The eastern ridge of Elbaf had ceased to be a mountain peak. It was a boiling cauldron of shattered stone, crushed frost, and howling gale winds.
Three distinct wills bled into the atmosphere, creating a storm of pure violence. Red-black lightning flickered wildly across the overcast sky, interweaving with dense black ribbons of supreme Haki and cold, razor-thin arcs of dark green steel.
In the eye of the storm stood Dracule Mihawk.
He had barely shifted his footing three yards since the clash began. His movements were terrifyingly sparse. A tilt of the head, a half-step back, a slight turn of his wrists. Yoru, held lightly in his right hand, moved with fluid, weightless economy.
"Move, you bastard!" Giovanni snapped.
Floating thirty feet in the air via Sky Walk, Gio kicked the atmosphere, launching himself downward like a black meteor. Black Armament swallowed Ace's edge as thin Conqueror's lightning crawled along the Supreme Grade blade. His gaze remained fixed entirely on Mihawk, desperate to turn the chaotic battle into the pure, uninterrupted sword duel he had craved for three long years.
Before Gio's blade could reach the hawk-eyed swordsman, a mountain of forged steel swept through the air from his left flank.
"STOP TURNING YOUR BACK ON ME!" Loki screamed, his face contorted in a mask of berserk rage.
Loki didn't care about tactical nuance. Whichever opponent had struck his pride most recently became his sole target. Seconds ago, Mihawk had knocked Loki's own greatsword back into his chest; now, Gio's sharp insults in the Underworld burned in his brain. Loki swung his colossal blade in a horizontal sweep that carried enough kinetic force to level a coastal fortress.
Gio gritted his teeth, forced to abort his trajectory toward Mihawk. Using the smooth, momentum-redirecting principles of Davy swordsmanship, Gio set the spine of Ace against the flat of Loki's giant sword at an angle. Instead of resisting the enormous force, he let Loki's swing carry him with it, spinning smoothly off the massive steel plane and kicking off the giant blade to launch himself right back toward Mihawk.
Mihawk didn't even raise a high guard. As Gio descended and Loki followed up with a furious, downward fist-strike, Mihawk took one precise step to the left.
Gio's descending slash lined up perfectly with Loki's incoming fist.
KABOOM!
Gio's Haki-infused cutlass collided directly with Loki's knuckles, sending a violent shockwave of dark lightning detonating between the human and the giant. The clash stopped Gio dead in mid-air and knocked Loki's fist violently off course.
Mihawk turned Yoru once with an effortless flick of his wrist.
"Burakku Hōku."
A narrow, dark-green flying slash tore upward between them. Gio twisted clear in mid-air, but the edge carved a bleeding line across Loki's ribs. The slash kept climbing, tearing a clean seam through the cloud cover high above Elbaf. The giant prince staggered back, one enormous heel crushing the granite behind him.
Every missed swing, every deflected blast, and every stray wave of Haki violently carved into the landscape. Landslides of ice and pulverized earth cascaded down the mountain face into the sea below. Deep beneath the torn topsoil, massive, iron-hard subterranean roots of the Treasure Tree Adam were laid bare, glowing faintly where stray Conqueror's lightning scorched their prehistoric bark.
From the safety of a collapsed ridge two hundred yards away, the recovering warriors of the Giant Guard watched in stunned, breathless silence.
Hajrudin pushed himself up onto his elbows, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Beside him, Stansen and Rhodes rested against a cracked boulder, their limbs still numb from Mihawk's earlier precision cuts and Haki blows.
"Two Conquerors are attacking him..." Stansen choked out, his eyes wide with horror and awe. "...and he's still controlling the fight."
"No," Hajrudin rasped, his voice thick with realization. "Watch his blade."
Hajrudin watched Mihawk's yellow eyes. The swordsman wasn't simply reacting to Giovanni and Loki. As he parried Loki's wild strikes and redirected Gio's lightning-fast aerial thrusts, Mihawk's attention never narrowed to the two opponents in front of him. Every flying slash rose or dipped away from the wounded giants. Every deflected blow from Loki's giant greatsword was guided away from the rubble where the eleven dazed giants lay incapacitated.
