Meanwhile, at the other end of the battlefield, the murderous tension had not faded with the fall of one legend after another.
"The bloodlines of evil must not escape!!"
Akainu transformed into magma and continued his relentless pursuit of the remnants of the Whitebeard Pirates as they tried to withdraw!
Above all, his gaze remained fixed on Ace and Luffy, whom everyone had gathered around to protect, as he unleashed blast after blast of magma.
Marco, Jozu, and the others were forced to risk their lives blocking him again and again, making their retreat agonizingly difficult.
To Akainu, the end of a legend was merely a sideshow.
Completely snuffing out the bloodlines of those two great "evils," the Pirate King and the Revolutionary Army, was the ultimate expression of his "justice"!
Put another way, he genuinely wanted to become Fleet Admiral. With Gern's achievements there for everyone to see, he had to prove himself a worthy contender!
High atop the Execution Platform, Sengoku took in everything happening below.
But when his gaze fell on the figure lying motionless on the ground, quietly staring at the sky, his brows furrowed slightly.
"Gern..."
He understood.
Or rather, he, Zephyr, and even Garp, who now sat silently on the Execution Platform, had all experienced similar moments to one degree or another.
It was the inevitable daze and emptiness that followed a shock powerful enough to reshape an era-
after personally ending the life of one of its defining figures, or witnessing their passing.
It was that distinct, fleeting sense of weightlessness that came from standing at a crossroads of history.
This was a tempering of the soul, an invisible threshold that everyone who truly stood atop the tide had to cross alone.
Some sank there. Others lost their way.
But... understanding was one