The grin on Zaraki's face only widened, and there was something almost mad in his eyes.
The wounds Jack's strength had torn across his body burned fiercely, yet that pain only made his blood boil harder.
It hurt, but it felt good.
Betting everything on the next swing was far more interesting than sitting in an office pushing papers, or sparring with soft-bodied weaklings on a training field.
What pleased him even more was the frantic stream of notifications ringing through his head.
**[Zaraki Kenpachi template synchronization increased by 1%...]**
**[Effective damage received. Battle spirit greatly elevated. Synchronization slightly increased...]**
**[Slash landed on an Ancient Zoan-class durable body. Synchronization increased...]**
So that was it.
Fighting thick-skinned monsters with absurd vitality made the synchronization rate rise this quickly?
Zaraki's eyes gleamed.
He licked his cracked lips, tasting Jack's blood smeared across them.
A rusty sweetness burst over his tongue.
'Good. Very good.'
One of the Three Calamities of the Beasts Pirates really was a worthwhile stepping stone for increasing his strength.
But only as a stepping stone.
Whitebeard's figure flashed uncontrollably through Zaraki's mind, and just recalling that man's presence was enough to make him feel pressure.
If the old man carried that kind of weight, then how strong would Kaido, the so-called strongest creature in the world, be?
He would face him sooner or later.
He needed to become faster. Stronger.
A fierce sense of urgency and battle lust surged through Zaraki all at once.
He could not drag this out any longer.
"This ends here, long-nose," Zaraki said softly, though his voice still reached Jack's ears with perfect clarity through the chaos of battle.
He abandoned every flashy move and simply gripped Murasame's hilt with both hands, holding the blade flat across his chest.
In the next instant, an overwhelming aura erupted from him.
The dark-gold arcs around the demon blade faded into a denser pressure, Reiatsu and Armament Haki compressing along Murasame's edge until the air around it seemed to bend under the weight.
Hum—
The blade trembled faintly and let out a low, heavy cry.
"One-Sword Style: Sever."
Zaraki's voice was calm and cold.
Then he swung.
The motion was not fast. If anything, it almost looked slow.
As the blade traced through the air, a thin black-gold line tore forward between him and Jack.
The sound of wind, battle, and distant gasps seemed to vanish for a heartbeat, swallowed by the dense Reiatsu wrapped around the slash.
Jack, who had been charging forward, felt his beastly pupils shrink to pinpoints.
A chill born from pure instinct drowned out his reason in an instant and made every hair on his body stand on end.
He felt it with absolute certainty.
If that slash landed cleanly, even his Ancient Zoan body would be torn open beyond what ordinary vitality could repair.
"ROAAAR!"
At the edge of life and death, Jack exploded with every ounce of his power.
He had no time to think, his body moved on instinct alone.
"Full-body Armament Haki!"
With a harsh grinding sound, jet-black Haki surged out from his body and coated him from head to toe, forming a heavy suit of black armor.
At the same time, he crossed both massive scimitars in front of his chest and poured every last bit of strength into them, forcing himself to meet that impossibly thin black line head-on.
'I've got this!'
'If I block this, the brat will be spent! And then—'
Jack's thoughts ended there.
Because the black line had already brushed lightly against his crossed blades.
There was no earth-shattering explosion and no shower of sparks.
Only a deathly silence.
Then, one second later—Boom!
A horrifying force burst forth at last.
Jack's enormous body looked as if it had been struck head-on by something impossible to resist.
The twin scimitars crossed before his chest twisted, shattered, and blew apart into a storm of fragments.
The impact then slammed directly into his chest through the remains of his weapons.
The black armor of Armament Haki that he had prided himself on gave off a rapid chain of cracking sounds, and spiderweb fractures spread across it in an instant.
"Pwah!"
A mouthful of dark blood mixed with pieces of torn flesh sprayed violently from Jack's mouth and arced through the air.
His huge body was blasted backward, smashing through three buildings in a row before crashing hard into the rock wall at the far end of the harbor.
