems I am about to bear witness to an era far beyond anything we ever imagined. To think such a monster existed in this world... If you knew about this, you'd probably want to crawl right back out from the other side, wouldn't you? Hahahaha..."
"What an unbelievable world!"
Shiki tilted his head back, gazing up into the dark sky. This life had dragged on for far, far too long... A sudden wave of loneliness washed over him.
Abruptly, a voice chimed in from right beside him: "You're right about that. This world truly is incredible."
Every hair on Shiki's body stood on end as he instantly locked onto the speaker's position.
Standing before him was an impossibly young man, nodding in earnest agreement, shifting between furrowed brows and deep contemplation.
"Y-Y-You... Who the hell are you?!" Shiki's eyes bulged. He hadn't sensed in the slightest when this young man had materialized behind his back!
What is going on here?!
Since when did this world produce so many goddamn monsters?! Just what on earth happened to the seas while I was locked away in Impel Down?!
"Oh? You mean me?" The young man paused for a brief moment, then broke into a wide, confident grin. "My name is Drake! The man who's going to become the Pirate King's third brother!"
Indeed, the one who had finally arrived was Drake.