Chương 78: Chapter 78 Cutting Down the Elders
Chapter 78 Cutting Down the Elders
Rayleigh was angry. It wasn't any one specific thing, but a culmination of a lot of ridiculous little things piling up into a massive irritant that had spilled over Rayleigh's bottom line. Titan's arrogance and reckless decisions. The insane plan of the Players that relied on something that apparently didn't even work. And probably most of all, someone that Rayleigh had taught, someone who could be considered a student of his, someone who owed him a debt, had been mortally wounded.
At this point, Rayleigh still was not in any danger. He could use shatterpoint to crack open that spider-web cage, run out of the perception range of the enemies, and use today's available Tavern Travel chance to leave the world outright. It wasn't even a bad idea. He had learned just about everything he needed from this world and wouldn't gain much more from staying.
But the thought of leaving was not available at this moment. He was angry. He was angry at the players. He was angry at the Marines. He was angry at this supposedly immortal elder. He was angry at this world.
Rayleigh certainly wanted to save Ace, but the Players told him they had it covered. And Rayleigh believed them. For that, he was also angry at himself. With Rayleigh's skills, he could have chopped off the arms of every Marine and most of the Vice Admirals. None of them had the skills necessary to stop him. But just like all of the other Players, he had been treating this too much as a show, a play, a game. Yes, he was very angry at himself. Others had their reasons but he allowed himself to end up in this situation, so he could not escape the blame.
Well, playtime was over. He'd never done this before and really didn't want to because it had too many risks, but it was the only available path that might lead to the outcome he wanted.
Rayleigh became empty. Not because he let go of his emotions, but because he fed them all into the Force. His frustration, his pride, his determination, his wrath.
But Rayleigh was not a practitioner of the Dark Side. He did not feed the emotion into the Force to receive a corruption-filled power boost to use to enact his own will. Instead, he asked the Force, the whole of the Force, to move through him without Rayleigh's conscious input. Rayleigh was not a practitioner of the light or the dark. He was the one in the middle, and the whole of the Force answered his call.
Of course, Rayleigh's consciousness existed both in his mind and within the Force. Just because his brain's consciousness was not controlling his body, did not mean that Rayleigh was not in control. The main problem with this power boost method was that if the Force could convince his 'higher' mind to do something, his 'physical' mind would not get a chance to refuse. Rayleigh had never done this because he didn't know how much he would have in the final say meaning he didn't have complete control over his life and death. Still, he had at least partial control.
"Do you mind if I take this one?" Under Rayleigh's direction, the Force did not simply interrupt his teacher's match, but politely asked to step in.
The sudden change was noticed by his teacher and his teacher's sword-wielding centaur opponent. Neither could attribute any word to what was different, but it was noticeable. Without a presence in the Force, it wasn't like Rayleigh looked visually different to either of them, but both had a high enough battle sense to tell that something had changed and Rayleigh used the moment that the pair paused to observe him to ask his teacher to take over their fight.
Mihawk only considered it for a moment before nodding and walking back over to the Pacifistas and Vice Admirals trying to kill everyone else. Mihawk's actual skill with a sword was above that of his immortal opponent and he had little to gain against someone who could afford to be worse just because he couldn't die.
"Arrogant Brat!" The Warrior God of Finance sent a high-speed flying slash at Rayleigh's neck. It carried what could be called the cold breath of the underworld, promising to chill the flesh and blood of any it sliced down to the bone, but the arc of sword intent shattered as the tip of Rayleigh's blood-red sword was brought up to meet it. The cold air had less effect on Rayleigh than it did Mihawk since Rayleigh's internal Tutaminis protected him against everything but physical damage, so hot or cold to a certain degree had no effect on him.
Rayleigh casually sent a flying slash of his own which Saint Nusjuro swiped his sword to block by splitting it in half, but the split arc did not scatter. In fact, after passing around his sword, it reconnected and passed completely through the skeleton-centaur's body, bisecting him length-wise.