Stone burst apart, and smoke billowed skyward.
When the dust settled, the harbor fell into dead silence.
The blackness swallowing the light vanished from Murasame's blade, and the sword returned to normal, but Zaraki could feel the spirit within it trembling, as though it were both exhilarated and afraid.
His eyes remained fixed on the man-shaped hole in the rock wall.
Did that finish it?
That strike had fused Armament Haki and Reiatsu into an edge compressed to the limit, thin enough to make the air itself feel as if it had been cut apart.
Even a mountain of steel should have been split in two by that.
Yet in the next second, Zaraki's pupils contracted sharply.
"Glrk... glrk..."
A strange wet sound came from the depths of that hollow, as though liquid were squirming somewhere inside it.
Then wisps of hot white steam began to drift out, carrying a thick, metallic smell of blood.
Under the horrified eyes of the Marines, a huge dark silhouette slowly stepped out from the rubble.
It was Jack.
The horrific slash across his chest tightened at a terrifying speed.
Broken bones shifted back into place, torn muscle clenched together, and steam rose from the wound as his Ancient Zoan vitality forced his body to keep moving despite damage that should have dropped any ordinary fighter.
It was not true regeneration, and the wound had not vanished, but Jack's monstrous body refused to fall.
"..."
Zaraki stared at the sight, and the curve of his mouth spread even wider.
Good. That was more like it.
If one slash had been enough to kill him, that would have been boring.
"You see that, Chaton?" Yamakaji said from the warship in the distance, pushing up his glasses as he spoke in a calm tone.
"That strike from Zaraki was incredibly powerful, but the consumption must've been enormous. Jack also burned through almost all of his stamina and Haki just defending against it."
Behind the reflection of his lenses, Yamakaji's gaze remained analytical and steady.
"Judging from the exchange, Zaraki's chance of winning is at least seventy percent."
"Seventy percent? Yamakaji, you're overestimating him!"
Chaton's face turned livid.
He had wanted Jack to tear away Zaraki's mask and let everyone see what kind of monster the man really was, yet instead Zaraki had reduced one of the Three Calamities to such a miserable state that it made Chaton grind his teeth in frustration.
"Don't forget what Jack is!" Chaton snarled, his voice thick with anger. "An Ancient Zoan! In terms of endurance and recovery, he's a monster among monsters! How many times do you think that brat can use a slash like the one just now? Once? Or maybe he can't use it again at all. From here on out, it's Jack's hunt!"
As soon as those words left his mouth, Jack burst into wild laughter, as if to confirm them.
"Rahahahaha!"
Jack shook his head and flung the blood off his face, his exposed eye burning even more fiercely than before.
He glanced at the broken remains of the scimitar still in his hand, but instead of throwing it away, he only tightened his grip.
"Brat... your name is Zaraki, right?"
"Good!"
"You're the first Marine in all these years who's managed to injure me this badly!"
Boom!
Before the words had even finished, the ground beneath Jack exploded as his massive body lunged forward again with crushing pressure.
This time he was even faster, even fiercer, combining his weight, his strength, his speed, and his Haki into one savage charging slash.
The air screamed as it was torn apart.
Wherever Jack passed, the ground was plowed open into a deep trench, as though his momentum would grind everything in front of him into dust.
Every Marine watching from the harbor had their hearts lodged in their throats, their faces tight with tension as they stared at the center of the battlefield.
Could the young Marine monster who had just created a miracle really stop Jack's berserk final charge?
A hunt?
Zaraki watched Jack thunder straight toward him, and the grin on his face did not fade in the slightest.
This was no hunt.
This was a life-and-death slaughter.
The raging wind rushing ahead of Jack whipped Zaraki's black hair wildly and made his coat snap around him.
Mixed into that gale was the thick stench of blood and beast from Jack's body, forced brutally into Zaraki's lungs and sending another electric thrill through his nerves.
"Good, come at me!"
The muscles in Zaraki's arms twitched from overexertion. After that slash, very little strength remained in his body.
