Imu: This time... I lost

She saw the sky, the five pillars supporting the heavens, Natsu looking down at her, and the enormous Susanoo and the dissipating Demon Entities on the battlefield below.

Her lips moved.

"Hmm..."

The voice was hoarse and very soft.

"Hmm... still alive?"

Natsu did not answer.

He simply gazed down at her quietly, the eighteen Tomoe in his Nine-Tomoe Rinne Sharingan slowly rotating, their crimson-gold light gradually receding.

His face was expressionless.

But his hand, inside his sleeve, trembled again.

Natsu looked down at Imu, his expression calm.

"Does living or not living even matter anymore?" he said. "I won this game."

Imu's body trembled slightly.

She struggled to her feet, her long red hair falling over her shoulders, her crimson eyes churning with a complex mix of emotions.

Reminiscence. Loss. Resentment. Despair.

Those emotions alternated, overlapped, and dissipated on her face layer by layer, eventually transforming into an extremely calm calm, as if she had swallowed everything.

She looked up at Natsu, who was looking down at her.

Natsu neither made a move nor spoke. He simply looked down indifferently, as if observing a game of chess that had already been played.

After a long while, Imu lowered his head.

"You're right..." the ethereal voice rang out again, much softer than before, "This time, Mu lost..."

The moment she finished speaking, her body began to dissipate.

Starting from the fingertips, from the ends of the hair, from the edge of the hem of the dress, little by little, they transform into shimmering specks of light, silently drifting, rising, and dissolving in the air.

She didn't struggle, didn't beg for mercy, and didn't try to grab onto anything.

She simply stood there quietly, letting her body gradually transform into light.

She could have submitted.

Natsu didn't say she wanted to kill her; if she bowed her head, she might have a chance to live.

But she didn't lower her head.

She was once the King of the World, the master of the Void Throne.

Anyone can bow their head, but she cannot.

Imu's vision gradually blurred.

A face emerged from the blur, wearing Straw Hat and smiling brightly.

She had seen that smile for eight hundred years, and had loathed it for eight hundred years.

In the face of that smile, she always felt like a dark Nezumi that couldn't bear the sunlight.

But now, that smile appears farther and farther away, fading into the dissipating light.

"Joy Boy..." Her voice was so soft it was almost inaudible, "In our battle, I won... I just... lost to someone stronger."

She paused. The light had spread to her chest, and her figure began to become transparent.

"My choice was not wrong. The Twenty Kings are not qualified to rule this world with me. Conflict only results in defeat and victory."

Yesterday, I stepped over the corpses of you and the other nineteen kings to ascend the Void Throne and became the master of this world.

Today, the new victor should naturally step over my dead body to become the new King of the World, the new ruler of the world.

Her body was almost completely gone.

Spots of light drifted out from her chin, her cheeks, and the corners of her eyes, swirling in the air like a swarm of Fire Fly scattered by the wind.

"I just don't know about tomorrow..." Her voice grew softer and softer, almost as if she were talking to herself, "Will there be another him, stepping over Natsu's corpse... or... will this new king... become eternal?"

The light spots dissipated.

Imu's figure vanished completely.

Only a quiet, slowly rising, fading glimmer remained in the void.

Natsu watched her dissipate without stopping her or making any sarcastic remarks.

His expression was calm, and his gaze was serene.

A king should have the proper way to fall from grace.

He opened his right hand, palm facing the dissipating specks of light.

One of the slivers of light was drawn away from the group by the gravity of his palm and fell into his hand.

The sliver of light condensed in his hand into a tiny crystal, shimmering with a dark red glow.

He glanced at the crystal and tucked it into his sleeve.

Then he raised his head and looked into the distance.

Below, Ban silently watched the dissipating specks of light.

His Nine-Tomoe Rinne Sharingan slowly rotated, his face expressionless.

He stared at it for a few moments, then looked away.

Fugaku's Complete Susanoo been deactivated. He stood on the broken reef, his Six-Tomoe Rinne Sharingan quietly rotating, looking up at the direction where Imu had disappeared.

He didn't react in any particular way, just watched quietly.

Shanks stood beside Shamrock, his left hand freeing itself from the hilt of Gryphon's sword.

He held his head high, his long red hair fluttering in the sea breeze, and three scars on his left eye were particularly clear in the dim light.

He saw those points of light.

His lips moved slightly, as if he wanted to say something, but nothing came out.

Beckman glanced at him from the side but didn't ask.

Natsu withdrew her gaze, glanced down at the crystal in her palm, and then looked back into the distance.

The crimson-gold light in his Nine-Tomoe Rinne Sharingan was gradually receding.

"Joy Boy..." His voice was soft and flat, as if he were talking to himself, or perhaps to someone who wasn't there, "Let's take care of it all at once."

On an island in the New World, the Straw Hat Pirates had just docked their ship to rest.

Luffy sat on a Taiseki, clutching half a piece of meat in his hand, his mouth stuffed full, grinning at his crewmates sitting in a circle around him.

The strange feeling he had just experienced had passed, and he felt lively and energetic again.

Sanji was setting up a pot to cook soup, Zoro was dozing against a tree trunk, Chopper was bandaging Usopp, Nami and Robin were checking the flight path.

Everything is normal.

Then Luffy's pupils suddenly contracted.

He abruptly turned his head, looking in a certain direction deep within the island. A pair of crimson-gold eyes were reflected in the wide, bulging eyes on that rubber head.

A pair of eyes floated in mid-air, with crimson-gold light pouring out from the depths of the pupils. Ring-shaped patterns covered the inside of the iris, and within the patterns, jet-black Tomoe slowly rotated.

"Ah--!!!"

Luffy suddenly arched his back.

He felt as if something was gripping him from the inside; he clutched his chest with both hands, his body trembling violently.

The feeling was exactly the same as when the Devil Fruit User extracted before, but this time it was more intense and direct, as if something was being forcibly pulled out from the deepest part of his body.