The earth's rumbling gradually subsided. A lava fissure stretched from beneath Ace's feet, cutting straight through half of Thunder God Island.
Every mountain it passed had been split in two, glowing with scorching red light.
"It should be over now, right..."
"...After all, Ace even used a move like that."
"I can't believe their fight got this intense."
The pirates gathered along the mountainside held their breath, their eyes fixed on the valley below, not daring to look away for even a moment. Instead, they had begun to worry a little about Luffy.
Back when Pops was still around, he and Roger could fight for days and nights at a time, and the crew had gotten used to it.
But Luffy and Ace were brothers, after all. At first, no one had expected them to get so carried away.
They'd been fighting side by side as recently as two years ago. They were genuinely afraid Ace might beat Luffy to death.
Those who had seen the battle at Onigashima knew this move was powerful enough to badly wound Kaido and force him to retreat.
Back then, when Ace had been driven into a desperate corner, he'd unleashed everything he had and used two attacks of this caliber in a row. He'd nearly exhausted himself and died on the spot.
Earlier, while Nami and Robin were fighting Yamato, Lina had watched and chatted with several pirates from the Second Division.
From them, he'd gotten a general idea of what the others had been through over the past two years, including the events of six months ago.
After the Summit War ended, Ace had fallen into a slump over Whitebeard's death. The others had been just the same.
The outside world had begun claiming the Whitebeard Pirates would fall apart, but when