"Kgh—!"
Oden violently spat out a mouthful of blood. His knees slammed into the ground, his arms shaking uncontrollably as blood trickled down the hilts of Enma and Ame-no-Habakiri.
Even with a body as monstrous as his, he had reached his limit.
The damage inflicted by high-frequency vibration was not mere surface wounds—it was destruction that penetrated bone, organs, down to the cellular level.
This delayed damage made Oden feel his muscle fibers tearing apart amid constant trembling, his blood boiling inside his veins—
Even the flow of his Haki had grown sluggish and uneven.
Darkness crept in at the edges of his vision. A relentless ringing filled his ears—the dizziness caused by internal organ resonance.
On the other side, Gern Reginald Sigmar was no better off.
His right shoulder had been pierced clean through by Oden's blade aura. His body was riddled with cuts, especially the grievous wound across his chest.
His breathing was no longer steady but ragged—each inhale carried the stench of blood, his lungs burning as if scorched by fire.
And in his hand, the black blade Bahuang hummed incessantly. The purple-black patterns along its body writhed like living organisms, greedily siphoning his Haki and stamina.
"...Hah."Gern took a deep breath.
Compared to his battle with Kizaru, his control over vibration had become far clearer.
It felt as if he had brushed against the threshold of the next stage of the Heavenquake Devil Fruit.
Sensing this, Gern's pupils contracted slightly. His Observation Haki locked onto the vibration frequency of every speck of dust in the air.
This time, he did not try to stop molecular motion—
He accelerated it.
"Vmmm—!"
Stripped of Conqueror's Haki, Bahuang's blade suddenly took on an eerie dark-red sheen. The surrounding air twisted violently as the temperature skyrocketed.
When the blade scraped across the ground, the rock was not cut—
It melted, like butter, transforming into crimson magma and leaving behind a searing trail.
Molecular vibration accelerated frantically→ frictional motion generated heat→ localized temperatures surged beyond limits (3000°C+)
Gern knew his own body had reached its limit. Every muscle screamed in protest—
But he did not stop.
Every remaining shred of stamina had to be poured into the blade.
"Shua—!"
He dragged the sword and charged forward, the blade plowing through the earth as molten rock splashed into the air.
"This bastard—"Oden's Observation Haki detected the attack, but as he tried to rise—
"Kah!"
His body suddenly seized up.
The aftereffects of tanking vibration damage earlier—pure bravado at the time—erupted in full.
Internal organ resonance slowed his movements by half a beat.
Only an instant—
But at this level of combat, against a top-tier monster, at this exact moment—
It was a fatal opening.
"SHUA!!"
Gern's figure vanished.
Not high-speed movement—
But a true instant blink.
Space collapsed beneath his feet. High-frequency vibration particles tore open a vacuum corridor through the air.
In the next second, he appeared directly in front of Oden.
Bahuang was raised high overhead, dark-violet Conqueror's Haki coiling around the blade like the scythe of a reaper.
"GOD—FALL!!!"
The roar shattered the clouds.
The arc of the blade was suffocatingly perfect. Dark-violet Conqueror's Haki and pale vibration waves spiraled together, forming a torrent of annihilation over a hundred meters wide.
Where it passed, space itself resembled tempered glass struck by a sledgehammer—
Black, spiderweb-like cracks appeared first—
Then the entire sky shattered apart.
Countless fragments of space whirled within the blade torrent, each shard reflecting Oden's stunned expression.
The Armament Haki coating the Wano samurai's body crumbled away inch by inch under the destructive flow.
"BOOOOM!!!"
Oden took Godfall head-on.
At last, even his willpower gave out. His pupils lost focus.
His body was launched skyward like a cannonball, blood streaking behind him in a blinding arc.
But it wasn't over.
Gern did not pause—he surged upward with the blade still in hand.
Shua—!
The world lost all sound.
Gern fully entered molecular-level control.
His figure collapsed inward, shrinking into a pitch-black fissure—
Not an afterimage.Not speed.
