Blackbeard's lips twitched as he tried to force out a smile, but their trembling made it look worse than crying.
His eyes remained fixed on Gern above him, and a dry voice rasped from his throat.
"Hey, hey... Heavenquake, calm down! Think this through!"
Blackbeard tried to steady him by appealing to the "bigger picture."
"Your Tremor-Tremor Fruit, plus my Tremor-Tremor Fruit...
If we both really cut loose here...
Egghead... this island... will completely collapse!!"
That was not entirely alarmist.
A full-power clash between two top-tier vibration users would be absolutely devastating to the island's structure.
Besides, by now, Blackbeard had more or less [fully mastered and assimilated] the Tremor-Tremor Fruit.
"Is that so?" Gern's voice was flat, without the slightest fluctuation.
He remained on the elevated platform, looking down from above.
"In that case..."
Gern's right hand slowly closed around the hilt of Eight Desolations, hanging at his right hip.
"Hummm!!!"
The bandages around Eight Desolations automatically unraveled in a spiral from hilt to tip.
They turned into grayish-white fragments suspended in midair, their edges flickering with arc-like waves of high-frequency vibration.
At the same time, dark purple serpents of Conqueror's Haki lightning leaped between the blade's gaps and his arm!
"Why don't you..." Gern's voice echoed through the hall.
"...give up on staying alive, Blackbeard?"
The instant his words fell-
"Clang!!"
A clear, lingering ring of steel exploded through the air!
Eight Desolations was fully drawn!
The pitch-black blade devoured every glimmer in the dim light, leaving only the serrated ripples of dark red cracks along its edge.
Entwined with dark purple Conqueror's Haki lightning condensed to its utmost limit, they seemed to imbue this fierce blade with a soul of destruction!
Gern did not swing immediately.
He merely raised the drawn Eight Desolations slowly, holding it horizontally