But so what?
A fight had never been a matter of arithmetic.
"Hah!"
With a low roar, Zaraki dropped his stance.
His knees bent, and the ground beneath his feet shattered at once, spiderweb cracks racing outward in every direction.
He brought Murasame across his body and poured every last bit of his remaining Haki into the blade.
The demon sword let out a strained cry as fine dark-gold Reiatsu arcs flickered along its surface and intertwined with the black sheen of Armament Haki.
There was no attempt to dodge, no fancy technique.
Faced with the all-out charge of a furious ancient beast, the only answer was to meet it head-on with something harder, stronger, and more absolute—and crush it completely.
In the span of a flash, the massive black silhouette and the comparatively small human figure slammed into one another.
Clang!
A shrill metallic shriek rang out across the harbor.
Then even that sound disappeared.
The shockwave exploding from the collision point was so violent that the ultra-high-frequency vibration surpassed the limits of human hearing, creating a terrifying zone of absolute silence that made everyone's chest tighten.
A white ring of compressed air burst out from the clash and pulverized every bit of shattered stone and debris within a hundred meters.
Zaraki felt an unstoppable force surging through the sword into his body.
That power was utterly pure and savage, like the whole world had thrown itself against him.
The skin on his palms split open at once, blood running freely.
His arms gave off the awful groan of straining bones, as though the next second they would snap under the weight of that monstrous strength.
His feet sank deep into the earth and were pushed backward, carving two long trenches through the ground.
But he held.
He had actually stopped the mammoth's full-charge assault with his blade.
"Guh... grrr..." A low growl rolled out of Jack's throat.
His bloodshot beast eyes locked onto Zaraki at point-blank range, filled with utter disbelief.
How was this brat still standing?
He had already exhausted nearly everything. How could he still stop an all-or-nothing attack like this?
And yet, in the next second, the astonishment in Jack's eyes turned into savage delight.
Because he heard it.
At the very center of their deadlocked clash, there came a single sound, crisp and devastating.
Crack.
It was quiet, but to Zaraki it rang as loudly as thunder.
He looked down, and his pupils shrank.
There, at the exact point where Murasame's blade met Jack's broken scimitar, a tiny fracture had appeared in his sword.
And then that fracture spread wildly at an astonishing speed, as if it were alive.
Crack... crack, crack...
Spiderweb-like cracks crawled across the entire blade in less than a ten-thousandth of a second.
Then—
Snap!
With a crisp sound, the blade of the demon blade Murasame could no longer withstand the crushing force of the two powers colliding.
It shattered like moonlight breaking apart.
Countless cold gleaming fragments burst outward in every direction, each piece carrying a sharp gust of wind.
With the weapon no longer blocking him, Jack's charge had nothing left in its way and slammed solidly into Zaraki's chest.
In that instant, time seemed to slow without end.
Zaraki could clearly see the savage, twisted smile on Jack's face, the wild joy of a gambler turning the tables at the final moment.
The strongest thing about this brat was his sword.
Without it, even a monster like him would have to face Jack's strength bare-handed.
The impact fully erupted.
A mouthful of scorching blood sprayed from Zaraki's mouth.
His body was thrown violently backward, carving an arc through the air before crashing heavily into the distant ruins and kicking up a cloud of dust.
Silence.
The entire battlefield fell into a grave-like stillness.
Every eye focused on the spreading smoke and dust, and on the enormous figure slowly straightening itself.
Jack stood where he was, breathing heavily.
The wounds across his chest had split open again from the force he had just unleashed, and blood was flowing freely, but he paid it no mind.
He lowered his head and glanced at the two weapons in his hands, both now reduced to bare hilts, then casually threw them away.
After that, he raised his head and looked across the devastated battlefield.
His face held a cruel smile, the expression of someone certain victory was already in his grasp.
The smoke slowly cleared.
Zaraki was half-kneeling among the broken stones, one hand braced against the ground, while the other still gripped what remained of Murasame—the bare hilt of the shattered demon blade.