One Sword Slashed Through Shiki's Legs-Get Lost

Golden sword energy pounced forward like a lion.

The long saber in Rektol's hand lit up with blinding blue-white lightning.

Under the intense heat, the ordinary-issue saber let out a painful hum. The rust on the blade instantly fell away, revealing the glowing-red steel beneath.

Rektol did not dodge.

His three-year-old body stood ramrod straight. Black military boots pressed firmly against the dented Wapometal floor.

The soles scraped against the Wapometal, dragging out a grating squeal.

He gripped the scalding hilt with one hand.

The muscles in his small arm bulged high. Veins coiled beneath his skin like green snakes, throbbing violently with every heartbeat.

"Slash."

The first heart in the left side of his chest pumped blood furiously.

Two hundred million volts of savage lightning poured through his arm and into the blade. A supreme slash at the Great Swordsman level, carrying thunder capable of sweeping away anything in its path, slammed head-on into the sky-filling golden lions.

"Boom!"

A blinding white light exploded in the center of the hall.

The two forces collided. The air was forcibly pushed aside, forming an absolute vacuum.

A gale mixed with metal shavings scraped across Rektol's face. He did not even blink.

There was no deadlock between evenly matched forces.

The blue-white sword energy was like a red-hot boning knife cutting straight into butter.

The wild golden sword net was torn to shreds the instant they made contact. Golden motes scattered through the air like fireflies.

Shiki stood with his mouth open. His broken teeth were still clamped into his lip.

He watched helplessly as his full-powered strike was effortlessly ripped apart. A mouthful of bloody phlegm lodged in his throat, and he could not make a sound.

A flash of blue light swept past.

It was so fast that it exceeded the limits of the retina's ability to capture it, leaving behind only a faint scorched mark in the air.

Shiki's entire body stiffened.

His brain had not even had time to issue the command to dodge.

"Pfft."

Two faint, muffled sounds came from just below Shiki's knees.

They were as soft as fingernails scratching through paper.

Shiki froze in place.

He was still holding his sword-swinging pose. His severed arms hung at his sides, blood dripping down from his kimono sleeves.

The pain had not yet reached his brain.

He merely felt that his field of vision had suddenly become lower.

The iron wall he had originally been looking straight at now showed only the rough welds along its base.

With nothing supporting the weight of his upper body, he pitched straight forward.

"Thud."

Shiki crashed heavily onto the cold Wapometal floor.

His chin struck the metal hard. His jawbone gave a crisp crack and was completely dislocated. Blood mixed with saliva sprayed across the floor.

Shiki struggled to turn his head.

He saw a sight that nearly tore his soul apart.

Two lower legs clad in yellow-and-black kimono trousers had been severed cleanly at the roots. They lay quietly on the metal floor half a meter away.

The worn wooden sandals were still on his feet.

Those were his legs.

The cuts were smooth as mirrors. The cross-sections of bone and muscle were completely exposed to the air.

Yet not a drop of blood flowed out.

The extreme heat of the two hundred million volts of lightning had completely seared the blood vessels and bone marrow the instant it cut through flesh.

The wounds had hardened into a layer of pitch-black carbonized scabs.

A thick stench of roasted meat, mixed with the acrid smoke of burning clothes, drilled straight into Shiki's nostrils.

"Argh—"

The nerve endings finally transmitted the agony to his cerebral cortex.

Like a dead fish thrown onto shore, Shiki rolled frantically across the metal floor.

He tried to cover his severed legs with his hands. But both arms had long since been broken and merely dragged limply along the ground.

He could only rub his ruined shoulders against the rough metal floor, letting out a shrill, inhuman scream from his throat.

The centipede-like scars on his face twisted completely out of shape. Tears mixed with blood and smeared across his entire face.

A sea emperor of an earlier era, the second-in-command of the Rocks Pirates.

Now he had become a cripple without both legs, unable even to stand.

Rektol carried the glowing-red long saber.

He took his short legs and walked over to Shiki.

His military boots landed on the metal floor with dull thuds.

Shiki stopped rolling.

He lay on his back, gasping for air. His chest heaved violently like a broken bellows.

His bloodshot right eye stared fixedly at Rektol standing beside him.

"Kill me..." Shiki gritted his teeth. His lips had been bitten open, leaving them mangled and bloody.

He could accept dying on the battlefield. But he would never accept living on in such humiliation.

Rektol looked down at him from above.

His gaze was as cold as the ice at the bottom of the sea. There was no mockery in it, only the indifference one showed toward garbage.

"Kill you? That would be letting you off too easily."

Rektol casually lowered the long saber in his hand to his side. The tip pressed against the metal floor, scorching a black dot into it.

"I want you alive. Crawling along in the sewers like a beaten dog."

He raised his military boot.

With mud and rust clinging to its sole, he planted it directly on Shiki's bloodstained face.

He ground down hard.

Shiki closed his eyes in humiliation. His fingernails dug into the metal floor, scraping out bloody marks.

Rektol withdrew his foot.

His right leg suddenly pulled back, muscles taut.

He aimed at Shiki's chest and kicked with all his strength.

"Bang!"

Shiki's ruined body was sent flying like a sandbag.

He traced a parabola through the air and crashed straight through the rickety iron door at the edge of the hall.

The door collapsed. Shiki rolled out.

His body tumbled down the steep steel steps of the breakwater.

His head struck the edge of a step with a dull impact, leaving a long red smear of blood behind.

Finally.

With a tremendous splash, Shiki slammed into the pitch-black seawater outside the breakwater.

A white spray more than two meters high erupted.

The icy seawater instantly flooded into his mouth and nose. His carbonized wounds soaked in the salt water, sending spasms of pain through his entire body.

Rektol walked to the gap at the edge of the hall.

The sea wind whipped the hem of his coat.

He looked down at the churning waves.

"Go back to the sea and wait to die." Rektol's voice was flat.

A ring of dark-red blood spread across the surface of the sea.

The smell of blood scattered with the sea wind.

Several bloodthirsty sharks poked their dorsal fins above the water in the distance. But intimidated by the terrifying aura lingering around the fortress, they circled beneath the surface and dared not approach.

Shiki's figure had already sunk to the bottom of the sea, nowhere to be seen.

Rektol withdrew his gaze.

He lowered his head and looked at the issue saber in his hand.

The blade had long since been unable to withstand two hundred million volts. That last slash had drained the final span of this piece of common iron's life.

The blade was covered in dense, spiderweb-like cracks.

"Clang."

Rektol released his five fingers.

The long saber dropped onto the metal floor and shattered into more than a dozen pieces of charred scrap iron.

He rubbed his aching wrist. His knuckles cracked several times.

He had just been about to turn around and walk back to the throne.

The heart in his chest suddenly missed half a beat.

Within the All-Knowing Eye's sensory network, it suddenly caught an immense vibration wave of astonishing strength.

The vibration carried no killing intent, yet it possessed a weight capable of overturning the entire island.

The seawater outside the breakwater was pushed backward by the invisible force.

A huge shallow depression appeared out of nowhere in the surface of the sea.

The current slammed against the steel breakwater, producing a deafening roar.

Rektol stopped walking.

He turned his head. His gaze pierced through the thin mist above the sea and looked toward the waters outside the harbor.

A massive pirate ship shaped like a white whale broke through the gloomy fog.

Its ram tore through the waves. Carrying an overwhelming pressure like a mountain range collapsing into the sea, it slowly came to a halt at the edge of Totto Land's waters.

The Moby Dick.