Although his energy was almost completely depleted, Meteor Burst still had not ended.
With his current abilities, ordinary attacks like this—ones not infused with Conqueror's Haki—could not actually kill him.
Of course…
That was assuming he did not use his trump card.
Otherwise, Kizaru would definitely notice what was going on, then slowly wear him down and kill him by force.
Kizaru's speed is too fast. I couldn't react at all just now.
Three times the speed of sound? No, even faster than that. Come to think of it, Kizaru's speed was already shown during the Egghead Island arc.
A distance of several thousand meters was crossed almost instantly—so fast that even Luffy, who could see the future, failed to react.
If not for the rule-based mechanic of Thunderclap and Flash letting me kill Kizaru's other clones in advance, I'd already have been chopped to pieces just now.
Which means one of his main goals is to kill me?
But what happened with the Donquixote Family proves the Navy did receive what Kuzan passed along. Otherwise, with Doflamingo's abilities, he wouldn't have been missing that much information.
If that's the case… was it Tsuru's idea to kill me? No, that should've been Sengoku's decision.
As he thought, Ren reached his conclusion, more or less piecing together the root cause of what had just happened.
The one who showed up was Kizaru, not Kuzan. That alone already explained the issue.
The person who issued the order could basically be confirmed to be Sengoku.
What happened in Dressrosa had been fully exposed.
Kizaru's job was to eliminate Ren, this unstable factor, and then drive Kaido away to prevent him from destroying an allied nation.
Marine Headquarters had already properly recognized how dangerous Ren was.
One of the secondary objectives of this operation had already been achieved.
Once the effect of the Forgotten Hourglass ended, Sengoku's side would further raise their assessment of his threat level because of Doflamingo's death and everything that had happened inside Dressrosa.
In other words, his position as a Warlord of the Sea was most likely secure.
The main objective is complete. Next, it's time to go back.
Ren beat his six wings and flew toward the Judgment. Behind him, violent disturbances continued to erupt among the chunks of earth rising into the sky.
His passive premonition sense together with Observation Haki allowed him to grasp the situation.
Issho held the suppressive position, pinning Kaido down, but he did not attack Kizaru.
He simply did not want either side returning to Dressrosa's territory.
Kaido was the one pressing the attack.
His battle intent was off the charts. He seemed to think the injuries on his body had been caused by Kizaru, and wanted to return the favor in kind.
As for Kizaru, he chose passive defense, because Issho's actions aligned with his own objective.
The longer the battle dragged on, the safer Dressrosa would be.
Without a doubt—
The three of them had forgotten the existence of Ren and the others, and under the brain's own logic-repair mechanism, had already formed a simple false chain of reasoning.
Each of them had their own objective.
Each of them had their own course of action.
Even if… they could deeply sense that something was wrong, the intensity of the battle left them no chance to free themselves from the effect.
Or rather, at the moment Kizaru pierced through Ren's body, the item Ren had used truly was terrifyingly powerful!
That item was the hourglass currently in operation!
.
[Forgotten Hourglass]
[Origin: One Piece / ???]
[Type: Rule-Type Item]
[Effect: A synthesized item created from a special seahorse possessing unusual powers, along with multiple same-origin items from different sources.
It possesses incredible and mysterious powers, capable of producing extremely special effects.
The traits it possesses are: "Memory Sand," "Forgetfulness," "Departed World," and "Erasure."
Memory Sand Trait — Extracts the memories of others to form Memory Sand, which serves as the power source of the Forgotten Hourglass.
Any memory turned into Memory Sand disappears permanently, leaving behind a gap in memory.
When the Memory Sand fills one-third of the hourglass, the Forgetfulness trait can be used.
When it reaches half full, the Departed World trait can be used.
When it is completely full, the Erasure trait can be used.
Forgetfulness Trait — The moment the hourglass is inverted, the Forgetfulness trait is considered activated.
Once activated, the Forgotten Hourglass drags the targets linked before activation into a forgotten gray-white state.
In this state, all related memories, physical traces, and so on connected to the forgotten targets are temporarily forgotten.
No external existence can perceive the existence, deeds, or actions of the forgotten targets, and will automatically fill in the missing memories with self-generated chains of logic.
At the same time, traces of their real existence in reality will be ignored, attention diverted away from them, and false assumptions formed.
However, take note: in this state, this cognitive concealment is fragile.
If the forgotten target performs any interactive or interfering action while others are under the forgetting state, the forgotten state will immediately break.
And the forgotten target will suffer backlash, entering conditions such as memory confusion.
The duration of Forgetfulness depends on the scope of influence. The larger the covered range, the faster the sand inside the hourglass falls.
When the hourglass finishes inverting, the forgotten effect disappears, and everything returns to normal.
Departed World Trait — After inverting the hourglass, a single target may be selected and separated from all else.
While in the Departed World state, all memories others have related to the affected target will disappear.
At the same time, during the inversion period of the hourglass, a brand-new identity can be generated and implanted into the minds of everyone within the affected range.
This includes but is not limited to identities such as teacher, worker, air, and so on.
