Drake's eyes snapped wide. Amidst the thrashing inferno enveloping her, Im's silhouette warped violently—and a secondary upper torso began tearing free from her frame!
It resembled an unnatural, conjoined monstrosity sharing a single physical vessel. Yet one of the two figures wore an expression of sheer, unendurable agony, shrieking ceaselessly into the roaring wind.
Could it be...?!
Though Drake had no idea what was causing the phenomenon, the reality before him was crystal clear: Im's metaphysical upper body was being forcibly ripped from Kaya's physical form!
Judging by her grotesque contortions, the ancient sovereign was being subjected to an inhuman torment, her visage twisted in unbearable anguish.
Blinding luminescence flared within the Demon Warder's ocular sensors!
Drake had held back for far too long. He didn't know the exact mechanics at play, but the tide had undeniably turned in his favor.
Im's spirit had been separated—and even if it was only half-severed, it was more than enough!
Thrusting both arms forward, Drake's hands blurred in rapid succession.
BOOM!
A terrifying, suffocating pressure erupted across the airspace.
"Im! You're finished!"
Executing the sequence in a fraction of a heartbeat, Drake channeled the spatial matrix to maximum capacity. Before the surging energy even dispersed, the surrounding coordinates locked into absolute stasis.
"Space Art: Thousandfold Tides—Execution!"
Surging like an uncontainable tidal wave, dense spatial energy rolled forth in relentless, roaring swells. Layer upon layer, wave crashing upon wave, it slammed into Im's emerging form, eliciting a volley of blood-curdling shrieks the moment it made contact.
The Thousandfold Tides—true to its name—was an onslaught composed of a thousand stacked waves of spatial force. Each successive wave hit harder than the last, and the cutting power carried within every particle of spatial energy was far from an ordinary slash.
It was pure laceration generated by micro-fractures in the fabric of space itself—a devastating force capable of tearing physical flesh and ethereal souls to shreds with equal ease.
This was Drake's definitive finishing strike to extinguish Im once and for all. He held absolute confidence that even if Im truly possessed an immortal body, surviving the total baptism of this technique was an impossibility.
The moment the vanguard of spatial force bit into Im, the spatial currents found their breach, unleashing an unbridled deluge of destructive power into the opening.
"Shatter!"
Drake roared, driving a concussive fist forward that blasted Im's true metaphysical form straight into the high heavens.
A colossal vortex constructed entirely of razor-sharp spatial rifts coiled tightly around Im, locking her within its violent vortex as boundless spatial energy poured continuously from Drake's frame.
"I don't know where those flames came from, but they just saved everything! Thank you, whoever you are!"
Drake brought his palms together with a resounding clap. Overhead, the swirling spatial tempest constricted sharply, its diameter shrinking at visible speed.
With every rotation of the spatial maelstrom, an immense, roaring whirlpool carved itself deep into the ocean below.
HUMMM—!
Just as the vortex compressed to the size of a small house, a ferocious blaze ignited spontaneously from within its core.
Spatial rifts and golden-crimson flames merged into a singular entity, feeding on one another in devastating harmony.
Probing the kinetic density contained within that golden fire, Drake was genuinely startled. Just what kind of flame was this? To burn unquenched within a spatial vortex tearing reality to shreds was nothing short of miraculous.
It was practically divine fire fallen from the heavens!
Meanwhile, in Loguetown!
Every soul across the port gazed up at the figure hovering in the sky as if looking upon a living god.
Moments earlier, as the suffocating wall of dark mist had rolled over their roofs, Sabo had vaulted into the air, unleashing a colossal stream of brilliant flame from his hands.
To the terrified citizens watching from below, the fire had initially seemed pathetically futile. Compared to the boundless ocean of black mist smothering the heavens, the disparity was like heaven and earth.
They simply weren't in the same realm of scale.
Yet in the very next breath, a miracle had unfolded that left their jaws on the cobblestones. The instant the fire collided with the dark vapor, it had ignited the mist like oil.
In a blinding flash, every trace of dark fog choking Loguetown had been reduced to cinder—and like a single spark touching a prairie, the inferno had cascaded outward across the horizon.
