If things ended here, then it would count as an outcome everyone could accept.
But....
"AAAAAH! I'M GOING TO AVENGE JUSTE!"
Luffy, who had not fully processed what had just happened, finally came back to his senses.
His eyes were bloodshot, and he once again charged straight toward Sakazuki without a thought for anything else.
Seeing this, Lucky Roux's expression immediately darkened.
He flashed forward at top speed, reached Luffy, raised his hand, and slapped Luffy hard across the face.
At this moment, all of Luffy's attention was focused on Sakazuki, his mind filled with nothing but revenge.
He had never expected Lucky Roux, one of his own allies, to suddenly attack him. The slap left him stunned, and he froze where he stood.
"Lucky Roux, what are you doing?!", Luffy demanded.
"What am I doing? I'm doing what the hell I have to!"
Lucky Roux's eyes were red with anger as he furiously berated him, "You idiot, Luffy! What are you charging over there for? Do you want Snake to have died for nothing? He just traded his life to bring you back, and you're going to throw his life away like this?"
As he cursed at Luffy, Lucky Roux quickly shot Yasopp a look.
This time, Yasopp actually cooperated for once.
The two of them each grabbed one of Luffy's arms and forcibly dragged him toward the escape door behind them.
"Let go of me! Let go of me! I'm going to avenge Juste! AAAAAAH!"
Luffy struggled wildly, kicking his legs as his hysterical state was laid completely bare before everyone.
This scene even made Rosse, seated high above on his throne, laugh.
There was no denying that, in certain respects, this kid Luffy really could always bring him some unexpected surprises.
But then again, it was precisely because people with such an innocent heart existed that this world could be interesting enough.
In the end, however, Rosse did nothing more.
After all, Luffy's destination was not today.
There was no need for him to do anything else. After waiting a little longer, this play would reach its true conclusion.
"Let go! I'm going to get revenge! Hahahaha! AAAAAH!"
Luffy's heart-wrenching cries, mixed with laughter and sobbing, were soon forcibly dragged inside by Lucky Roux and Yasopp, abruptly cutting off.
Luffy and his group, who had hurried here, ultimately hurried away in disarray.
Across the enormous Marineford plaza, only the bodies of Snake and Juste remained, lying quietly on the cold ground.
Silently proving that they had once been here.
After Luffy and the others fled in disarray, Whitebeard slowly glanced at Shanks, who had likewise been held back nearby:
"Red-Haired brat, things have come to this. Get lost."
At this moment, most of the anger surging through Whitebeard's chest had already subsided, leaving only a sorrow that could not be put into words.
Shanks and Luffy's reckless arrival had been like a farce, turning the funeral that should have belonged to him into a complete mess.
But things had already come to this, and Whitebeard could not be bothered to say anything more.
After all, regardless of the outcome, he absolutely would not be leaving this place alive today.
"Take care. We were the ones who disturbed things today."
Shanks looked deeply at Whitebeard, a complicated trace of guilt flashing through his eyes. He then decisively turned and fled outward.
Ace had no intention of stopping him either, merely watching him leave coldly.
Someone like Shanks, who did not even have the courage to draw his sword, was simply not worthy of being their opponent.
And the days to come would only be even further from what Shanks wanted.
"JUSTE!"
A cry of anguish suddenly rang out across the empty execution platform.
At this moment, Garp's tall, sturdy figure seemed to have suddenly aged greatly. His back was hunched, and his shoulders trembled violently.
At last, he had broken free of Sengoku's entanglement. Or, more accurately, Sengoku had deliberately allowed him through. He staggered over to Juste's cold body.
With tears streaming down his face, Garp tightly embraced Juste and let out a grief-stricken cry.
That cry carried the unbearable pain of a grandfather losing someone of the younger generation.
Yet as the heartbreaking cries rang out, the Marine soldiers present all wore indifferent expressions.
Since they had chosen to oppose the World Government, they should have been prepared to lose their lives here.
Who could they blame for recklessly trying to challenge the World Government?
The World Government had given them countless opportunities to surrender and submit. Since they were determined not to surrender, they could only accept this hellish outcome.
"AAAAAAAH!"
Garp put Juste down, then suddenly leaped up like a madman and charged toward Sakazuki with red eyes.
"Sakazuki!"
However, after he had only taken two steps forward, Sengoku hurried over from behind, wrapped both arms around him, and forcefully pinned him to the ground.
"Sengoku! Then keep me pinned down like this!", Garp struggled desperately on the ground, staring fiercely at Sakazuki above him, tears mixing with dust on his face, "Otherwise, I'll charge up there and beat that bastard to death!"
"Beat me to death?"
Sakazuki looked down at him and gave a grim laugh, "Sengoku, let him go. I want to see exactly what you intend to use to kill me."
As his words fell, the scorching magma surging up from the ground forced Sengoku to release Garp and retreat.
The moment Sengoku let go, Garp charged forward without the slightest hesitation.
"Sakazuki, you damned bastard!"
Black and red Haki wrapped around his callused iron fists as he tore through the air, his anger driving the punch straight toward Sakazuki.
"Heh!"
Sakazuki merely sneered and casually met it with his magma-covered right fist.
Did he really think Sakazuki was easy to bully?
This grandfather and grandson really were cut from the same cloth, equally incapable of recognizing their own limits.
BANG!
The moment their fists collided, Haki and magma burst outward.
Yet under everyone's horrified gaze, Garp could not hold out for even two seconds before the force sent him flying backward.
Sengoku's expression changed drastically. He rushed forward and leaped behind Garp, attempting to catch him with his own body.
But Sakazuki's punch contained the full power of an SS-level attack.
Even with Sengoku and Garp working together, they had no way to effectively resist it in midair.
