"Finally getting serious?" Gern's lips curled upward as the bandages on his Black Blade began bursting apart inch by inch.
"That's more like it, Roger!!!!"
Their Conqueror's Haki collided in midair, and the entire Deserted Island began shaking violently.
Waves dozens of meters high surged across the distant sea, while a rift was ripped straight through the clouds overhead.
At the heart of the storm, however, a triumphant smile tugged at Gern's lips.
This was exactly what he wanted.
A Pirate King fighting with everything he had, not a dying man resigned to his own death.
Dangerous violet light flickered in Gern's eyes.
"As for what you said..." The blade of Black Blade: Eight Desolations began vibrating at high frequency, crying out like a thunderbird.
Where its edge passed, it left frozen trails of vacuum, pale cracks spreading from the blade into the surrounding space.
It was as though the entire world had become fragile beneath this single slash.
"Regret?" Gern suddenly burst into wild laughter, his Black Blade erupting with even more dazzling white light. "Hahahahaha!"
He lunged a step forward, and the earth beneath his feet shattered like glass.
Purple-black arcs of Conqueror's Haki danced wildly around him, each footfall unleashing a shock wave across a hundred-meter radius.
The air compressed into visible ripples, and fine, pale cracks spread through the void like a spiderweb.
"Those words stopped meaning anything the moment I came to find you alone!"
Gern lunged forward, his figure suddenly blurring as he shot ahead like a comet wreathed in white light. In the next instant, he stood before Roger.
Black Blade: Eight Desolations traced a perfect arc, shattering the space along its path like a mirror.
Facing Gern's space-rending slash, Roger abruptly turned his wrist, and Ace's edge carved a streak of dark