Arlong made no attempt to resist after falling to the ground. He could not even summon the will to struggle.
He knew better than anyone that any resistance before this man was futile. It would only make his death come faster and leave him in an uglier state...
So Arlong lay in the shallow crater his own body had smashed into the ground, as though resigned to his fate.
Gazing up at the blue sky over the East Blue, he let out a laugh filled with despair and madness.
"Wuhahahaha... hahahahaha!!"
Meanwhile, not one of the previously vicious fish-men of the Arlong Pirates dared move a muscle. They barely even dared to breathe.
Because the man before them was Gern, "Heavenquake"!
He was the absolute force whose name and flag alone kept anyone from daring to threaten Fish-Man Island!
Gern ignored everyone else's gazes and walked up to Arlong, who lay sprawled on the ground. He lowered his eyes and looked down at him coldly.
"You've wanted to kill me for a long time, haven't you?" Arlong stopped laughing. His bloodshot eyes stared up at Gern, his voice mocking.
"Back on Fish-Man Island, in front of Brother Tiger's grave.
Your eyes... they told me back then!"
"Yes." Gern's face remained expressionless, his voice flat. "So what?"
"So what? Haha!" As though he had heard something hilarious, Arlong's voice abruptly turned shrill.
"Looks like I, Arlong, will end up just like Brother Tiger, dying at the hands of you lowly humans! Hahahaha!!"
Arlong now saw himself as a "martyr," just like his big brother Tiger, and faced death with a twisted sense of "pride."
Yet in the face of Arlong's self-important, tragic "sacrifice," Gern merely gave a cold scoff.
"Heh."
"You don't deserve to speak Fisher Tiger's name."
"I told you,