Chief of Staff Sabo wasn't merely a man—he was a god!
Such was the singular, reverent thought carved into the hearts of every witness in Loguetown.
"So it really worked..." Sabo murmured, his gaze resting on the swirling embers dancing across his palm, a flicker of wonder stirring in his chest.
Following the awakening of his Flame-Flame Fruit, he had gained command over this bizarre flame that seemed nearly impossible to extinguish.
Neither torrential rain, crashing waves, nor solid stone could smother it.
He had even tested its limits out on the open sea, only to find that it could burn directly atop the rolling ocean swells—a feat utterly unheard of in the history of Devil Fruits.
"With this, the crisis threatening the East Blue should be dismantled. The rest is in your hands, Drake!"
Sabo turned his eyes toward the distant center of the East Blue.
Though he couldn't make out the silhouettes through the distance, he knew with absolute certainty that Drake and Im were locked in battle right there.
[Hey! System! Didn't you swear there was zero chance of pulling this off? What do you call those flames, huh?!]
Drake locked a smug, glaring gaze onto the tiny form of the System curled up in his mindscape, which remained utterly silent.
[Take a look! Didn't I just rescue her?!]
[And the East Blue is completely untouched! Isn't this the exact perfect ending I was aiming for?!]
The System maintained its dead silence.
It hadn't anticipated divine fire descending from nowhere either. Such an absurd turn of events was akin to a meat pie dropping straight out of the sky—theoretically impossible.
If such an anomaly occurred, there was only one plausible explanation: someone had orchestrated it deliberately.
What looked like lucky coincidences and fallen blessings were almost always the deliberate work of someone watching your back from the shadows.
The System had always held deep faith in that truth.
However...
Given how harshly it had chewed Drake out earlier, speaking up now would only hand the brat an open invitation to mock it endlessly and drag it through agonizing verbal torment.
It wasn't about to leap into that trap of its own accord.
Besides, even the System couldn't fathom where this divine flame had originated. Fire capable of burning the soul itself was an absolute legend.
Even with its vast knowledge, it had never witnessed it in the flesh, only knowing of it through ancient lore:
The legendary, unquenchable Divine Flame.
Why such a flame had manifested here left it thoroughly perplexed.
Since it had no concrete answers to give Drake anyway, playing dumb and keeping its mouth shut was far more comfortable.
[Tch!] Drake clicked his tongue in disdain, turning away from the silent ball of fur and withdrawing his consciousness from the mindscape.
[Utterly useless System.]
The jab made the System's fur bristle with rage, though it forcibly swallowed its fury down.
[This insufferable brat... really knows how to shave years off a person's life!]
Out in the physical world, the Demon Warder slowly opened its colossal mechanical palm, revealing Kaya lying peacefully within.
"We finally got her out. This voyage really hasn't been a walk in the park," Drake let out a weary sigh of relief, gesturing subtly toward Kenshin.
Kenshin caught the signal instantly, stepping outside the hull to carefully retrieve Kaya and bring her into the medical bay.
With this, everything is finally over...
Drake looked at the spatial vortex, which had now shrunk to a compact cylinder barely large enough to fit three or four people, letting out a long breath. By all accounts, the nightmare was concluded.
He refused to believe Im could survive a concentrated shredding of that magnitude.
Yet reality was often rife with cruel twists. Just as the spatial vortex began to disperse, a minute black speck tumbled from the eye of the storm toward the ground below.
Drake's combat instincts flared instantly. Lunging forward in a blur of motion, the Canhong Sword materialized in his grip as he brought it down in a thunderous, cleaving arc.
BOOM!
The bedrock split cleanly in two.
Yet the minute black speck had already vanished from his crosshairs.
Drake's eyes widened in disbelief!
"She actually survived an assault like that?!"
"Is this woman an unkillable cockroach?!"
"Look out! She's escaping!" Bell's voice shrieked through the communication channel.
Down beneath the shattered stone, the black speck had burrowed deep into the subterranean crust, vanishing without a trace.