Chapter 277
Silence had become the only rhythm left across the sea.
The wind and waves seemed insignificant beside the anticipation of tens of thousands of people whose gazes had converged on Zaraki and Dracule Mihawk.
The aftermath of Zaraki's death match with Charlotte Linlin had barely settled, leaving everyone with the same questions: would he really answer the world's greatest swordsman now, and more importantly, did he have enough strength left to do it?
Zaraki could feel every muscle in his body protesting.
The battle with Big Mom had squeezed his Reiatsu and stamina nearly dry, the deep wound in his left shoulder still ached beneath Law's treatment, and every hard movement sent a hot pulse through the half-healed tissue.
None of it diminished the excitement steadily swallowing everything else in his head.
Then a hand the size of a fan slammed down on his uninjured right shoulder.
The Oni Slayer rocked beneath the impact.
"BWAHAHAHA! Not bad, brat!"
The combination of sea salt, rice-cracker crumbs, and that shameless laugh told Zaraki who it was before he even turned.
Garp stood beside him with a huge grin. "Looks like this old face of mine still carries some weight! I show up and that bastard Kaido runs off with his tail between his legs!"
He scratched his chin and looked toward the ships surrounding Kalles. "But seriously, what kind of spell did you cast on Whitebeard and Red-Hair? Two Emperors come all the way out here, Jinbe and Hancock jump in, and Hawkeye threatens Kaido just to keep the duel alive?"
The joking look faded slightly as Garp's eyes returned to the bandages beneath Zaraki's coat.
"You fought that crazy old woman Linlin head-on. Your body still holding together?"
He glanced toward the rocky shore where Mihawk stood beside his coffin-shaped boat. "That guy looks cold enough to freeze seawater, but when it comes to duels he's every bit as obsessed as you are. He can wait. If you're not up for it, I'll tell him you two can settle this another day."
A helpless warmth stirred somewhere inside Zaraki.
'This old man...'
He looked past Garp toward Mihawk.
The world's greatest swordsman stood motionless with Yoru beside him, almost like an ancient statue carved into the shoreline.
As though sensing the gaze, Mihawk lifted his eyes.
"I can wait."
His cold voice crossed the open water with ease.
A fierce edge appeared in those hawk-like eyes as his grip shifted on Yoru.
"Until you recover enough to make this worth my time."
Crack!
Somewhere during the conversation Garp had shoved a bottle into Zaraki's hand, and Zaraki had just crushed it.
Glass fragments and liquor spilled between his fingers and splashed across the deck.
He did not care.
This was exactly what he wanted—not later, not after he had rested until every ache disappeared, but now, while his body still remembered where its limits had been pushed and torn.
A battle fought on that edge, with nothing comfortable left to hide behind, was the good part.
Zaraki stepped forward.
BOOM—!!
The Oni Slayer's reinforced deck cracked beneath his foot as he launched himself toward Kalles.
Mihawk moved almost at the same time, kicking off from the rocky shore to meet him above the shallows.
Their blades collided once in midair.
CLAAAAANG—!!
The shriek of metal grinding against metal cut across the sea.
A heartbeat later, compressed air burst outward from the impact, flattening the water beneath them into a broad depression before it rebounded in white spray.
The nearest spectator vessels pitched under the resulting wave, and crews who had been trying to edge closer immediately began ordering their ships back.
Neither swordsman remained suspended over the sea.
Zaraki and Mihawk broke apart from the opening clash and landed on the abandoned Kalles assessment ground, where the old fortress, barren ridges, and cleared training field offered a battlefield large enough to keep the spectators from sitting directly beneath their swords.
Then they moved again.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG—!!
Nozarashi's sealed form met Yoru from one angle after another as the two men tore across the rocky field.
Their blades collided dozens of times within seconds, the impacts merging into something like a storm of steel.
Stray cutting force flashed away from them—some carrying dark-gold traces from Zaraki's Reiatsu, others simply the cold pressure of Mihawk's swings—and carved trenches through stone or skipped out over the empty side of the island.
One pirate ship had ventured too close in search of a better view.
A residual slash brushed the top of its hull and opened a long cut through the timber with almost no resistance. The pirates aboard lost their nerve immediately and fled farther from the island.
At this level, standing too close to the duel was its own form of suicide.
