I'll kill you, you damn girl!!" Linlin roared, her fury shaking the air.
After being injured, Charlotte Linlin's aura grew even more ferocious. She swung her saber and charged at Esdeath again, as if the near-severing of her arm moments ago had never happened.
Seeing this, Esdeath grinned and met her head-on. This time, she didn't bother to dodge — allowing Charlotte Linlin's blade to cleave her body "in half."
What followed was a replay of the previous scene — Esdeath stood there completely unharmed, her own sword flashing down and slicing into Charlotte Linlin's abdomen.
Although Charlotte Linlin had managed to coat her stomach in Armament Haki beforehand, the strike was too quick and still left a deep gash across her belly.
She swung back again almost immediately, but the result was the same. This time, Esdeath thrust her blade straight into the very wound she'd already opened in Linlin's abdomen.
That grotesque and frenzied exchange lasted barely three minutes before Charlotte Linlin was drenched in blood, her body marked by at least six or seven wounds that would have been fatal to any ordinary human.
But for a Yonko like Charlotte Linlin, such injuries were nothing more than scratches — in fact, the gash on her arm was already starting to close.
Esdeath, having once again taken a slash "too slow to dodge," turned her head toward her clone. At some point, the iron mask on the clone's face had vanished, revealing a flushed, almost ecstatic expression beneath.
"Go, Withering Rose!"
Esdeath's grin turned mad as she gave the command, then instantly leapt back — as though something terrifying was about to happen.
Charlotte Linlin, drenched in blood, didn't understand at first. But an instant later, her Observation Haki screamed warnings in her mind — so intense that it rivaled the feeling she'd had when facing Boros.
"Old hag! Run!"
Not far away, Kaido suddenly roared. Having remained a spectator, his senses weren't dulled by Esdeath's Conqueror's Haki, and he realized what was about to happen faster than Linlin did.
The moment the words left his mouth, a figure appeared in front of Charlotte Linlin — it was Boros, who should have still been inside the temple.
"Don't wreck my ship…"
The newly appeared Boros extended his hand toward Esdeath's clone. A moment later, a "black hole" opened up, swallowing the clone whole. When it reappeared, it was already on a remote island over a hundred kilometers away from the Dark Matter Pirates' fleet.
A shattering, glass-like sound followed — cracks began spreading all across Esdeath's body…
"Lord Boros!"
Katakuri was the first to recover from shock, dropping to one knee before Boros.
Even with his ability to glimpse the future, he hadn't seen that explosion coming — but the feeling of death that had just brushed against him was enough to make his heart tremble.
"Captain Boros!"
"Boss Boros!"
"Lord Boros!"
…
The officers who had been preparing to flee moments ago now crept back cautiously. None of them could have imagined that even after retreating so far, they had almost been caught up in the clash between two of the crew's strongest fighters.
"...From now on, you're not allowed to use that move on the ship."
Boros paid no attention to the pirate officers kneeling all around him. His single, massive eye turned instead toward Esdeath, whose face had gone deathly pale.
Although he didn't know how Esdeath had managed to unleash such an attack that clearly exceeded her limits, recalling the course of the battle made it easy enough to guess.
As the former ruler of the universe, Boros couldn't care less about a mere spaceship—but this one still had a purpose to serve, and he couldn't let Esdeath destroy it on a whim.
"I was just testing that move…" Esdeath said casually, even flashing Charlotte Linlin a mocking smile.
But Charlotte Linlin clearly wasn't in the mood to care about Esdeath's provocation. For the first time in her life, she had come that close to death.
If Boros hadn't intervened just now, given her condition at the time, taking that attack head-on—even at close range—would have left her gravely injured, if not outright dead.
Who could've imagined that an opponent who'd been suppressed the entire fight, relying only on strange tricks to annoy her, would be hiding such a deadly trump card?
After giving Esdeath a brief warning, Boros turned and headed back to the temple.
Kaido and Charlotte Linlin exchanged a few words, and soon the two Emperors of the Sea followed Boros away as well.
Just as Esdeath was about to leave, Fubuki appeared, dragging a very unwilling Tatsumaki along, with Lu, Xiao Yan, and Xiao Mei trailing behind.
