"That's... Uncle Sakazuki!"
Rorschach's pupils constricted.
He hadn't expected Akainu to be here as well.
And looking at his carving knife, which had not come down, and his silent back, which was like a statue, Rorschach's heart felt as if it was being crushed by a large rock.
Who was he here for?
Suppressing the unease in his heart, Rorschach turned to Hibari and said gently: "Hibari, can you please go to Lilith's lab for me and see if she has made the concentrated nutrient paste? If she has, bring some back. After you get it, just go home. I'll come find you at your place later."
Hibari did not see Akainu deep in the cemetery. She nodded obediently when she heard Rorschach's words and turned to leave.
Rorschach took a deep breath and walked forward along the path lined with gravestones, entering the depths of the cemetery.
This cemetery in Marineford was a huge area.
Rorschach roughly swept it with his Observation Haki and found that there were at least a few hundred thousand gravestones here.
There were also some large, shared gravestones with densely packed names.
Walking here, time seemed to slow down, giving one the illusion of being forgotten by time.
When Rorschach got closer, he saw a deep hole in the ground next to Akainu. The dirt from the hole was piled up on the side, and a shovel was stuck in it.
Akainu was sitting cross-legged, holding a carving knife in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. He looked at the gravestone in front of him, lost in a long silence.
"Uncle Sakazuki, is this...?"
Rorschach walked behind Akainu and stood still. He spoke in a low voice.
Rorschach's voice seemed to break the silence. The carving knife in Akainu's hand came down onto the surface of the gravestone.
As stone chips flew, the carving knife in his hand began to carve steadily.
At the same time, he handed the paper in his left hand to Rorschach.
He still did not speak. He just carved on the surface of the gravestone, stroke by stroke.
He was carving with great force, and the words he carved sank deep into the gravestone.
The moment Rorschach took the paper, his heart trembled.
An unspeakable sadness surged through his heart.
'The last will and testament of Charles D'Adela'
"I am Charles D'Adela. If I die, then this letter is my last will and testament. Hahaha, I hope it will never be used. I don't want people to cry at my grave. It's too noisy."
"How am I supposed to write a will? After all, I've never died before, and I don't have any experience in this area. It would be great if I could get my hands on the legendary Yomi Yomi no Mi. Then, I could wait for people to finish reading my will at my grave, and then crawl out of the grave and scare them to death."
"Well, let me introduce myself first."
"I am Charles D'Adela. I was born in the year 1477 of the Sea Calendar. I'm exactly forty years old this year, ten years younger than Big Brother Sakazuki. Currently, I'm a Marine Headquarters Vice Admiral. Hehe, I just got promoted and haven't even been assigned to a garrison mission yet. I'm very satisfied with being able to become a Marine Headquarters Vice Admiral at the age of forty, as my talent is not outstanding. This is all thanks to Big Brother Sakazuki's guidance over the years."
"I have a wife named Jennifer. She's a beautiful and kind woman. If I die, I hope she finds a good man and remarries. There's no need for her to be a widow for me. I know Jennifer will probably curse me to hell when she reads this, but this is truly how I feel. To be honest, it's so difficult to be the wife of a marine who could die at any time while fighting pirates. You live in fear every day, praying that your husband, who's away, won't get into trouble. You don't get to see each other many times a year. And even when you do, it's a rush. There's no time for intimacy."
"I joined the Navy and became a third-class marine when I was eighteen."
"I still remember the day I joined the Navy very clearly. It was in my hometown, the capital of the Laurenz Kingdom in the North Blue. That day, I had just gotten a good job at the Talika bank, and I was going to earn a salary of 8,000 beli a month. In the Laurenz Kingdom, 8,000 beli was only enough to buy a few dozen pounds of meat, but it was extremely valuable for my sick, bedridden mother and me."
"I was very happy that day. I specifically bought two pounds of smoked meat to take home and make a hearty dinner for my mother. When I arrived at my home outside the city, I saw half of a mountain destroyed."
"My house was gone, and my mother was gone too."
