Neither of them dodged.
Sakazuki's magma fist tore straight through Marco's chest, and Marco's black-flame blade plunged deep into Sakazuki's torso.
For a heartbeat, time seemed to freeze.
Then—
Sakazuki coughed violently, blood spraying from his mouth.
He hadn't expected it.
His Armament Haki… had failed to stop Marco's attack.
Pain snapped him back to clarity.
"Brother Sakazuki…!"
From afar, Aramaki's expression changed drastically.
He had never imagined the two would fight like this.
No feints.
No evasions.
Just raw, suicidal collision.
Now they stood locked together.
Marco's right arm was buried inside Sakazuki's body.
Sakazuki's magma fist had pierced completely through Marco's chest.
At a glance, Marco's injuries looked far worse.
His flesh sizzled.
The smell of scorched blood filled the air.
Marco coughed, blood running from his lips as magma ravaged his insides—
Yet beneath the destruction, phoenix flames burned fiercely, regenerating tissue at terrifying speed.
With his left hand, Marco seized Sakazuki's collar and pulled him closer—
Not allowing even a fraction of escape.
Black flames surged again, spiraling violently toward his embedded right arm.
Marco's eyes gleamed with cold mockery.
"So this is your 'Absolute Justice'?"
"As Fleet Admiral, all you have is brute violence."
"You drove out two colleagues. Is this the limit of your power?"
Sakazuki's pupils trembled.
The pain had steadied him for a moment—
But Marco's words ignited something far hotter than magma.
"SHUT UP!!!"
"You think a pirate can lecture me?!"
"Great Eruption!!!"
The magma arm inside Marco detonated.
Superheated lava exploded outward, widening the wound, tearing flesh apart. The temperature rose so violently that Marco's body seemed on the verge of splitting in half.
"UGH—!"
Even the phoenix flames were being worked overtime.
Blood streamed from his nose and mouth.
Under this level of destruction, even his regeneration struggled to keep up.
Yet—
He did not release Sakazuki.
Instead, he roared through blood-soaked teeth.
"The one who dies... is YOU!"
"Destruction Black Flame—"
"Super Spiral Incineration Cannon!!!"
Black fire detonated inside Sakazuki's body.
A spiraling inferno erupted outward—
Blasting through his back in a corkscrewing pillar of black flame.
Sakazuki convulsed violently, coughing up thick blood that splattered across Marco's face.
"Brother Sakazuki!!"
Aramaki felt his scalp go numb.
This wasn't combat.
This was an execution.
This was two monsters trying to drag each other into hell.
Then—For the first time—Fear flickered across Sakazuki's face.
Death.
He felt it.
With a savage pull, he ripped his magma arm out of Marco's chest, eyes blazing with final resolve.
"Die!"
"Hell Hound!"
The magma hound lunged—
Marco tilted his head at the last possible instant—
But the attack still crushed half of his skull above the left eye.
A bone shattered.
Blood and flame scattered.
Yet—
Marco's right hand, still buried inside Sakazuki's body, clenched.
He grabbed something soft.
Something vital.
With a savage jerk, he tore it free.
Sakazuki's pupils shrank violently.
In Marco's blackened, flame-wreathed hand—beat his heart.
Or rather, It had been beaten.
For a split second, Sakazuki stared at it.
Understanding dawned.
Then—
Marco crushed it.
The sound was wet. Final.
Sakazuki's heartbeat ceased instantly.
Everything had happened in under a minute.
Aramaki stood frozen.
Big Mom stared in stunned disbelief.
One man had half his skull obliterated.
The other had his heart torn out.
Both had been pierced through the torso.
Yet only one could continue.
Sakazuki's consciousness faded rapidly.
Without a heart—with catastrophic internal destruction—Even his iron will could not hold.
Marco's remaining eye burned with a black flame.
"Destruction Black Flame—"
"Fire Fist!!!"
BOOM!!!
The punch slammed into Sakazuki's face with apocalyptic force.
His body was blasted backward, skidding dozens of meters across the ruined battlefield before finally crashing to a halt.
Smoke rose.
Silence fell.
The Fleet Admiral of the Marines—
Lay motionless.
The moment Sakazuki's body crashed to a halt, Aramaki abandoned his clash with Big Mom without hesitation and shot toward it.
"Brother Sakazuki!"
He landed beside the fallen Fleet Admiral—and froze.
Sakazuki's chest cavity was a ruin.
His heart was gone.
His internal organs had been pulverized by the eruption of Destruction Black Flame.
Residual black fire still smoldered within the wound, refusing to die out.
Even for Aramaki, whose Forest-Forest Fruit granted extraordinary regenerative properties, this was beyond treatment.
Still—
He refused to give up.
Vines burst from his arms, plunging into Sakazuki's body like living IV lines. Life force surged desperately through them, pouring into the shattered shell of a man.
"Hold on… hold on!"
But even as he infused energy, Aramaki knew the truth.
You cannot regrow a heart that has been crushed to ash.
Not far away, Big Mom stared at the scene with narrowed eyes.
"Mamamama... so that's how it is. …"
Her gaze shifted to Marco.
"So you've grown this much stronger… Marco."
