The two sides had clashed violently across this stretch of sea, flames soaring into the sky while battle cries shook the heavens.
Countless displays of courage and hot-blooded resolve had been poured into this battlefield, laying bare both the fragility and the tenacity of life.
In the end, Ron had led his warriors to a decisive victory through his extraordinary judgment, overwhelming strength, and unwavering conviction.
This victory represented far more than simple military success.
It had established the Divine Kingdom's authority beyond any doubt.
The Eternal Divine Kingdom, once shrouded in mystery and hidden behind layers of uncertainty, now stood before the world like a towering mountain rising above the clouds, forcing every major power to regard it with awe.
At the same time, this war had undoubtedly opened the door to an entirely new era.
The future was beginning to unfold before them, filled with possibilities no one could yet predict.
From this moment onward, the balance of the seas had changed completely.
The once-calm waters were scarred by the traces of war, while previously orderly shipping routes had been thrown into chaos.
Every wave seemed to carry echoes of the brutal battle that had just ended, and every gust of sea wind still smelled faintly of smoke and gunpowder.
The surviving Marine fleet looked utterly miserable.
Their ships were riddled with damage. Some had enormous holes blasted through their hulls and were steadily taking on seawater, while others had been smashed so badly that broken planks littered their decks and trailed through the sea behind them.
The warships resembled a pack of wounded beasts dragging their battered bodies away from the waters surrounding the Eternal Divine Kingdom as quickly as possible.
Marine officers frantically attempted to restore some semblance of order.
They shouted commands until their voices turned hoarse, signal flags waving constantly as they tried to reform the scattered fleet.
But the soldiers had not recovered from the terror of the battle.
Fear and confusion still filled their eyes.
Again and again, they looked back toward the battlefield they had just escaped, as though expecting some new nightmare to emerge from the smoke at any moment.
Then, just as they began to believe they could finally breathe again—
"Woooooo—! Boom! Boom! Boom!"
The deep, penetrating sound of conch horns suddenly rolled across the sea from every direction.
There had been no warning.
The powerful notes swept over the water like an incoming tide, instantly shattering the brief silence following the Marines' escape.
The long echoes lingered across the sea and sent a chill through everyone who heard them.
Then shadows began appearing along the distant horizon.
At first, they were faint and indistinct.
But as they drew closer, the Marines finally realized what they were seeing.
Pirate flags.
Dozens of them.
Each bore different colors and vicious symbols, rising one after another above the horizon until they seemed to tear apart the boundary between sea and sky.
Then the ships themselves appeared.
Strange vessels bristling with weapons and murderous intent slowly emerged from the distance.
First one.
Then ten.
Then a hundred...
And still more kept coming.
The sheer number was enough to make anyone's scalp crawl.
It was as though a ghost fleet had risen from the deepest reaches of the ocean.
Pirate ships poured in from every direction, rapidly tightening their formation around the remaining Marines until a suffocating shadow seemed to fall over the entire sea.
"KILL THEM!!!"
A deafening roar shattered the air.
Then countless other savage voices joined it.
"DON'T LET THE MARINES GET AWAY!"
"For the Divine Kingdom! For Lord Ron!"
"Kill those World Government dogs!"
Their battle cries crashed over the already shaken Marines like a tidal wave.
Wild roars mixed with the metallic clang of weapons striking against ship rails, each blow sounding like another toll of a funeral bell.
Together, those sounds formed a terrifying chorus that sent fear through every surviving Marine.
These pirates had come from every corner of the New World.
They possessed different histories, different loyalties, and different ambitions.
Some had probably been bitter enemies before today.
Others were undoubtedly opportunists who had simply followed the news, hoping to profit from the chaos.
But now they had all been drawn here by the overwhelming strength the Divine Kingdom had displayed.
Some were intimidated.
Some were fascinated.
And some simply wanted to ingratiate themselves with the man who now seemed increasingly likely to become the future ruler of the seas.
Whatever their reasons, they had all chosen the same moment to appear.
They descended upon the defeated Marines like a pack of starving wolves spotting wounded prey, eager to become the final weight that crushed what remained of the fleet.
"It's over... It's a whole pirate armada!"
One Marine spoke through trembling lips.
Despair covered his face as he stared at the growing number of pirate ships surrounding them.
His legs nearly gave way beneath him.
"We're surrounded!"
Another soldier cried out helplessly.
The remaining Marine fleet now seemed trapped inside an enormous cage.
Enemies surrounded them on every side.
Every route of escape was being sealed.
The cries spreading through the fleet carried fear, helplessness, and absolute despair.
Not long ago, this had been a proud and confident Marine force.
Now it had just suffered a catastrophic defeat.
Smoke still lingered above the battlefield behind them, while the stench of blood already saturated the sea breeze.
Their morale had collapsed like a candle extinguished beneath a storm.
Many of their veteran commanders were badly wounded, their uniforms soaked in blood as they struggled simply to remain conscious.
Others had been captured outright, their pride and honor dragged away with them.
Even the once-imposing warships had been reduced to battered wrecks, their hulls covered in cannon holes, cracks, and scorched scars.
And yet the nightmare still was not over.
Now they had sailed directly into another terrifying situation—
A pirate encirclement vastly larger than their remaining fleet.
Everywhere they looked, pirate ships crowded the sea.
The dark mass of vessels surrounded them like an enormous net descending from the sky.
There was nowhere left to run.
For the surviving Marines, it looked like a dead end with no path to survival.
...
Every Marine soldier wore the same expression of fear and despair, their eyes betraying both terror at the thought of death and uncertainty over what awaited them.
