Chapter 158: Complete!!
The monstrous wave struck the surface and detonated upward again — secondary surges dozens of meters high, cascading outward in overlapping walls. Ships that had survived the initial impact were being twisted and broken by the churn. The soldiers aboard them had long since gone under.
From a distance, it looked like a small meteor had hit the ocean.
Whitebeard stood on air above it all and watched.
How many had died from that strike — he hadn't counted, and he wouldn't. At his level, after a life lived in blood and spray, human casualties were arithmetic.
Through the churning he could still pick out the largest hulls — great warships rolling end over end, some colliding with each other and detonating, fire and shrapnel flowering across the water.
He'd seen this before. He'd caused this before. Many times. The Tremor-Tremor Fruit's Seaquake, once it caught a fleet on open water, left very few ways out. Warlord-level ability, at minimum, to survive it — and that assumed you weren't a Devil Fruit user without flight, in which case even that might not save you.
"The guns and cannons in this world are stronger than back home in a lot of ways. But the people are too fragile, and so are their ships. Open ocean has a way of making that permanent." He hefted the bisento. "That said — some Stand users might have used their abilities to survive. A handful. Nothing that matters, but careful is better."
"Gurararara — since I'm being thorough, let's make it clean."
Another swing. The bisento blade wrapped in white light, the Tremor-Tremor Fruit roaring to full activation.
The cut went through the waves.
The ocean itself split — and then the shockwave carried into the already-broken hull fragments, and those fragments became shrapnel moving at anti-materiel velocity, some pieces the size of cars. What was left of the fleet dissolved.
The deep fish population within several kilometers had already been wiped out. An unfortunate side effect, but unavoidable.
Whitebeard took a photo through the Chat Group interface and posted it.
Edward Newgate: [Image] — done on this end. Total fleet loss. No survivors that I can confirm, though I can't rule out a handful who slipped away somehow.
Edward Newgate: If there are any, they won't be a threat. Gurararara!
Admiral Kizaru: Whitebeard's a little slow — I already finished the logistics bases.
Admiral Kizaru: [Image] [Image] — their rapid-fire firearms are interesting though~ I took a few back. I'll let the Navy's research division have a look.
Admiral Kizaru: Easier than expected, honestly.
RawrSoFierce: ...I have the hardest assignment here, of course it was easy for you.
Edward Newgate: Gurararara — the Admin's probably just playing around. He could end it any time he wants.
Terrible Tornado: Same, honestly. I've been throwing rocks at aircraft.
Terrible Tornado: Knocked down several dozen fighters so far.
RawrSoFierce: ...
Ryū gripped a tank's barrel — solid steel, cast and reinforced — and it crumpled around his fingers like paper. He lifted the tank one-handed and used it to bat another one sideways.
Bullets hitting him were being decomposed on contact by the Decompose-Decompose Fruit, broken down into particles before they reached his skin. He was effectively immune to conventional ranged fire in this state.
Which made this a very one-sided harvest.
Tanks thrown. Armored vehicles flipped. Each toss took out clusters of soldiers — dead or incapacitated, hard to tell from inside the motion. Spent casings were piling up in layers across the ground. Bodies had stopped being countable.
His honest assessment: it felt like nothing.
He also noted a gap in his toolkit — area-of-effect techniques were limited. Tempest Kick for crowd clearance, and not much else in that category.
He braced one hand against the ground, went fully inverted, and spread both legs into a split — horizontal, in the air, looking somewhat ridiculous.
"The form is ugly," he muttered, "but let's see if it works."
The hand on the ground twisted. Both legs swung like a blade, rotating through a full circle, generating a compressed vacuum arc.
The circle flew.
At bullet-muzzle velocity.
The arc swept out to a diameter of over a thousand meters in a single pulse. Everything it passed through — soldiers, tanks, armored vehicles — came apart. The cut surface was clean and smooth, almost decorative. Like slicing tofu.
From directly above, the effect would have looked like a blood-red ring, perfectly centered on Ryū, every living thing within it gone.
Nobody had a count. Including Ryū.
"What IS that thing?!"
"That's not human strength — nothing about that is human—"
"Where's the air support?! Hit him while his people aren't around him!"
"The missiles are gone. The fighters are gone — that girl overhead destroyed everything that got airborne!"
"How is someone flying that high?! Is she even human?!"
"Retreat!"
"Hold your position!!"
"You don't give orders to my soldiers — you're not even from my country!!"
Ryū looked back at the ground behind him. Then forward at whatever remained ahead.
He rolled out a shoulder that had started to ache slightly.
A lot of soldiers were breaking and running. He let them go. No reason to chase.
And the Quest ① notification had just appeared: complete.
It seemed the trigger condition was the enemy losing their will to advance — when the retreat impulse spread through enough of the force, the Quest registered it as fulfilled.
Easier than I thought. Good workout, at least.
[Group Quest ①: Complete! Click the link → [Link] to claim 10,000 Points.
Group Quests ② and ③ remain. Admin "RawrSoFierce," and members "Edward Newgate," "Terrible Tornado," "Admiral Kizaru," "Ying Zheng The Sovereign" — keep going!]
He screenshotted it and posted.
RawrSoFierce: [Image] — Quest ① done. Very satisfied.
RawrSoFierce: 10,000 Points collected~
Eternally Seventeen: Envy is separating my cytoplasm from my cell wall, AAAAAAA!!
Ying Zheng The Sovereign: ...We appear to have been purely decorative for this Quest.
Ying Zheng The Sovereign: We have become a Points collector who contributed nothing.
Kaguya-sama: It's fine — I've done it too. Did nothing and got 8,000 Points once. Still feel slightly guilty about it!
RawrSoFierce: Same. The Blackbeard Quest, for example.
Terrible Tornado: Using all 10,000 directly on psychokinesis enhancement — think there'll be a big jump?
RawrSoFierce: 10,000 Points probably won't produce a dramatic leap at your level. My rough guess is you'd need something like 100,000 to reach a genuinely new tier. Though I'm completely making that up.
RawrSoFierce: Two Quests left. Once we finish ②, ③ should follow naturally.
Quest ② required establishing a Qin administrative special zone inside the JoJo fan world — something like an embassy, but with the territorial footprint of a small city — and getting recognition from 80% of the world's nations.
Eighty percent.
That was going to be a headache.
Getting a global consensus of 80% required not just power but narrative control. The play was to announce the special zone publicly and make the announcement so visible and so widely known that any nation thinking of objecting found themselves politically isolated before they could organize a veto.
Information warfare. That was Wolffy's arena. He'd need to be compensated fairly — actual resources, not vague promises.
If the public-opinion approach wasn't enough, there was always the option of surgically removing whoever decided to be loudly obstructive.
Ryū hoped no one decided to be loudly obstructive.
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