He converted his entire body into high-frequency vibration particles and tunneled through the molecular structure of space itself—
Erasing his existence from reality's laws, if only for an instant.
The next moment—
"BOOM!!"
The air along Oden's falling trajectory exploded.
Gern emerged from nothingness, his entire body cloaked in warped darkness, only his eyes blazing with soul-piercing crimson light.
Bahuang had completely transformed into flowing magma. The limitless heat warped space itself, as if seen through burning frosted glass.
"..."Oden barely regained clarity—then his pupils shrank.
His mouth opened, but no sound emerged.
(The vibration of space disrupted sound propagation.)
"Shua! Shua! Shua! Shua!!"
Gern wielded the blade with both hands, turning into countless afterimages. Each strike carried extreme vibration and heat, the blade transcending into a plasma state.
Eighty-one slashes—each seamlessly linked—
Painting a blooming crimson lotus across the void.
"KRA—CK!"
As the final slash fell, Gern slid to the ground behind Oden.
Stabilizing his stance, he flicked his wrist, Bahuang tracing a sharp, elegant arc as Conqueror's Haki on the blade was violently dispersed like burning flames blown apart.
"Quake Ash · Crimson Lotus Hell."
The words fell—
And so did the flower.
All the heat accumulated by the previous strikes erupted at once.
Oden's body became the lotus core.
Flames reaching tens of thousands of degrees burst outward as a red lotus bloomed.
A pillar of scarlet fire pierced heaven and earth, vaporizing the cloud sea and carving out a vacuum dome over a kilometer wide.
This final flower—bloomed at the cost of Gern's life—
Had ultimately won.
...
The crimson lotus fire gradually died out.
Rain began to fall as superheated vapor cooled, revealing a land left utterly devastated.
Oden's body fell from the sky, smashing into the ground and kicking up a cloud of dust.
His body was covered in countless slash marks. Only his eyes remained stubbornly open—
Their pupils pale, unfocused.
Ame-no-Habakiri and Enma, the two famed blades, were embedded in the ground before and behind him, just as dim and lifeless as their master.
Gern gasped for breath, his chest heaving violently. Blood still seeped from his right shoulder as rain washed over his body.
Dragging his exhausted frame forward, he walked to Ame-no-Habakiri, gripped the hilt, and slowly pulled it free.
Metal scraped against stone with a piercing shriek.
He then walked to Enma and drew it out as well.
Finally, he stood before Oden, staring coldly at the fallen warrior.
Bahuang trembled faintly in his hand, dark-violet arcs of lightning still crackling along its edge.
"It's over," Gern murmured, his voice hoarse and cold.
And then—
An overwhelming, suffocating wave of Haki surged in from the coastline.
Gern's pupils contracted violently as his Observation Haki screamed in warning.
He snapped his head up.
On the distant sea, a colossal ship shaped like a white whale cut through the waves—
The Moby Dick.
At the bow stood the towering figure of Whitebeard.
Golden hair whipped wildly in the sea wind. His open captain's coat flapped violently as Murakumogiri gleamed with icy light in the sun.
His gaze was sharp as a blade—locked squarely onto Gern.
"Gurararara…"Whitebeard's laughter thundered across the sea."Marine brat. Long time no see."
"Heh. Whitebeard."Gern sneered, meeting his gaze without yielding an inch.
He knew the self-proclaimed 'father of the seas' had come to retrieve his man.
At Whitebeard's peak—
If Gern killed Oden in front of him, it would be a guaranteed life-for-life trade.
But trading his life for a future clown—some "boiled-to-death king"—
Wasn't worth it.
Gern lowered his gaze to Oden.
Slowly, he raised both blades and crossed them.
"Shua! Shua!"
Ame-no-Habakiri and Enma plunged down simultaneously, pinning into the scorched earth on either side of Oden's neck—forming a massive X.
Oden's head was fixed in place. His arms lay spread, legs slightly bent.
Like a condemned criminal—
He was nailed to the battlefield that would haunt him for the rest of his life.