At that critical moment, some of the more ferocious pirate ships ignored the dense cannon fire entirely and charged straight toward the Marine fleet like maddened beasts.
BOOM!
With deafening crashes, the ships slammed together.
Grappling hooks immediately flew through the air like striking snakes, catching firmly on the opposing vessels and locking them together.
"Pirates! They're pirates! There are too many of them!"
"Where the hell did these guys come from?! Why are there so many Devil Fruit users?!"
"The Ice-Ice Fruit, the Glint-Glint Fruit, even the Sand-Sand Fruit!"
"Use the Super Green Blood serum! Drag them in with Black Vortex!"
"I already used mine! I don't have any left!"
"Same here!"
In the next instant, countless vicious-looking pirates with bloodlust gleaming in their eyes brandished their blades and leaped aboard with wild howls.
They descended upon the Marine ships like starving wolves.
Their heavy footsteps pounded across the decks, sounding almost like the approach of death itself.
The pirates immediately crashed into the panicked Marines.
Steel flashed in every direction.
Blood sprayed across the decks.
The pirates attacked ferociously, every swing of their weapons carrying lethal intent, while the Marines struggled to defend themselves through overwhelming fear.
Their movements no longer possessed their former sharpness and discipline.
Many were no longer truly fighting back at all, merely reacting on instinct and desperately trying to avoid the next fatal blow.
The Marines' previously somewhat organized retreat collapsed instantly beneath the sudden assault.
What had been a withdrawal became a bloody breakout—
And then a desperate scramble for survival.
Chaos consumed the fleet.
Men ran in every direction as shouts and screams merged together.
Some Marines abandoned their ships entirely and threw themselves into the sea, hoping they could somehow swim beyond the encirclement.
Others desperately worked the oars of smaller boats, trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the battlefield.
To carve out any path of escape at all, the Marines were forced to make a brutal choice.
They abandoned the critically wounded.
And they abandoned ships too badly damaged to keep up.
The decision cut deeply into everyone involved.
The soldiers who could no longer move stared desperately at their retreating comrades, knowing exactly what being left behind meant.
The officers ordered to carry out the withdrawal were no less tormented.
But there was no other choice.
Amid anguished cries, the critically wounded were left where they lay.
The most heavily damaged warships were set ablaze, transforming into enormous balls of fire behind the retreating fleet.
The Marines paid an even greater price with every mile they gained.
Every step toward survival demanded more blood.
More lives.
There was a cruel irony to it all.
Once, they had represented "justice."
They had sailed the seas hunting pirates and maintaining order, their banners inspiring awe wherever they appeared.
Now they fled like beaten dogs, hunted down by the very pirates they had always branded as evil.
The flags that had once flown so proudly above them now hung dull and battered in the wind.
...
At last, the final handful of Marine warships still capable of sailing forced their way forward.
Heavy smoke poured from their damaged hulls while flames continued spreading across their decks.
They resembled wounded beasts being chased by a pack of vicious hunting dogs, battered from head to toe yet still desperately running for their lives.
With enormous difficulty, they finally broke through a weak point in the pirate encirclement.
Then they fled toward the distant sea.
Gradually, their burning silhouettes disappeared beyond the endless horizon.
And with that, the enormous battle into which Marine Headquarters had committed nearly all of its elite forces—a campaign intended to destroy the Eternal Divine Kingdom in one decisive strike—
came to an end.
Not with victory.
Not even with a narrow defeat.
But with an unprecedented and irreversible rout.
A crushing loss soaked in blood and tragedy.
...
Looking back across the vast waters where countless warriors had fought and several supreme battles had unfolded, the sea itself seemed transformed.
It was no longer the vibrant blue ocean it had once been.
It had become a floating graveyard.
The eerily quiet waters seemed almost like an old man who had witnessed too much suffering, silently recounting the unbearable weight of the Marines' defeat.
Every rise and fall of the waves resembled a heavy sigh.
Marine wreckage covered the surface as far as the eye could see.
The enormous remains of shattered warships drifted helplessly among the waves like the bones of dead sea monsters.
Broken planks were tossed apart by the surf, occasionally colliding with one another with dull knocks.
Torn strips of sailcloth whipped wildly in the wind, like hands making one final desperate struggle.
Twisted cannon barrels lay scattered throughout the wreckage, some even driven down into the seabed, never to fire another shot.
The Marine flags that had once flown proudly as symbols of justice and order had lost all their former splendor.
Some had been completely consumed by fire, leaving only blackened scraps fluttering in the wind.
Others floated in blood-red seawater, stained dark crimson and carried helplessly along by the waves as though silently mourning the outcome of the battle.
Smoke still covered the sky.
The lingering haze merged into a low gray shroud that hung heavily over the entire sea, like an enormous black curtain lowered in mourning for the dead.
The wind carried the sharp smell of blood—
the lingering scent of countless warriors who had spilled their lives here.
Mixed with it was the heavy odor of gunpowder left behind by the battle, along with the nauseating stench of burned ships and scorched wreckage.
Together, those smells filled the air with a suffocating heaviness.
...
The first rays of dawn had only just begun breaking through the thin clouds and spilling across the shimmering sea.
Elsewhere, much of the world still seemed peaceful.
Quiet.
Unaware.
Only the sharp cries of seagulls cut through the calm of the morning.
Then came the distinctive scent of fresh ink.
Across printing houses, high-speed presses worked without rest.
Emergency editions of newspapers rolled off the machines one after another.
Soon, freshly printed papers scattered across the world like falling snow, carried toward every nation, every island, and every corner of the sea.
The news of what had happened was about to reach the world.
...