The heavy, jet-black greatsword Meteor, carrying a physical mass of tens of thousands of pounds, felt as light as a feather within Leona's left hand. Stripped of the constraints of gravity, her frame darted through the currents like a spectral swallow defying the laws of physics, instantly closing a hundred-meter gap.
"Special Observation: The Anatomical Dead Line!"
Within Leona's amber, vertical pupils, a razor-thin crimson line of absolute structural failure manifested along Garp's broad, muscled torso.
But a fraction of a second later, her pupils constricted sharply.
The red line across Garp's skin was shifting and twisting in a highly erratic, fluid rhythm. There was no static structural flaw to exploit. The old veteran had pushed his physical limits and his Armament Haki to such a flawless baseline that his abnormal muscle fibers and reaction speeds could reconfigure his defense to seal any opening in a microsecond.
"If the dead line isn't there... I'll cut one open through sheer force!"
Leona ground her teeth, her right hand driving the silent edge of White Night through a perfect, unreadable arc. The pristine steel transformed into a silent ribbon of silver-black lightning, sliding through the air like a phantom targeted straight for Garp's throat.
"Decent speed, little girl!"
Garp grinned, making no attempt to alter his stance or duck the trajectory. He simply hoisted his thick left hand with an unbothered, casual execution.
Clang!
A crisp, metallic snap resonated across the palace ruins.
The blade of White Night, engineered to shear through reinforced steel plating, was halted dead in mid-air, clamped securely between two thick fingers insulated in a deep coat of black Armament Haki. The pure, compressed sword-qi leaving the edge couldn't even scratch the thick calluses lining the old man's skin.
"Too light! This force lacks structural density!" Garp remarked, shaking his head.
"The light blade was only intended to anchor your position!"
A ruthless, feral light flared within Leona's pupils. Refusing to succumb to panic, she utilized the rigid point of contact on White Night as leverage, twisting her entire frame through a highly flexible, acrobatic flip in mid-air.
The massive greatsword Meteor, which had hovered weightlessly in her left hand, came down toward Garp's crown with a sudden, vicious momentum.
"Gravity Return!"
The exact millisecond the edge of Meteor cleared the space inches above Garp's gray hair, Leona cut the power of the Float-Float Fruit attached to the alloy.
Boom!
The nimble, weightless mass instantly reclaimed its multi-ton physical mass. Multiplied by the acceleration of her high-speed swing and backed by the full output of her Armament Hardening, this brutal, unreasonable downpour of pure physical pressure slammed down like a collapsing ridge.
"Oh?"
Sensing the immense kinetic weight shearing the air currents above his skull, Garp's eyes finally flashed with a genuine spark of interest.
"Synthesizing extreme velocity and extreme mass? That's an intelligent application of a fruit's matrix!"
Faced with a heavy blade carrying enough weight to smash a crater into the bedrock of the floating island, Garp released his two-finger clamp on White Night. He drew his right boot back half a step, lowering his center of gravity to lock into a rigid riding stance. His right fist, comparable in dimensions to a heavy sandbag, was instantly encased in an ultra-dense, faintly purple layer of high-tier Armament Haki.
"But these knuckles have shattered real mountains!"
"Fist Bone Impact!"
There was no complex tactical transition; it was a single, pure, devastating uppercut driven from the marrow.
Bang!
The massive fist and the iron greatsword collided in mid-air with a terrifying concussive force. A deafening explosion instantly washed over the entire central plateau of Merveille. A visible, circular shockwave rippled outward from the point of impact, reducing the structural stone ruins within a radius of several miles to fine splinters as if they were wet parchment.
"What?!"
Leona's feline vertical pupils dilated to their limits.
She felt as if the greatsword Meteor in her left hand hadn't struck a human limb, but had collided with the unyielding core of an entire continent. Furthermore, the internal penetration behind Garp's punch was horrific. That dominant, high-tier Haki bypassed the thick alloy blade entirely, traveling down the steel like an array of needles to pierce directly into her left arm.
Crack!
With a sharp, splintering snap, the bone of her left arm fractured instantly, the internal backflow forcing a mouthful of crimson from her lips. The immense kinetic recoil hurled her body hundreds of meters across the courtyard like a broken kite, her frame slamming heavily into the collapsing stonework of a ruined palace wall.
"Boss!" Jeno shouted from the eastern flank, the heavy mortar housing on his right arm instantly screaming as the power cells began a rapid charge.
"Cough... Cough..."
Leona dragged herself out of the masonry rubble, her left arm hanging completely limp and useless at her flank. Yet her right hand, locked around the hilt of White Night, remained as steady as stone. She spat a glob of blood into the dirt, her gaze fixed entirely on the terrifying old man who hadn't shifted his boots even a millimeter from his starting mark.
During the collision, the shock-absorbing properties Jeno had mapped into Meteor had absorbed a fraction of the impact—the only factor that had preserved her arm from being reduced to loose splinters.
"That black greatsword of yours is a solid piece of craftsmanship," Garp said, rolling his right knuckles, which bore only a faint white score across the skin. He looked across the clearing at the swordswoman, a trace of respect softening his scowl. "Your fruit manipulation is clean, and that kinetic buffer is an interesting asset. But your Armament Haki is far too raw! You haven't even touched the boundary of internal destruction, yet you dare to meet my punch head-on?"
Garp let out a boisterous laugh, stepping out of the crater as he walked toward her position.
"Listen well, little girl! No matter how sharp the edge or how heavy the iron, if a swordsman cannot project their Haki as a tangible extension of their will to detonate within the enemy's core, then on the highest stages of this ocean, your steel is nothing but a pretty toy!"
"Ryuo..."
Leona ground her teeth, the memory of the force that had bypassed her blade to shatter her bone burning within her mind. That hyper-compression and localized internal expansion was the exact benchmark she had been unable to calculate during her solitary drills.
She took a deep, stabilizing breath. Though her left arm was crippled, the predatory focus in her pupils burned with a more violent ferocity. She didn't retreat a single inch before the absolute disparity in power; instead, she smoothly realigned her breathing.
"The lessons are clear, Vice Admiral Garp. But as long as my right hand can lift the steel, this ledger remains open!"
"Yahahaha! The girl speaks the truth! The vanguard hasn't folded yet!"
A sudden, violent bolt of electricity punched into the sky from the ruins behind Garp. Enel emerged from the dust, his face heavily score-marked with blood but his features twisted into a ferocious, manic grin as blue static whipped around his shoulders, his golden staff held ready.
"Sabo! Shark! Jeno! What are you standing there for?!"
Arrogant as the sovereign was, he recognized that the old man before them was a physical mountain that could not be scaled in a solitary duel. "Close the perimeter! Attack as a unit! Let's blast this old bastard and his lectures into white ash!"
"On it!" Jeno's laser core erupted with a blinding blue light.
Shark dropped into the foundational stance of Fish-Man Karate, the ambient vapor in the high atmosphere gathering toward his palms in shifting, liquid currents. Sabo pulled the brim of his top hat low, the compressed blue fire at his heels letting out a low, dangerous hiss.
Under the terrifying pressure of the Marine Hero, the outlaws of the Eclipse Pirates laid aside their individual pride, aligning their trajectories to launch a coordinated, high-velocity gang attack against the heaviest physical mountain on the sea.