"I've been waiting for this moment!!!"
Gern Reginald Sigmar's roar detonated across the shattered battlefield. Amid the rain of crystalline shards, his figure transformed into a streak of pale lightning.
He raised both arms at once. Vibrational particles spiraled around his body like stellar rings, and fine cracks began to creep across his skin.
He was compressing the entire Heavenquake Domain!!!!
"Final Quake…"
The sky darkened abruptly, as if even the sun itself had been swallowed.
Nine colossal pale vibration rings—each tens of thousands of meters in diameter—unfurled layer by layer across the heavens, like wheels of judgment descending from a god.
Within every ring, space twisted and collapsed under extreme high-frequency tremors. Light was crushed into pale stardust. The battlefield's rubble, seawater—even the air itself—silently disintegrated into the most primordial streams of particles.
"Godfall Star Rings!"
The first vibration ring slammed inward, collapsing onto the blade of the black sword Eight Desolations!
BOOM—!!!
The island's surface vanished instantly.
Not collapsed.Not shattered.
Erased—reduced directly to nothingness.
The ground beneath Roger's feet disappeared like a pencil sketch wiped away by an eraser. He could even see the soles of his boots dissolving into particles.
"You madman!!" Roger snapped his head up as the second ring began to contract.
In response, dark-red lightning erupted from his entire body. His Conqueror's Haki no longer wrapped around his blade—it exploded outward from his very being, forming a sky-piercing vortex of Haki that forcibly resisted the tearing collapse of space itself!
The price, however, was brutal.
Blood seeped from his skin. His bones screamed under unbearable strain.
Gern floated at the center of the ninth vibration ring, blood pouring from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth—yet a crazed grin stretched across his face.
Then the fifth and sixth rings contracted in succession.
Roger's Haki domain was crushed down to a radius of barely three meters around his body. Cracks spread across Ace's blade—it was beginning to break down.
When all nine Godfall Star Rings finished contracting, only a single word remained.
"Heaven's Sentence."
The first slash fell—
And time itself seemed to freeze.
Within ten meters, space became fragile canvas, neatly sliced apart by circular rifts.
Pale lightning flickered along the edges of the fractures, emitting a teeth-grinding zzzt as distorted void currents churned within the severed layers of space.
When the second slash swept out, Gern's right sleeve was pulverized into dust.
A hundred-meter-long spatial rift fanned outward. The crystallized ground it touched silently disintegrated.
Violent spatial turbulence spewed from the裂隙, grinding everything in its path down to base particles.
When the third slash came down, the skin on Gern's right arm had already split apart. Any blood that should have flowed was instantly evaporated by the high-frequency tremors.
This blow carried apocalyptic force.
The entire sky filled with spiderweb-like fractures.
Sunlight shattered into countless fragments, refracting wildly through intersecting spatial rifts and bathing the battlefield in surreal, chaotic light.
Three slashes in succession—the world shattered!!!
Annihilation itself was Heaven's judgment!!
Reflected in Roger's pupils was this vision of the end of days—yet the smile on his lips burned with fanatic joy.
The golden flames on Ace flared violently, releasing an aura of overwhelming terror.
"God—Wrath!!!"
He surged upward against the storm of裂隙, slashing in defiance. Dark-red Conqueror's Haki and blazing golden flames wove together into a net of destruction.
Each strike landed precisely on the weakest nodes of the spatial fractures. The resulting energy chaos tore the crystallized ground completely free.
Tens of thousands of tons of crystal debris rained down like a storm, refracting dizzying seven-colored auroras beneath the sun.
The instant the two blades collided—
The world fell into eerie silence.
"Crack."
A faint shattering sound rang out—
Then erupted into a deafening explosion.
Centered on the two of them, space within a radius of ten thousand meters shattered like glass, revealing the pitch-black void beyond.
The sea was wrenched upward by invisible forces, pouring into the sky. Cloud layers were shredded into cotton-like fragments by spatial turbulence.
