Kizaru's voice remained a low, mocking drone as the golden rays surged. They didn't just travel; they simply existed where Rojen had been standing a millisecond before.
Rojen's silhouette blurred, his Shunpo kicking up a shockwave as he cleared the blast zone. But the moment his feet touched the ground, the air around him turned a blinding, predatory yellow.
Kizaru wasn't just firing shots anymore. He was painting the sky.
With a lazy flick of his finger, thousands of pinpricks of light ignited in the air, tiny, dense stars suspended in a lethal grid. Each one held the explosive power to level a city block. In the heartbeat it took for Rojen to inhale, those thousands of dots stretched into lances of pure kinetic energy, converging on him from every angle.
Rojen's robes snapped like whip-cracks as he pushed his acceleration to the breaking point. His body fragmented into a dozen afterimages, weaving through the gaps in the light. He tried to close the three-hundred-meter gap, desperate to bring his blade into play, but the sheer volume of the barrage forced him back. Kizaru wasn't aiming to kill; he was building a cage.
Through the shimmering heat and the crisscrossing beams, Rojen caught Kizaru's expression. It was that same cold, detached smirk. The Admiral knew the math. Every second Rojen spent dancing was a second closer to his expiration date.
BOOM… BOOM… BOOM!
Behind Rojen, the lasers that missed found the ground, erupting into towering pillars of fire that licked the clouds. The battlefield was being hollowed out, replaced by a churning sea of glass and flame.
'Twenty minutes', Rojen thought, his pulse hammering. I've burned twenty minutes and I haven't even touched him.
The stalemate was a death sentence. He couldn't afford a war of attrition against a man made of light.
His eyes sharpened, the iris flashing with a sudden, grim resolve. He shifted Tensa Zangetsu to his left hand. His right hand rose slowly, his palm open, fingers poised at the top of his forehead.
He didn't just need speed anymore. He needed to break the scales.
…
Marine Headquarters: The Sky
High above the carnage, Shiki the Golden Lion looked down from his floating fortress. The impatience at the corner of his mouth had curdled into a sneer.
The ground below was a meat grinder. His Flying Pirates and the Marines were locked in a gruesome tally of casualties, and to Shiki's eyes, his "legendary" cadres were being handled far too easily by the Marine Vice Admirals.
"Useless trash," He spat.
The air around him began to warp. A suffocating, arrogant pressure bled out of his pores, an aura so dense it felt physical. Shiki stood bathed in the sun, his golden hair and coat billowing, looking less like a pirate and more like a vengeful god preparing to reset the world.
The void hummed. Then, it snapped.
A tidal wave of Conqueror's Haki erupted from him, a physical shockwave that tore through the clouds and slammed into the battlefield below.
"Ugh… !"
It was instantaneous. Hundreds, then thousands of Marines fell like wheat before a scythe, their eyes rolling back as their consciousness was simply snuffed out. From the lowest seaman to the hardened officers, everyone felt the crushing weight of a King who had once rivaled Roger himself.
The massive floating island beneath Shiki's feet groaned, the rock trembling as it began to drift forward, a shadow the size of a country slowly blotting out the sun.
BUZZ.
The island lurched another ten meters, and Shiki let out a second, even more savage pulse of power. He was done watching.
"The Golden Lion! He's finally making his move!"
A Marine Vice Admiral stared skyward, his voice cracking with terror. Above, the white clouds didn't just drift, they shattered, obliterated by a sudden, suffocating pressure that felt like the atmosphere itself had turned to lead.
This was the man who had once ruled the second half of the Grand Line with an iron fist. The man who had cornered the Pirate King, Gold Roger, and nearly ended his legend then and there. Shiki the Golden Lion.
As he stirred, it felt as though a dormant predator had let out a roar that vibrated through the marrow of every living soul on the battlefield. The sheer, tyrannical ferocity of his presence sent a physical shiver through the Marine ranks.
On the execution platform, Sengoku stood up so abruptly his chair nearly toppled. His face was a mask of grim focus. He had never made the mistake of underestimating Shiki. You don't dominate the New World by luck; Shiki was a force of nature, an unparalleled titan whose strength had once kept the world in a state of constant tremors.
The evidence was currently littering the ground. In a single, sweeping pulse of Conqueror's Haki, the battlefield had fallen into an eerie, terrifying silence. Every Marine below the rank of Vice Admiral had been snuffed out, their bodies collapsing like marionettes with their strings cut. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
"Marines! Show me the strength you boast of!"
Shiki's voice didn't just carry; it boomed, resonating in the chests of everyone present. He rose from his perch, defying gravity as he drifted into the open air. Behind him, his cadres erupted into a synchronized roar, leaping from the floating islands like a rain of predators descending upon the war below.
The stalemate was over. The slaughter had begun.
"Sengoku. Brace yourself," Commander-in-Chief Kong said, his voice low and heavy as he rose to stand beside the Admiral.
"Understood," Sengoku replied, his eyes locked on the figure hovering in the void. He was calculating, theorizing, but how do you plan for a man who stands at the peak of the world? Shiki's next move was an unknown variable in an equation of pure destruction.
"You expect me to believe you Marines captured Roger?" Shiki's voice was cold, dripping with a decade's worth of spite. "I've traded blood with that man for years. I know his strength better than anyone. And I know yours."
He reached for his waist, his fingers closing around the hilts of his twin blades.
"I know you are weaklings."
With a sharp, metallic hiss, he drew the legendary swords: Oto and Kogarasu. They gleamed under the sun, hungry for the carnage to come.
"But since you had the gall to tell the world you brought him down... show me! Show me the power that supposedly humbled the Pirate King!"
Shiki swung his right hand in a casual, almost lazy arc.
The air didn't just move; it tore. A jagged rift appeared in the void, a distortion in space that expanded with terrifying speed. It looked like a scar across the sky, growing until it became a three-dimensional wall of cutting force.
The atmosphere shrieked in protest. The shockwave hit the ground in a heartbeat, and the earth simply gave up. The stone floor of Marineford split open, a bottomless, jagged canyon yawning wide under the feet of the panicked soldiers.
"It's a sea-splitter! Get back! Clear the area now!" Sengoku roared, his voice barely audible over the sound of the world being torn apart.
Shiki watched the chaos below with a bored, detached expression. He lowered his blade, the air still humming from the displacement.
"Shishi Odoshi," He murmured.
(End Of This Chapter)
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