Summit War 36

From the direction of the bay, Whitebeard Murakumogiri into the ground and simultaneously unleashed shockwaves behind him with both hands—not as an attack, but to use the recoil to push the last batch of his sons toward the Moby Dick.

"Marco! Jozu! Take them away!" His roar was only mouthed in silence, but Marco understood. Blue flames enveloped his entire body, and his wings swept up a dozen crew members as he pounced on the bow of the ship.

On the Moby Dick, Uchiha Fugaku's Complete Susanoo extended both arms, pulling people up as he fell onto the deck.

Uchiha Kei, Yaoyu, Yakumi's Susanoo an arc-shaped shield wall at the bow of the ship, while the three long-legged giants were firmly rooted to the deck.

Doflamingo's pink feather coat was nowhere to be seen. He was hanging on Susanoo's arm like a drowning man clinging to the last piece of driftwood, and he couldn't even muster up his signature laugh.

No one spoke, no one turned around. Everyone was desperately trying to escape the silently spreading ripples.

One by one, the figures lagging behind—navies, pirates, it was hard to tell—disappeared silently in the ripples, leaving no trace.

This is no longer a natural disaster.

This is true destruction.

As warships and pirate ships hastily departed the shore, only two sounds remained amidst the remaining ruins of Marineford —the silent yet all-consuming aftershocks behind them, and the desperate cries rising and falling before their eyes.

"Wait for me! Please! Wait for me!" The marines who had fallen behind stumbled and staggered along the broken ice, chasing after the warship that was slowly moving away from the shore.

Someone desperately tried to leap onto the deck using Geppo, but was pulled up by the wrist by their companion;

Someone was shaving halfway when they lost their strength and fell into the sea, but was pulled out by a quick-thinking colleague.

But many more could only stretch out their hands in vain on the ever-receding sea, their faces contorted into blurry shapes by fear, their eyes fixed on the gray ship silhouettes sailing further and further away, their words indistinct, reduced to the most primal utterance—"Don't go."

But of all of them, the most desperate one was Coby.

He grabbed the warship's anchor chain.

The rust on the iron chain made his palms bloody and raw, and the seawater splashed on his face and filled his nostrils, choking him so much that he couldn't even cough it up, but he dared not let go.

The warship accelerated, the anchor chain was pulled taut, and his body was repeatedly slammed against the hull by the waves, his bones creaking from the impact. His strength had long been drained away by the cold seawater and the continuous impact.

"Stop! Stop! Help me--!" His hoarse cries pierced through the echoes of the gunfire, but no one answered.

Behind him, the silent ripples were closing in inch by inch, and those figures who couldn't escape in time were already swallowed up.

There was no blood, no screams; it simply vanished silently, as if someone had gently erased a line of pencil writing from the surface of the sea with an eraser.

Coby's nerves completely snapped.

He frantically shouted towards the deck, his voice cracking. "Stop! Stop! I don't want to die! Please save me--!"

Because the anchor chain could not be retrieved, the warship's speed was noticeably slower than that of the other ships.

On the deck, the Marine Vice Admiral in charge of command had a grim face.

He certainly saw the sailor hanging on the anchor chain, and he wanted to save him—but if the warship slowed down any further, and the ripple caught up, all the thousands of people on board would be killed.

He was the captain of this ship, with thousands of lives on his shoulders. He had no right to gamble everyone's lives on the possibility of saving someone.

"Damn it! Loosen the anchor chain! Are you trying to kill everyone on the ship?!" he roared down.

"No! No! Please save me! I don't want to die!" Coby the iron chain, choking on seawater as he desperately shook his head.

The Vice Admiral gritted his teeth and drew his pistol from its holster.

He didn't want to do it, but the ripples behind him were so close that he could see how the engulfed ice surface vanished into thin air.

He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again, his voice as cold as iron. "I'll count to three last times. Let go."

"No! You can't do that! You can't—!"

"One."

"Please! Please--!"

"Two."

"No! My friend is the grandson of Vice Admiral Garp, the naval hero! You can't abandon me--!"

The Vice Admiral's finger paused on the trigger for a moment.

Garp's grandson?

He remembered the boy in the Straw Hat, charging into battle alongside the Whitebeard Pirates in the plaza.

His expression changed, but the ripples behind him wouldn't stop because of a name.

He glanced at the other warships that had already distanced themselves from the fleet, then looked down at the pale-faced young marines on the deck who were staring intently at him. He forcefully suppressed the struggle in his eyes.

"Three. Fire!"

Dozens of marines pulled the triggers almost instinctively.

A barrage of gunfire erupted on the sea, startling several seabirds that were still circling low in the air.

Coby's eyes widened in that instant—not from pain, but from disbelief.

Bullets pierced his arm where he was holding the iron chain, his shoulder, and his chest. Blood gushed from those dark wounds, spreading into patches of dark red in the cold seawater.

He loosened the iron chains one by one, staring at the gray stern of the warship and the sailors on the deck who had turned their faces away. He opened his mouth, but couldn't say anything.

The seawater washed over his face, over his eyes still shrouded in fear, and sank into the unfathomable depths along with his small, thin body.

On the stern of another warship in the distance, Garp watched this scene, his fingers gripping the gunwale so tightly they almost dug into the metal. Those were his men, men he had personally brought from the East Blue.

He watched the child struggle on the sea, watched the Kakkō of gunfire from the warship, and watched the small, thin body disappear into the Flower Room.

He wanted to shout, to curse, to rush over and punch the Vice Admiral who fired the shot into the deck, but as soon as he opened his mouth, a cold voice rang out behind him.

"A marine, disobeying Vice Admiral's direct orders and even threatening him in public by invoking his superior's name— Vice Admiral Garp."

Akainu had appeared behind him unnoticed, his baseball cap pulled low. His face, blackened by gunpowder, held neither mockery nor anger, only a chillingly resolute calm.

"Some things, don't go too far."

Under normal circumstances, Akainu would have already berated Garp for his lax discipline.

But today is different.

He witnessed firsthand how this old man held off the Whitebeard with each punch, and how he protected the new recruits who couldn't escape in time at the last moment.