"Ghost-Man Gin?"
Ron's grip tightened on the Elven Wand as he advanced, cutting through the ranks like a storm made flesh. From the chaos of Krieg's retreating horde, several figures pushed forward instead of back men unflinching in the face of his slaughter. His lashes flicked once. His eyes did not change.
Krieg's cadres. Only Gin's face he remembered. The rest? Forgotten, and not worth remembering.
Steel screamed.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Gin and four or five other officers met him head-on, blades and maces crashing against invisible force. Sparks erupted, ringing out across the beach.
Ten seconds later, it was over.
Ron stepped calmly out from the melee, brushing the dust from his coat. Behind him, the cadres stood frozen until crimson lines bloomed across their torsos. Weapons and armor split apart with a hiss of air. Bodies crumpled to the blood-soaked sand.
Gin and the others had been formidable by pirate standards, but to Ron now they were nothing. He didn't even need to draw on his second-tier magic. His control alone his awareness of every motion and attack, like a sixth sense was enough to crush them.
Close combat, for him, was only an inconvenience. Yet even forced into it, the magician who wielded the Elven Wand could outfight any ordinary warrior.
Half my spiritual energy gone already… faster than I thought. But it'll do.
He exhaled, noting the numbers in his mind. The battle had turned into an exercise testing his limits, sharpening the control between thought and spell. So far, it was going perfectly.
Ten minutes. That was all it had taken. In that time, more than a thousand pirates lay dead on the beach.
The scene was hell itself.
The remaining men nearly a thousand more, had shattered. No one dared approach. They fled wherever they could, faces twisted with fear. Krieg shot a few in rage, but even his bullets could not stop the collapse.
Through the haze of smoke and blood, Ron walked forward, slow, steady, inevitable. Each step echoed over the corpses.
Krieg's jaw tightened. His glare burned hotter than the fires around them.
Silence crept across the field.
Far off, Marines and civilians finally stirred from their shock, watching the two men face each other. Ron, calm as still water. Krieg, the self-proclaimed overlord of the East Blue, seething like a volcano ready to erupt.
No one dared to speak.
"The pirate admiral… Krieg…" someone whispered, trembling.
Ron's power was terrifying but Krieg's name carried weight. Fifteen million Berries on his head, his reputation carved into the East Blue itself.
Even now, no one could be sure. If Krieg won, everyone here would die. If Ron won, they might yet live. The stakes pressed down like a physical weight.
Ron… he had to win.
They had seen him annihilate two thousand men, yet sweat still dripped down their palms. Because if he fell, there would be no one left to save them.
This wasn't about victory anymore. It was about survival.
Krieg's eyes burned as Ron approached. He didn't strike. Instead, his lips curved into a cold, prideful smile.
"That power of yours… that's the Devil Fruit, isn't it?"
He chuckled lowly. "I underestimated you. I didn't think you'd possess such witchcraft. You cost me half my men but it's useless against me."
With a snap of his shoulders, the greatcoat fell away.
Underneath gleamed a suit of golden armor, shining brilliantly in the sun.
"My Wootz armor," Krieg said with a smirk. "You can't pierce it. None of your little blades will even scratch me."
He tilted his head, arrogance radiating off him, already scheming. Someone like Ron, this powerful, this precise would make the perfect weapon in his fleet.
But reality rarely indulged fantasy.
"Is that so?" Ron's voice was calm, almost kind. "Then try surviving this."
Before Krieg could finish his next word, his expression froze. His pupils widened in disbelief.
Ron raised his wand, wrist flicking with lazy grace.
Seven or eight enormous blades of wind erupted forward, howling like dragons.
Gale Rend.
The second-tier spell's power dwarfed everything that came before it. These weren't mere blades of air—they were sword auras, each taller than Nami herself, cleaving the very wind as they advanced.
Krieg's blood ran cold. For an instant, his instincts screamed at him to dodge. He tried. Too slow.
Boom.
The storm struck him head-on.
Each blade of wind collided with his armored arms, roaring against the metal. For a heartbeat, Krieg resisted teeth clenched, feet gouging trenches in the sand. Then the golden plating began to crack.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
The Wootz armor shattered piece by piece.
Ron's expression didn't change.
The next moment, Krieg was flung backward, swallowed by the cyclone.
When the wind finally faded, there was nothing left but fragments of gold and a scatter of bloody remains tumbling into the waves.
One strike. Instant kill.
For a long time, no one moved.
It was as if time itself had stopped.
The pirates who had fled turned back in disbelief. The Marines and civilians stared, wide-eyed, as realization slowly dawned.
They had hoped for Ron's victory, prayed for it but none had imagined it would come this easily.
Fifteen million Berries. The strongest pirate in the East Blue. Gone in one effortless sweep of a wand.
For a moment, everyone wondered if what they saw was even real.
Had they truly just watched the East Blue's mightiest warlord die in a single blow?
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