A long time passed.
The frozen sea lay deathly silent, with only the cold wind moaning through the crisscrossing gullies and ruins.
Pale daylight shone over the shattered battlefield...
"Cough... cough, cough..."
An irrepressible coughing fit broke the silence.
Red-Haired Shanks knelt on one knee on the ice, Griffon driven deep into the frozen surface before him, supporting his swaying body.
"You really are as strong as a monster, Heavenquake!
"Captain Roger once said that if you'd lived in his era, you would have been a match for him...
"Looks like... he was right!"
Shanks tried to lift his head and look toward the equally battered figure in the distance, but his vision kept darkening and blurring.
He still wanted to demand answers, to stop him, to roar and charge once more... but his body betrayed his will.
His throat felt clogged with searing sand and gravel. He could not make a sound.
And so, after barely managing to stand, he could only stumble a few pathetic steps forward.
Then, with a thud, his knees scraped faint trails across the ice, and at last, the final sliver of strength holding him up drained away.
"Ugh..."
A brief, muffled grunt escaped him.
Griffon, embedded in the ice, rocked slightly forward.
Shanks's fingers loosened from its hilt one by one.
The light in his eyes rapidly faded. Darkness swallowed his vision entirely, and the body he had forced to stay upright became a puppet with its strings cut.
He slumped forward and crashed heavily onto the ice, scattering tiny ice crystals, then lay motionless.
Only the faint, almost imperceptible rise and fall of his chest proved that this member of the Four Emperors still clung to life, though he had completely lost the ability to fight.
Elsewhere.
Gern remained vigilant, his grip