"Are you done talking?"
Yas's voice, so cold it hardly seemed human, thundered in Bloodjaw Carlos's ears.
Then, through pupils distorted to the extreme by sheer terror and madness, Carlos witnessed the most hopeless, most inconceivable sight of his life.
It was not an attack.
It could not even be called a burst of energy.
It was pure destruction descending... on a conceptual level.
BOOM-!!!
A pillar of black lightning erupted into the sky with Yas at its center, not brilliant, but so profoundly dark it seemed capable of swallowing all light!
The pillar had no raging roar, no blinding radiance, only a deathly silence that made even the soul tremble.
Carlos's enormous spiked club, forged from seastone slag mixed with a special alloy, had accompanied him for half his life and smashed the skulls of countless powerful foes. The instant it touched the invisible force field surrounding the black pillar, it could not even let out a whimper.
Like dust tossed into a cosmic black hole, it silently disintegrated layer by layer, starting from the spikes at its tip, annihilated into nothingness smaller than atoms.
Along with it, Carlos's thick, muscle-bound arm, into which he had poured all his life's strength, vanished into that absolute darkness.
"Urgh..."
An indistinct sound escaped Carlos's throat, like leaking air.
He felt no pain.
Because the nerves that controlled his arm and sensed pain, along with the arm itself, had been completely erased within one ten-thousandth of a second.
Before he could even think about what had happened, the black lightning, like divine punishment, had already spread across his entire body.
Szzzz-
Strange, fine black arcs, like hundreds of millions of tiny venomous snakes, instantly burrowed into every pore, flowed through every inch of his meridians, and enveloped every cell.
It was not the scorching heat of burning, but something far more terrifying: disintegration and stripping away at life's most fundamental level.
He watched helplessly as the steel-like muscles he took such pride in, strong enough to withstand cannonballs, peeled away inch by inch like a weathered sand sculpture, turning into black ash.
His hideous metal jaw also warped and melted beneath that power, before finally being utterly annihilated.
In the final second before his consciousness was completely consumed, only one thought remained.
"This... isn't... human..."
BOOM!
Only when the black pillar receded did a terrifying shock wave erupt outward, as though delayed.
On the deck, the surviving pirates who had just been wailing or playing dead could not even scream as the shock wave swept over them. Like dry grass set alight, their bodies instantly became smoking human-shaped charcoal, frozen in various poses of terror.
A gust of wind reduced them to black powder scattered across the deck.
That single strike had forcibly cleared the Razor's entire deck.
Only that solitary, charred statue, no longer recognizable as human, remained kneeling before Yas.
Bloodjaw Carlos, a notorious pirate with a bounty of ninety-eight million Beli, had not even managed to put a crease in Yas's clothes before his wicked life ended in the most humiliating, most silent way.
"Gulp."
Inside the Leviathan's bridge, a young helmsman swallowed hard, the sound piercing in the deathly silence.
Like the other five hundred elite Marines, he stared blankly at the enormous Surveillance Den Den Mushi screen, watching a scene that resembled both a divine miracle and the descent of a demon god.
At that moment, their hearts seemed to stop beating.
Their brains had completely shut down, unable to process a sight that surpassed the limits of human imagination.
What was that?
Was that the power of their new captain, that boy of only sixteen?
Clearing a pirate ship's deck in an instant?
Reducing a notorious pirate with a bounty of nearly a hundred million to ash, weapon and all?
They had actually dared question such a being? Tried to restrain such a god with Marine military law?
How ridiculous! How ignorant! How... fortunate!
Yes, fortunate.
They were grateful they stood on the god's side, rather than being like those pitiful pirates, reduced to cosmic dust without even the right to wail.
"What... what did I just see?" a major in charge of gunnery muttered, his lips trembling. "Could the Fleet Admiral's Three Admirals... do something like that?"
No one answered him.
Because everyone present, including Brannew, who had often witnessed battles between top-tier fighters at Marine Headquarters, had the same answer in their hearts.
They couldn't!
Absolutely not!
Whether it was Admiral Akainu's magma that burned everything away, Admiral Aokiji's ice that froze everything, or even Admiral Kizaru's light with its ultimate speed.
Powerful though they were, they still fell within the realms of "physics" and "energy."
But the power Yas had just displayed, that pure, unreasonable power of "Erasure," had surpassed their understanding.
It was the power of laws... belonging to a higher dimension!
Divine punishment... that only the gods of legend could command!
Brannew's body trembled violently.
He was not afraid.
He was... excited!
An unprecedented, feverish excitement that almost set his soul ablaze!
His earlier worries, doubts, and dissatisfaction all vanished at that moment.