Saint Nusjuro's face would have been worth remembering if Rayleigh was in the mood to do so. Flying Slashes of Sword intent can be blocked and shattered by swords. This was common sense in this world.
Unfortunately for Saint Nusjuro, Rayleigh's flying slash was aura transformed into hundreds of sharpened sword aura lines compressed into a single line that was emitted from his blade and enhanced with Haki and controlled with Tutaminis. The saturation of sword lines and control of Tutaminis allowed Rayleigh to remotely recombine the split lines back into a single line. More than half the lines still dissipated, so the effect was far weaker, but it was still very strong.
Saint Ethanbaron V. Nusjuro did not understand how it worked but he did understand that he had to go all out or he would be played with by this child like Saint Saturn had been. Black smoke covered his figure and a moment later, his form was restored. Like Saint Saturn, he had undergone changes. His form was larger and he had a ribbon of darkness over his shoulders and around his back, behind his head. Ice spread from his hooves, but Rayleigh had been fighting on ice all day and it wouldn't affect him.
The Elder was unaware that Rayleigh could completely resist the chill of the underworld air he emitted and charged forward to meet Rayleigh's sword. In his mind, Rayleigh would eventually slow down due to the effect of the cold air and be defeated. This was also why Mihawk was willing to give up the fight. Mihawk was superior to the Elder in swordsmanship, but the Elder could win just by outlasting his opponent, making the fight entirely unsatisfying to the world's number one swordsman.
The other elder on the battlefield, Saint Jaygarcia Saturn, had already gained an advantage in his fight against Titan. Although Titan's defense was supercharged with Nen, his actual skill in Haki was weaker than the ancient Elder's and the spider's poisoned limbs had pierced several holes in Titan's giant form. The main reason that Titan could still fight in that state was due to the stacking self-recovery effects of being an Enhancer and having a Mythical Zoan Devil Fruit. Those attributes combined could allow him to recover from even the deadliest poisons.
Aokiji had taken his student's body and completely froze it before leaving the battlefield. Depending on luck, she might make it. Kizaru pretended to be passed out in a crater he had been smashed into by his own student. After their fight, Justice joined Geko Moria in fighting off Akainu to prevent him from killing the Marines.
As Rayleigh and Saint Nusjuro exchanged swords, the latter's expression grew more frustrated while Rayleigh's seemed empty. Almost every slash of Rayleigh's sword sliced something from the Warrior God of Finance, forcing the latter to move around and constantly shift his position while the cold air seemed to have no effect on Rayleigh. Just being close to Saint Nusjuro should cause Rayleigh's flesh to freeze and rot off. What was worse was that the slashes he dodged didn't just vanish because he dodged them. Every slash toppled a building or wall and all the buildings and walls behind them. The whole of Marineford was being turned into rubble from their fight.
Of course, the main source of frustration was not from the fact that he was losing the fight, it was from calculating the costs of rebuilding Marineford on top of the costs of the upcoming recruitment drive. Even though he noticed that Rayleigh still seemed unaffected by the cold, Saint Nusjuro literally could not comprehend losing since in his mind, Rayleigh would run out of steam eventually, freeze up, and then get cut to pieces. It was only a matter of time.
The slashes sent by Rayleigh even affected the fight of the lower-ranked Marines for their survival. If it weren't for the fact that the Marineford was built like a layered cake and that Rayleigh's fight was happening on a higher level than theirs, hundreds of Marines would have already been killed by Rayleigh who didn't bother altering his aim if someone was behind Saint Nusjuro. In this way, Rayleigh was essentially a calamity for everyone around him who did not differentiate between friend and foe. All were equal under his blade.
