In the sky, an enormous azure dragon circled, casting a vast shadow.
A Marine looked up at Kaido, the giant dragon in the sky, and thought in despair, That's Kaido of the Beasts! Are we really fighting a god? With a body that huge, a single breath could kill hundreds of us!
Casualties on the battlefield were devastating. The Marines' screams mingled with the pirates' wild laughter, and blood stained the ice dark red.
Faced with this unprecedented tidal wave of pirates, a hundred thousand elite Marines had actually begun to retreat, losing ground at every turn.
Sengoku watched it all from the Execution Platform, his expression grim.
"Fleet Admiral Sengoku, casualties are rising rapidly. Our elite forces are about to buckle," Vice Admiral Tsuru said on the Execution Platform, her face grave.
"Activate the Encircling Wall!" Sengoku drew a deep breath and ordered loudly, "We must not let them reach the plaza! Trap them inside the bay!"
"But Whitebeard is still inside the bay. If we activate it now, we'll shut our own people out as well," Vice Admiral Tsuru said worriedly.
"We can't worry about that now. Activate it immediately!" Sengoku gritted his teeth. "We must not let the pirates break through to the plaza!"
At Sengoku's command, the ice inside Marineford's bay suddenly began to shake violently.
Massive steel barriers, forged from a special alloy and Seastone, slowly rose from the seabed, separating the inside of the bay from the outside.
"What is this? Seastone barriers? Cannonballs can't even penetrate them!" the pirates cried out. They hacked at the barriers with their weapons, but could leave only faint white marks.
"Gurararara! Sengoku, do you think this iron box can hold us?" Whitebeard sneered as he watched the Encircling Wall rise.
Just then, the thunderclouds in the sky