One moment, the army of Sea Kings had blotted out the sky with its ferocity; the next, it was like a painting fed into a shredder, instantly reduced to countless scraps of flesh and blood...
Bones, scales, and the towering waves they had raised all vanished along the path of that pitch-black cross of blade light...
There were no screams, no struggles, only a deathly still, mirror-smooth cutting scar that instantly replaced the churning sea.
The enormous deep-blue vortex, radiating terrifying gravitational force, silently collapsed like a punctured bubble the instant the cross of blade light pierced its core.
Before the violent energy turbulence could erupt, it was completely erased, as though it had never existed...
A vast, mirror-smooth, cross-shaped vacuum had been forcibly carved out of the sea.
The seabed lay exposed at the bottom, flanked by frozen walls of water hundreds of meters high, like blue mountain ranges split apart by an invisible giant blade.
Sunlight fell unhindered over the waters that had just been shrouded in death, illuminating the bottomless cross-shaped abyss...
And, within the frozen walls of water on either side, the horrifying sight of countless dismembered Sea Kings, suspended in the instant before they disintegrated into nothing.
Absolute silence...
The rumble of the Ark Maxim's engines became the only background sound in that deathly silence.
The enormous golden ship sped steadily and unhindered along the calm, cross-shaped passage carved through the sea, leaving behind the hellish gateway the Demon King had created with two casual slashes.
Crocodile gripped the helm tightly with both hands, his knuckles groaning under the excessive strain.
All the blood in his body seemed to have frozen. His mind was blank, leaving only the apocalyptic black cross seared into his retinas and the frenzied tide of beasts that had turned to