"As you might expect, it was done by a new pirate crew. Their captain was a man with an 80 million beli bounty. That bastard had bombed the mountain outside the capital to show his power to the Laurenz Kingdom so that they could easily capture a group of civilians to sell for money."
"To get revenge, I found that man. However, even with all my might, I couldn't pose the slightest threat to him. He stepped on me and held a knife to my throat. At that moment, my heart was full of despair. Then, Big Brother Sakazuki appeared."
"I'll never forget that scene. Big Brother Sakazuki just glanced at that pirate. Heh, the man who was so lawless just a second ago was so scared he peed his pants and begged for mercy on the ground like a pathetic dog. I used the pirate's knife to slit his throat, and then I joined the Navy."
"Since then, my goal has been to become a powerful marine like Big Brother Sakazuki. I gave up on this idea when I left the North Blue and came to the Headquarters. Because I knew that this goal would never be achieved. Big Brother Sakazuki is too strong. His strength is something I can never hope to reach in my lifetime."
"Hehe, but I never thought that a hard-headed man like Big Brother Sakazuki would have such a gentle, kind, and adorable daughter. Sigh, I'm really envious. Jennifer always wanted a child, but I'm forty years old, and we still haven't had one. Little Hibari is a kind child. Jennifer loves her very much. And Rorschach, that kid... I never thought I'd see a man like my big brother cherish a teenager so much."
"It turns out that my big brother's eye for people is indeed sharp. Rorschach has really made him proud. In just over two years, he has become a monster-level Navy rookie who is even stronger than me. Damn it, it's so disheartening."
"If I really die, and if someone asks me what my biggest regret is..."
"I'll say that my regret is that I didn't have a child with Jennifer, that I couldn't witness Big Brother Sakazuki's dream coming true, that I couldn't see the boy Rorschach grow up, that I couldn't see the future of the Navy, and that I couldn't see the end of the Great Pirate Era."
"Finally, I wish Big Brother Sakazuki good fortune in his martial arts. Justice will prevail."
The letter was signed, Marine Headquarters Vice Admiral Charles D'Adela.
After reading this will, Rorschach's heart felt incredibly heavy.
He frowned, recalling the situation of the battle that day.
When he had led Hibari into the crowd of pirates, he remembered that Vice Admiral D'Adela was still okay.
Moreover, as part of the Navy support force that had arrived later, he was full of energy and could use his full strength. In that situation, there shouldn't have been any pirate strong enough to kill him.
It was worth noting that before Rorschach recommended Shiryu to Akainu as his subordinate, D'Adela was Akainu's subordinate.
His strength was in no way inferior to Momonga's and the others'.
Seeing Akainu silently finish carving D'Adela's gravestone, Rorschach couldn't help but ask: "Uncle Sakazuki, how did Vice Admiral D'Adela die?"
Akainu put down the carving knife and stood up. He looked at Rorschach with an expressionless face. "He was trying to save his subordinates from the tsunami and was hit by a piece of a falling island. He disappeared into the sea. He was truly a hopeless idiot."
"What?"
Rorschach's mind went blank.
D'Adela had died while trying to save his subordinates.
In Rorschach's impression, although D'Adela was usually kind to him, he was an absolute follower of Akainu's faction and a hard-headed officer who believed in absolute justice.
Although it was a little inappropriate to say this.
But the hard-headed hawkish officers in the Navy believed in might makes right.
They would not hesitate to praise and support subordinates with outstanding talent and great strength.
For example, Momonga and Doberman had taken good care of him, and they had also highly praised Rob Lucci from CP9.
Most of the hawkish officers looked down on weak and cowardly subordinates.
They believed in the law of the jungle, despised death, and were not afraid of dying, but their personalities were also a little apathetic.
They would usually not do something reckless like risking their lives to rush into a tsunami to save their subordinates.
Rorschach had not expected that D'Adela, who was once Akainu's subordinate, would do such a thing.