Even with Giovanni and Loki pressing him from opposite directions, nothing Mihawk redirected came near the fallen giants.
He's fighting both of them... and he's still watching us, Hajrudin thought, a cold sweat breaking out across his brow.
In the center of the clearing, Giovanni's breathing grew heavy. His frustration was mounting. Every time he tried to pin Mihawk into a rhythm, Loki's giant frame intruded, or Mihawk subtly shifted his posture to use Loki's vast reach as an impenetrable wall.
The memory of his defeat flared violently in Gio's mind. The image of his own blood on the deck, the absolute helplessness he had felt before he learned Future Sight, before he mastered Advanced Armament, before he held a Supreme Grade blade.
'I'm not the man you cut down three years ago,' Gio's mind roared.
His composure slipped. The Conqueror's Haki he had fought to keep compressed suddenly burst outward in a wild surge of dark lightning. His aura flared brightly, his anger flooding his senses as he charged Mihawk directly, abandoning his footwork for pure, blinding speed.
"Enough games, Mihawk. Fight me!" Gio yelled, bringing Ace down in a high, aggressive arc.
Mihawk didn't flinch. He didn't even use two hands.
"Your sword grew stronger," Mihawk said, his voice flat and glacial. "Your temper did not."
As Gio's broad, anger-fueled swing descended, Mihawk didn't block it. He slipped inside the wider radius of Gio's flared Haki with the smallest turn of his shoulders. Yoru flashed upward through the opening in Gio's guard with surgical speed.
Gio's eyes widened. A thin, cold line of pain scorched across his right shoulder.
Gio instinctively leaped backward, landing heavily on the frost-covered stone. He reached up, his bandaged fingers touching his right shoulder. Blood stained his dark coat. A thin, shallow cut that echoed the wound Mihawk had given him three years ago.
All the power Giovanni had gained meant little if Mihawk could still read his anger before Ace moved. He belonged in this fight now. His Haki and speed had proven that much. But he still wasn't Mihawk's equal. Not yet.
"I'LL BURY BOTH OF YOU!"
Loki's roar shattered the moment.
The giant prince was entirely past the point of reason. Blood ran down Loki's side and he had been ignored by two humans for the last time.
Loki drove his greatsword point-first into the fractured ridge, freeing both hands. He slammed both of his colossal palms deep into the fault line of the mountain. His muscles bulged to monstrous proportions, his red-black Conqueror's Haki coating his massive forearms like liquid iron.
With a sickening, thunderous groan of tearing earth, Loki violently heaved upward.
An entire shelf of bedrock and thick roots from the Adam Tree ripped free from the mountainside. Loki raised the massive slab over his head, his eyes crazed, and hurled the vast mass of stone straight toward the ridge.
The shadow of the falling stone covered the clearing in total darkness.
Mihawk raised Yoru. The blade tilted away from the fallen giants.
At that exact moment, Giovanni spotted it.
Because Mihawk had raised his blade high to handle the falling stone, his lower guard was open for a fraction of a second. It looked like the cleanest opening Gio had seen since the battle began. A split-second window where Ace could drive straight past Mihawk's hip and force the swordsman to retreat.
Gio dropped into a low stance, his boots cracking the stone, ready to spring forward—
FLASH.
Gio's gaze snapped into focus.
Future Sight.
The veil of the next two seconds tore open in his mind:
Gio springs forward. Mihawk turns Yoru and catches Ace. The exchange steals only a heartbeat, but that heartbeat is enough. The falling shelf crashes onto the eastern ledge, crushing Hajrudin and Stansen beneath the mass of stone.
Gio's heart slammed against his ribs. His teeth gritted so hard he tasted copper.
The opening against Mihawk was still there.
Above him, the falling stone swallowed Hajrudin and Stansen beneath its shadow.
For the first time since Mihawk arrived, Giovanni looked away from him.
---
Find 10 early chapters on my patreon
[Patreon.com/tenten100?]