Chapter 437 - 276

Chapter 277: The Payback War (6)Hearing that voice echoing across the battlefield, Marco froze mid-air. A flash of bewilderment crossed his pupils, but it was immediately replaced by the light of hope!"The chance... has finally come!!"He muttered to himself, his voice carrying an irrepressible excitement.He no longer hesitated!The massive blue-gold Phoenix in the sky, with a wingspan of hundreds of meters, transformed into a highly condensed blue stream of light and began to zip across the ruins of the island at extreme speed!He first swept past the spot where Jozu's arm had been severed, a swirl of blue flames gently lifting the Diamond Giant, who was slipping into unconsciousness from blood loss.Without stopping, he streaked through the area where Vista and Shiliew were locked in combat. A precise blast of fire forced Shiliew back, and his talons hooked Vista, who was already exhausted and holding on by sheer willpower.Next, flashing through the ruins, he rescued the Captains scattered everywhere from the siege of the Blackbeard Pirates' thugs!The entire process was as fast as lightning, smooth and fluid!The officers of the Blackbeard Pirates were stunned for a full second by this sudden, purposeful rescue operation!By the time they reacted and saw their prey being rescued one by one, their faces flushed red with rage and shame, and they let out frustrated roars:"Damn you, Marco—!!""Stop him!! Don't let them escape!!""...""Don't even think about it—!!"Boom!A burly figure leaped high from the rubble; it was the "Champion" Burgess, who had been sent flying by Jozu and had struggled back to his feet!His eyes were bloodshot as he condensed all his strength and Armament Haki into his right fist. With a violent momentum capable of crushing mountains, he swung upward, smashing toward Marco!"Stay... the hell here!!"Marco, in mid-air, didn't even look down. He simply swiped a massive claw burning with blue-gold flames toward the ground.Bang—!!!!The Phoenix claw, coated in top-tier Armament Haki and Awakened Blue Flames, struck first despite moving second, nonchalantly swatting Burgess's imposing fist!"Argh—!!!"The ferocity on Burgess's face instantly turned into extreme pain and horror!An irresistible force surged through him, and he was sent crashing back into the ruins below like a broken kite. Marco, holding all his rescued comrades firmly within the blue flames, turned into a streak of light that pierced through the battlefield, racing toward the sea at high speed!Faced with this scene, Blackbeard Teach, at the center of the battlefield, was so angry that the veins on his forehead throbbed, and fire practically spat from his eyes!The prize he had already secured had flown away right under his nose!And yet, he could only watch helplessly, with no effective way to stop them!If it were just a Marine Admiral, he was confident that with his awakened Dark-Dark Fruit, he could at least stall them even if he couldn't win, and certainly wouldn't let Marco escape so easily.But of all people... it had to be Monkey D. Garp!!This old man was the peak of physical techniques and Haki, with no weaknesses!His fists didn't rely on any fruit ability; his pure strength, speed, and Haki were exactly the types that the Dark-Dark Fruit's "Ability User Nemesis" trait struggled against most!It could be said that within the entire Marinesystem, the ones Blackbeard Teach least wanted to face head-on were Garp and Akainu!The former was "strong without weaknesses," while the latter was "insane without restraint"!"Bastard...!!"Blackbeard squeezed out a low growl of extreme frustration, his eyes flickering rapidly between rage and calculation.Just half a second later, he made the decision most fitting for a man of his ambition."There's no other way!!"He suddenly looked up and roared hoarsely and urgently at his subordinates, who were in chaos, suppressed by cannon fire, or trying to chase Marco:"Men—!!""Forget those remnants!!""Prepare to—get out of here—!!!"Despite his heart being full of resentment and rage, at this moment when the situation had taken a turn for the worse, preserving his own strength and avoiding a direct conflict with the marine hero was the most "rational" choice for an ambitious man like Blackbeard... At the front of the warship's broad deck.Garp picked his nose, casually flicked away the unknown object, and squinted at the blue light disappearing into the