At the edge of the West Blue.
The pallid setting sun clung stubbornly to the horizon.
Waves battered the scorched, shattered hulls, letting out dull, mournful groans.
Sengoku stood at the very front of the deck like a clay statue stripped of its soul.
The cloak of justice that symbolized the Navy's highest authority was now tattered and stained with dark red blood.
For the first time in his life, the back of the Navy Fleet Admiral known as the Wise General had bent.
Vice Admiral Tsuru stood beside Sengoku, her arms tightly wrapped around herself.
Her deeply wrinkled face was as pale as paper.
Behind them, Onigumo, Momonga, and the other surviving Headquarters vice admirals leaned against one another as they collapsed onto the deck.
Everyone hung their heads, lifeless and dispirited.
Oppression.
Despair.
Even breathing felt incomparably difficult.
To crusade against those monsters calling themselves the "Empire," Marine Headquarters had deployed virtually everything it had.
More than fifty top-class warships.
What an enormous force that was!
Enough to launch five Buster Calls capable of destroying everything!
But now?
Sengoku looked around, and all that remained in his eyes was unbearable devastation.
More than a dozen battered warships drifted across the sea like stray dogs with broken spines.
They had lost.
Lost completely and utterly!
What Sengoku found most impossible to accept was the total defeat of their high-end forces.
Garp.
Kizaru.
Aokiji.
Momousagi.
Those top experts who had supported the Navy's backbone had all fallen, reduced to prisoners!
Without those peak combatants standing guard.
What could the Navy use to suppress this rampaging sea?
They would not even need to wait until tomorrow.
The Four Emperors of the New World would soon pounce like sharks scenting blood!
"Sengoku."
"Return to Mary Geoise first."
"We must report to the