He finally understood.
Why the Fleet Admiral, Vice Admiral Garp, and Admiral Sengoku had staked the Marines' future, everything they had, on this boy.
Because he was no "ultimate weapon" at all.
He was a living... god who stood above every weapon!
A god who could lead the Marines into an unprecedented new age of violence!
To follow such a god, to wage war across this sea and hunt those so-called "Emperors of the Sea."
What an honor!
What a... fortunate life!
"A-all hands, heed my orders!"
Brannew snatched up the communications Den Den Mushi, his voice hoarse with extreme excitement as it rang through every corner of the Leviathan over the broadcast system.
"Head for the enemy ship's wreckage! Close in! Prepare to board!"
"Medical team! Bring the best equipment! Be ready to support Captain Yas at any moment!"
"Combat personnel! Take up your weapons! We're going to clean up the battlefield... for our god!"
There was no longer the slightest hesitation or reason in his words, only an almost fanatical worship of Yas.
And upon hearing his orders, every Marine soldier on the bridge, and indeed throughout the ship, erupted into earthshaking, fervent cries like powder kegs whose fuses had been lit.
"Fight for Captain Yas!"
"Crush them!"
Fear had vanished, replaced by a fervent faith that could melt steel!
Meanwhile, on the Razor's deck.
Yas slowly withdrew the faint layer of Black Lightning surrounding him.
He glanced at the pile of charcoal on the ground, no longer recognizable as human, then at his fingers, as spotless as before, and frowned slightly.
"The power was still too scattered."
He shook his head, seemingly dissatisfied with the effect of that strike.
Black Lightning's power was so overwhelming that his current body and Haki still could not control it with perfect precision.
That strike had seemed capable of destroying heaven and earth, but in reality, at least eighty percent of its power had been wasted on damaging the surroundings.
If he could compress that power perfectly and have it affect only the target itself...
"Looks like I still need more actual combat to hone it."
Yas thought to himself.
Just as he was about to return to the Leviathan, his Mantra Haki suddenly detected several faint but extremely terrified signs of life remaining deep within the hold of the Razor, which had already become a ghost ship.
Moreover, one of those presences seemed somewhat different.
"Oh? Still some survivors?"
A trace of interest flashed in Yas's eyes.
His figure flickered, disappearing from the deck like a phantom, passing straight through the hold's iron door and reaching the dim bottom of the ship.
At the bottom of the hold stood cages made of seastone.
Inside the cages were dozens of ragged people with numb expressions.
They were clearly the "sacrifices" captured by the Bloodjaw Pirate Crew.
In a cage at the very back, a frail boy who looked to be only in his teens clutched his head, trembling like a leaf.
Unlike the other prisoners, he was not bound by seastone chains.
When he saw Yas suddenly appear, a savage gleam of a cornered beast abruptly erupted in eyes that should have been filled with fear.
"D-don't come any closer! I'm warning you! Come any closer and I won't hold back!"
The boy let out a shrill scream, and his body began to change strangely.
His arms stretched and twisted like melting candles, then turned into chains covered in barbs, gleaming with a metallic luster!
"The Chain-Chain Fruit?"
Yas immediately recognized the Paramecia fruit he had seen in the Devil Fruit Encyclopedia.
"Interesting."
He did not stop, continuing toward the boy one step at a time.
"You bastard! You asked for this!"
Yas's indifferent gaze thoroughly enraged the boy.
He roared, and the dozens of chains formed from his arms sealed off the entire hold in an instant like venomous snakes hunting prey!
They came from every direction, winding toward Yas!
"Captain Yas! Watch out! It's a trap!"
At that moment, Brannew, who had just rushed onto the deck through the breach caused by the collision, happened to witness the scene. Terrified out of his wits, he cried out.
He recalled the mission mentioned in the intelligence concerning the pirate crews affiliated with Rocks-capturing Devil Fruit Users.
Could a Devil Fruit User have been hidden aboard this ship all along, as a guard or a trap?
Yet faced with this all-encompassing cage of chains, Yas merely... yawned in utter boredom.
"Too slow."
He could not even be bothered to dodge.
One second before those countless chains touched his body.
He spoke, his voice as flat as though he were stating a fact.
"You know nothing about power."
The next second, Yas simply threw a punch forward.
It was neither a spear-hand strike nor Black Lightning.
It was just an unremarkable, ordinary straight punch, without even any Haki infused into it.
But before the Chain-Chain Fruit user's utterly horrified eyes.
A terrifying force of absolute purity, powerful enough to send ripples through space itself, erupted with Yas's fist!
You called that... an ordinary punch?
Before you continue