-Babylon Command Center.
"...Wh-what is this? Hiss-Lord Sephi!? Ah..."
Aisa suddenly clutched her head in agony and crouched on the floor. A phantom pain, like wire threading through her brain, made her grit her teeth.
"Aisa! Are you all right? I'm sorry! I'm so sorry-"
Seeing Aisa like this, Lilith immediately gathered her into her arms.
According to the satellite reports, the shot had indeed inflicted heavy casualties on the Beasts Pirates.
She thought the heart voices of the dying pirates were tormenting Aisa. Overwhelmed with guilt, she could think of nothing to say except repeated apologies.
"Aisa! What on earth is happening!? This seems..."
Thanks to Sephiroth's "spoilers," Brook had already approached his strength in the original story's New World arc. After all, he was nearly ninety. What limited his strength wasn't any objective constraint, but more a matter of how he thought.
"You feel it too, you lecherous skeleton? Aisa...this seems to have something to do with souls."
As a ghost-type Paramecia Devil Fruit User, Perona was particularly sensitive to minds and souls.
"...I'm fine. It's not your fault, Lily...this is...Lord Sephi's...heart voice...hah-"
Aisa endured the headache and tried to explain, but her Emotion Absorption was passive. She couldn't control it as freely as Sephiroth could.
As Sephiroth approached Babylon, Aisa's Mantra had picked up his arrival.
In truth, she wasn't particularly fond of dealing with people, though over the past few years, she had gradually learned to get along with more of them.
To her innate perception, Sephiroth was someone very special.
If people's hearts were melodies, everyone else's heart voice was usually an unstable little tune, each with its own style. Only Sephiroth's was a vast, steady wash of white noise.
It was like fine rain falling into every corner of a huge, empty city.
But