Chapter 441 - 92
"This... this can't be real."
Somewhere in the crowd, a resident of Nightless City sank to their knees, the strength simply gone from their legs. And honestly, looking up at what was coming, no one could blame them.
"Even if the Dragon King can catch one island, there's no way he can handle that many at once," a pirate Supernova muttered, cold sweat running freely down his forehead. "And those things are falling from high altitude. The force behind them is nothing like what we just saw. Not even close."
"They really intend to leave nothing standing," a Marine officer stationed at Sabaody said, his voice hollow. "What kind of grudge do you have to carry to do something like this? The waves alone, when all those islands hit the water... even Naval Headquarters would feel the impact."
"My, my," Enel said, his brow creasing slightly. "This really is a bit much."
"Kah-keh-keh-keh. I knew from the very beginning," Indigo said, his laughter carrying a cold edge beneath it. "Scarlet's ability was never going to match up to Master Shiki's. Not in Haki, not in the precision of his fruit application. Scarlet has only ever had one advantage over Master Shiki, and that's the raw toughness of his body and his bottomless stamina."
He tilted his gaze upward, watching the burning streaks cross the sky.
"So we planned around brute force from the start. We seeded thousands of meters of airspace with islands long before any of this began. Even you, Dragon King, cannot stop this many from falling at once."
Rosinante looked at him for a moment, then smiled, easy and unhurried.
"You've really gone and cornered yourself too, haven't you. You're inside the impact zone same as the rest of us. Willing to die alongside me just to settle a score for Shiki?"
"No need to concern yourself with that." Indigo's smile widened. "Have you noticed that the stone beneath my feet still hasn't fallen? That means Scarlet is still alive. And as long as he lives, those islands won't touch me."
"Jii-jii-jii!"
Nobody had quite noticed when Scarlet returned, but there he was, drifting back into view. He was an absolute mess. The blow he had taken was something beyond what his body had ever been asked to absorb, and wounds had opened across him from head to foot, blood flowing in slow, persistent streams. No matter how extraordinary his constitution, no matter how much of the force he had managed to shed through the Fuwa Fuwa no Mi, being struck directly by an entire island had still done serious damage.
But his eyes were bright with a deep, ugly satisfaction.
"Hey!" A pirate in the crowd shouted, patience gone. "If you want revenge on the Dragon King, fight the Dragon King! Why are you dragging the rest of us into this?"
"Exactly!" someone else called out, one of Sabaody's civilians, their voice cracking. "We have nothing to do with any of this! We have no quarrel with you!"
They had thought the hard days were over. Dragon King and the Oathblood Imperial Guard had come, and with them the promise of something like peace for Nightless City and the Sabaody Archipelago. And now here they were, watching destruction rain down from a clear sky without ever having provoked a single soul.
"Blame the Dragon King," Indigo said pleasantly. "He's the one who chose to be here. You're just collateral, honestly. Though I'll tell you something, since you're all so curious: the primary target of this attack isn't you, and it isn't even the Dragon King himself. It's the Oathblood Imperial Guard."
He let that land before continuing.
"The Dragon King can fly. And one of his Guard can move through space itself. If Rosinante wanted to run, or if he wanted to save a handful of people, it would be trivially easy. But right now his Guard is scattered across every corner of the Sabaody Archipelago. Getting all of them out in time is simply not possible. So if he doesn't want to watch his entire Guard die here, he has no choice but to stay and deal with every single one of those islands. Which means he stays right where we want him."
Indigo spread his hands, delighted with himself.
"That's why the Dragon King is trapped."
The years he had spent studying Rosinante had not been wasted. He had read between the lines of every account, pieced together the shape of the man underneath the title. And what he had found was this: Rosinante had once marched his entire crew to war against the Golden Lion Pirates, had killed Shiki himself, all for the sake of a single division commander. A single subordinate.
A man like that would never run and leave his people to die. Indigo had built this entire plan around that one certainty.
The Oathblood Imperial Guard reacted instantly, faces draining of color.
"How can this be..."
"Your Majesty, take the young princess and go! Don't worry about us!"
"We swear to protect His Majesty! We will not be the reason he falls!"
"Concentrate fire on the islands! Destroy them before they land!"
The Guard's voices overlapped and tangled together, every one of them moving, drawing on whatever power they had.
"Are you finished?" Rosinante said.
His voice was quiet. Calm in the way that very deep water is calm.
"You've done your research on me. I'll give you that." He raised one hand as he spoke, extending it slowly before him. Resting in his palm was a sphere of energy, perfectly round, dense and absolute. Its color was a black so complete it seemed to pull the light around it inward, as though brightness itself had decided to surrender to it. And at its center, suspended within all that darkness, sat a single block of silver-white.
"Dust Release," Rosinante said, his arm swinging forward. "Gravity Black Hole."
The sphere left his hand and shot upward into the sky.
...