Drip!!
Drip!!!
The sky was cloudless for miles beneath the clear sunlight.
Blood dripped from Roy's fingertips, drop by drop, onto the wooden steps.
The pale yellow wooden platform was now stained crimson with blood.
Thump, thump!!
Perhaps because Roy had moved too quickly, the heart clutched in his hand was still twitching and beating.
Everything around them
seemed to have fallen into the silence of time itself stopping.
If not for the white clouds still drifting slowly in the wind and the blood on Roy's fingers gathering drop by drop into a stream,
everyone watching the broadcast might have thought the global broadcast Den Den Mushi had malfunctioned and frozen the image in that instant.
"Hey, hey, this is a joke, right?"
"Bro, pinch me. Am I dreaming right now?"
"What was that attack? He actually tore out a Celestial Dragon's heart in front of a worldwide broadcast. Has this world gone crazy, or can I just not keep up with it anymore?"
Everyone who witnessed this scene had their pupils contract in unison. Their mouths hung open as they struggled to swallow against their dry throats.
Some rubbed their eyes furiously, thinking they had seen wrong.
Others slapped their own faces, thinking they were dreaming.
It couldn't be helped. Although Roy's earlier buildup had already allowed the public to vaguely guess his intentions, what he had done still shocked them so badly that they could not believe their eyes.
A regional authority under the World Government had actually torn out the heart of a World Noble Celestial Dragon during a global broadcast.
This was unprecedented in nearly eight hundred years of Pirate World history.
According to World Government propaganda, the Celestial Dragons were World Nobles and descendants of the Creator.
They were born standing at the pinnacle of