The two were sent flying backward for more than a hundred meters, crashing into a ship moored at the harbor and smashing the NEW Marine battleship apart before both fell into the cold seawater, sending huge waves splashing upward.
Seeing this, the Marines did not show any surprise.
Marine Admiral Sakazuki was one of the two highest-level combat forces publicly announced by the World Government.
To them, knocking two old men away with one punch was perfectly normal, let alone anything more.
"He's strong... stronger than Captain Rocks was back then..."
Whitebeard, however, who had witnessed countless powerful figures, instead showed a solemn expression.
Only someone who stood among the ranks of the strong could truly feel the shock brought by Sakazuki's strength.
Decades ago, Whitebeard's own strength had already reached its absolute limit, and he could no longer advance even half a step.
He knew very well that although he had been born a natural monster, that was where his limits lay.
But even if five versions of himself at his peak were combined, he probably still could not unleash a casual punch like the one Sakazuki had just thrown.
Without using Haki, merely relying on the power of his Devil Fruit, Sakazuki had effortlessly sent two peak S-class fighters flying while precisely controlling his strength so that neither suffered a fatal injury.
That terrifying level of control was almost impossible for him to imagine.
Before this, he had naively believed that the SS-level strength defined by the World Government was only somewhat stronger than him, roughly on the level of Rocks back then.
But now, it seemed that the gap between them was far, far greater.
It was like the difference between the clouds and the mud, an impassable chasm.
But...
He was Whitebeard, after all.
"Gurararara! Since all the people who came to interfere have already left, there are still some final debts that need to be settled properly," Whitebeard threw his head back and laughed, but his laughter carried an unmistakable resolve, "Sakazuki! You killed my son. Even if I die, I absolutely won't let you off easily!"
Whitebeard clenched his battered fists and slowly raised both arms.
Cracks spread through space alongside the rising of his arms, as though the entire world itself were about to be torn apart.
At the same time, blood began to seep uncontrollably from his mouth and nose, while the countless wounds covering his body continued to bleed, leaving him looking horrifying.
Yet even so, he did not make a sound. He merely clenched his teeth and silently raised his arms, driving the power of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit toward its limit bit by bit.
At this moment, the ground beneath their feet began to split violently, and all of Marineford started shaking wildly.
Even though the ground had long since been hardened by Sakazuki's magma, it now began cracking apart in every direction.
"This is how you should look, Whitebeard."
Sakazuki calmly gave his assessment, his eyes resting peacefully on the powerful man making his final attempt.
With his current strength, he could easily use the power of the Magma Fruit to seal the fractured ground again and resist the effects of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit.
After all, with Rosse's help, his strength had long since surpassed the limits originally established by this world.
Even the energy and destructive power contained within his Magma Fruit was in no way inferior to the power the Nika Fruit could possess.
But even though he hated pirates as a group from the bottom of his heart, he was still willing to give Whitebeard, a legend of the old era, the respect he deserved.
Whoosh!
The next second, Sakazuki's figure suddenly flashed and appeared directly in front of Whitebeard, preparing to end everything.
"Got you! Gurararara!"
But at this moment, Whitebeard, who had seemed to be using everything he had to release the power of his Devil Fruit and take Marineford and everything here down with him, suddenly grinned and laughed strangely and freely.
At the same time, he suddenly extended his enormous arms and tightly embraced Sakazuki, who had been caught off guard.
Given the enormous difference in their sizes, the scene looked like a burly adult tightly embracing a small child.
Except that the adult's strength was now completely inferior to that of the child in his arms.
Rumble!
At this moment, the power of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit that had been accumulated inside Whitebeard for a long time suddenly erupted completely within his embrace.
All of Whitebeard's seemingly world-shattering movements just now had been a diversion.
Instead of releasing the Tremor-Tremor Fruit's shockwaves outward, he had done the opposite, using his own battered body as a sealed container and compressing all that devastating energy inward.
He had continuously layered and resonated the power, causing each shockwave to reflect inside his body and overlap with the new shockwaves that followed.
It was like trapping countless waves inside a bowl and repeatedly making them surge against one another, with the waves colliding and amplifying each other until they gathered into a gigantic surge far beyond that of a single wave.
And the moment Sakazuki was pulled into his embrace, Whitebeard violently broke the seal on this container.
All the shockwave energy compressed and imprisoned to its absolute limit erupted toward Sakazuki at virtually point-blank range.
This attack allowed not the slightest bit of energy to escape. It was Whitebeard's strongest attack, staking his life on a final struggle.
The force shook through Sakazuki's entire body, repeatedly surging through him with nowhere to evade and nowhere to escape.
"Hmph!"
Even with Sakazuki's extraordinary SS-level strength, he could not emerge completely unscathed.
Blood flowed from his mouth and nose.
The shockwaves made his entire body feel as though it were being violently shaken apart from within.
Beneath his skin, countless tiny blood vessels ruptured under the vibration, leaving extensive bruising.
His originally spotless white suit was completely torn apart by the destructive close-range impact, with strips of fabric flying in every direction.
Sakazuki's entire outline seemed distorted and blurred by the high-frequency vibrations, and even standing became difficult.
The damage was certainly not minor.
But he was Sakazuki, after all. His strength was simply too deep and formidable. Even after taking this decisive attack, he was nowhere near being seriously incapacitated.
Even so, at this moment, he genuinely felt a trace of surprise at Whitebeard's unexpected move.
He had not expected this powerful man, who was already at the end of his strength, to still have such a desperate killing move hidden away.
However, surprise was surprise.
He endured the terrifying vibrations that could have overwhelmed an ordinary person, his fists suddenly igniting with blazing magma, and without hesitation, he drove them through Whitebeard's already battered body.
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