Let's turn the clock back about three minutes.
On Mont Blanc Island, the battle was at its peak.
"'Black Body Style: Whale Fall!'"
Zephyr leaped high into the air, his Smash arm coated in powerful Armament Haki as he came crashing down.
'BOOM!!'
The ground exploded into a massive crater, the overwhelming shockwave tearing through everything nearby and sending debris flying in every direction.
Zephyr showed no restraint. There was no town left to protect, only his enemy remained.
"Mother... it hurts... My body's... falling apart..."
Below him, Weevil had taken another direct hit. His injuries had become even more horrific, with not a single part of his body left intact. All four limbs had long since been shattered, and Zephyr could even see that the previous punch had blown away nearly a fifth of Weevil's head.
Under normal circumstances, no one could possibly survive in that condition. And yet,
'Crack.'
"Mother... ah..."
Dragging his grotesquely broken body across the ground, Weevil still struggled to move. The countless stitches covering his frame barely managed to hold him together.
"Hah..."
Even Zephyr was beginning to feel exhausted. Staring at Weevil, he muttered, "...Just a little more."
He was certain of it. No matter how abnormal Weevil's vitality was, once his body was completely destroyed, there was no way he could still live. With a strained breath, Zephyr raised his Smash arm once more and lowered his stance.
Then,
"Mother... Mother..."
"Enough already, Weevil."
A second voice suddenly interrupted Weevil's cries. It was coming... from inside his head.
Zephyr's pupils contracted. His gaze fell on Weevil's shattered skull, and only then did he notice it: embedded in the inside of Weevil's skull was a miniature Den Den Mushi.
The wrinkled little snail, its face resembling that of an old woman, began to speak.
"Tch, looks like this one failed too. The World Government's reinforcements were way too slow. Hey, Judge, your information wasn't very accurate, was it? If your country's losing a future Warlord ally, don't go blaming me."
"No helping it... We'll have to abandon Weevil. What a shame. It took me forever to find suitable materials for him."
She sounded as though she was speaking to someone else, casually chatting about matters that made little sense. Then she addressed Weevil directly.
"Hey, Weevil... undo your stitches."
Zephyr heard every word through the Den Den Mushi.
"B-But... Mother... it'll hurt. If I undo them... it'll hurt even more..."
Only then did Zephyr understand. Weevil's childish cries hadn't been meaningless at all. From the very beginning, he'd really been talking to his "Mother", the conversation had simply been taking place inside his own head.
"What the hell... is this thing?" Zephyr gritted his teeth, but no one was there to answer him.
"It's fine, Weevil. You're already used to pain, aren't you? Undoing the stitches will make Mother happy."
The voice from the Den Den Mushi remained as cold as ever. She called herself his "Mother," but there wasn't the slightest trace of affection in her tone, only cruelty and indifference.
"Undo them, Weevil! That's Mother's order. Besides, once they're gone... you won't be hurting for much longer."
Weevil shrank back fearfully, then nodded. "Y-Yes... Mother..."
Trembling all over, he forced himself to stand. Gripping his enormous naginata, he raised it... and slashed at his own body.
'Slash!'
One of the special stitches across his shoulder was cut apart, sending blood spraying into the air. At the same time, Weevil let out the most agonizing scream he had ever uttered.
"It hurts! It hurts! Aaaagh!!"
The overwhelming pain turned his cries into the roar of a wounded beast.
But that was only the beginning.
'Slash!' 'Slash!' 'Slash!'
Again and again, Weevil hacked through the strange stitches binding his body together. Each stitch that snapped was followed by the sickening sound of flesh tearing apart.
Right before Zephyr's eyes, before every Marine on Mont Blanc Island, and before the evacuated civilians watching from afar, Edward Weevil's body began to undergo a horrifying transformation.
His shoulders... chest... waist... arms...