All matter collapsed—then recombined—forming a fleeting black-hole singularity.
At the heart of that destruction, Gern saw blood continuously spilling from Roger's mouth, yet the fighting spirit in his eyes burned hotter than ever.
At the same time, Gern felt the vibration energy within Eight Desolations spiraling out of control. The bones in his right arm wailed in protest.
BOOOOM!!!
The black-hole singularity finally detonated.
Blinding white light swallowed the battlefield whole.
The shockwave expanded in a perfect sphere, crushing the sea across hundreds of thousands of kilometers into a massive depression.
(As an aside: the One Piece world is far larger than most people imagine.)
...
When space repaired itself, the battlefield was nothing but ruins.
Only two patches of intact ground—each less than a square meter—remained, just enough for the two men to land.
Gern's Heavenquake Domain had completely collapsed. The black blade Eight Desolations was plunged deep into the crystallized earth.
He knelt on one knee, pale pupils violently contracting. Cold sweat mixed with blood dripped from his chin.
His body trembled from extreme overexertion, yet his gaze never left the man opposite him.
Roger was also on one knee, Ace embedded in the ground to steady himself. His chest heaved violently, yet he still grinned as he wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth.
"Feel satisfied?" Roger spat out a mouthful of blood foam. The illness made every word rasp and tremble—he was clearly at his limit.
"This isn't your peak," Gern said, wiping blood from his brow. His fingers dug into the ground as he forcibly dragged himself upright.
In the distance, the shattered clouds began to gather once more.
A single beam of sunlight pierced through the gap, spotlighting the two of them like actors on a stage.
"Why…" Roger suddenly erupted into a violent cough, blood pouring through his fingers."Why… does it have to be like this…?"
"Because…" Gern took a deep breath and spoke slowly,"my era—and my future—need this stroke of overwhelming color."
"Do they…" Roger forced himself upright. Against all reason, arcs of Conqueror's lightning burst from him again—those leaping crimson bolts were the absolute limit of what his diseased body could produce.
"Yes!" Gern answered, watching him—his own body now barely sustaining flickering arcs of Conqueror's lightning as well.
Two utterly different Conqueror's Haki collided in the void, releasing pressure that warped heaven and earth.
In that instant, both men gathered every last shred of strength and lifted their weapons.
"This battle should end now!"
"I was thinking the same!"
Almost simultaneously, both figures exploded into motion!
Eight Desolations shuddered violently, releasing a low, unprecedented hum.
Black blade patterns writhed like living creatures as purple-black lightning wrapped around it in a frenzy.
At the blade's edge, space itself began to twist and collapse, forming a light-devouring black vortex!
Gern surged forward. Eight Desolations dragged a purple-black torrent that split heaven and earth!
Where the blade passed, space shattered layer by layer like brittle glass, pale shockwaves ripping countless裂隙 through the void!
Fast—faster than sight itself!
This was his final strike at the absolute limit!!!
For a heartbeat, the sky held only two afterimages—one crimson, one dark violet—racing toward each other at a speed that nearly tore spacetime apart.
"Come!" Roger's voice thundered in Gern's ears."Be the man who stands with me in the final battle of my life!"
ZANG!
Ace swept out, red Conqueror's Haki erupting like a volcano!
"I take back what I said earlier!" Roger's wild laughter shook the heavens."From here on, the stage—and the era—belong to you, Gern!!!"
Ace blazed brighter than the sun itself. Within the crimson Haki, countless silhouettes of past adventures flickered like memories.
This was the slash of Pirate King Roger, bearing the dreams of the entire sea!
"Just like back then—but…" Gern snarled, every muscle in his arms bulging as the patterns on Eight Desolations boiled violently.
"This time, I cannot lose!!!"
The blade came down without mercy.
Purple-black and crimson Conqueror's Haki collided in midair!
"Divine Evasion!!"
"Godfall!!"
..
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