The main problem of using this Force-Phenomenon to become a natural disaster was that if the Force did not want Rayleigh to do something, he would not be able to do it in this state. He would either be unable to consciously think of doing it or would have to end the effect and face the backlash. Rayleigh either had to be very persuasive or the Force had to be okay with doing it. Consciously, Rayleigh did not know which it was. Did his 'higher' consciousness convince the rest of the Force that this guy needed to die or did the Force want him to die and Rayleigh was just the instrument to do it with? In either case, the immortal's time was coming to an end. The longer the fight lasted, the more of the Force was being brought down. It would be a problem if he ran away since the Force wasn't likely to let him chase a fleeing target to kill but Saint Nusjuro hadn't even thought of fleeing, so the issue hadn't come up.
One side effect of Rayleigh's usage of the Force was the change to the environment. For one, the clear sky became very cloudy and thunder rolled overhead even though rain did not descend. Even those with a Force presence did not notice the connection between the change in weather and Rayleigh. None of the Players here had gone through extensive Jedi training and even if they felt something, they did not have the training or experience to understand what that something was.
The one who was happiest with this change was actually Geko Moria. He shouted to Justice, "Hey! The sun is gone! Give me your shadow!"
Justice was having a hard time against Akainu and the bear robot. Akainu had ordered it to kill Justice and it was immune to Justice's light attacks and stronger than his physical attacks could damage. If he was the only one fighting, it would be fine, but he was also trying to keep the other Marines around him alive and he was only keeping up thanks to the help of Crow and Stoner. Justice shouted back to Moria, "I'm a little busy right now!"
Moria replied, "Just let me take your shadow if you don't want to die! You'll get it back, okay? I don't want to die either!"
"Fine! Just do whatever!" Justice shot a scattered shotgun of light at Akainu to break his lava form into pieces. It didn't hurt him, but it did slow him down enough for Justice to have a free moment to run over to Moria who snipped off Justice's shadow before taking it and running off in the direction of Whitebeard's corpse.
Moria already tried pushing some of his stored shadows into that corpse earlier, but the corpse wouldn't take it. That meant he needed a stronger shadow. But if he took the shadow from someone and that someone was touched by sunlight, that someone would turn to dust and die. After death, their shadow would also die. This instant death effect wasn't useful if Moria was killed while taking the shadow, so he couldn't just take Kuma's or Akainu's shadow to kill them since they knew his tricks, and none of the Vice Admirals on their side were strong enough to produce a shadow that could support Whitebeard. He couldn't ask Mihawk either since the latter knew how dangerous it was to be without a shadow while this young Marine probably did not.
While Moria was trying for his Hail Mary, Rayleigh's eyes never left his opponent. Other than the Wills required to maintain his Sword of Babylon, the remaining Wills were all focused on this one target under the direction of the Force. This state wasn't something he could go into halfway, it was all or nothing, so he wasn't paying the slightest attention to his surroundings or the people around him like he usually would while in combat. He could leave this state whenever he wanted to, but his 'wants' were not 'fully' in his control at the moment. He had given his wrath to the Force and in exchange, became the wrath of the Force. In this state, he was both his strongest and most vulnerable.
Not that his opponent could take advantage of this. It would have to be someone else. Because he was incapable of paying attention to others, it was entirely possible for someone else to kill him right now because the calamity he called down could just as easily be his own, but the sword-wielding immortal in front of him was not capable of doing so when he had Rayleigh's full attention.
This state was incredibly risky, but as long as he didn't die, he could bring the world down upon everyone around him.
In this state, Rayleigh was not simply slicing Saint Nusjuro up for fun. In this state, Rayleigh was not even capable of having fun or enjoying what he was doing. The entirety of the Force had essentially become his brain and he was using it to calculate how to perform the task the Force required his body to perform, the execution of the man in front of him. Using the whole of the Force as a computer, Rayleigh was slowly able to perceive things he had not seen earlier. With every slice, more and more was revealed.
In Rayleigh's newly adjusted perception, this man was covered in stitches. The stitches did not sew the man's pieces together though. They appeared to sew the man to the world. So the man's static state had been sewn onto the fabric of the world. This form of immortality had drawbacks. It meant that his state would never change. He could never get stronger or more skilled. But the benefits were also obvious. If he was broken or impaired, the world itself would restore him as naturally as water would flow downhill.
