Kael let out a long breath. The lazy, devil-may-care look slipped back onto his face as he muttered under his breath,
"Tch, big area AOE really drains the MP…"
That light, casual complaint carried cleanly to Sakazuki's ears and stabbed into him like a blade.
Humiliation and fury instantly drowned out the shock of having survived.
He was Sakazuki. The man who would one day enforce "Absolute Justice" across the seas. How could he allow himself to feel fear at a moment like this?
"You bastard!"
Sakazuki roared like an erupting volcano as he lurched up from the ice. His right arm swelled in an instant, turning into a colossal fist of magma wreathed in thick smoke and blazing fire.
"Great Eruption!"
Without a hint of hesitation, that fist, packed with all of his rage and heat enough to boil the sea dry, blasted straight toward Kael.
Hmm. So this is what the Magma-Magma Fruit user looks like when he goes full overheat?
Facing the rampaging strike, Kael did not even bother to move the naginata resting on his shoulder.
He simply tapped his toes lightly on the ice, and his figure blurred.
Boom.
The titanic magma fist tore through where his afterimage had been and crashed down onto the sea.
In an instant, every floating sheet of ice within several hundred meters vaporized. The frigid seawater boiled violently, rearing up in a wall of scalding steam that blotted out the sky.
The shockwave and the boiling surge rolled outward, nearly flipping the ice floe Kuzan lay on.
Kuzan, somewhere in the haze, probably, "Sakazuki, you @#￥%…"
Kael reappeared on another floe dozens of meters away. Standing steady, he watched the roiling steam rise and spoke in a tone that carried effortlessly through the roar of boiling water.
"Hey now, that is some enthusiasm. But if you put in a bit more effort, Kuzan is going to fall in and become fish food."
Sakazuki's silhouette stepped out of the steam. In his eyes, a rage burned hotter than the magma covering his body.
"Shut up. The justice of the Marines is not something a heinous pirate like you is allowed to defile."
"Justice?"
Kael repeated the word, and the smile at the corner of his lips turned faintly mocking.
He took Nidhogg down from his shoulder and tapped the butt of the naginata lightly against the ice. The dull thuds echoed between them.
"When the Buster Call started, those ships trying to flee Ohara, packed with civilians and tourists, you were the one who gave the order to sink them, right?"
Sakazuki's pupils shrank sharply.
"That ship was full of unarmed scholars and citizens. You erased them along with the island. That counts as 'justice' too, in your book?"
That particular order had been given over the internal Marine communication line. How did he know?
After a brief flash of shock, Sakazuki's face hardened even more.
"So what if I did?" His voice was hoarse and low, each word squeezed out through gritted teeth. "A pirate has no right to lecture the justice of the Marines."
He stepped forward. The ice beneath his foot cracked and melted at once.
"To make sure evil has no chance at all to escape, we have to root it out completely. Even if a single scholar slips away, the poisonous thoughts of Ohara could reignite somewhere in the world. Then there will be a second, a third Buster Call, and the sacrifices will only grow."
Sakazuki's voice rose, the flames of his "Absolute Justice" blazing higher.
"Sacrificing the people of Ohara is to save more innocent lives in the future. That is my justice. That is the necessary price."
Kael listened quietly and did not argue further.
There are some people you cannot reach with words. Only a fist can make them calm down for a while.
"You done?"
Kael lifted Nidhogg off the ice and slung it casually back over his shoulder.
"If you are, then it is my turn."
"Bastard!"
Sakazuki's reply was an even more violent roar.
His right arm once again transformed, this time into a vicious, slavering magma hound. The molten jaws gaped wide, the magma within darker and denser than before. Even the air around it warped from the heat.
"Dogtooth Red Lotus!"
The magma hound tore free of his arm and surged toward Kael's face, bringing with it the fury to burn sea and sky alike.
Kael's body left behind an almost imperceptible afterimage.
Boom.
The enormous magma hound just grazed that phantom and slammed into the sea behind him.
The shockwave and boiling surge hammered outward. Kuzan's ice floe was flung high like a toy, then crashed back down. The unconscious Vice Admiral rolled twice across the slick surface, nearly tumbling into the churning, boiling water.
Sakazuki went all in. Both arms turned into a storm of magma fists, hammering down like a continuous bombardment, smothering every spot Kael could possibly stand.
Kael slipped through the gaps between punches like a strolling tourist, each step just enough, never rushed.
"Fighting on when you already know you cannot win, that is the kind of stupidity people like to call hot blood."
His tone was flat as he spoke between dodges.
"Even if you got lucky and won, it would only mean fate decided to throw you a bone."
Stupid.
A favor from fate.
The battles he, Sakazuki, had fought, the sins and curses he was willing to bear in order to uphold justice, the life he gambled time and again, and in this man's mouth, they became "stupidity"?
"Aaaaah!"
The last threads of Sakazuki's rationality were burned away by rage.
He squeezed out every scrap of power left in his body and poured it into his right arm.
The magma there was compressed to the extreme. Its color shifted from bright crimson to deep, blackish red, radiating a pressure that felt as if it could punch straight through the world.
"Dark Hound!"
This was the strongest strike he could muster, the attack that carried all of his will and fury.
Kael simply stood where he was, watching the wave of destruction charge straight at him.
He yawned.
"Man, this is boring."
Just before Dark Hound struck him, Kael's body suddenly broke apart into a shower of glittering golden motes. The lights flickered once, then vanished.
Boom.
With no target, Dark Hound punched straight through the towering ice mountain behind him, melting a smooth, circular tunnel through it. The blow tore on into the distant sea, raising yet another colossal wave.
Sakazuki remained frozen in his punching posture.
He was panting hard. The magma making up his body flickered, bright then dim, the unmistakable sign of complete exhaustion.
"Not playing with you anymore."
Kael's voice drifted down from high above.
Sakazuki jerked his head up, just in time to see a streak of light tearing across the sky, shooting back toward Ohara.
Gone.
He just… left?
The moment Kael departed, the crushing pressure that had blanketed the entire battlefield dissipated as if it had never been.
The world seemed to return to normal in an instant.
The roar of battle faded into a suffocating silence.
Only the quiet crackle of cooling magma and the soft swish of seawater lapping against broken ice remained.
Pain and exhaustion rushed in like a tide. Sakazuki staggered and dropped to one knee on the ice.
He stared a long moment in the direction Kael had vanished, then turned his head and looked at the ice floe where Kuzan lay drifting not far away.
Sakazuki said nothing.
Slowly, he clenched his fists. The knuckles clicked faintly.
Humiliation, anger, helplessness, all kinds of emotion churned in his chest.
Beneath that storm, though, something else surfaced, so faint he did not even notice it himself.
Relief.
He was still alive.
Kuzan was still alive.
The shoulders that had been drawn tight with righteous fury relaxed, just a little, in that moment.
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