The wind across Elbaf's eastern ridge sharpened until it felt like a blade.
Frost tore from the granite plateau in thick white sheets, briefly swallowing the battlefield before the mountain gale scattered it over the cliffs. In the centre of the clearing, Dracule Mihawk stood motionless, appearing almost impossibly small beneath the four giant warriors advancing toward him.
Sig, Thormann, Gantonio, and D.D. Tee moved as one.
This was not the desperate rush of men driven by wounded pride. It was the Iron Wall, an ancient formation refined across generations of war against sea kings, colossal beasts, and enemy fleets that had attempted to breach Elbaf's shores.
Each warrior controlled a different direction.
Together, they intended to leave the human swordsman nowhere to stand.
Sig led the advance with a fortress shield held before him. The overlapping plates of iron and hardened wood formed a moving wall several times taller than any human building. He drove its lower edge into the ridge as he stepped, sealing the ground ahead of Mihawk and steadily reducing the space available to him.
Gantonio moved behind the shield's right side. He released the chain wrapped around his forearm, sending its thick iron links whistling around the battlefield. A broad axe head swung at the end, circling Mihawk from behind and cutting off any attempt to retreat toward the cliff.
D.D. Tee attacked from above.
He thrust his spear downward with both hands, the weapon descending like a falling tower. Its iron tip alone was many times larger than Mihawk's entire body, and its shadow covered the swordsman long before it reached the ground.
Thormann waited behind them.
His immense war hammer rested over one shoulder, its head reinforced by bands of blackened iron. Armament Haki coated his forearms and weapon as he watched Mihawk's hands.
He did not intend to swing first.
The hammer would fall only after Mihawk committed Yoru to the spear or the chain. The instant the black blade was occupied, Thormann would crush the entire point of engagement beneath a blow powerful enough to cave in the side of a warship.
The Iron Wall continued closing.
Mihawk did not interrupt it.
His golden eyes followed every movement: the angle of Sig's shield, the rhythm of Gantonio's chain, the slight tightening in D.D. Tee's shoulders before each adjustment of the spear, and the patience in Thormann's stance.
The formation deserved observation.
Its strength did not come from any one warrior. Each giant surrendered part of his freedom so the others could cover it. Sig gave up speed for control. Gantonio sacrificed direct power for restraint. D.D. Tee limited his thrust to create pressure from above. Thormann waited instead of chasing the first available strike.
For ordinary opponents, the result would have been inescapable.
Mihawk's grip shifted slightly on Yoru.
'Well constructed.'
The chain completed its circle behind him.
Sig's shield drove forward.
D.D. Tee's spear began its final descent.
Thormann raised his hammer.
The trap closed.
Mihawk moved.
He rotated Yoru once.
The motion appeared almost lazy, but the blade tore through the surrounding air with enough force to make the ridge scream.
A vast dark-green flying slash erupted from Yoru.
It was not a narrow line meant for a human opponent. The crescent expanded until it stretched across the giant formation, broad enough to meet weapons built on Elbaf's scale. Frost, loose stone, and entire trees were ripped from the ridge in its wake.
Yet the slash did not spread without control.
Its destructive force remained compressed into a thin edge, enormous in width but precise in depth. Mihawk had not aimed at the giants' bodies. He had aimed at four carefully selected weaknesses inside the formation.
The flying slash met Sig's shield first.
It passed through the heavy support brace behind the outer plates without cutting through the full face of the shield. The brace split cleanly, and the immense weight of the structure shifted sideways before Sig could compensate.
His left shoulder absorbed the sudden imbalance.
Before the joint could tear, Mihawk appeared beside it.
To Sig, the swordsman was little more than a black speck moving near his arm. Mihawk struck the joint with the flat of Yoru, placing the blow precisely between muscle and bone.
Sig's arm went numb.
His shield fell from his hand and crashed into the ridge.
The same broad flying slash continued across the formation.
It struck the anchor link of Gantonio's chain at the exact moment the weapon reached its highest tension.
The reinforced link snapped.
The released chain recoiled with all the force Gantonio had placed into its rotation. Mihawk turned Yoru slightly, and the pressure trailing behind the slash redirected the whipping links inward.
Gantonio's own chain wrapped around his chest and arms.
The hooked axe buried itself in the earth behind him, pulling the chain tight and pinning the giant's elbows against his sides. He struggled once, but every movement only tightened the iron around him.
Thormann's hammer was already descending.
The dark-green crescent reached it next.
Rather than cleaving through the entire weapon, the slash crossed the iron head along a hairline weakness where two reinforced sections had been forged together.
