Marineford — Judgment of the Gods
"This… feeling…"
Garling Saint's pupils constricted slightly, the scene before him eerily overlapping with a memory buried deep in his mind.
At God Valley, in the fading twilight of that fateful day, a man named Rocks had once stood like this—blade drawn, swirling with a darkness that seemed to devour everything in its path.
Back then, Garling Saint had charged forward, brimming with unrivaled confidence and pride…
Only to have that man shatter every ounce of his arrogance with a single stroke, forcing him to retreat to the secondary battlefield, never daring to approach the core of the fight again.
And now…
Gern Reginald Sigmar stood in the center of the shattered plaza, Black Blade Hachiraku crackling with purple-black lightning.
Conqueror's Haki arced along the blade like a living thing. Vibration particles distorted the surrounding air, bending reality ever so slightly.
The oppressive aura… mirrored perfectly the one Garling Saint had felt that day.
"No… this can't be…" His breathing accelerated violently, sweat forming at his brow, only to be instantly vaporized by the searing intensity of Haki.
His face twisted into a grotesque mask of fury, his golden hair, once a crown of pride, whipped wildly in the storm of aura. Each strand crackled with dark crimson electricity, writhing like a living thing.
The ground beneath him cracked, fragments of stone defying gravity and floating upward.
"This time…" he slowly raised his rapier, tracing fiery arcs through the air, leaving heated afterimages.
"You will not scare me!!!"
BOOM!
Garling Saint erupted with a titanic aura. Crimson lightning erupted like a volcanic explosion, the sky itself seeming to rip apart under its power, reminiscent of the legendary aura once wielded by future Red-Haired Shanks.
Clouds tore open, forming a colossal chasm in the heavens.
The rapier in his hands glowed with a blinding, blood-red light. The blade vibrated under the sheer weight of Haki, humming ominously, while the surrounding air rippled visibly.
"In front of me…" His words were cut short. Garling Saint vanished, leaving behind only a web-patterned crater where he had stood.
Before the sound of the sonic boom could even reach the plaza, the sword, charged with destructive energy, tore through space itself, aimed straight for Gern's throat.
"You are not that man!This weapon… will be my trophy once you die!Gern Reginald Sigmar, bow before me… in front of the World Government, you lowly wretch!"
Where his blade passed, space itself shattered like fragile glass.
Dark crimson lightning coalesced into a dragon, its gaping maw capable of swallowing the entire plaza.
The sword's tip ignited from the sheer friction of cutting the air, trailing a blazing comet hundreds of meters long behind it.
"Divine Strike!!!"
"This battle will not concern right or wrong," Gern murmured, his pupils reflecting the approaching death. Yet a near-maniacal smile crept across his face."We only recognize strength and weakness!!"
He didn't move a muscle, simply bending slightly at the waist, gripping Black Blade Hachiraku in a horizontal stance.
Compared to Garling Saint's overloaded, groaning rapier, Hachiraku trembled slightly but buzzed with delight, exuding a joyous resonance as if anticipating the carnage.
Swish!
What looked like a casual horizontal slash triggered a cataclysmic reaction.
Black-purple energy erupted from the blade like molten lava. Countless micro-vibration particles traced vein-like patterns in the air, intertwining madly before converging into a rainbow of light spanning the heavens. Even light itself was warped and swallowed along its path.
The blade cut a clean swath through space, leaving a black rift as if the world itself had been torn open—a wound that would not heal.
"Heaven's Tribulation."
As the two forces collided, time seemed to freeze. Then—
RUMBLE!!!
Purple-black and crimson lightning coiled into colossal serpents, shockwaves rippling outward in perfect spheres.
The hundred-meter radius beneath them instantly vaporized. Massive stone pillars of the Marineford central plaza crumbled like toys.
Marines were flung hundreds of meters by the blast. Even Sakazuki had to rise, bracing himself, while Kuzan's ice wall evaporated the moment it touched the shockwave.