distance, muttering a complaint:"Tch... running pretty fast. Didn't even say hello to this old man, how rude! After all, I did come here to 'help'!"The next second, his gaze snapped toward the distant island still shrouded in darkness.His lazy aura vanished instantly, replaced by an iron-blooded majesty that suppressed everything!"Hey—!! You pirate scum on the island!!""The farce ends now!!""Surrender peacefully!! Come 'take a vacation' in a cell at Impel Down with me!!!"Zzz-boom!!!Before his voice even faded, red-gold Haoshokulightning surged wildly from his burly body without warning!At the same time, the aura on Garp's body began to climb and soar in a way that defied common sense and knew no bounds!The air distorted and collapsed violently around him, the massive warship beneath his feet let out an overburdened groan, and the surrounding sea was forced into a giant depression by invisible pressure!"Hah—!!!"With a short, deep breath, Garp slammed his feet against the deck!Bang!The specially reinforced warship deck exploded into a deep crater!And he himself had turned into a blurred afterimage, his body soaring like a rocket, breaking through the low clouds in an instant and reaching the peak of hundreds of meters above the island!The wind blew his Justice Coat straight back, snapping loudly!Hum—!!!Even more violent red-gold Haoshoku Hakitumbled, boiled, and compressed, converging madly toward his clenched right fist!A brilliant Cruciform Starburst suddenly lit up and shone on his knuckles!"Fist Bone—"Garp's low voice echoed clearly between heaven and earth!"—Galaxy Impact!!!"BOOM————!!!!!!He punched!The light, clouds, and even the sound of the entire sky seemed to be forcibly swallowed and pulled in by the absolute destructive power contained in that punch!The next second—A red-gold flood of destruction, on a scale beyond words, poured down from that singularity!"What?!"On the island, Blackbeard Teach, who was ordering his men to retreat and preparing to vanish into the darkness himself, saw his pupils shrink to the size of pinpricks!An unprecedented sense of fatal crisis, originating from biological instinct, felt like ice water poured over his head, making his hair stand on end!Survival instinct made him roar hysterically:"Black Hole: Full Power: Dark Barrier!!!"Hum—!!!!!Viscous dark power erupted from Blackbeard's body at an unprecedented, frantic speed!In an instant, it formed layers of dark shields tens of meters thick above his head, with dark vortices spinning wildly on the shields, trying to withstand the falling Galaxy of destruction!Rumble rumble rumble!!!!The red-gold "Galaxy Impact" and the deep "Dark Barrier" collided head-on!In that moment—The heavens split and the earth shattered! The tsunami roared!The earth's crust was overturned like a fragile cracker, creating giant waves of earth and stone dozens of meters high that rolled and flew in all directions like a tsunami!Boom—!!!The destructive red-gold shockwave swept out madly with no blind spots!At the edge of the battlefield, "Crescent Moon Hunter" Katarina Devon and "Death God" Doc Qdidn't even have time to make any effective defense or reaction before they were instantly torn apart and annihilated into a mist of blood and dust by the shockwave!After a long time... at the center of the island, the world-destroying light and dust slowly dispersed.In the core area of the explosion, a terrifying crater over a thousand meters in diameter and hundreds of meters deep appeared!!At the edge of the crater, countless red-gold Haoshoku lightning bolts still leaped and coiled like wild thunder snakes.And at the center of these lightning bolts, a burly figure wearing a tattered Justice Coat, with bulging muscles like a god of war, stepped out from the center of the energy turbulence, steady as a mountain.On the other side of the crater's edge, the viscous darkness slowly receded like a low tide.At the center of the darkness, Blackbeard Teach's figure reappeared.He looked quite wretched now, with many scorched marks on his body, blood at the corner of his mouth, and his breathing somewhat ragged.Behind him to the side, the darkness coiled like tentacles around an unconscious, burly body—it was the "Champion" Burgess!Although he was a mercenary, cruel, and cunning hegemon, at the moment that catastrophe descended, Teach had instinctively diverted a portion of his dark power to protect Burgess, who was closest to him!