Whoosh!
At that critical moment, an incomparably shrill sound of something tearing through the air, as if it could rip apart the entire night sky, cut through every sound on the battlefield.
It shot out from the dark forest at the edge of the battlefield, as deep and ominous as the mouth of some giant beast.
It was an astonishingly long blade!
It was too fast!
So fast that the smile on Doflamingo's face had only just frozen; so fast that Diamante's cruel grin had yet to turn into shock; so fast that none of the Donquixote Family officers' eyes could even catch its trajectory.
Splurt!
Like a hot knife through butter, the long blade pierced precisely beneath Diamante's left shoulder blade.
The terrifying force within the blade did not relent, hurling his entire body backward like a stone launched from a catapult, his feet leaving the ground.
In the end, he was brutally nailed to the trunk of an ancient tree dozens of meters from the center of the battlefield, so thick it would have taken several people to encircle it, left hanging there like a specimen.
"Arghhh—!"
Only then did Diamante's heart-wrenching scream erupt.
Blood gushed out like a fountain, instantly staining his extravagant clothes red, dyeing the cold blade crimson, and spreading into a horrifying dark-red patch across the rough bark behind him.
The rapier in his hand had long since clattered to the ground. His body convulsed violently from the agony, yet he could not break free in the slightest.
The entire battlefield fell into absolute silence.
Even the crackling flames and the wind's mournful howl through the ruins seemed to have been strangled by an invisible hand at that moment.
Every Donquixote Family officer's expression froze, their previous mockery, fury, and smugness instantly turning into