Black appeared in the ability card space. A hundred meters away, Whitebeard's towering figure stood opposite him.
"What? Do all you Four Emperors like to choose towns as battlefields?"
Black carried his long saber, the dark patterns on its sheath gleaming with a cold metallic luster in the dim light.
Their Conqueror's Haki clashed across the air, making the nearby houses creak and groan as cracks spread along the load-bearing pillars.
Whitebeard looked much like he did during the Marineford War, but his wrinkled hands gripped Murakumogiri so tightly that the blade hummed like tearing silk.
"Your saber is much better maintained than your hands."
Black quipped before leaping upward.
Because in the future he saw through Observation Haki, the ground below shattered like glass.
The next moment, Whitebeard swept his bisento horizontally, and the atmosphere itself tore apart!
Nearby houses were pulverized by the vibration, and the shockwave carrying gravel exploded outward in a fan shape.
Black leapt into midair and drew his long saber.
The black-purple blade, crystallized with Armament Haki, split open the incoming shockwave, and the slash flew directly toward Whitebeard.
This time, Whitebeard had no Jozu to block for him.
He casually swung his fist and batted the slash aside.
Boom!
The slash struck the ground, carving a gully several hundred meters long.
Black had already dived down using gravity, the tip of his saber wrapped in black-gold lightning of Conqueror's Haki and spiraling Ghost Qi purple flames.
Whitebeard stepped back half a pace as Murakumogiri, infused with Conqueror's Haki, met the attack.
The moment the two weapons collided, the sky seemed to split apart as if torn by an invisible giant hand, and the storm blasted the surrounding ground clean.
Black was thrown back dozens of meters, flipping several times before stabilizing himself, while Whitebeard remained utterly unmoved.
"Such explosive power! Such terrifying strength!"
Even before joining the Rocks Pirates, Whitebeard was said to be strong enough to lift a warship with one hand. He was a monster born of the sea.
Age had weakened his stamina, preventing prolonged battles, but his bursts still carried the power of his prime.
Whitebeard plunged his bisento into the ground, clenched both fists, and swung them violently.
Instantly, the entire town's foundation tilted as the air shattered like glass.
Black covered his entire body with Armament Haki, rising with Moonwalk while continuously slashing, shattering the incoming boulders one by one.
Whitebeard flipped Murakumogiri, leaped high, and brought it down fiercely.
"Secret Art: Galaxy!"
Although Black blocked the blow with the tsuba of his sword, he was still sent flying.
"Secret Art: Ghost Flash!"
While flying backward, Black slashed repeatedly, three Haki-infused sword waves flying toward Whitebeard in a triangular formation.
Whitebeard parried every attack with sweeping chops of his bisento, displaying astonishing agility.
It was hard to imagine a man over six meters tall moving with such speed.
Black landed on the ground, his long saber angled toward the earth, the black-gold lightning on its blade still crackling.
"Very impressive, old man!"
Whitebeard responded with a sudden thrust.
The air fractured into a spiderweb pattern before the blade, but Black had already predicted the trajectory with Observation Haki and countered with an Iai slash.
The shockwaves from their Conqueror's Haki collision raised a wall of earth tens of meters high.
The tip of Murakumogiri suddenly burst from the dust cloud.
Whitebeard had forced his way forward using the recoil of his own shockwaves!
Clang!
Crystallized Armament Haki spread across Black's chest like ice cracking.
Whitebeard's attack had come unexpectedly and wasn't fully charged.
Black's triple-layer defense barely held.
With a backhand motion he knocked the bisento aside and unleashed a horizontal slash.
Whitebeard blocked vertically, and both men were blasted back nearly a hundred meters, once again facing each other from afar.
Black grinned.
"You've revealed a weakness, Whitebeard!"
This was no empty boast.
After several exchanges, Whitebeard's breathing rhythm had subtly changed.
Though the difference was small, Black's Observation Haki caught it clearly.
The battle stretched from afternoon into the early morning.
Black maintained a steady rhythm neither rushing nor slowing.
Unlike his battle with Garin before, the longer this fight continued, the more advantageous it became for him.
When Whitebeard swung Murakumogiri again, the shockwaves were no longer as devastating as before.
Black crystallized Armament Haki into rhomboid armor on his left shoulder and took the residual shockwave head-on.
"Already holding back?"
He shook his numb arm.
On his blade, Armament Haki, Conqueror's Haki, and Ghost Qi intertwined.
"Then I'll take this chance!"
"Secret Art: Storm!"
Black surged forward, one-third faster than before.
The sword energy he released was no longer crescent-shaped but spiraled like a drilling spear.
Whitebeard blocked horizontally, but his declining stamina prevented him from fully resisting the penetrating force of Armament Haki.
The impact reached his bones, forcing his right knee to bend slightly.
Black's Observation Haki caught the opening instantly, and a kick smashed into Whitebeard's jaw.
Blood seeped from Whitebeard's mouth, yet he silently counterattacked.
The shockwave sphere released from Murakumogiri pulverized everything within several thousand meters into dust.
Black leaped into the air and brought his sword down.
The slash split into eight streaks midair, each infused with Conqueror's Haki and Ghost Qi.
"Secret Art: Underworld!"
Whitebeard shattered five, but the remaining three tore through his defense.
The blood that spilled from his chest froze into icy crystals before it could fall.
Black did not use blazing flames like Garin.
Instead, Ghost Qi gave his slashes a chilling cold.
"Whitebeard! Have you ever seen a slash fall from the sky?!"
Black held his saber with both hands, body inverted, spinning downward in a man-and-sword-as-one strike.
Whitebeard looked up and thrust Murakumogiri upward with both hands.
The awakened Tremor-Tremor Fruit shattered space layer by layer like glass.
But Black's strike was faster than the spread of the shockwaves.
Three types of Haki condensed at the tip of his blade into a blinding white point.
"Secret Art: Starfall!"
The blade burst from Whitebeard's back, spraying blood.
Murakumogiri clanged to the ground.
Whitebeard staggered forward two steps before his body slowly dissolved into particles of light.
Black's strike was not a simple piercing wound like Akainu's attack during Marineford.
The rotating impact had already destroyed most of the internal organs.
"Too bad you're only an AI… otherwise I'd ask whether One Piece really exists."
Before he finished speaking, Black also vanished from the ability card space.
Back in the azure System Space, Black looked down at the card in his hand as a wide smile spread across his face.
Ability Card: Tremor-Tremor Fruit.
"What a pity that Devil Fruit ability cards cannot inherit the original owner's development level."
"If it had given me an awakened Tremor-Tremor Fruit directly, that would have been perfect."
Black thought somewhat greedily.
When he left the System Space, dawn was already breaking outside.
Looking toward the faint light on the horizon, Black murmured,
"My journey in the West Blue should also be coming to an end."