The bone-chilling sea wind swept through waters already turned into a hellscape, carrying gunpowder smoke, sulfur, and a faint, cloying scent of caramel.
The ruins of the G-Series Branches, once symbols of Marine authority, still belched black smoke over the distant sea. In their place, pirate fleets flying the sinister flags of the Beasts and Totto Land pressed against the Marines' final defensive line like packs of greedy hyenas.
A battered Marine flagship cut through the waves, struggling to hold back the pursuers as the core of the rearguard.
On the bridge, Admiral Aokiji-Kuzan-slowly removed his sleep mask, his languor replaced by icy sharpness. Without another word, he leaped from the high gunwale toward the churning, ink-black sea below!
Just as the toes of his military boots were about to touch the water-
Crack-crack-crack!!
Centered on that single point, bitterly cold white frost spread wildly like a living plague!
The sea froze upon contact, the freezing spreading in every direction at a speed that defied reason! This was not merely ice forming; the very "flow" of the entire stretch of sea was stripped away.
In the blink of an eye, a towering Ice Great Wall, dozens of meters high and stretching to the edge of sight, rose thunderously from the sea like a boundary drawn across it!
It forcibly separated the aggressively pursuing Two Emperors' Allied Fleet from the retreating Marine remnants!
Aokiji's feet had fused with the ice. He stood atop the wall, even his breath carrying ice crystals. On the ice field slightly below and ahead of him, another figure resembled a volcano suppressed to its limit.
Admiral Akainu-Sakazuki. His sleeves had long since turned to ash, and his exposed, muscular arms had now transformed entirely into a terrifying mass of churning, dripping dark-red magma. The intense heat