"That's why I said he was an idiot. He sacrificed his strength, which he had worked so hard to cultivate for decades, for a few insignificant subordinates. He still hasn't figured out that the root cause of his subordinates' deaths was the pirates. If a hundred incompetent subordinates die, then go and kill a thousand, ten thousand pirates to get revenge. He knew it was futile, and he still went to save them. In the end, he threw away his own life. What is that if not stupidity?"
Akainu's voice was cold, like metal clanging. It came out of the gaps in his teeth, as hard as cold iron.
Rorschach looked at his face, which was hidden in the shadows and whose expression he couldn't see. He moved his lips but couldn't say anything.
The sky quietly grew dark, and a light rain began to fall.
An old man with purple hair, holding a shovel, was digging in the dirt.
A hoarse and sad tune came from his mouth.
"The sea is watching the beginning of this world."
"The sea also knows the end of this world."
"So the direction it guides is the path we should take."
"So the destination it points to is the right world."
"Pain and suffering, it embraces for me."
"It's wide and gentle, embracing me..."
A cold sea breeze blew from the sea. Marines and officers from all over gathered, forming a white ocean.
The residents of Marineford also silently walked out of their homes and came to the plaza in front of the cemetery.
Some children held flowers and placed them in front of the cold white sheets.
People also silently hummed the song Zephyr was singing.
"The sea is watching the beginning of this world."
"The sea also knows the end of this world."
"If I were to disappear from this world."
"The omniscient sea would still guide me."
"I won't be afraid because I have you."
"I won't be scared because my comrades are waiting..."
This was the Navy's farewell song. Its meaning was both a farewell and a comfort.
Rorschach and Akainu also walked over.
He saw Hibari walking from a distance, holding two sets of uniforms in her arms.
As the sad humming echoed over Marineford, warships returned to the port in the inner bay not far away.
Sengoku, Garp, Vice Admiral Tsuru, Kizaru, and the others, who looked exhausted, disembarked from the warships.
Behind them were marines carrying boxes.
Inside the boxes were the ashes of the marines who had died in the G1 sea battle.
And the bodies of even more soldiers could not be found. They were swallowed by that monstrous tsunami.
After putting on his uniform, Rorschach and Hibari silently joined the ocean of people. They stood in the plaza in front of the cemetery, watching as bodies wrapped in white sheets, boxes, and uniforms were gently placed into the holes that had been dug by the soldiers.
Sengoku, Garp, Zephyr, Tsuru, Akainu, Kizaru, and the others, with the soldiers, picked up their shovels and silently filled the holes with dirt.
Sengoku put down his shovel and walked to the front of the crowd with a solemn expression. He said in an old and hoarse voice:
"Please allow me to tell you with the deepest sorrow that in this war, we have lost a total of 37,283 brave marine soldiers."
"Among them, there were four Marine Headquarters Vice Admirals, eighty-six Rear Admirals, and three hundred seventy-eight Commodores..."
"They were the bravest marines, heroes who were willing to sacrifice themselves for justice, were not afraid of death, and protected our world!"
"Let's show them our highest respect!"
"Salute!"
Whoosh!
The crowd surged, and people simultaneously raised their right hands above their heads.
In the crowd, some people couldn't help but sob.
Sengoku's raised right hand suddenly clenched into a fist, and he said in a loud voice:
"Their sacrifice was not meaningless!"
"This war was the largest and most ferocious in decades in terms of the enemy's size and brutality."
"The pirate alliance, with a total of more than 160,000 pirates from the four pirate crews led by Shiki, Kaido, Charlotte Linlin, and Wang Zhi, attempted to destroy the Navy, completely control the New World, and bring fear and disaster to innocent people. They were successfully stopped by our soldiers' fearless fighting!"
"The 160,000-strong pirate alliance was completely defeated, with more than 90% annihilated on the spot! The masterminds, Shiki and Wang Zhi, were killed."
"In this war, our force of justice was victorious!"
"Now, let us commend the excellent soldiers and officers who have made great contributions in this war!"
End of Chapter)
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