"Holy crap!? Did a world war just happen here!?" Lu gawked at the devastated battlefield, his jaw practically on the floor. Could someone please explain what the hell had just gone down?
"Miss Esdeath, are you all right?" Fubuki asked, her voice full of concern for her guildmate as she looked at Esdeath's pale complexion.
"Ah, I'm perfectly fine," Esdeath replied offhandedly. Her relationship with Tatsumaki was strained, but she had no problem with Fubuki.
Besides, after receiving a powerful ability from Kizaru's bug-arrow, Esdeath was in a rather good mood.
"Lady Esdeath, many of the chambers in this section have been destroyed. Please allow me to prepare new quarters for you," Katakuri said respectfully. The battle had demolished at least a hundred compartments and over a dozen corridors of the Overlord.
Still, for a spacecraft spanning dozens of kilometers, that level of damage wasn't particularly serious.
"Fine," Esdeath replied. She wasn't picky about her accommodations—but there was no reason to stay in the ruins if proper rooms were available.
Boom!
At that moment, a thunderous explosion suddenly erupted in the distance.
Even though they were hundreds of kilometers away—sheltered within the command ship Dominion—everyone aboard could still feel the earth-shaking tremor from that catastrophic blast.
Esdeath's Stand was named "Withering Rose." Its ability was simple: it absorbed all damage inflicted upon its user.
However, this absorption had a limit. Once that threshold was exceeded, the Stand would self-destruct—releasing all the accumulated damage in a single devastating explosion.
Strictly speaking, Withering Rose's true ability was only damage absorption. The detonation afterward was technically a side effect.
But Esdeath treated that very drawback as her trump card—planning to use it to drag Charlotte Linlin down with her.
Fortunately, at the crucial moment, Boros intervened and banished Esdeath's Stand away. Otherwise, even the mighty Dominion would have been heavily damaged by that terrifying blast.
The island Boros used to banish the Stand had once been a temporary base for the Dark Matter Pirates.
Although it was uninhabited, the island was still large by New World standards—bigger than many small nations.
Yet the detonation of Esdeath's Stand annihilated it with ease. The resulting shockwave and tidal waves reached the Dark Matter Pirates' position mere minutes later.
Dozens of ships on the fleet's outer perimeter were capsized by the towering waves. Gale-force winds shredded hundreds of sails, and even the aftershock alone claimed the lives of thousands of pirates.
But Esdeath herself had no strength left to care about any of that. Pale and trembling, she staggered into the cabin—only for her body to collapse forward, completely spent.
Just then, a flash of golden light appeared. Esdeath fell directly into Kizaru's arms.
"If I'd known you were going to pull something this reckless, I never would've given you that Arrow…"
Kizaru sighed helplessly. He had only given her the Stand Arrow because he couldn't find a suitable Mythical Zoan Fruit at the time.
What he hadn't expected was that Esdeath would be bold—or insane—enough to push herself to such extremes just to draw out more power.
"But I did get the ability I wanted, didn't I?"
Esdeath shifted slightly in his embrace, tilting her head up with a faintly smug smile.
Stand users shared the same damage as their Stands, but Withering Rose was special—its explosion merely released the excess damage it had stored.
Though the strain on her body was tremendous, if managed carefully, it was still a valuable hidden trump card.
"You've got some nerve saying that. Can you even summon your Stand right now?"
Kizaru poked her cheek lightly. He was so used to her confident, commanding demeanor that seeing her weak like this was… oddly entertaining.
"No. After it self-destructs, Withering Rose needs at least three days to recover," Esdeath admitted with a trace of regret.
The Stand's power was formidable, but its restrictions were equally harsh.
If she could absorb infinite damage and then detonate it freely… even Kizaru wouldn't be a guaranteed victory.
"What are you scheming now?"
Sensing a flicker of malice in her thoughts, Kizaru pinched her cheek again with mild annoyance.
Even in this state, she still refused to behave. If she didn't look so much like a frail, beautiful patient at that moment, he probably would've been far less gentle.
"Next time—when I fight that old hag again—I won't need a Stand to finish her off!"
Esdeath's voice brimmed with confidence. After all, she was born into her Tribe, a clan of hunters who had trained since childhood to hunt down the most dangerous beasts in the world.
°°°
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