The dawn broke across the horizon, and eventually, the dusk arrived once more. A full day and an entire night of unrelenting slaughter had passed. The sea area surrounding the G-5 Branch had seen its very geography completely rewritten by the violence of the conflict. The frozen sea surface, which had been pierced through by the force of the battle, was refrozen by Kuzan as he watched from a distance, a process that repeated itself a dozen times over. Those distant desert islands had long since vanished, sunk deep to the seabed to become nothing more than new reefs. In this entire stretch of the ocean, the physical map was permanently altered under the devastating clash of these two monsters.
Clang!
Zangetsu and the red umbrella collided once again, sending sparks exploding into the air like a display of fireworks. The Red Count was no longer breathing with any sense of steadiness. His iconic wine-red suit, once a symbol of his elegance, had long been soaked through with a mixture of sweat, blood, and salt water, clinging to his frame in tattered, useless ruins. The muscles in the arm he used to grip his red umbrella were trembling with uncontrollable fatigue. His vast experience, his refined technique, and his masterful use of Haki were all examples of textbook-level perfection. Throughout the first half of this grueling battle, he had relied on those very traits to suppress Kane and keep the upper hand.
But Kane simply was not a human being! This guy seemed to have a stamina bar that was nowhere near its end. Every single time he took a hit, the resulting wounds would wriggle and knit themselves back together within just a few breaths of time. Every time he appeared to be completely exhausted, the power he erupted with in the following second was even more ferocious and wild than it had been before. What shocked the Red Count even more was the realization that Kane's swordsmanship was actually growing at a speed visible to the naked eye during the heat of this extreme slaughter. He had evolved from an initial state of having plenty of ferocity but insufficient finesse to a point where every strike now carried a terrifying, heavy sense of pressure.
And perhaps the most frustrating part of the entire ordeal was that, while facing this madman, his invincible trump card—his Mind Reading—did not work in the slightest bit. In the head of that Marine, besides the thoughts of making money and grinding points, there was not a single thought belonging to a normal swordsman to be found. Because he was unable to predict any moves, the Red Count was forced into a miserable quagmire of a pure stamina competition.
"Ha... ha..." The Red Count panted heavily, his crimson eyes staring fixedly at the madman standing opposite him. Kane was also covered in blood, yet he was becoming increasingly excited as the fight dragged on. "You are a monster..."
"Right back at you," Kane said as he grinned, revealing a row of white teeth that were stained a dark red with blood. He had even more visible wounds on his body than his opponent, including one particularly nasty gash that had pierced straight through his abdomen, but the fighting intent burning in his eyes was even more blazing than it had been when they first met.
[Ding! Detected that the host's swordsmanship realm has achieved a major breakthrough during the extreme deathmatch with a legendary Great Pirate!] [Swordsmanship Level Increased: Great Swordsman to Peak Great Swordsman!] [Disciplinary Points +50,000!]
"Oh?" Kane felt the brand-new comprehension of the blade settle into his mind, and the curve of his mouth became increasingly savage and hungry. "Can you still fight, the Solitary Red? I have not had my fill of this yet!" Kane rested Zangetsu casually on his shoulder, looking entirely too fresh for someone who had fought for twenty-four hours straight.
The pupils of the Red Count suddenly constricted in realization. This guy actually wanted to wear him down until he died! He knew he could not afford to delay this encounter any longer. The gaze of the Red Count suddenly became resolute as he poured every last drop of his remaining Haki into the red umbrella gripped in his hand.
Buzz!
The blood-colored Haki rose up in waves, dyeing the clouds in the sky above them a dark, ominous red. "This is the end, Marine!" His figure erupted forward, turning into a blood-colored meteor that tore through the space between heaven and earth. He stabbed straight for the heart of Kane, a peak strike that gambled everything he had left on a single moment.
Seeing this incoming death blow, Kane did not even attempt to dodge. Instead, he let out a hearty and unrestrained laugh that echoed across the ice. "Now that is more like it!" He gripped the handle of Zangetsu with both of his hands. The newly attained realm of a Peak Great Swordsman and the destructive power of the Storm-Storm Fruit merged together perfectly. On the pitch-black blade of the sword, wind and thunder surged with violent intensity, and his Haki became as deep and dark as an abyss.
"Getsuga Tenshō: Fujin's End!"
A pitch-black crescent of energy exceeding a hundred meters in length, carrying with it countless fine wind blades and violent bolts of thunder, slashed out boldly to meet that oncoming blood-colored meteor.
Rumble rumble rumble!
A terrifying explosion that defied any description erupted between the sea and the sky. The two extreme forces of black and red collided and began to annihilate each other with extreme violence. The resulting shockwave from the impact blew away absolutely everything within a radius of several kilometers. The ice surface that Kuzan had just recently frozen shattered like a sheet of fragile glass, turning into billions of tiny ice crystals. Those crystals were then evaporated into a sky full of thick white mist by the terrifying heat generated in the very next second. The three Marines watching the fight from a distance had to release the full extent of their own power just to barely stabilize themselves in the center of this raging storm.
