Summit War 12
The deathly silence lasted less than half a second. Then the entire square seemed to be lit up as if a fuse had been lit.
"Akainu --Admiral!!!" It wasn't a cheer, but a trembling roar squeezed from the back of his throat.
The veterans gripped their knives tightly, the new recruits' eyes reddened, some were shouting, and some were already charging forward with their guns drawn.
Justice is a heavy word, sometimes so heavy it makes it hard to breathe, but at this moment, this man, who was never popular, used the most brutal way to nail it back into the bones of every marine.
Those who stand here may include parasites or unlucky souls forcibly conscripted by military orders, but none of them are cowards.
"Sakazuki ..." Aokiji stood on the edge of the ice, the ice spear in his hand now hanging down to his side.
He certainly didn't like Akainu; the two were completely incompatible, from their ideologies to their styles of doing things.
But he saw it clearly—that shout just now wasn't a scheme, not a trick; that magma bastard had truly staked his life on this.
He withdrew his gaze and raised the ice spear again.
A dozen or Headquarters Vice Admiral quickly filled the gaps in the defenses, forming a human wall around the remaining Pacifista.
Gion and Tokikake exchanged a glance, then simultaneously drew their swords, the blades pointing directly at the purple Susanoo at the bow of the ship. Two slashes of Admiral Level crossed in mid-air, only to be blocked by the Susanoo's ribs. The resulting shockwave created a spiderweb-like pattern of cracks on the ice next to the Moby Dick.
Uchiha Fugaku Mangekyo Sharingan slowly spun. He raised the hand of his Susanoo and struck the two of them with it.
Behind them, twenty Kage Level ninjas from the Uchiha Clan silently dispersed, each cutting into key points in the plaza.
Instead of directly confronting the Vice Admiral, they used the most efficient method— Substitution Technique to lure the enemy, Genjutsu to control the field, Fire Release release to block movement—to gradually relieve the Vice Admiral Level pressure that had been weighing on the Whitebeard Pirates.
On the ice, the vassal pirate crews that had been scattered by the Pacifista and Vice Admiral were rapidly regrouping, with the dozen or so Division Commander of the Whitebeard Pirates at their core.
Vista swung his twin swords, slicing through the wreckage of a Pacifista that was attempting to flank him, then turned and shouted something to the pirates behind him;
Marco pulled himself out of Akainu's Magma Fist, his blue wings unfurling above his head, pulling back several crew members who had been blown apart;
Jozu crumpled a naval riot shield into a ball like a piece of paper and tossed it into the sea. Then he turned around and used his Diamond -like back to take a volley of bullets fired from the side, protecting the wounded soldiers behind him.
A straight breach is slowly but steadily tearing open the navy's Iron Wall.
Target – the Execution Platform.
Marco's blue wings drew an arc in the sky above the west side of the plaza, once again grazing past Akainu's Magma Fist.
His Phoenix Flames had been broken and reassembled countless times in the previous battles, and each rebirth consumed his stamina.
He knew very well that he had already performed exceptionally well by holding off Akainu for so long— Yonko Commander versus Admiral, holding off is a victory—but he still glanced at Bayhead for a moment longer.
Whitebeard was clashing head-on with Garp's iron fist while swinging Murakumogiri with one hand. The shockwave from the collision of the Armament Haki shook the entire plaza. Marco subconsciously tilted his head in that direction.
In that fraction of a second of distraction, Akainu caught him.
The right arm magmaized faster than ever before. The magma, compressed to its limit, exploded at the elbow in a blinding dark red aura, and the entire arm shot out like a volcanic eruption— the Hound Dog.
Marco hastily folded his wings to shield his chest, and in that instant, he pushed the flames of the Phoenix to their limit.
The magma collided with the flames, and the resulting shockwave shattered the ice surface within a radius of tens of meters, sending scalding steam billowing into the sky.
He was sent flying backward like a baseball hit by a hammer, his blue feathers scattering in the air. He crashed through a cannon, bounced off, and rolled several times on the ice before coming to a stop.
The scalding wound on his chest, pierced by lava, was slowly healing under the blue flames, but his breathing had become erratic.
Almost simultaneously, on the ice on the other side of the plaza, the battle between Aokiji and Jozu also came to a conclusion.
The Diamond -like arms were indeed ridiculously hard; Aokiji's ice spear couldn't even leave a white mark when it pierced them.
Jozu used his unreasonable toughness to withstand several rounds of attacks from Aokiji, and even forced his opponent back several meters at one point.
But Aokiji was never one to rely on brute force.
After discovering that his ice spears couldn't pierce the Diamond, he simply gave up on a direct attack and instead covered the ice beneath Jozu's feet with frost, layer upon layer, without making a sound.
Jozu didn't notice that with each step he took, frost would silently spread up his calves.
When he finally realized something was wrong and tried to back away, his left foot was already stuck.
Aokiji didn't give him a chance to break free.
The frost erupted with all its might in that instant, freezing from his ankles all the way to his knees, then to his waist, chest, and shoulders. In just two or three breaths, Jozu was completely enveloped in a thick layer of ice.
He remained in a fist-pumping stance, like a statue abandoned on an ice field, the luster of Diamond faintly shimmering beneath the ice.
In the distance, Vista's twin blades clashed once more with Hawkeye's Black Blade.
As sparks flew, a numbing, stinging pain shot through his hand—he had lost count of how many times the blades had clashed tonight.
His wrist was trembling, not from exhaustion, but from the force of each strike from the opponent's knife, a force powerful enough to shake his entire skeleton.
Hawkeye still held the knife in one hand, his face expressionless, his breathing as steady as if he were practicing swordsmanship in a courtyard.
Vista gritted his teeth, crossed his twin swords to block the Black Blade's next downward slash, but his knee buckled and he was forced to kneel on one knee.