"Are you ready to face true despair?"
Zephyr's smile, as warm as a friendly neighborhood uncle's, formed the strangest and most terrifying contrast with the words leaving his mouth, cold enough to freeze the soul.
The instant his words fell, the entire world seemed to have been muted.
The pirates and Marines fighting each other involuntarily slowed their movements.
The howling winds silently died down.
The churning sea seemed to have been smoothed by an invisible hand, becoming as glassy as a mirror.
An indescribable, ancient pressure, seemingly born at the beginning of the universe, spread like spilled mercury, silently enveloping the sea for a hundred miles around.
This was not Conqueror's Haki.
Conqueror's Haki was "dynamic"-conquest and domination.
But this pressure was "still."
It was the indifference of a god gazing down upon the mortal world, the absolute dominion of the rules themselves over all existence. Beneath this pressure, even the thought of resistance could not arise.
"Ugh..."
Aboard the Celestial Dragons' flagship, CP0's acting commander, Rob Lucci, was deathly pale, beads of cold sweat rolling uncontrollably down his forehead. His prized Six Powers and Zoan abilities were as laughable as children's toys before this pressure. He felt his heart, his cells, and his vitality being mercilessly stripped away by this "domain."
Elsewhere, the arrogance on "Captain" John's face, so overbearing just moments earlier, vanished without a trace the instant he saw Zephyr emerge. He reined in every trace of his presence and lowered his head slightly. He looked like a student facing his most revered mentor, not daring to harbor even a hint of disrespect.
Even Ochoku, already gravely injured and on the verge of passing out, clung to his last breath, his eyes revealing the wild joy of surviving a disaster and a reverence that reached into