Marijoa
Everyone present in Marijoa watched in silence as the four people surrounding Ace withdrew.
One by one, distance was created. The battlefield widened until only two figures ( Saint Figarland Shamrock , Admiral Kizaru) remained before him and the rest standing more than a hundred meters away.
The true core.
Five Elders
Four Knights of God
And Aramaki
Ace looked at them—and smiled.
To everyone watching, that smile meant relief.
A man spared.
A pirate allowed to live.
They were wrong.
Without warning, Conqueror's Haki erupted from Ace.
The air twisted. Breaths faltered. Even those present—Admirals, Elders and Knight of Gods felt an unmistakable unease crawl up their spines.
Yet no one fell.
Everyone there was powerful enough to withstand it. Many of them possessed Conqueror's Haki themselves.
Which made it strange.
Why now?
Why release it here—when intimidation wouldn't work?
Only Ace knew the answer.
This wasn't ordinary Conqueror's Haki burst.
It was the advanced form of Conqueror's Haki.
Observation Killing.
Creating a crushing presence that destabilizes an opponent's calm and focus, making it impossible for them to maintain the concentration required for Observation Haki.
This disruption effectively nullifies Future Sight, preventing enemies from perceiving incoming attacks or glimpsing future events, leaving them completely vulnerable.
At the sametime, this overwhelming will can conceal the user's presence and true intentions, masking them from Observation Haki users entirely,
For the first time since the standoff began—
They could not see ahead.
Ace's smile widened slightly as he looked at the ten figures before him.
"Well," he said calmly, almost politely,
"it was nice to meet you."
The moment the words left his mouth—
Every one of them felt it.
Not danger.
Not hostility.
Death.
An instinctive, primal certainty struck them all at once. Hearts tightened. Muscles reacted before thought could form.
But they didn't understand why.
They couldn't see it.
They couldn't predict it.
And that was when Ace spoke—not aloud, but inwardly.
System
Use Dust Release: Detachment of the Primitive World Technique in from of me.
The moment Ace finished speaking—
Reality folded.
With the five Elders at its core, space itself was sealed.
A cube formed.
Perfect. Absolute.
Forty-nine point nine nine meters forward.
Forty-nine point nine nine meters back.
The same distance in every direction.
A white, translucent cube enclosed everything inside it.
The Five Elders.
Aramaki.
The four Knights of God.
All of them—sealed within a single, silent boundary.
Outside the cube, time seemed to hesitate.
Kizaru's eyes widened slightly.
Shamrock stiffened.
Neither of them had seen Ace move.
No hand signs.
No gestures.
No distortion in the air.
There had been nothing—nothing except the overwhelming pressure of Ace's Conqueror's Haki.
But Conqueror's Haki didn't do this.
And yet, this power felt unmistakably like a Devil Fruit ability.
The problem was—
They sensed no Devil Fruit user other than Ace present here.
Not one.
Ace's Conqueror's Haki continued to press down, steady and deliberate, as if he had been waiting for this exact moment.
Shamrock didn't wait.
His sword screamed as he activated his awakened Mythical Zoan.
"Cerberus."
The three-headed blade lunged forward, piercing straight toward the cube with murderous force.
Just before contact—
The cube vanished.
Not shattered.
Not broken.
Vanished.
And what replaced it—
Was nothing.
No land.
No air.
No light.
No people.
Where the cube had existed, everything had been erased.
Reduced beyond dust.
Reduced beyond fragments.
Matter itself had been broken down to atoms—and then dispersed.
The center of Marijoa was gone.
Silence swallowed the battlefield.
For half a second, no one moved.
Then Shamrock snapped.
His fury exploded outward as he rushed Ace, sword shaking with rage.
"You—!" he roared.
"What did you do?!"
Kizaru, however, did not attack.
For the first time since arriving, the Admiral hesitated.
His relaxed posture tightened, eyes darting—not at Ace, but at the empty space where the Elders had stood.
His thoughts were simple.
This isn't worth my salary.
And now—
The people who paid him were gone.
Ace met Shamrock's charging blade with his bare fist.
Steel and flesh collided, Haki screaming between them.
Calmly, almost casually, Ace spoke.
"I sent them to heaven."
Shamrock froze—just for a fraction of a second.
Ace continued.
"That was my strongest attack."
He glanced briefly toward the void left behind.
"You can think of it like this—it destroys all matter inside the area. Completely. Breaks it down to atoms."
He looked back at Shamrock.
"So even if someone has immortality. Regeneration. Some strange divine trick."
A faint smile tugged at his lips.
"You can't regenerate from atoms."
A pause.
"…Well. Unless you can rebuild yourself from nothing. If you can—then congratulations. You'll grow back."
The words settled like a curse.
For the first time in years—
Shamrock felt it.
Fear.
Not anger.
Not tension.
Fear of death.
Fear of something so overwhelming that resistance felt meaningless.
Yet confusion gnawed at him.
If Ace possessed such power—
Why hadn't he used it earlier?
Why endure wounds?
Why take hits?
Why fight like this at all?
Two possibilities surfaced in Shamrock's mind.
Either—
Ace couldn't use that attack freely.
Or—
Ace had been playing with them from the very beginning.
---
The outside world collapsed into chaos.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then—
Everything exploded.
At Marine Ship which was moving towards Marijoa, Garp stood frozen, fists clenched so tightly his knuckles cracked. His jaw trembled—not from shock, but from something far heavier.