"HAHAHA! THAT'S MORE LIKE IT!"
Zaraki's laughter burst uncontrollably from his chest as his sword crashed against Yoru again.
"HAWKEYE! YOU REALLY ARE WORTH USING BOTH HANDS FOR!"
His left hand closed around the hilt.
Pain tore through the shoulder Linlin had wounded and tightened every muscle down that side of his body.
Zaraki's grin only widened.
Mihawk noticed the strain instantly.
"Still injured."
"You offered to wait," Zaraki replied. "I said no."
He broke away by half a step and lowered the rough katana beside him.
"Drink, Nozarashi."
The sealed blade changed.
The rough katana broadened and lengthened into the enormous chipped cleaver, its guard disappearing as dark-gold arcs began crawling along the uneven edge.
Released Nozarashi immediately started pulling at Zaraki's Reiatsu, greedily testing how much he would allow through the channel stabilization had given him.
The spectators reacted almost as strongly as they had to the opening clash.
Many had seen images or reports of this weapon from Zaraki's fights with Weevil, Kaido, and Charlotte Linlin.
They did not know what sort of sword it truly was, but they understood what it meant when the War Demon brought it out.
Zaraki attacked.
The difference was immediate.
Nozarashi's weight and Zaraki's increased output forced Mihawk to give ground for the first time, and the world's greatest swordsman was finally feeling the full pressure of the chipped cleaver Zaraki had spent months learning to control.
A broad flying slash tore across the designated field. Mihawk cut through it with Yoru, only for a second to arrive from below and a third from the opposite angle.
The attacks were enormous, but they were not random; Zaraki used them to herd Mihawk farther from the shoreline instead of scattering power toward the watching ships.
Mihawk's expression darkened with interest.
"Better."
Zaraki came in behind the next slash and brought Nozarashi down with both hands.
BOOOOM—!!
Yoru caught the cleaver. Mihawk's boots dug two trenches through the ground before he shifted the angle of the black blade and bled some of Zaraki's weight to one side.
Then he countered.
The strike did not land on Nozarashi's body. Mihawk's edge found the dense layer of Reiatsu Zaraki had compressed around the chipped cutting edge—the same kind of concentration Mihawk had forced him to learn on Kuraigana.
A tiny vibration traveled through the hilt.
Crack.
Zaraki's golden eyes narrowed.
The blade itself had not broken.
The pressure wrapped around its edge had.
Crack...
CRASH!
The compressed layer of dark-gold Reiatsu around Nozarashi's edge collapsed all at once.
Countless fragments of light scattered through the air like sparks caught in a violent wind, spinning away from the chipped blade as the concentration holding them together failed.
For one suspended instant, the entire battlefield seemed to fall silent.
From a distance it looked as though Zaraki's sword had shattered.
Tens of thousands of eyes locked onto his hand, and the same thought spread through the spectator ships with frightening speed: if a swordsman's blade had broken against Mihawk, was there really any suspense left in the duel?
Zaraki felt none of the despair they expected.
Quite the opposite.
'Interesting.'
He had felt exactly what Mihawk did through the hilt.
Yoru had not cut through Nozarashi itself; Mihawk had found the point where Zaraki's compressed Reiatsu lost stability and broken the concentration around the edge with surgical precision.
Across the water, Benn Beckman noticed the same thing.
A cigarette hung from his lips as his deep gaze followed the fading fragments rather than the chipped weapon still visible through the dust.
"The sword didn't break," he said. "Hawkeye broke whatever the kid had wrapped around it."
The scattered dark-gold fragments stopped fading.
Zaraki pulled them back.
Instead of pouring the same amount of Reiatsu into another oversized sheath, he compressed the returning pressure into a thinner, denser layer along Nozarashi's chipped edge.
The glow became less spectacular, almost modest compared with the wasteful burst Mihawk had just destroyed, but Zaraki could feel how much more stable it was.
Mihawk's eyes sharpened.
Zaraki grinned.
"TRY THIS ONE, HAWKEYE!"
He swung with his entire body.
A massive dark-gold flying slash tore across the old assessment ground.
The air screamed around its edge, and the shadow of the attack swept over the broken stone ahead of Mihawk, but all of that force remained concentrated in a single line instead of spreading into some enormous construct over the island.