One who has departed from the world cannot interact with others and may only act upon themselves.
Erasure Trait — Breaking the hourglass counts as activating this trait, permanently destroying the hourglass in exchange for a permanent world-scale effect.
Select "a certain event" and erase it. All memories and real traces related to it will be instantly erased.
It cannot be remembered, rewound, or reconstructed.
However, take note: this trait forcibly imposes its effect on all relevant individuals, and the strength of that effect depends on the hourglass's essential power.
There is a possibility that a few individuals may resist the effect and undo the influence.
If the number of people connected to the erased event is too large, and the required power exceeds the Forgotten Hourglass's available power units,
then some people may completely forget while others still retain their memories.]
[Consumption: Memory Sand]
.
This item was Ren's confidence in starting the war—
Or rather, the trump card he had deliberately crafted to deal with a Yonko.
Even before the battle began, Ren had already more or less known what kind of situation he would be facing.
And yet, he still chose to start this war.
Considering the overwhelming power of a Yonko, having at least one trump card was absolutely necessary.
Even if he could not win, he could still have everyone withdraw safely and avoid a total defeat.
After much thought, Ren chose memory as the direction for this trump card.
Mainly because Kuma also had a need for something like this, so it might as well serve two purposes at once.
Most importantly—
He had already gotten hold of the seahorse.
As a special lifeform capable of extracting memories and even feeding on them, the seahorse naturally became the core ingredient in Ren's crafted item.
Its ability was to impose influence through music.
In sleep, memories would be extracted. After waking, the victim would forget the missing memories and be unable to notice that a portion had vanished.
They could sense that something was off, but still had no way to recover the memory.
Unless the seahorse was defeated and forced to spit out what it had eaten.
Of course,
If it were only the seahorse, the limitations would have been too severe.
So Ren drew a number of prizes related to memory and rule-type items, then used a Synthesis Scroll.
And from that, he created this thing.
As for the production of Memory Sand, he had to thank the sky pirates.
Because pirates and sky pirates within Skypiea could be turned into materials, they were now nearly extinct.
But what that brought him was a huge quantity of usable Memory Sand.
The hourglass was basically in a fully charged state, with all of its traits available for use.
The Forgetfulness trait caused Ren to be forgotten.
Its additional effects included cognitive concealment, attention diversion, and self-generated assumptions.
That prevented the horrifying outcome of others immediately noticing something was wrong, then forcefully remembering him anyway.
Because in One Piece, there was a setting concerning Haki:
Powerful Haki could ignore the effects of certain rule-based Devil Fruit abilities.
For example, when Law fought Doc Q, he used Haki to nullify the Sick-Sick Fruit's effect, changing himself back from a female body into his original male form.
Or take Kaido and Sugar as another example.
With Kaido's level of Haki, even if Sugar touched him, the power of the Toy-Toy Fruit would be forcibly negated by Kaido.
And considering that Law did not have Conqueror's Haki—
It was probably due to advanced Armament Haki, which possessed incredible power.
Even though the Forgotten Hourglass was not a Devil Fruit ability, there was still a possibility it could fail against unreasonable Haki.
That was why Ren waited until that exact situation before choosing to use the Forgotten Hourglass.
At the time, the situation was already chaotic. Kizaru and Kaido were opposed to one another, while Issho stood in a relatively neutral position.
But in the end, it was still a three-way confrontation.
Even if they sensed that something was wrong, other circumstances would pull away their attention.
As a result, they could not break free from the Hourglass's influence.
And Ren had also used the Departed World trait, defining himself as air, preventing the three sides from detecting anything wrong with Observation Haki while he moved.
It could only be said that—
Even with the Forgotten Hourglass, dealing with the world's peak combatants still was not necessarily foolproof.
As for the Erasure trait—
That was something he had prepared for Kuma.
The Erasure trait could permanently erase an event.
In other words, it could directly erase the event of Kuma having a weakness.
It could forcibly erase the existence of those hostages from the records the World Government had kept.
Or rather, erase the records themselves along with it.
Though that would cause the hostages to forget the good things Kuma had done for them, and would also make Kuma forget them—
It was still better than letting the World Government use them as bargaining chips!
Of course, the drawback was just as obvious.
The Forgotten Hourglass was the final product of multiple synthesized items, and its final cost was six hundred million Beli.
Not too much.
Its effect was powerful, but the scale of its power also had a limit.
Which meant it needed to be used together with another "spoils of war."
And he thought—
That "spoils of war" should already have been acquired.
Ren returned to the gray-white Judgment. Clearly, this spaceship was also in a forgotten state.
Under Nami's control, the Judgment sped away from Dressrosa at an astonishing velocity.
Before the effect of the Forgotten Hourglass ended, they had to get as far away from Kaido as possible.
Because the truth was simple—
They really could not beat him.
"Is everyone back?"
After landing, Ren asked the question while spreading out his Observation Haki to scan the ship.
"They're all here. We brought the target back too."
Zoro, sitting cross-legged on the deck, answered without even looking up, then continued downing potions to treat his injuries.
(End of Chapter)