Reality would not change because you could not accept it; walk the final stretch with dignity

One minute. Five minutes. Ten minutes.

Nothing!

Nothing at all!

All his senses returned was a chilling, utterly complete emptiness!

There was not the slightest trace of life, not a scrap of unusual residual energy, and certainly no sign of Ace's life force.

Ace—and every trace of his existence—seemed to have truly been erased from this world!

"Whew."

At last, Imu's nerves, stretched to their limit, relaxed considerably, and a faint smile appeared on his face.

The pressure and sense of danger that had haunted him slowly receded like the tide.

It worked.

It really worked!

Ace was dead!

This Transmigrator, who was like him and possessed a system, was finally dead.

From now on, this world would once again—no, forever—belong to him, Imu, alone!

As the only Transmigrator, he would rule this world for eternity!

As for the lives destroyed in the crossfire... Aokiji, Garp, and the countless innocents caught up in it—what did they matter?

Hadn't the dead Ace been just as indifferent?

What mattered was the outcome! What mattered was that he had survived to the end! He would reshape the world according to his own will!

In his triumphant satisfaction, Imu even unconsciously overlooked the moon still hanging high in the sky, radiating an eerie, blood-red light.

Infinite Tsukuyomi was still running!

The caster was "dead," so why did the technique persist? That glaring contradiction was temporarily buried beneath the joy of victory filling his heart.

With a thought, he prepared to turn away from these utterly devastated ruins and return to the Flower Room, where he would begin clearing up the aftermath and truly take control of a world with nothing left to restrain him.

However...

At that very moment...

Behind Imu, ripples spread through space at the center of that region of absolute silence,