Black appeared in the ability card space, a hundred meters away, Whitebeard's towering figure stood in opposition to 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 faint light.
Their Conqueror's Haki collided across the air, making the nearby houses creak and groan, and cracks began to appear on the load-bearing pillars.
Whitebeard's appearance was similar to how he looked during the Marineford War, but his wrinkled hands gripped Murakumogiri so tightly that it hummed like tearing silk.
"Your saber is much better maintained than your hands."
Black quipped, then leaped up.
Because in the future he foresaw with his Observation Haki, the entire ground was cracking like glass.
The next moment, Whitebeard swept his bisento horizontally, and the atmosphere instantly tore apart!
Nearby houses were pulverized by the vibrations, and the shockwave, carrying gravel, exploded in a fan shape.
Black leaped into mid-air, drawing his long saber.
The Black-purple blade, crystallized with Armament Haki, split open the incoming shockwave, and the slash flew directly towards Whitebeard.
This time, Whitebeard didn't have Jozu to help him block.
He casually swung his fist, batting the slash aside.
Boom!
The slash landed on the ground, plowing a gully several hundred meters long.
Black had already dived down using gravity, the tip of his saber imbued with Black-gold Haoshoku lightning, spiraling with Ghost Qi purple flames.
Whitebeard stepped back half a pace, Murakumogiri, imbued with Conquerors Haki Infusion, met the attack.
The moment the two blades collided, the sky seemed to be torn in half by an invisible giant hand, and the storm blew the ground around them clean.
Black was thrown back dozens of meters, performing several backflips before steadying himself, while Whitebeard remained utterly motionless.
"Such high burst! Such great strength!"
It was said that even before Whitebeard joined the Rocks Pirates, his strength was enough to lift a warship with one hand; he was a natural-born monster.
Age had prevented his stamina from sustaining long battles, but his burst attacks still carried the might of his younger days.
Whitebeard plunged his bisento into the ground, clenched both fists, and swung them forcefully.
Instantly, the foundations of the entire town began to tilt, and the air exploded like glass.
Black covered his entire body with Armament Haki, ascended with Moonwalk, and continuously swung his longsword, shattering the incoming boulders one by one.
Whitebeard flipped his bisento, leaped up, and brought it down fiercely towards Black.
"Secret Art: Galaxy!"
Although Black blocked the attack with his tsuba, he was still sent flying.
"Secret Art: Ghost Flash!"
While flying backward, Black continuously slashed with his longsword, and three Haki-infused slashes flew towards Whitebeard in a triangular formation.
Whitebeard parried all the attacks with his bisento, slashing and chopping, displaying astonishing physical agility.
It was hard to imagine a man over six meters tall making such movements.
Black landed on the ground, his long saber angled towards the earth, the Black-gold lightning on its blade still not dispersed.
"Very impressive, old man!"
Whitebeard's response was a sudden, thrusting bisento slash.
The air shattered into a spiderweb pattern before the blade, but Black had already predicted its trajectory, countering with an Iai slash.
The aftershocks of the two Haoshoku collisions raised a tens-of-meters-high wave of earth from the ground.
The tip of Murakumogiri suddenly thrust out from the dust cloud—Whitebeard had forcibly broken through using shockwaves as propulsion!
Clang!
Crystallized Armament Haki blossomed with ice-like cracks on Black's chest.
Whitebeard's attack was unexpected, after all, and not fully charged.
Black successfully defended with his triple layer of defense.
He backhanded, flicking the bisento away, and unleashed a horizontal sword strike.
Whitebeard held his bisento vertically to block, and both simultaneously flew back nearly a hundred meters, once again facing each other from afar.
Black grinned:
"You've shown a weakness, Whitebeard!"
This was not a meme.
After several rounds of exchanges, Whitebeard's breathing frequency had changed compared to the beginning of the battle.
Although the change was not obvious, it was clearly visible in Black's Observation Haki perception... The two fought from afternoon until early morning.
Black's tactics had always been stable, neither rushed nor slow.
Unlike his previous encounter with Garin, the longer this battle dragged on, the more advantageous it would be.
When Whitebeard's bisento fell, the shockwaves were no longer as devastating as they were initially.
Black's Armament Haki crystallized, forming a rhomboid armor on his left shoulder, taking a residual shockwave head-on.
"Are you already holding back?"
He shook his numb arm, and on his blade, the light of Armament Haki, Haoshoku, and Ghost Qi intertwined:
"Then I'll seize the opportunity!"
"Secret Art: Storm!"
Black's advance speed was one-third faster than before, and the sword energy he unleashed was no longer crescent-shaped, but a spiral drill.
Whitebeard blocked horizontally, but due to his lack of stamina, he couldn't completely defend against the internal damage of Armament Haki.
The force penetrated his bones, causing his right knee to bend slightly.
This opening was precisely captured by Black's Observation Haki, and a kick fiercely struck his opponent's jaw.
Blood seeped from Whitebeard's mouth, but he silently swung a counter-attack, and the shockwave sphere created by his bisento pulverized the ruins within several thousand meters into dust.
Black leaped into mid-air, bringing his sword down, and the sword energy split into eight in the air, each one layered with Haoshoku and Ghost Qi Infusion attacks.
"Secret Art: Underworld!"
Whitebeard shattered five of them, but the remaining three tore open his chest defense.
The blood had not yet fallen to the ground before it turned into ice crystals.
Black did not unleash flames like Garin; instead, he added a chill to his slashes with Ghost Qi.
"Whitebeard! Have you ever seen a slash descend from the sky!"
Black, holding his saber with both hands in the air, head down and feet up, spun and thrust down at Whitebeard in a man-and-sword-as-one stance.
Whitebeard looked up, gripping his bisento with both hands and thrusting it upwards with all his might, the awakened power of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit shattering space layer by layer like glass.
But Black's thrust was faster than the propagation of the shockwaves, with three types of Haki condensed at a single point on the blade tip, forming a blinding white light.
"Secret Art: Starfall!"
As the blade tip emerged from Whitebeard's back, it brought with it a spray of blood.
The bisento clanged to the ground, Whitebeard stumbled forward two steps, and his figure slowly dissipated into specks of light.
Black's attack was not the kind of penetrating wound Akainu inflicted during the Marineford War.
The rotating impact had destroyed most of the internal organs upon hitting the body.
"It's a shame you're an AI, otherwise I would have asked if One Piece really exists."
Before he finished speaking, Black also disappeared from the ability card space.
Returning to the azure System Space, Black looked down at the ability card in his hand, a wide smile spreading across his face—
ability card: Tremor-Tremor Fruit
"It's a shame that Devil Fruit type ability cards cannot inherit the original owner's level of development."
"If it had given me an awakened Tremor-Tremor Fruit directly, it would have been perfect."
Black thought, a little greedily.
When he left the System Space, it was almost dawn outside.
Black looked in the direction from which the faint light emerged:
"My journey in the West Blue should also be coming to an end."