"…Dead?" he muttered.
Beside him, Sengoku said nothing. The Fleet Admiral stared at the screen in silence, glasses shadowing his eyes. He had lived through eras, through wars, through the rise and fall of monsters—
But this?
This was unprecedented.
---
On Sphinx Island, Whitebeard exhaled slowly.
Then—he smiled.
Not a laugh.
Not joy.
A faint, heavy smile.
"…You really are Roger's son," he murmured.
---
Across the world—
Cities erupted.
Civilians screamed.
Nobles panicked.
Kings locked themselves behind walls.
For the first time in history, Celestial Dragons had been killed in Marijoa in live broadcast.
Not assassinated in shadows.
Not erased quietly.
They had been executed—live, in front of the entire world.
And worse—
They were strongest of them.
The heads of the World Government.
The Five Elders.
No bodies remained.
No proof to deny.
No lie to bury the truth.
They were gone.
Completely.
The world trembled.
In Mary Geoise itself, remaining Celestial Dragons screamed in terror. Some fainted. Some fled. Some clutched their slaves as shields, suddenly aware—for the first time—that divinity did not protect them.
Across the seas, admirals, vice admirals, and elite forces mobilized instinctively.
Because this was no longer politics.
This was a world-class catastrophe.
If a Celestial Dragon was attacked, Admirals moved.
But now?
The system itself had been decapitated.
People understood what this meant.
Without the Five Elders—
The World Government would begin to rot from the inside.
Power vacuums would form.
Pirates would rise.
Revolutionaries would surge.
Kings and nobles would claw at each other, desperate to claim the gap left behind.
Fear spread faster than truth.
And then—
The civilians turned their anger outward.
Not at the Celestial Dragons.
Not at the World Government.
But at Ace.
"He killed them!"
"He destroyed order!"
"This is the Pirate King's blood!"
They remembered Saint Saturn's words.
They remembered the name.
Portgas D. Ace.
Son of Gol D. Roger.
The man who started the Age of Pirates.
And now—
They feared Ace would end this era only to begin something far worse.
To the civilians, the death of the Celestial Dragons meant nothing.
Their lives hadn't improved.
Their suffering hadn't vanished.
What they saw instead—
Was chaos.
More pirates.
More war.
More tyrants.
The ones who had truly exploited them weren't only the Celestial Dragons.
It was the kings.
The nobles.
The warlords.
The pirates.
And now, those same people would fight to become the new gods.
The world didn't see a savior.
They saw a spark—
One powerful enough to burn everything.
---
Another minute passed.
Only three figures still fought within the frozen battlefield—
Figarland Shamrock
Admiral Kizaru
And Portgas D Ace
But the fight was no longer had the same intensity.
It was because everyone had slowed down.
At −35°C, the battlefield itself had turned hostile.
Movement became labor.
Every step felt heavy, as if the air itself resisted motion. Muscles stiffened. Reaction speed dulled. Even Haki circulation felt sluggish, as if the body struggled to keep pace with the will.
Metabolism dropped sharply.
Breathing hurt.
Each inhale felt like knives of cold slicing through the lungs, scraping against organs not meant to endure such temperatures. Frost formed with every breath, lingering unnaturally long in the air.
The land around them had grown brittle.
Marble streets cracked under minor pressure. Towers that once stood for centuries fractured with the smallest shockwave. The sacred structures of Marijoa—symbols of untouchable authority—now shattered like thin glass.
Just then—
It happened.
A massive surge of Haki erupted from deep within Marijoa.
Not a simple burst.
Not Conqueror's pressure meant to dominate.
This was something older.
Heavier.
The wave rolled outward like an invisible tsunami.
Across the globe, den-den mushi screens flickered.
Then—
They went dark.
Every live broadcast cut simultaneously.
The recording transponder snails seized, foamed at the mouth, and collapsed unconscious.
Silence.
The world froze.
People everywhere felt it—
A crawling sensation beneath their skin.
Like ants moving across their bones.
They didn't know what happened.
They couldn't know.
And that ignorance was worse than any truth.
The strongest beings across the seas went pale.
Those who had lived through legends.
Those who had survived God Valley.
They recognized that feeling.
Not by sight.
By instinct.
"This Haki…"
"…No way."
Even watching through a screen, their bodies remembered.
The presence.
The pressure.
The same overwhelming will once wielded by the IT who controlled Rocks.
The king of the world.
The shadow behind the World Government.
For decades, the greatest pirates had avoided directly attacking the World Government—not out of fear of Admirals, but because they knew it was futile.
God Valley had proven that.
But now—
They wanted to know.
They needed to know.
Had this pirate—
Had Ace—
Performed another miracle?
Had he done the impossible again?
Like ten Admiral- and Emperor-level beings been erased at once?
But the screen remained dark.
The answer was denied to them.
---
Back in Marijoa—
The Haki crashed down like judgment.
Shamrock was the first to break.
He staggered back.
His sword slipped from his grip.
And then—
He knelt.
Kizaru, on the other hand, retreated.
Slowly
Carefully
He didn't kneel.
He didn't attack.
He simply stepped away from the battlefield, golden light flickering around his body, his usual lazy smile long gone.
What remained in his eyes wasn't panic—
It was calculation.
"…This isn't worth the salary," he muttered quietly.
For the first time in his life, Kizaru understood something clearly.
Behind the World Government—
There was something else.
And whatever that something was—
Ace had just brushed against it.
---