Saint Valerius was backed up against a massive, mossy mangrove root, sobbing uncontrollably. The snot bubble in his nose had popped, smearing a disgusting trail of mucus across the inside of his pristine resin helmet. He looked up at the Rear Admiral, his eyes wide with a frantic, animalistic terror he had only ever inflicted upon others.
Light stared down at him.
He expanded his Level 2 Observation Haki, letting the system translate the aura of the man below him.
[ Saint Valerius — World Noble ][ Good: 0 / Bad: 2,450,000 ]
Two million, four hundred and fifty thousand points of concentrated, personal sin.
Light could feel the weight of those points. It wasn't abstract math. The Karma System resonated in his mind, echoing with the phantom screams of the people Valerius had broken. Women mutilated for their beauty. Children fed to exotic beasts because the Noble was bored on a Tuesday. Men worked to death in the blistering sun, chained to treadmills to power the moving sidewalks of Mariejois.
Light's god-complex did not view himself as a savior of these people. He didn't particularly care about the victims. What disgusted him, what truly stoked the cold, sociopathic fury in his chest, was the sheer, grotesque filth of it. It was the chaotic, rotting mess of a world where insects were allowed to play at being gods, disrupting the perfect, sterile order Light intended to build.
"P-Please!" Valerius begged, holding his trembling, white-gloved hands up in front of his face, cowering against the root. "You can have the girl! You can have all my slaves! I'll give you billions of Beli! I can make you a Fleet Admiral! You can't touch me! I'm a descendant of the gods! If you hurt me, the world will end!"
Light didn't answer with words. He took a single step forward and drove the heel of his polished Marine boot directly into the side of the Celestial Dragon's bubble helmet.
CRACK.
The heavy resin splintered, the boot connecting solidly with the side of Valerius's face, pressing his cheek violently into the filthy cobblestone.
Valerius shrieked, a wet, gargling sound of absolute indignation and pain. The unfiltered, salty air of Grove 1 flooded into the shattered helmet.
"You—!" Valerius spat blood onto the stone, his unearned arrogance briefly flaring over his terror. "You dare step on me?! I am a God! I will call the Admirals! I will find your family! I will have your parents flayed alive! I will burn whatever miserable island you come from until there is nothing left but ash! Get your foot off me!"
In a pathetic, desperate attempt to free himself, Valerius reached up with his white-gloved hand and grabbed Light's ankle, trying to shove the Rear Admiral's leg away.
Light looked down at the hand touching his trousers.
A profound, visceral disgust washed over him. It was as if he had stepped in raw sewage and the sewage had dared to reach up and grab him.
Sshhhhk.
The motion was so fast, so geometrically flawless, that Captain Haas didn't even see Light draw his sword. He only saw the blur of black steel and heard the sharp hum of Level 2 Armament Haki slicing through the air.
Thud.
Saint Valerius's right arm, severed cleanly midway up the forearm, hit the cobblestone.
For a fraction of a second, the Noble didn't process it. Then, his eyes dropped to the spurting stump where his hand used to be.
The scream that tore from Valerius's throat was unlike anything the plaza had ever heard. It wasn't a threat anymore. It wasn't anger. It was the raw, unadulterated shriek of a mortal creature suddenly realizing it was entirely made of meat, and that it was about to die.
Valerius thrashed wildly, weeping in pure agony, clutching his bleeding stump to his chest. "My arm! My arm! Please! I don't want to die! Please, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Let me live! Let me live!"
He abandoned all pretense of divinity. He was just a pathetic, bleeding worm squirming in the dirt.
Light's expression remained perfectly sterile. He lifted his boot from the side of the Noble's face and brought it down heavily on the center of Valerius's back, pinning the thrashing Celestial Dragon flat against the bloodstained cobblestone.
"Your apologies..." Light said coldly, his dark eyes looking down at the weeping creature, "take them to the grave."
Light adjusted his grip on the hilt of his black saber.
SWISH.
It was a single, horizontal stroke. Level 5 Weapon Arts executed with absolute, merciless perfection.
The blade sheared through the collar of the environmental suit, slicing cleanly through muscle, spine, and vocal cords in a millisecond.
Saint Valerius's head was severed from his body.
The pressure of the Noble's frantic, racing heartbeat forced a massive torrent of blood out of the stump of his neck. Because Light's boot was pressing the torso flat against the ground, the geyser of arterial blood sprayed out perfectly parallel to the cobblestone, painting a wide, horrifying arc of bright crimson across the stones of Grove 1.
The head rolled a few feet away, the eyes wide and frozen in an expression of eternal, pathetic terror inside the shattered remnants of the bubble-helmet.
Silence.
It wasn't just quiet; it was an apocalyptic, suffocating absence of sound. Hundreds of people in Grove 1 stared at the severed head of a Celestial Dragon. A World Noble had not just been killed; he had been butchered like a common pig in broad daylight.
The sky didn't fall. The oceans didn't rise. A man who was supposed to be the untouchable ruler of the world had died, and he had bled red just like everyone else.
Light calmly flicked his wrist. The blood slid effortlessly off the Armament-coated steel. He sheathed the saber with a sharp, echoing click that seemed to restart time in the plaza.
