His neck was locked in a crushing grip, and tentacles sprouting from the dark domain bound his limbs.
His Devil Fruit powers were forcibly stripped away, his strength ebbing...
A hopeless situation.
A truly hopeless situation, trapped completely within his enemy's "web."
And Imu, inhabiting Blackbeard's body, looked down at him as though admiring a moth's final, futile struggles in a spiderweb.
"Actually, compared to Davy, Mu prefers your body.
If you were to replace the Five Elders...
Mu's reign could easily continue for another eight hundred years."
"So, Gern Reginald Sigma!"
"Mu truly cannot bear to kill you!"
"Is that so?" Gern's lips curled into a cold sneer.
"What a shame..."
"What is?"
"That I have no trouble killing you!!"
Before his words had even faded!
"Eight Desolations!!!"
A furious roar erupted from Gern's chest!
"Hummm!!!!"
The Black Blade, Eight Desolations, stood embedded in the distant ground, perfectly still.
Its blade suddenly erupted with a dazzling dark-purple radiance!
Instead of flying slowly back, it became a bolt of lightning that tore through space.
Moving faster than the eye could follow, as though distance meant nothing,
it instantly appeared above the right forearm with which Imu was gripping Gern's neck!
Its tip pointed down, without the slightest pause or visible trajectory.
A muffled shlick rang out as the blade pierced flesh and bone!
Eight Desolations drove viciously upward through Imu's-Blackbeard's-thick forearm.
The pitch-black blade emerged from the other side, carrying a few drops of thick blood so dark red it was almost black.
"Urgh?!" For the first time, a visible change crossed Imu's composed face.
It was not anger, but shock at the doubled agony fed back from the wounded vessel.
The right hand gripping Gern's neck instinctively loosened at the sudden puncture wound.
"Now!"
Dark-purple Conqueror's Haki erupted from