For the first time since the duel began, Mihawk's expression reflected genuine seriousness.
He watched the slash for a fraction of a second, measured its angle, and chose a direct counter because meeting it would leave him in the best position to attack afterward.
Both hands closed around Yoru as Armament Haki reinforced his grip and forearms.
BOOOOM—!!
The slash crashed into Yoru and drove Mihawk backward.
His boots carved deep trenches through the rocky field while shattered stone and dust blew outward from either side of him.
He gave ground rather than trying to absorb the force completely, turned his wrists at the right moment, and split the attack apart before it could bury him beneath the ruined ridge.
The instant the line opened, Mihawk moved through it.
A black figure shot from the dust and crossed the broken ground toward Zaraki with frightening speed.
Zaraki had already started forward.
CLANG!
Nozarashi and Yoru collided again.
Sparks and dark-gold arcs burst between them as the duel collapsed from long range into a violent close-quarters exchange.
Zaraki attacked from the right.
Mihawk caught the cleaver near Yoru's strong point and slid the black blade along its edge, redirecting the cut past his shoulder before answering with a thrust.
Zaraki twisted, let Yoru pass beside his ribs, and brought Nozarashi back around with enough force to make the air crack.
Mihawk stepped inside the larger weapon's path.
His left hand flicked toward the small cross-shaped dagger at his neck.
He drew it once.
The little knife was not suddenly a second weapon equal to Yoru.
Mihawk used it exactly as its size allowed: a close-range feint while the two larger blades were bound together.
The cross-shaped edge flashed through a gap near Zaraki's ribs, forcing him to twist farther than he wanted.
Three thin lines of blood opened across his side.
Zaraki laughed as the exchange continued.
Yoru remained Mihawk's center.
Every time Zaraki tried to crowd the black blade and deny it room, the small dagger threatened a wrist, a rib, or the inside of an elbow before disappearing behind Yoru again.
Mihawk never let the little knife become a gimmick; it was simply another way to punish Zaraki for entering carelessly.
Clang-clang-clang-clang—!!
More than a hundred exchanges accumulated in what felt like seconds.
Nozarashi hammered at Yoru with savage weight while Mihawk answered through timing, angle, and control, refusing to let Zaraki turn the duel into nothing more than a contest of raw strength.
Then Mihawk found a better opening.
Yoru bound Nozarashi high. T
he small cross-shaped dagger slipped underneath from an awkward angle and darted toward Zaraki's heart.
Fast.
Precise.
Merciless.
Zaraki's conscious mind did not have time to finish identifying the line.
His body moved anyway.
His left foot struck the broken ground at an angle, hips turning before his thoughts caught up, and the dagger passed along his ribs rather than entering his chest.
More blood sprayed from a shallow cut, but the killing line was gone.
Zaraki felt the difference immediately.
The technical memories from Miyamoto Musashi's Swordsmanship Legacy had been settling into him since the Polar Tang, but until now much of that knowledge had existed as something he understood rather than something he naturally did.
Mihawk's pressure was stripping that distinction away.
Distance.
Timing.
Rhythm.
Feints.
Commitment.
The lessons Mihawk had taught him on Kuraigana and the accumulated sword experience from Musashi's legacy were being hammered into Zaraki's own instincts one exchange at a time.
His body was beginning to answer openings before conscious thought could slow the response.
Mihawk cut high.
Zaraki shifted beneath it and brought Nozarashi upward from the opposite side.
Mihawk stepped outside the line and countered.
Zaraki turned with the pressure instead of resisting it, recovered one half-step sooner than before, and attacked again.
There was no grand revelation visible to the spectators. Zaraki had not become suddenly stronger or faster in any measurable physical sense.
He simply wasted less movement, arrived at better positions, and stopped giving Mihawk the same openings twice.
Pain throbbed through his shoulder and ribs.
Nozarashi continued drinking from his Reiatsu, and the cost of the duel was beginning to stack on top of everything Linlin had already done to him.
None of it cooled his blood.
The world around him seemed to become simpler as his attention narrowed to Mihawk's breathing, Yoru's angle, the pressure under his own feet, and the openings appearing and vanishing between one heartbeat and the next.
The thought left in his mind was brutally simple.
'Cut him.'