While the Marines shifted their fire, the battlefield slowly drew closer. Only a few ships remained near Ace, and the Marines paid them little attention.
The crews that had broken out of the melee were not the strongest Pirates. Quite the opposite: the stronger a crew was, the more likely it was to draw concentrated fire and fail to break through.
Whatever the strength of the Pirate crews that remained, their luck had been extraordinary.
As the distance closed, their cannons finally came into play. The Marines could no longer remain as calm as before. So what if the cannons were weak and prone to bursting? There were enough of them.
As if by agreement, nearly every warship on the outer edge of the defensive ring was struck by a dozen or more cannonballs at once! Two particularly unlucky ships even had their masts blasted apart and began to list.
Looking across the smoke-filled battlefield, Aokiji waved Loa over. "Time to get to work!"
"Got it!"
Loa met his gaze and shot into the sky in the blink of an eye. Aokiji headed in the opposite direction and stood on the deck of an outermost warship.
"Admiral Aokiji?! Ice Dragon Loa?! What are they going to do?!"
Both men were feared far and wide. Their mere appearance made the Pirates tremble. Yet instead of attacking, they turned their attention to the sea below.
The sea?
The seawater?
Water could be frozen!!!
The Pirates suddenly understood. They scrambled to turn their ships around and put some distance between them, but it was already too late.
"Ice Age!"
"Ice Dragon's Roar!"
Crack, crack!
Under their powerful freezing attacks, the sea hardened visibly, ice spreading at a startling speed! Aokiji's Ice Age rolled out like a white wave, swallowing the blue seawater and