Gern paused at the unyielding, even fiercer fighting spirit in his opponent's eyes, then burst out laughing.
"Good! Very good! That's exactly how it should be!" Black Blade: Eight Desolations hummed joyfully in his hand, as though it, too, was thrilled to encounter such an opponent.
"Then, the next strike..." Gern dragged Eight Desolations behind him, its tip scraping across the ground.
Yet unlike the violent warning signs of his earlier attacks, which had set heaven and earth trembling, an eerie silence suddenly descended, making souls shudder.
It was a deathly silence in which sound had been stripped away and all things stood still.
Air Quake fissures formed along the blade of Black Blade: Eight Desolations, their glow initially the pale white of shattered space.
It swiftly faded to a deep blue, finally becoming an icy azure that seemed capable of freezing the soul!
The hum of High-Frequency Vibration abruptly changed pitch as well, transforming from a destructive roar into an incredibly shrill hiss, almost beyond the limits of human hearing.
The air around the blade no longer distorted. Instead, like fragile glass, it developed countless fine cracks resembling fractures in ice!
But the transformation did not stop!
Those pale cracks in the air rapidly deepened in color, turning a profound, frigid... deep blue that seemed capable of freezing even light!
"This is..." Every hair on Hawk-Eye's body stood on end!
This was not the fear of facing destructive energy, but something more primal: the terror of absolute "stillness," of the end of all things!
He felt the temperature around him plummeting at an unbelievable rate. His breath instantly condensed into ice crystals, and even the blood coursing through his body and the circulation of his Haki seemed to grow sluggish!
"What... is this?!" Hawk-Eye stared in alarm at a