Atmos's warning had not even finished when a blinding flash of dark-gold pressure exploded before his eyes.
Boom!
It was a pure impact that tore at the eardrums.
The instant Zaraki raised his blade, Reiatsu and Armament Haki poured into Murasame, compressing into a violent arc that looked like lightning only because the air itself was being crushed and scorched around it.
He did not even seem to swing.
Or perhaps he did, but the movement had been so fast it exceeded the limit of sight.
In everyone's eyes, Zaraki had merely raised his blade in front of him, and then the entire world was swallowed by pressure and light.
One-Sword Style: Thunder Bagua!
A dark-gold slash, wrapped in Armament Haki and Reiatsu, transformed into a massive thunderbolt-like arc and came crashing down toward Ace.
Wherever the slash passed, the air gave off a sharp sizzling sound, and the space around the pressure seemed to ripple faintly.
Ace's expression froze instantly, replaced by instinctive horror.
His Observation Haki screamed a warning, telling him to escape, but his body had been pinned in place by an invisible pressure. He could not even move a finger.
It was the pressure of a stronger being.
In the next instant, dark-gold pressure drowned him.
Aboard the Moby Dick, everyone instinctively closed their eyes and raised their hands to block the light that almost burned their vision.
Then a hurricane exploded outward with the island at its center and swept in every direction.
The enormous Moby Dick shook violently in the wind.
The sea surface was forcefully pressed down several meters, and the towering waves that rose from it slammed hard against the ship's sides.
The light and thunder arrived quickly, and vanished just as quickly.
When everyone could finally force their eyes open, only blue smoke and the burnt smell hanging in the air remained in their vision.
The island had not been split apart, but the battlefield had been torn open from the beach to the rocky rise beyond it.
A deep trench carved across the deserted shore, its edges scorched smooth by the heat and pressure of the strike before the remaining force finally died out near the far side of the island.
As for Ace, he was gone.
"Ace!"
Marco was the first to react. Blue flames ignited behind him, and he was about to rush over.
"Over there!"
The sharp-eyed Izo pointed toward the sea a thousand meters away, his voice trembling.
Everyone looked in the direction he pointed and saw, at the edge on the other side of the island, a charred human figure lying there motionless.
The terrain around him had been completely changed by the aftermath of that strike.
After a brief, dead silence, the sound of people sucking in cold breaths rose across the deck.
They saw it.
Ace lay among shattered stones, his clothes burned to tatters, exposing skin covered in scorch marks and blood.
A savage slash wound ran from his left shoulder all the way to the right side of his abdomen.
It was so deep that bone could be seen, and blood poured from it, dyeing the broken stones beneath him dark red.
The dagger he always kept with him had also snapped into two pieces and lay weakly nearby.
Three moves.
A man with a bounty of 550 million berries, a Logia-type user of the Flame-Flame Fruit, hailed as one of the brightest pirates of the new generation, and Whitebeard's newest son, Fire Fist Portgas D. Ace... had been defeated in three moves, his life or death unknown!
"What... what kind of joke is this...?"
A pirate's legs went weak, and he collapsed onto the deck, his face full of disbelief.
"That's Commander Ace!"
"Is this fake? That guy... what kind of monster is he?"
Doubt and terrified whispers intertwined, and fear covered the hearts of every member of the Whitebeard Pirates.
"That's it! That's exactly it!"
Atmos suddenly pointed at the trench carved through the island's shore and shouted like a madman, his voice carrying both the terror of surviving disaster and a trace of relief.
"The wound on my chest was made by an attack just like that! Exactly the same! I didn't lose unfairly... I didn't lose unfairly at all!"
His shout caused the surrounding commotion to quiet down.
Marco, Jozu, Izo, and the other commanders' expressions had become extremely ugly, the corners of their eyes twitching beyond their control.
They finally understood where Atmos's fear had come from.
Faced with this kind of attack, ordinary combat technique or experience seemed powerless.
It had exceeded their understanding of what a Marine of Zaraki's age should be able to do.
This Zaraki could not be measured by common sense at all.
...
On the deserted island, Zaraki slowly lowered Murasame.
The remaining dark-gold arcs around the blade vanished into the air with a soft crackle.
His breathing was not disturbed in the slightest, as if that attack had merely been a casual swing.
Zaraki looked at Ace, who had fallen in the distance, then raised his eyes toward the stunned faces aboard the Moby Dick and sighed softly.
He had thought this would at least serve as a warm-up.
Was that all?
His gaze passed over the crowd and finally landed on the figure that had remained seated on the throne from beginning to end.
Even across nearly a thousand meters, he could still feel that faint yet vast and terrifying aura.
That aura seemed slightly different from before.
It was no longer simple assessment and anger. There was now a trace of gravity.
A rare kind of seriousness.
Atmos's words sounded more like he was trying to convince himself, confirming that this inhuman scene before him had truly happened.
Zaraki stood on one side of the scarred battlefield, the tip of Murasame hanging casually as it lightly touched the scorched ground beneath his feet.
His calm gaze swept across the restless crowd aboard the distant Moby Dick, then fixed on the man seated on the throne.
That man, Whitebeard, finally made his first movement.