The dust eventually settled. The figures of Kane and the Red Count faced each other from a distance of a hundred meters away.
Pfft!
The Red Count suddenly spat out a mouthful of dark blood. His body swayed dangerously, but in the end, he used the red umbrella—its tip already cracked and splintered—to prop himself up against the ground. He refused to fall. His aura had weakened to the absolute extreme. In contrast, although Kane was clearly in severe pain and his coat of justice had been completely reduced to a few hanging rags, his chest remained upright and proud. The terrifying recovery power brought about by his unique physique was already rapidly repairing his damaged internal organs.
"Heh... hehe..." Kane chuckled lowly, walking toward the Red Count one step at a time. "It seems that I have won this round."
The Red Count looked up and gave the younger man a deep, lingering look. That gaze was incredibly complex, containing a mix of shock and unwillingness, but more than anything else, it held a recognition of a fellow madman. He knew that if they continued to fight right now, it would definitely be him who ended up dead. This Marine was a complete and total monster. It simply was not worth fighting to the death with such a reckless, unhinged monster in this place. The Red Count said nothing at all, turned his back, and prepared to leave with his heavily injured body.
"Did I give you permission to leave?" Kane's voice rang out through the mist, cold and demanding.
The Red Count paused in his tracks and slowly turned back around, the killing intent clear in his tired eyes. "Brat, you should leave a way out in all things. Forcing me to the brink of death won't do you any good at all."
"Good?" Kane laughed, and he laughed incredibly arrogantly at that. "In my dictionary, the phrase 'knowing when to stop' simply does not exist! Kuzan! Borsalino! Sakazuki!" Kane suddenly turned his head and roared out at his three companions in the distance, who were already looking dazed by the scale of the fight. "It is your turn now! Surround him for me! Today, he either leaves four billion Berries behind, or he leaves his life on this ice!"
"Oh my, there really is no helping it with you," Borsalino's figure turned into a flash of golden light, instantly appearing to the left of the Red Count as light began to gather at his fingertips.
"Ara ara... Kane, you really do know how to order people around," Kuzan added as he yawned, an ice path spreading out quickly beneath his feet to seal off the Red Count's path of retreat.
"Hmph! It should have been like this long ago!" Sakazuki's roar descended from the sky as he transformed himself into a massive lava meteorite, crashing down violently toward the position of the Red Count.
The expression on the Red Count's face finally darkened completely. In a one-on-one fight, he was already exhausted. Now, he was being forced to face these three Logia users who were also monster-level fighters in their own right? "Marines..." The voice of the Red Count sounded like it was being squeezed through his clenched teeth. "You are all seeking your own deaths!" He completely gave up on the thought of running away, a mad light flashing in his eyes. Since he could not leave this place, he would simply drag these brats down to hell along with him.
"Come on!"
The Solitary Red in his peak, even while being heavily injured, still erupted with a heart-palpitatingly terrifying level of combat power. With his scarred and broken body, he head-on withstood the combined siege of the three future Admirals.
"Great Eruption!" Sakazuki's lava dog head was blown apart by a sudden sweep of the Red Count's umbrella. The splashing magma sizzled as it burned against his body, yet the old pirate did not even frown at the pain.
"Ama no Murakumo no Tsurugi!" Borsalino's sword of light was parried by the handle of the Red Count's umbrella, flying past his neck by a mere hair's breadth.
"Pheasant Beak!" Kuzan's ice bird was crushed flat under the Red Count's foot.
But in the end, two fists were simply no match for four hands. This was especially true when the main attacker was Kane, a madman who possessed what seemed to be a bottomless health bar.
"Stay down!" Kane's figure moved like a ghost, appearing time and time again in the defensive blind spots of the Red Count, with Zangetsu tracing tricky and lethal arcs through the air. Sakazuki even went so far as to implement a wound-for-wound fighting style, preferring to take a heavy blow from the Red Count on his own shoulder just so he could leave a hole in the pirate's body with a lava-coated fist. Borsalino and Kuzan worked together to continuously harass the target and control the field, making the Red Count's situation even worse with every passing minute.
The battle continued from the morning of the second day until the arrival of dusk. When the last ray of the setting sun finally sank below the horizon, there was a loud clatter. The red umbrella that had accompanied the Red Count for half of his life finally snapped into two pieces.
Thud.
Patrick Redfield, the legend who once stood alongside Roger and Whitebeard, finally exhausted the very last bit of his strength and knelt on one knee on the ice field, which was now mottled with blood and cooling magma. He did not fall over; his spine remained perfectly straight, but his heavy panting and the dense, bone-deep wounds covering his body all announced his total defeat.
Opposite him, Kane stood bare-chested, revealing muscles that were as sturdy as a demon's back. Although he was also panting heavily, a greedy smile like that of a hungry wolf seeing fresh meat hung on his face.
"Hey, Red Count," Kane said as he carried his blade, approaching step by step while the ice surface beneath his feet made a creaking sound. "Can you still dance?"
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