The Black Flames coiling around him were nothing like before. When he had fought her in the past, he hadn't possessed such terrifying destructive power.
Devil Fruit Awakening.
There was no other explanation.
Behind her, Katakuri stood stunned.
He finally understood—
Marco hadn't been reckless.
He had provoked Sakazuki deliberately.
He had dragged him into a rage.
He had forced him into a head-on exchange where retreat was impossible.
But even knowing that—
Katakuri hadn't imagined it would end like this.
A one-minute duel.
Half a skull shattered.
A heart crushed.
Madness.
Then—
A familiar mechanical voice echoed in Marco's mind.
Mission complete. Fleet Admiral Sakazuki has been defeated.
Reward: 10,000 attribute points.
Marco's expression barely changed.
Inside, however, the tension finally loosened.
He coughed again, dropping to one knee.
Magma still churned within his chest and skull, eating at flesh and bone. Black flames burned continuously, fighting to cleanse the foreign destruction.
This time, the damage was catastrophic.
Even with his awakened Phoenix regeneration, the recovery was slow.
Blood dripped from his chin.
But he was alive.
And Sakazuki was not.
After several breaths, Marco forced himself upright.
The crater in his chest had shrunk.
The shattered side of his skull had mostly reformed.
Another minute, perhaps two—and he would be battle-ready again.
He exhaled slowly.
In that clash, he had truly walked the edge of death.
Sakazuki's magma was no exaggeration—it could erase a man from existence in seconds.
If he had hesitated…
If his awakening had faltered…
He would have died instantly.
Aramaki lifted his head.
And what he saw made his blood run cold.
Marco.
Standing.
Healing.
Recovering at a speed even the Forest-Forest Fruit could not replicate.
That wasn't regeneration.
That was a rebirth.
Fear—real, instinctive fear—tightened Aramaki's chest.
Marco wiped the blood from his mouth and looked toward Big Mom.
His black wings unfurled once more, flames rising violently.
"Big Mom," he said calmly.
"Let's finish this."
He turned his gaze to Aramaki.
"Together."
The air grew heavy.
The battlefield, already shaken by the fall of the Fleet Admiral, trembled once more.
The war…
It wasn't over yet.
Although the system had not issued a mission to kill Aramaki, Marco had no intention of letting such an opportunity slip away.
An Admiral.
Wounded.
Isolated.
Shaken.
If he escaped today, there might never be a second chance.
"Good," Big Mom growled without hesitation. Thundercloud Zeus crackled beneath her feet as she shot into the sky, barreling straight toward Aramaki.
Seeing two emperors closing in at once, Aramaki's composure finally cracked.
One emperor was already terrifying.
Two?
And one of them had just crushed Sakazuki's heart.
Even an admiral would not gamble on those odds.
Without another word, his body unraveled into writhing trees and surging vines. He scooped up Sakazuki and fled, roots tearing through the earth as he retreated at full speed.
Sakazuki's body hung amid a grotesque web of vine-like tubes. They pierced into him from every angle, pumping stolen life force into a corpse that refused to die.
No heart.
Shattered lungs.
Ruined organs.
Only Aramaki's Forest-Forest Fruit was keeping him tethered to existence.
"Aramaki…"
The voice was hoarse. Broken.
Aramaki stiffened.
Slowly—impossibly—Sakazuki opened his eyes.
Then, with terrifying willpower, he pushed himself upright.
Aramaki stared at him in disbelief.
As a Logia user of the Forest-Forest Fruit, he understood anatomy better than most surgeons. Sakazuki's body was beyond saving. By all logic, he should already be dead.
And yet—
He stood.
"Brother…" Aramaki's voice trembled.
Sakazuki's gaze was steady and iron-hard despite the blood spilling from his lips.
"Aramaki," he said loudly, forcing each word through broken lungs, "convey my final order as Fleet Admiral."
The vines feeding him trembled.
"All Marines… withdraw from Cake Island immediately. Preserve as much strength as possible. Return to Marineford."
Aramaki froze.
He could hear it in Sakazuki's voice.
Final.
"Brother… you—"
"This time," Sakazuki rasped, "we lost."
His breathing grew ragged. Without lungs, every inhale was agony. Without a heart, his life was nothing but borrowed time.
Even with Aramaki's life force sustaining him, there was no future.
No survival.
Only seconds.
But as Fleet Admiral, he would not crawl away.
He would not die fleeing.
With a violent motion, Sakazuki tore the vine tubes from his body and stepped off Aramaki's support, landing heavily on the scorched earth below.
"Brother!!!" Aramaki shouted in panic.
"Execute the order!" Sakazuki roared back. "Retreat immediately!"
His fists erupted into blazing magma.
Ahead of him, Marco's black wings cut through the sky. Big Mom's towering figure loomed behind him like a living mountain.
Sakazuki's eyes burned with savage resolve.
"Even if I die…" he growled, magma boiling violently around him, "…I will drag you pirates to hell with me!"
He thrust both arms skyward.
"Meteor Volcano!"
The sky split open.
Hundreds—no, thousands—of magma fists ignited above Cake Island, falling like a rain of annihilation.
Not just toward Marco.
Not just toward Big Mom.
But across the entire battlefield.
If he was going to fall—He would take the island with him.
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