Dagger Revealed (III)

Apple Sea, the center of the battlefield.

"Disappear. All of you."

Mother Carmel, whose identity Reg had exposed, had no desire to talk. Her voice merged with Big Mom's, who had fallen onto the transparent passage yet struggled back to her feet and continued singing, detonating every disaster—Thrum!!!

Like the sudden snap of a string, yet also like the final heavy note as a stage curtain fell, the sound echoed with a sense of utter finality, carrying decay, ruin, and overwhelming despair as it swept forth!

Rumble... Exploding fire tornadoes dyed one corner of the sky. Pitch-black meteor shadows emerged amid waves of heat, while endlessly erupting magma churned the sea into countless bubbles. Hundreds upon thousands of enormous pillars of fire erupted in a magnificent display.

Crash... In another expanse of sky connected to the flames, crystalline snowflakes, massive hailstones, and freezing cold currents that froze whatever they touched rapidly converged into mountain-sized inverted ice cones. Swept by hurricanes, they stretched into continuous peaks, radiating the lonely chill of a thousand mountains devoid of birds.

Whoosh, whoosh... The thick smoke brought by the gale mingled with cold currents, scorching heat, and the torrential curtain of rain. Miserable green, mottled dark red, inky purple-black, and other utterly ominous clusters of light surged toward Reg like a vast swarm of locusts, launching the first charge.

"Ah, ah~!"

Amid these bizarre transformations, the magnificent music returned to its original beginning... but both the singer and the voice had changed beyond all recognition.

The sorrow and despair in this voice ran far deeper than Big Mom's... The face beneath the black mist enveloping her gradually changed from seductive beauty into gentle, delicate grace, yet there was no trace of life in it. This was the appearance of the nun, Mother Carmel.

Reg, who