Chapter 21: Fist Bone: Heaven Piercer!
Outside the Dragon Palace kitchens, the faint, rhythmic snoring suddenly ceased.
almost at the exact same instant—
At Gyoncorde Plaza.
The colossal ship, blotting out the heavens, had finally crushed the very last sliver of light. Absolute darkness shrouded the entirety of Fish-Man Island.
Doomsday had arrived.
"Run! Hurry!"
"There's nowhere left to run! We're going to be crushed into powder along with the island!"
"Mama! I'm scared!"
"Queen Otohime... someone, anyone, please save us..."
Cries of utter despair erupted from every corner of the island, only to be ruthlessly swallowed by the deafening, low-frequency rumble of the descending behemoth.
Inside the Hard-Shell Tower.
The giant Mermaid Princess, Shirahoshi, clasped her hands together in prayer. She was trying desperately to call out to her friends of the sea.
But no matter how hard she prayed, no matter how loudly she cried out within her heart, that familiar telepathic connection felt like a stone sinking into the ocean.
An invisible, freezing field of energy acted like an impenetrable wall, severing all contact between her and the Sea Kings outside.
"No... why... why can't they hear me..."
Back at the Plaza.
"Gum-Gum... Grizzly Magnum!"
Luffy's body had expanded to its limit. His arms, coated in pitch-black Armament Haki and resembling massive cannon barrels, blasted fiercely against the descending shadow.
BOOM!
A terrifying shockwave exploded against the hull, sending a shower of massive wood splinters raining down. The entire frame of the Noah shuddered.
But that was all.
The speed of its descent was only delayed by a fraction of a second.
against a behemoth that rivaled an island in size, Luffy's all-out attack was as insignificant as the struggles of an ant.
"Luffy!" Nami's scream tore through her lungs.
"It's over... it's all over..." Usopp collapsed to the ground, the blood draining from his face.
atop the execution platform, King Neptune and the three princes watched the ever-enlarging underside of the ship. Their bodies were stiff, frozen in a terror so deep they had forgotten how to breathe.
This was a natural disaster that could not be resisted.
It was a fate that could not be reversed.
Far away, pinned to the coral wall by a mere toothpick, the leader of CP0 watched the scene unfold. He let out a satisfied, cruel laugh.
Madam Shyarly's prophecy was about to be fulfilled.
Destruction was right before their eyes.
Just one second before the giant ship would impact the plaza and grind everything into dust.
The entire world seemed to fall into a deathly silence of despair.
Outside the Dragon Palace kitchens.
Garp slowly stood up. He stretched his back, a cascade of crisp pops echoing from his joints.
"Good grief. Can't a man even get a peaceful afternoon nap around here?"
He looked up, glancing at the massive shadow that had completely swallowed the sky. He sighed with a touch of impatience.
"Looks like I'll have to loosen up my muscles a bit before dinner."
As the last word fell, his figure vanished from where he stood.
In the next instant.
At Gyoncorde Plaza, under the gaze of countless despairing, terrified, and dull eyes—
A figure wearing a floral print shirt appeared out of thin air, directly in the path of the Noah's descent.
He simply stood there, hands clasped behind his back, looking up at the monstrosity pressing down like the weight of an entire nation.
"That... That's Garp!"
A fish-man soldier's voice cracked, distorted by extreme shock.
"What is he doing? Is he trying to block the Noah with his body?"
"He's crazy! He's a madman!"
"He is the destroyer from the prophecy! He's going to destroy this place with his own hands!"
"Look! What is he doing?!"
Voices of confusion spread like a virus through the deadly silence.
Garp paid no mind to the noise below. He stood firmly on the ocean floor, staring up at the accelerating ship, completely motionless.
[Lazy Justice]
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
Just then, in the dark, deep sea outside Fish-Man Island.
A standard Navy warship, hidden within the shadows, flashed a blinding light from its cannons.
A yellow laser beam, condensed with destructive energy, silently pierced through the seawater, aiming with lethal precision at the tiny figure in the plaza.
The laser struck Garp squarely in the back.
There was no explosion.
There was no charred flesh.
Not even his cheap floral shirt suffered a single wrinkle.
The moment that laser—hot enough to melt steel—touched his body, it vanished as if swallowed by a black hole, annihilated into nothingness.
"Hmph!"
"Sure are a lot of flies buzzing around today!"
Garp slowly raised his right fist.
His movement wasn't fast, yet it seemed to pull the momentum of the entire ocean with it.
Everyone's eyes were locked deathly tight onto that seemingly ordinary fist.
They thought his target would be the giant ship.
However, Garp's target was not the Noah.
Instead, he aimed at the space above his head—through the massive bubble of Fish-Man Island, targeting the endless, pitch-black deep sea that bore the weight of ten thousand tons of water pressure.
"Fist Bone: Heaven Piercer."
He threw a single punch.
There was no earth-shattering boom.
There were no dazzling light effects.
There was only pure, unadulterated power, compressed to its absolute limit and wreathed in black lightning, surging upward from his knuckles.
That force silently penetrated the massive outer bubble of Fish-Man Island without causing it a single scratch.
Then, it plunged headlong into the bottomless dark ocean above.
In the next moment.
A scene so bizarre it overturned everyone's understanding of reality occurred.
Centered on the impact point of that force—
The entire ocean above Fish-Man Island was punched into a massive, circular vacuum!
The ten-thousand-meter deep sea had been pierced by a single punch!
The surrounding seawater, reacting to the sudden, massive pressure differential, let out a silent roar. It rushed madly toward the vacuum in the center, only to be blocked and compressed by an incomprehensible force at the edges.
Finally, it formed an unprecedented, gravity-defying, terrifying upward surge!
A pillar of water, originating ten thousand meters beneath the sea, rose from the ground to the heavens!
This colossal wave, flowing in reverse, perfectly caught the Noah as it accelerated downward.
BOOM!!!
Under the dull, bewildered gazes of everyone in the plaza—gazes that looked as if they had just witnessed a god—
The giant ark, the symbol of their destruction, was solidly bucked backward by the geyser of ocean water erupting from below.
Its massive hull, pushed by the giant wave, accelerated continuously.
It smashed through the airspace of Fish-Man Island, tore through the vacuum created by Garp's punch, and was forcibly hurled from the depths of the ocean floor, all the way toward the distant surface.
The sky brightened once more.
Sunlight pierced the water, once again sprinkling down upon this land that had survived the apocalypse.
Destruction had been "realized," and then "prevented," in a way no one could have possibly imagined.
Gyoncorde Plaza fell into a deathly silence.
(To be Continued)