His massive body leaned forward slightly. That simple motion made Zaraki feel as though the surrounding air had instantly solidified.
An invisible pressure descended from the sky, and even the sound of the waves seemed to grow muted.
"Gurarararara..."
A deep laugh clearly crossed the thousand meters of sea and sounded beside everyone's ears.
There was no anger in that laughter anymore. Instead, it carried the scrutiny of someone who had discovered something new.
"That body, that Haki... and that power..."
Whitebeard's voice was not loud, but it carried majesty. His sharp eyes locked firmly onto Zaraki.
"Brat, what exactly are you hiding under that Marine coat? That isn't just Haki."
The Moby Dick instantly fell silent.
Everyone froze, disbelief written across their faces.
It was rare for Pops to say something like that. If even Whitebeard could not immediately name the power wrapped around that blade, then whatever Zaraki carried was far stranger than an ordinary Devil Fruit or Haki technique.
Zaraki's brow lifted slightly.
'Interesting guess.'
The speed and cutting principles he had borrowed from the Thunder Bagua-style strike, combined with the powerful physique granted by his template and the Reiatsu wrapped around Murasame, were being mistaken for something outside common sense.
That was reasonable enough.
But that was fine.
Let them guess.
Zaraki did not respond.
"Marco! What are you standing there for?! Hurry up and save Ace!"
Atmos's anxious roar broke the silence on the deck.
"Damn it!"
Marco's heart tightened, and he instantly snapped out of his shock.
He glanced toward the direction where Ace had fallen.
Even from this distance, the wound running through Ace's body was enough to make his heart clench.
Marco no longer hesitated.
With both arms spread, azure flames erupted with a boom, and he transformed into a phoenix, dragging a long tail of fire as he flew toward the deserted island at astonishing speed.
Zaraki watched the blue fire shoot straight toward Ace and did not stop him.
Blade in hand, he walked leisurely toward Ace's direction.
Marco landed beside Ace and returned to human form. Azure flames covered his hands as he carefully examined Ace's injuries.
With just one look, his heart sank to the bottom.
It was too severe.
Broken organs could even be seen deep inside the wound, and Ace was losing blood at an alarming speed.
His breathing was already so faint that it could almost no longer be sensed.
His phoenix flames could heal, but their effect on others was far weaker than on himself. Faced with a wound this serious, he had no way to save him.
Just as Marco's heart filled with urgency, a calm voice sounded behind him.
"Move."
Marco whipped his head around and saw Zaraki standing less than three meters behind him, his expression calm, as if the dying man before him had nothing to do with him.
Blue flames rose again.
Marco instantly went on guard.
Zaraki ignored his hostility.
He casually searched inside his coat and took out a small green bean, then flicked it with his finger.
Whoosh.
The bean traced an arc through the air and landed steadily in Marco's hand.
"Feed it to him."
Marco lowered his head and looked at the green bean in his palm, completely stunned.
What was this?
At a time like this, what kind of joke was he making?
Was it poison?
Was he trying to humiliate them like this?
But at that moment, Ace, lying in a pool of blood, struggled to open his eyes by a sliver.
His gaze passed over Marco and saw Zaraki's eyes, which held no killing intent.
Using the last bit of strength he had, he mumbled a few unclear words.
"...Give it... to me..."
Looking at Ace's pleading and trusting eyes, Marco clenched his teeth and stopped hesitating.
He pushed the small green bean into Ace's mouth.
In the next second, an unbelievable scene unfolded.
The huge, bone-deep, mangled wound across Ace's chest began to heal rapidly at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The burned skin peeled away, revealing fresh new skin beneath.
The savage wound quickly closed and smoothed over, leaving only a faint pale line that was already fading.
The others had no way of knowing that this was one of the few emergency items Zaraki still had left, rare enough that even he would not waste it casually.
In only a few seconds, Ace suddenly sprang up from the ground.
He looked down at his restored chest, then moved his body, feeling his strength return to its peak even though the memory of being cut down still lingered in his bones.
He was completely stunned.
The scene left not only Marco, who stood right beside him, frozen in place, but also every pirate aboard the distant Moby Dick who was watching through spyglasses.
Their minds went blank.
Time seemed to freeze in that instant.
No one knew how long passed before a pirate lowered the spyglass in his trembling hands and stammered in a dazed, dreamlike voice,
"J-Just now... Commander Marco's blue flames touched Commander Ace, didn't they?"
"I think so... When Commander Marco landed, his hands were on Commander Ace..." another person agreed, his voice just as unsteady.
That guess instantly ignited everyone's thoughts.
The blue phoenix flames.
A miraculous recovery.
A wild yet seemingly inevitable possibility exploded in everyone's minds.
"It... it was Commander Marco's ability!"
A pirate suddenly shouted at the top of his lungs, his voice twisting with excitement.
"Commander Marco's ability awakened!"
Boom!
The deck erupted completely.
Everyone looked toward Marco on the deserted island with fanatical eyes.
As for Marco himself, the focus of everyone's attention, he simply stood there blankly.
He stared in disbelief at his hands burning with blue flames, then at Ace, who was now full of life and energy, his mind utterly empty.
His body suddenly stiffened.
A thought appeared without warning.
'My ability... awakened?'