The hammerhead split in half.
Both pieces continued downward and struck the ridge on either side of Mihawk, exploding through the stone with deafening impacts. Thormann remained standing between them, staring at the bare wooden haft in his hands.
D.D. Tee's spear came last.
The flying slash struck just below its iron tip and cut through the reinforced collar securing the metal to the shaft. The spearhead spun away and buried itself deep in a distant cliff face.
The wooden shaft continued falling toward Mihawk.
He stepped forward.
The giant weapon struck the ground behind him as Mihawk passed inside its reach and crossed the distance to D.D. Tee's chest.
Even standing on the ridge directly before the giant, Mihawk barely reached above the height of his boot. To strike the warrior properly, he leapt onto the descending spear shaft and ran along its surface in three light steps.
D.D. Tee tried to pull back.
Mihawk reached him first.
He turned Yoru and drove the broad, unsharpened back of the blade into the centre of the giant's chest.
BOOM!
The force travelled through D.D. Tee's enormous frame without breaking through his ribs. His breath exploded from his lungs in a white cloud, and his eyes lost focus.
The giant fell backward.
His body struck the ridge with enough force to send a tremor through the mountain.
Sig dropped to one knee, unable to lift his numb arm. Gantonio remained bound beneath his own chain. Thormann stood empty-handed between the severed halves of his hammer, while D.D. Tee lay unconscious in the fractured snow.
The Iron Wall had fallen.
Not through overwhelming destruction.
Mihawk had dismantled every part that allowed it to function.
Elder Jarul stood near the tree line, his beard whipping in the violent wind. His eyes moved from one fallen warrior to the next.
No throat had been opened.
No limb had been severed.
Even the massive flying slash had passed through the formation without touching exposed flesh. It had been large enough to confront giant weapons, but controlled closely enough to cut only the structures Mihawk had chosen.
Jarul's grip tightened around the haft of his weapon.
The reports from the southern shore returned to him.
Those victims had suffered rough, unnatural wounds. Their flesh had been torn without discipline, and their shadows had been disturbed by something no ordinary blade should have been capable of touching.
Nothing before him resembled that violence.
Mihawk's swordsmanship was clean enough to separate iron from iron without drawing blood from the warrior holding it.
And Giovanni's presence had felt entirely different when Jarul visited the dungeon. The young pirate's Haki had been fierce, hot, and unmistakably alive. It carried none of the cold distortion described by the sentries whose shadows had been stolen.
Two dangerous outsiders had entered Elbaf.
Neither seemed responsible for the southern attack.
The realization settled heavily inside Jarul.
'We imprisoned an innocent guest while another enemy moved freely through our land.'
The elder looked toward Hajrudin, Stansen, and Bjorn, then at the four giants who had just fallen.
Seven of Elbaf's eleven elite warriors had been defeated.
All seven still lived because the human before them had chosen restraint.
Jarul's certainty fractured completely.
His duty, however, remained.
Mihawk had entered Elbaf without permission, crossed sacred territory, and struck down the kingdom's warriors. Even if he had not committed the crimes blamed on Giovanni, Jarul could not simply allow an armed intruder to walk deeper into the island.
Heavy footsteps sounded behind the elder.
The final four members of the vanguard stepped forward.
Rhodes carried an enormous axe capable of cutting through sections of the ridge itself. Raideen lowered a long spear whose polished head flashed like lightning in the grey light. Kiba unhooked heavy chains fitted with curved blades, while Blyue raised a broad shield and lowered his body for a direct rush.
They did not look at their fallen comrades with panic.
They studied them.
Every warrior Mihawk had defeated remained conscious enough to understand that the swordsman had deliberately spared them. That knowledge did not weaken the final four's resolve.
It made them more careful.
Rhodes stepped to the front and drove the base of his axe into the stone.
"Rhodes," Jarul warned.
The warrior did not turn.
"If we allow fear to lower our weapons now, we shame the mercy he showed them."
Raideen moved into position at his side.
Kiba's chains slid across the snow.
Blyue locked his shield before them.
The formation they assumed was not designed to capture an enemy or gradually close his escape. It was the vanguard's final technique, built around destroying the battlefield beneath an opponent and denying him stable ground, distance, or rhythm.
Mihawk watched them settle into place.
Rhodes lifted his axe.
"In the name of Elbaf and the warriors still standing," he roared, "prepare the Funeral of Jotun!"
The final four raised their weapons together.
Mihawk lowered Yoru toward them.
---
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