Chapter 44: The Tyrant's Gaze
Silence.
A silence so profound it felt like the vacuum of space had swallowed Eternal Hell. The only sounds were the fading echoes of the burst body and the frantic, hammering heartbeats of those still alive. A needle dropped in this silence would have sounded like a thunderclap.
Every person—prisoner, guard, Admiral, Warden—froze, their movements arrested as if time itself had seized. Even Magellan, mid-stride in his venomous advance, stopped and turned, his toxic features slack with disbelief.
Dead? Just like that?
The man who had just been reduced to crimson mist wasn't some fodder. He was a veteran of Level 6. His bounty had once topped 1.6 billion berries. He had clashed with the crews of Roger and Whitebeard in his heyday. He was a monster among monsters.
And Levi had erased him with a glance.
Magellan could kill him. Sakazuki could kill him. But it would require effort, a confrontation. Not this… this casual, absolute unmaking. It defied every law of combat they understood.
The young Admiral stood at the entrance, a figure of serene, terrible power. The lingering black mist of his Reiatsu coiled around him like a living shroud. In his deep eyes, cold anger simmered, but it was an anger laced with a detached, god-like indifference. He looked down upon the broken forms of the world's worst as one might look at ants that had dared to crawl on one's boot.
The oppressive, black spiritual current continued to churn, a torrent of pure will that pressed down on everything. Very few could even breathe normally under its weight.
Thump. Thump. THUMP.
But these were not men who bowed easily. They were tyrants, conquerors, mad kings whose pride was the last thing the decades of hell had not stolen. Resistance flared. A dozen, then more, fierce, defiant wills pushed back against the crushing tide. They would not kneel! They would rather die on their feet!
Levi felt it—a spike of opposition. Not coordinated, but a raw, instinctual eruption of pride. At least ten distinct pulses of Conqueror's Haki, each carrying the imprint of a once-dominant ruler, surged upward, clashing against his own spiritual dominion. They were desperate, furious roars of kings refusing to be dethroned, even in their dungeons.
"Conqueror's Haki?!" Sakazuki, Magellan, and Gion all tensed, their expressions shifting to alarm. This was an unprecedented event. The simultaneous, provoked release of so many King's Dispositions on Level 6 was like lighting a fuse in a powder magazine. The air crackled with invisible, clashing wills.
Gion's heart clenched. He did this for me? The thought was startling, cutting through her professional detachment. But the practical Marine in her saw the immediate danger. "Admiral, be careful!" she cried out. Even Levi, as monstrous as he was, was one man. A dozen Conqueror's Haki users attacking in unison was a force that could shatter mountains and level fleets.
Magellan's body bubbled, venom ready to form a protective shield. Sakazuki's magma arm glowed brighter, poised to intercept. They acted on instinct—this was an external threat that endangered everyone present.
They had, for a moment, forgotten the sheer scale of the variable in their midst.
Levi didn't look at the incoming torrent of kingly wills. He didn't brace or prepare a technique.
He simply spoke.
"Conqueror's?" His voice was a whisper of frost in the psychic storm. "Kneel."
The word was a command, and with it, his Reiatsu transformed.
BOOOOOOM—CRACK!
The entire underwater fortress of Impel Down shuddered. It was a deep, groaning vibration, as if a leviathan had rammed its foundations. The black, airy flow of his spiritual pressure didn't just intensify; it condensed. It became a thick, oily, tangible fog of absolute oppression that flooded forward.
The dozen raging streams of Conqueror's Haki met this black fog.
They did not clash. They were consumed.
Like paper banners thrown into a raging industrial shredder, the kingly wills were violently, effortlessly torn into psychic confetti and silenced. The backlash was immediate and physical.
Ugh!
Ghhk—!
SPLUT!
From a dozen cells came the sounds of agony—choked groans, the wet sound of internal injuries, and the heavy thud of bodies being flung against stone walls as their own rebellious spirits were hammered back into them.
The remaining strongmen, those who had been barely holding on through sheer force of will, finally broke. With a series of unified, jarring cracks, every single prisoner on Level 6—every last legendary, unrepentant monster—was driven to their knees, their foreheads pressed against the cold, filthy stone. The sound of collective submission was deafening in its finality.
Only a scant few figures remained upright, trembling with the strain, their legs locked, backs bent, but not yet conquered.
Silvers Rayleigh, in Roger's old cell, sweat beading on his brow. I thought… I thought if I fought with my life on the line at Sabaody… I had a chance. But he was holding back even then. By how much? What is he?
Douglas Bullet, his massive muscles corded and shaking, let out a guttural snarl of pure, unadulterated denial. "IMPOSSIBLE! I AM THE STRONGEST!" The dream he had nurtured in the dark for over a decade—to surpass Roger, to conquer the world—shattered against the immovable reality of Levi's power. What kind of monster has the world created in my absence?
Wang Zhi, the Red Earl, simply stared, his ancient, weary eyes wide with a shock he hadn't felt in fifty years. "The youth of this era… are truly terrifying. What has the world become?"
Levi ignored their struggle. His gaze, now devoid of the earlier black mist but no less piercing, swept over the sea of kneeling criminals. The riot was not just quelled; it was annihilated as a concept. His eyes finally settled on Gion's bleeding arm.
"Now," he said, his voice returning to its normal, dispassionate tone, which now carried the weight of absolute authority. "Let's try this again. Who was responsible for injuring my adjutant?"
In the new, crushed silence of Eternal Hell, the question demanded an answer no one dared to give.
(End of Chapter)
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