Chapter 17: The World-Mending Sacrifice
The colossal, primordial shadow of the Ur-Jormungandr—the World Serpent—rose above the ruins of the Red Line, its Entropic Haki dissolving everything it touched into ancient dust. Below it, the ocean where Monkey D. Kelean had fallen was a maelstrom of fear and chaos.
The Founder's Will
Imu, recovering slightly in the ruins of Mariejois, watched in horrified fascination. Their despair turned to a desperate demand: "Retrieve him! He caused this! Only his power can command the seals!"
Cipher Pol agents, immune to the immediate terror of the Serpent, plunged into the water where Kelean had vanished. They found him not dead, but suspended—unconscious, his body pale from the immense loss of blood and Haki, floating motionless in the turbulent channel.
But as the Serpent let loose another, wider blast of Haki—a wave of pure conceptual Entropy aimed at erasing the entire Grand Line—Kelean's body responded, not to a conscious command, but to a primal, ancestral will.
The moment the Serpent's nullification wave touched the water around him, Kelean's eyes—even in his unconscious state—snapped open, burning with a cold, desperate amber light.
Unleashing the Red Earth
The restraint was gone. The Blood-Blood Fruit (Chi Chi no Mi), awakened to its absolute limit, was no longer controlled by a mind but by a foundational instinct to preserve life's structure.
The ocean around Kelean did not just turn red; it crystallized. Kelean began drawing the entirety of the Red Line's remaining foundation—the iron ore, the deep-sea salts, the geological compression—and condensing it into his own domain. He was commanding not just the blood of life, but the blood of the planet.
His body, still bleeding from the stump of his shoulder, became the epicenter of a planetary-scale disaster. He shot upward, encased in a shimmering, crimson shell of compressed earth, salt, and water.
The Ur-Jormungandr, sensing a force that challenged its own primordial law, turned its massive head and roared—a sound that was pure chaos.
Kelean, now fully encased in the ultimate expression of his power, raised his single, remaining hand. The Crimson Monolith was small. This was different. He formed a giant, writhing Glove of Compressed Red Earth around his fist—a fist larger than the Serpent's head, made from the material of the shattered continent.
"You are the chaos that ends all things!" Kelean's voice was distorted, amplified by the geological shell he inhabited. "I am the Structure that began all things!"
The Serpent slammed its head forward, the Void Haki meant to erase Kelean's very essence. Kelean met the blow with the massive, crimson, earthen fist.
The clash was the sound of the planet itself recoiling. The air fractured into geometric patterns. The Serpent's Entropic Haki, designed to nullify material, met a material so dense, so fundamentally charged with Kelean's unrestrained Haki, that the power could not dissipate it—it could only push it.
Kelean held the Serpent's head in his enormous, crimson fist, forcing it back into the chasm. The pressure of the blow was so immense that the ocean floor cracked open for miles.
The effort was consuming Kelean. His Haki was boundless, but his physical shell was not. His crimson shell began to crack, the effort of controlling tons of geology and resisting existential nullification tearing his body apart.
The Eternal Seal
Kelean didn't aim to defeat the Serpent; he aimed to re-seal it.
With a final, desperate surge of will, Kelean drove the Serpent deep into the kilometer-wide gap in the Red Line. He used the Serpent's own massive body as a geological stake, ramming it down into the earth's mantle.
Then, Kelean released the power he had condensed. He commanded the remaining, liquefied portions of the Red Line to rush back into the gap. He was physically healing the wound he had created, forcing the colossal volume of the shattered continent to flow back and solidify around the Serpent's body.
The Red Line rapidly reformed, a massive, uneven, crimson scar across the world. The Serpent roared, trapped, its tail still visible for a moment before the continent solidified around it entirely.
Kelean had sealed the monster, but the price was absolute.
His crimson shell dissolved. Kelean's body, now impossibly frail and scarred, drifted free. He had used every atom of his power. He did not sink, however. He was now held aloft by a single, thin, metallic-red strand of permanent, solidified Haki—the last, crystalline remainder of his power.
He was the victor, but he was no longer a man. He was a sentinel. His appearance had changed: his eyes were permanently clouded with an amber glow, and his missing arm was replaced by a perfect, shimmering scar of crystalline red.
He looked up at the Marineford side of the Red Line, where Imu and the Elders watched in silence.
"The seal will hold," Kelean whispered, his voice weak but clear. "But the price for your fear... has been paid. The world is safe, but it is not yours."
He then focused his final, tiny pulse of Haki toward the West—toward the New World and his great-grandson. The Serpent sleeps, descendant. The path is clear. Do not fail the freedom I paid for.
With that, Kelean drifted to the top of the newly scarred Red Line, becoming a silent, motionless guardian—the eternal sentinel of the broken wall.
Kelean has made the ultimate sacrifice, using his full, unrestrained power to save the world from the chaos he accidentally unleashed. He is now a living monument and a passive guardian.