Every stitch that split open caused the corresponding part of his body to come apart with it, revealing something no one could have imagined. Like a stuffed doll with its seams ripped open, the true contents hidden inside his body were finally being exposed.
"What... what is that?!" someone couldn't help but cry out in horror.
Because what they saw inside Weevil's body... wasn't normal bones or muscles.
Instead, there were countless overlapping skeletons and chunks of flesh of completely different colors, textures, and sizes. Some muscles were thick and bulging with brute strength, while others were lean and tightly packed, built for explosive power. Even his skin consisted of more than ten overlapping layers, all stitched together.
As a veteran who had spent decades fighting on the seas, Zephyr recognized it immediately.
"...Corpses."
Yes. Edward Weevil's body wasn't truly alive.
Or rather... when a living creature dies, its body remains biologically "alive" for a short time, even after the soul is gone. The flesh is still fresh; only the life within has disappeared.
That was Weevil's true nature. He was a monster created by stitching together the freshly dead bodies of multiple powerful people, corpses whose vitality had not yet completely faded, and somehow forcing them back into motion.
Looking at him now, it was hard to even call him a living creature.
"ROOOAAARRR!!"
Weevil's agonized howl echoed across the entire island like the roar of a wounded beast. No one could hear the faint voice still coming from the Den Den Mushi inside his skull.
"Finding corpses strong enough to adapt to Newgate's bloodline wasn't easy. And stitching together twelve bodies with Life Stitch... even for me, that took quite a bit of effort. What a waste. But... this is fine."
Her voice remained utterly emotionless.
"Weevil... take all that pain... and make one final rampage."
'Click.'
The call ended.
"ROOOOAR!!"
As if the last thread holding his sanity together had snapped, Weevil let out a feral scream.
'Bang!'
His body was collapsing at an alarming rate, chunks of flesh and twisted bones falling away from him with every passing second. Yet at the same time, an even more terrifying aura erupted from his body like a tidal wave.
"RAAAAH!!"
Weevil swung his naginata, no technique, no martial skill, just a simple, savage sweep.
But,
'SHRIIING!'
The air split apart with a piercing shriek. A blood-red flying slash shot forward, visible to the naked eye. Where it passed, violent winds exploded outward, the earth split open, and rocks and rubble were pulverized into dust.
Zephyr's expression hardened as he understood what had happened. Once the stitches restraining Weevil's body had been cut, the remaining vitality and power from all those different warriors inside him had been unleashed, burning themselves out in one final explosion.
"It hurts... Mother... kill..."
The last fragments of Weevil's consciousness locked onto Zephyr. Pain had become the entirety of his world, and his childlike mind naturally blamed the purple-haired old man standing before him, the one who had caused him nothing but agony.
"So... this is your last attack."
Zephyr tightened his stance once more, coating his Smash arm with Armament Haki as he prepared to meet the charge.
Then,
"'Haa... haa...'"
His face suddenly changed. Violent, uncontrollable gasps burst from his lungs, and the Haki covering his Smash arm flickered unstably. One hand clutched tightly at his chest while the other braced against his knee as his face turned deathly pale.
"Sensei Zephyr?!"
Watching from the command platform in the distance, Ain and Binz cried out at the same time. The scene was far too familiar, it was as though the nightmare from four years ago was happening all over again.
Zephyr's asthma... had struck at the worst possible moment.
"The fight lasted too long..." Binz clenched his teeth. "Sensei brought more than enough asthma medicine with him, but that bastard was far tougher than we expected... and now, of all times..."
Zephyr had always known about his condition. That's why he'd made sure to carry plenty of medicine before this battle. But medicine could only suppress the symptoms; it couldn't cure the problem. As he'd grown older, prolonged high-intensity combat placed an enormous burden on his body. The medication could delay an attack, but it couldn't prevent one forever.
Meanwhile, Hans and Fal, who had already begun evacuating the civilians as Roy had instructed, immediately pulled out an emergency Den Den Mushi.