At the center of the storm, Garling Saint's blade halted, locked against Hachiraku, unable to advance even an inch.
His pupils trembled violently as he stared in disbelief at his own shaking weapon.
Crack… crack… The rapier quivered and hummed, not in stalemate but under absolute crushing pressure.
His Conqueror's Haki, once unstoppable, now collided with something even more savage, raw, and unyielding.
"This… can't be…" Garling Saint coughed blood."My Conqueror's Haki… suppressed… by this lowly wretch… how is this possible…"
Crack… crack… The blade wailed again. Garling Saint's pupils shrank to pinpoints.
Black Blade Hachiraku pressed against his chest.
"What?!" His pupils constricted further, cold sweat instantly evaporated under Gern's oppressive Haki.
He tried to pull back, to escape—but his limbs felt submerged in a thousand-meter-deep ocean. Every muscle screamed under the weight of Gern's Conqueror's Haki.
Invisible shackles gripped him tight. Not even his fingertips could twitch.
"Move… move!" He gritted his teeth, straining with all his might.
But the only response was the sharp creak of his spine under pressure.
At that moment, Gern's Conqueror's Haki had taken form. It was as if the heavens themselves pressed down, and breathing became a luxury he could not afford.
"My power… is far more than this." Gern's low voice was a declaration of death itself.
Vrrrr—!
Hachiraku shuddered violently, emitting a high-pitched, ear-piercing hum.
The semi-awakened power of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit was unleashed completely.
Molecular-level vibration, mastered!
The left side of the blade froze molecules into near-absolute stillness. Ice-blue tremor patterns spread like glacier fissures, the air crystallizing into suspended ice dust. Each particle pulsed with lethal, high-frequency vibration.
Even before the cold reached him, Garling Saint's brow was dusted with frost; blood in his veins stilled into ice.
The right side of the blade accelerated molecular motion to its extreme, orange-red tremor patterns erupting like molten lava. Black smoke and ionized sparks hissed from the hilt.
The ultra-high-frequency friction heated the edge white-hot. Space around it twisted and collapsed. Garling Saint's robe ignited before the slash could even land.
Red and blue energies twisted like entwined dragons along the blade, converging into an otherworldly rainbow of destruction.
As the blade fell…
Left-side space froze into an absolute-zero cage.Right-side space incinerated into plasma-level hellfire.
Garling Saint, trapped at the center, could only watch helplessly as his body was assaulted by two extremes.
The right half of his flesh vaporized under molecular vibration. The left half of his bones crumbled under absolute stillness.
"This… is the true…"
"Divine Punishment!!!"
Pchh! The dull sound of the blade cutting into flesh echoed across the silent battlefield.
Black-purple energy poured along the blade like a swarm of ravenous snakes, slicing through Garling Saint's chest.
His opulent robe incinerated on contact. Flesh beneath the skin shredded by dense vibration particles, bones cracking under agonizing wails.
"Ughhh!!" His scream was cut short by the violent energy, the force choking it back down his throat.
His body flew like a broken kite, chest marked by a gaping, diagonal wound down to the bone. Blood and flesh at the edges froze into ice, yet scorched black like charcoal, as if burned in the fires of hell.
Blood vaporized instantly under the heat of Conqueror's Haki, forming a crimson mist and ice shards, trailing his flight path like a horrific rainbow of death.
BOOM!!!
His body slammed into the ruins hundreds of meters away, the impact pulverizing half the Marine fortress into rubble. Dust rose, blotting out the sky. Only the horrifying diagonal wound glowed faintly with a sinister purple-black aura, as if a curse were eating into his body.
Haa… haa…
From deep within the debris, Garling Saint struggled to prop himself up, every breath spewing blood and shattered organs.
Under Gern's overwhelming Haki, his body visibly withered and cracked, each inch crumbling like parched earth.
He looked down at his chest—once the symbol of his exalted lineage—now unable to heal again.
Fingers trembling, he reached for the wound… only to have the residual vibration tear at his flesh upon contact.
"This… can't… be…"