"Captain Haas" Light called out softly, his eyes already drifting away from the corpse.
Haas stood up from his kneeling position. His entire body was trembling uncontrollably, not with fear, but with an overwhelming, fanatical awe. The absolute taboo had been broken. The chains of the world had just been severed by the Smiling Reaper.
"Sir!" Haas barked, snapping a salute so hard his bones cracked, tears of pure, adrenaline-fueled devotion streaming down his face.
Light looked out over the paralyzed crowd of slave merchants and kidnappers.
"Unlock the slaves," Light commanded, his voice ringing with the cold authority of a new god. "Execute every merchant in this plaza. Burn the Auction House to the ground."
"SIR YES SIR!!" Haas roared, drawing his sword, his five veterans echoing the battle cry.
The plaza exploded.
Criminals shrieked in absolute terror, the spell of silence broken. They scrambled over each other in a desperate, animalistic stampede to flee the grove. Slave merchants abandoned their ledgers and Beli, running for their lives as Haas and the rogue Marines descended upon them like starving wolves.
Bonney simply stood there, staring at Light's back. She realized with bone-chilling clarity that she had not just made a deal with a rogue Marine. She had bound herself to a monster far more terrifying than the World Government.
Light looked up at the sky. A flock of seagulls scattered, startled by the sudden screams and the thick black smoke beginning to rise from the Auction House.
I've pulled the pin, Light thought, the sociopathic thrill of the ultimate gamble rushing through his veins. The message is sent. The illusion is broken. Now, the dog will come off his leash.
⬛ ⬛ ⬛
[ MARINE HEADQUARTERS — MARINEFORD ]
The massive, golden Den Den Mushi on Fleet Admiral Sengoku's mahogany desk didn't just ring. It screamed.
Sengoku was standing over a massive tactical map of the New World, nursing a cup of hot green tea. The room was tense. He had spent the last week agonizing over the erratic movements of Whitebeard and the Red Hair Pirates. He rubbed his temples, feeling the creeping onset of a migraine.
He snatched the receiver. "Sengoku."
"F-Fleet Admiral!" the voice on the other end was hysterical, weeping in pure, unadulterated terror. It was a local communications officer from the Sabaody Garrison. "Grove 1! The Auction House! It's under attack! There's blood everywhere!"
Sengoku's blood ran cold. He gripped the edge of the desk. "Calm down, soldier! Did a rookie pirate crew cause a riot? Did Eustass Kid make a move?"
"No! No, sir! It's Saint Valerius! He's... he's dead! He was decapitated! His head is literally rolling in the street!"
The teacup slipped from Sengoku's fingers.
It shattered against the polished stone floor, hot tea spilling over the expensive rugs. The entire tactical room went dead silent. Vice Admirals Tsuru and Doberman stopped breathing, staring at Sengoku in absolute shock.
"A Celestial Dragon... is dead?" Sengoku whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying, apocalyptic rage he hadn't felt in decades. The Fleet Admiral's knuckles turned white. "Who did it? Which Supernova committed this atrocity?! Give me a name!"
"It wasn't a pirate, sir!" the officer sobbed, the sound of explosions, collapsing buildings, and dying merchants echoing loudly in the background of the transmission. "It was the Smiling Reaper! It was Rear Admiral Yagami! He butchered the Noble, and now he's slaughtering the entire grove! He's gone completely rogue!"
The heavy receiver fell from Sengoku's hand, clattering onto the desk.
Light Yagami. The prodigy. The golden boy who had just purged the South Blue with flawless efficiency. The man Sengoku had personally envisioned as the future of the Marines.
THE BOY WAS FUCKING CRAZY AFTER ALL! DAMN IT!!
Before Sengoku could even issue an order, before he could sound the Buster Call alarms, the heavy wooden doors to the tactical room swung violently open.
The temperature in the room instantly spiked by thirty degrees. The smell of sulfur, burning ozone, and boiling rock choked the air.
Standing in the doorway was a massive man in a crimson double-breasted suit. He wore a Marine cap pulled low over his eyes, hiding everything but the furious, glowing embers of his gaze. A pink rose was pinned to his lapel, wilting instantly from the sheer heat.
Thick, bubbling magma was literally dripping from his clenched fists, burning hissing, black holes deep into the stone floor of Marineford with every step he took.
Admiral Akainu had returned from the New World exactly one hour ago. And he had heard the transmission in the hallway.
"Sakazuki," Sengoku warned, his voice tight, sensing the absolute, genocidal fury radiating from the Admiral in waves of suffocating heat.
"A Marine," Akainu rumbled, his voice sounding like grinding tectonic plates, low and filled with absolute, uncompromising hatred. "Has turned his blade. He has desecrated the absolute justice we uphold. He is a traitor of the highest order!"
Akainu turned around, leaving a trail of scorched, melting footprints in his wake.
"Prepare my warship," Akainu ordered, the magma flaring brightly on his arms, casting long, demonic shadows across the walls of Marineford. "I am going to Sabaody. And I am going to melt the 'Smiling Reaper' down to the bone."