"Boss!" Hans roared into it. "Something's happened! Admiral Zephyr's asthma just flared up!"
And at that exact moment... Weevil's crumbling body burst forward, flesh and blood flying in every direction as he charged straight at Zephyr.
Right then,
'BOOM!!'
Black-and-red Conqueror's Haki lightning exploded across the sky above Mont Blanc Island. A golden streak tore through the heavens like a meteor ripping open the night, moving so fast it surpassed the limits of human sight.
The terrifying pressure alone made the evacuated civilians on the island struggle to breathe. Roy had deliberately restrained his Conqueror's Haki, yet its overwhelming presence still left many on the verge of passing out.
The members of the Pirate Guerrilla Force and the Marines of the Detention Unit immediately recognized it.
"Boss!"
"It's Lord Black Kirin!"
"Vice Admiral Roy!"
Roy had arrived. Wrapped in overwhelming Haki, he descended toward the battlefield at incredible speed.
"You bastard... don't you dare lay a finger on the old man!"
With his Five Senses Enhancement already active, Roy instantly locked onto Weevil below. He came to an abrupt stop in midair, the sudden loss of momentum unleashing a violent gust. His right fist, wrapped in black-and-red lightning, clenched tightly.
'Bzzz!'
The punch was ready.
But, his fist froze in midair.
"Roy... kid. That's you, isn't it?"
Thanks to his enhanced senses, Roy heard the voice from below with perfect clarity.
"Don't interfere."
It came from the hunched, purple-haired old man beneath him.
"I told you already... I'm not so pathetic that I need one of my students to finish off a pirate for me."
Zephyr slowly straightened up. He looked like an old lion at the end of his life... yet his fighting spirit burned brighter than ever.
"I have to kill this one myself."
His sunglasses had fallen away, revealing his eyes, where something blazed within them.
"You keep saying you're in pain?"
Zephyr fixed his gaze on the monster charging toward him with its naginata raised high. He was still gasping for breath, cold sweat drenching his body, his asthma worsening by the second. But the hand clutching his chest slowly, firmly dropped to his side.
'Clack.'
His Smash arm tightened in his grip.
For a brief moment... it felt as though he had returned to the past.
He saw the place he had once called home, engulfed in flames. He saw the bodies of his wife and son, murdered by pirates, they had died because of him.
Then another memory surfaced: the Marine training ship. The bodies of his students lay scattered across the deck where they should have been full of life, blood spreading beneath them. They had died because of him, too.
"...How laughable."
His hoarse roar thundered across the battlefield.
At the same instant, Weevil's naginata came crashing down. The blade of destruction swept up Zephyr's short purple hair, whipping his tattered Marine coat wildly in the wind.
Yet Zephyr remained perfectly calm. He could clearly feel every ache in his body, the pain, the tightness in his heart, the struggle to breathe. In the past, any one of those would have brought him to his knees.
But after the Three Forces Military Exercise... after casting aside the burden called responsibility... after finally choosing to follow his own convictions... he realized something.
Compared to the pain he had carried all these years... the suffering of his body meant nothing.
"Haa..."
He drew a deep breath, as though pulling all his pain into a blazing furnace. Each agonizing inhale made his body tremble, yet with every breath... his back grew straighter.
Yes. Saint Pierre used ancient technology to turn pain into power. Weevil turned pain into one final frenzy before his destruction.
But for Zephyr... pain was fuel. It burned within his heart like an unquenchable fire, tempering his soul and his will every moment of every day.
Now... his will was harder than steel, allowing him to stand above the limits of his broken body. Even the World Government's betrayal had failed to break him.
'BZZZT!'
The Armament Haki covering his Smash arm became denser and darker than ever before.
"Do you have any idea what kind of resolve brought me to this battlefield?!" Zephyr raised his fist. "If I fall again... how could I ever face my students?"
"Pirate!!"
His fist shot forward, meeting Weevil's descending naginata head-on.
'(End of Chapter)'
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