"You insolent fools!" Magellan roared, furious that he was being completely ignored in his own prison. The red Venom Demon hissed, and the Warden lunged toward the Straw Hats to execute them himself.
Before Magellan could take a second step, Light vanished.
'Soru.'
He suddenly reappeared directly in front of Magellan, completely cutting off the Warden's path to Luffy.
"Your fight is with me, Warden," Light stated coldly.
Magellan glared down at the man in the black coat. "I will melt you both!"
Light exhaled slowly, raising his pitch-black saber.
In the grand, complex calculus of the seas, power was cleanly stratified. Warden Magellan was a terrifying gatekeeper.
To rookies, Vice Admirals, and even seasoned New World commanders, his Devil Fruit made him an almost insurmountable obstacle. The sheer lethality of the Kinjite poison meant that fighting him was a battle of attrition that normal men simply could not win.
But Light Yagami was no longer a normal man.
He didn't need to fear the poison anymore, because the poison would never touch him again.
[Observation Haki Lv. 4 (Future Sight)]
[ WEAPON ARTS Lv. 5 (MAX) ]
[ ARMAMENT HAKI Lv. 4 (Internal Destruction) ]
Light stood at the absolute pinnacle of martial skill. His Level 5 Weapon Arts meant his swordsmanship was flawless—a state of perfection that only a handful of beings in history had ever achieved.
In pure, unadulterated blade work, he could seamlessly contend with Dracule Mihawk for the title of the World's Strongest Swordsman. Every muscle movement, every twitch of his wrist, possessed maximum kinetic efficiency.
Coupled with that was his Level 4 Armament Haki and Observation Haki.
In the New World, Level 4 was the absolute ceiling for mortals. It was the level of the Emperors. Kaido, Big Mom—they all resided in this terrifying tier of spiritual pressure.
Only the truest freaks of nature—men like Shanks with his famed Conqueror's Haki, Redfield's Observation Haki, or ancient gods like Nika and Imu—may have ever possessed the theoretical realm of Level 5 in the various forms of Haki.
Light did not yet possess Conqueror's Coating.
He lacked the Advanced King's Haki that Mihawk and Shanks casually wielded to split the heavens.
But he didn't need it for Magellan.
The Warden swung his massive, red-coated arm in a devastating horizontal arc, aiming to cleave Light in half.
Light didn't dodge. He simply swung his saber upward.
Ittoryu: Shinkuu (One-Sword Style: Vacuum).
He didn't even make physical contact. The sheer, overwhelming density of his Level 4 Emission Haki projected outward from the black blade, creating an invisible, impenetrable wall of spiritual force.
The skeletal arm of the Venom Demon slammed into the Haki barrier with an explosive BOOM. The red Kinjite splashed violently against the invisible wall, sizzling and boiling, but it could not advance a single millimeter.
Magellan grunted, putting all of his immense physical weight into the strike, but Light held the blade steady with just one hand, his expression entirely bored.
"Impossible," Magellan gasped, staring at the absolute gap in their power.
"Your poison is formidable, Warden," Light said smoothly, his Future Sight allowing him to read Magellan's next three desperate attacks before the man even formulated the thought.
"Against men who must touch you to hurt you, you are a god of death. But against a man who can cut you from the inside out without ever making contact..."
Light flicked his wrist.
Internal Destruction.
The Haki didn't just block the Venom Demon's arm; it aggressively surged forward, traveling through the red poison, bypassing Magellan's thick uniform and skin entirely.
The spiritual pressure detonated directly inside Magellan's chest.
"GAAAAAH!"
Magellan coughed up a massive spray of blood. His ribs cracked audibly from the inside. The colossal Warden stumbled backward, completely losing control of the Venom Demon for a brief second as the agonizing shockwave ruptured his internal organs.
Light didn't give him a chance to recover. He needed Magellan incapacitated immediately so he could harvest the prisoners before Teach broke their cages.
Light blurred forward, stepping inside Magellan's guard.
"I don't have time for a drawn-out duel," Light whispered, his blade glowing with an intense, concentrated black aura.
"Ittoryu: Black Judgement!"
Light unleashed a flurry of hyper-fast, completely contactless slashes. Every swing projected a dense arc of Internal Destruction Haki that bypassed the red venom and struck Magellan's vital organs directly.
Slash. Slash. Slash.
PSHHHHHH.
Blood erupted from Magellan's shoulders, his abdomen, and his legs. The Warden roared in fury and agony, blindly unleashing massive waves of toxic gas and Hydra heads, but Light's Future Sight rendered every counterattack completely obsolete.
Light sidestepped a lethal splash of acid, ducked under a sweeping venom claw, and delivered a devastating, invisible Haki strike directly to Magellan's jaw.
BAM!
The sound of the impact echoed like a cannon firing inside a vault.
Magellan's eyes rolled into the back of his head. The absolute ruler of Impel Down, the impenetrable wall of the World Government, was lifted off his feet by the sheer force of the spiritual blow.
He crashed heavily onto the solid bedrock, sliding across the wet stone until his massive body slammed into the base of a Seastone pillar.
The red Kinjite venom immediately began to rapidly dissolve, returning to purple before evaporating completely.
Magellan lay motionless, entirely incapacitated in less than sixty seconds.
Light slowly sheathed his saber, the distinct click of the guard hitting the scabbard ringing out in the suddenly quiet corner of the hall.
He didn't execute the Warden.
He was not a criminal.
Light turned his back on the fallen giant and looked toward the other side of the Eternal Hell.
"Now," Light murmured, cracking his neck as he looked at the terrified prisoners staring out from their cages.
"Let's clean up this mess."
Across the hall, Luffy clashed violently with Blackbeard, sending shockwaves through the air. The battle for Level 6 had only just begun.
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A/N: Welp. Light is still getting a hang of his powers. Magellan did well to hold on so long honestly!
Read more at Patreon/Glivaria!