Within the enormous crater in the seabed, the dust had yet to settle.
An icy, low shout already rang out.
"Heavenquake: Thousand Light Wheels!"
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!!!
In an instant, hundreds of pure-white energy rings with serrated edges shot out of the billowing dust, spinning at high speed!
Their trajectories were treacherous, covering every angle of the sky, and the rings let out piercing shrieks as they sliced through the air.
Like a swarm of bees, they converged on Whitebeard in midair!
Whitebeard's expression darkened, and he swung Murakumogiri!
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!...!!
Murakumogiri's blade struck each incoming light wheel with pinpoint precision. The supreme power of vibration coating it instantly invaded the wheels' internal structures, detonating them prematurely in midair!
Yet when the last light wheel was shattered, Whitebeard's expression did not ease. Instead, it grew even graver.
"If I had a choice... I really wouldn't want to see... a future like this!"
On the seabed, an invisible aura forcibly dispersed the dust, revealing Gern's figure deep within.
He knelt on one knee at the center of the enormous crater, tearing off his tattered shirt, a streak of fresh blood trailing from the corner of his mouth.
Then he raised his eyes. There was no anger in them, only an almost absolute calm.
Staring at Whitebeard, he lifted his hand. His bloodstained lips slowly curved upward as he uttered,
"Domain Expansion."
The instant those words fell-
Hummm-!!!
A perfectly transparent cylindrical vacuum, roughly ten meters in diameter, appeared without warning, centered on Gern's body!
Then the vacuum cylinder expanded wildly in every direction at a speed that defied all reason, a hundred times beyond what the eye could follow!
It was not an impact, nor an explosion, but... "erasure"!
Wherever the vacuum domain passed, shattered reefs, the