So to kill this man, Rayleigh had to cut the man's connection to the world. This was not easy. Though Rayleigh claimed to have a knock-off version of the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, Rayleigh's sword could not interact with these stitches no matter how much he tried to slice his sword against them. The Force was far from all-powerful. Shatterpoints only worked on physical and living things, but this immortal was only an imitation of life, a well-preserved photograph of what once was, pretending to still be. These stitches had no Force presence and the Force in Rayleigh's sword did not interact with them.
So Rayleigh could only keep trying, keep swinging his sword. Every swing would be slightly different. If a hundred attempts did not work what about a thousand? Ten Thousand? A Million? A Hundred Million? As long as a method existed, the Force would find it through the process of elimination. That is, as long as Rayleigh's body had not broken to pieces from the strain or run out of aura before that point.
As their battle raged on, Whitebeard's eyes opened.
"What is going on?"
Moria was thrilled. The corpse took the shadow. Immediately after a shadow was placed into a body, the body was affected by the instinct of the shadow and the memories of the body. The fresher the body, the higher the memory quality. Usually, this was a downside, so Moria never revived fresh corpses because it took too long for them to fall under his control. Now, though, this side-effect was a boon. Moria pointed to the side and shouted, "Akainu is over there, go kill him!"
Whitebeard did not move. He observed Moria, observed his wounds, recalled his final moments, and looked over the battlefield.
For a dead man, he was pretty quick to come to a conclusion. "Who's shadow did you take Moria? If it is one of my son's, I will kill you."
The pressure from the old man's words felt like a mountain on Moria's shoulders, making it difficult to even breathe. "What?! No! It was Kizaru's disciple, that kid fighting Akainu over there! He volunteered it and I even told him I'd give the shadow back!"
Whitebeard looked over and felt a connection to the kid, something he could easily attribute to the shadow granting him a fake-life. He said, "Then you'd better keep your word Moria."
Zombies could not use the Devil Fruits they had when they were alive, but Whitebeard didn't need it. He could barely use his strength today because of his health issues. Ironically, being dead removed all of those issues. It didn't affect his ability to use Haki either since he was given the shadow of someone capable of using all three forms of Haki. Before, using all the strength of his body would have killed him. Now, he can truly go all out. The zombie smiled as blood dripped down his face. It was time to remind the Marines why he was feared.
Mihawk watched the Zombie Whitebeard with some interest after cutting down the final Pacifista. The only robot remaining was Kuma, but the man's Devil Fruit made attacking him difficult, as he could push away any attack sent toward him, no matter how strong. He got a feeling that the battle would be ending soon though, so he decided to exchange a few blows with that giant spider elder since the younger user of the Golden Buddha Fruit did not seem to be fairing so well.
When Whitebeard's zombie rose, Rayleigh felt something interesting. There was a slight resonance of Whitebeard and a presence inside his Kyber Crystal. It was only for a moment and faded right after, but it made Rayleigh and the Force acutely aware of both new presences in his now purple Kyber Crystal. Neither were aspects of the Force, so the Force had not paid attention to them until now, but since the power of the Force was not being very useful in helping him cut this immortal, The Force's one-track mind was more open to alternatives.
After a moment of analysis under the full power of the Force, Rayleigh understood what was inside his Kyber Crystal. This understanding would have left him shocked in normal circumstances, but he was currently unable to feel emotions, so it was accepted without issue. Previously, he knew that he had drawn the laws of Space Vibrations and Darkness from Blackbeard using Psychometry through Rayleigh's sword, but he thought he was only copying the man's understanding of the laws. He didn't think that he had somehow actually drawn the full power of both Devil Fruits into his Kyber Crystal.
Devil Fruits required life to exist. It was possible to fuse an inanimate object with a Devil Fruit, but that was only when the Devil Fruit provided the aspect of Life, so only Zoan Fruits could be 'fed' to objects. A Kyber Crystal is alive. Furthermore, Rayleigh's Hatsu poured his Nen, his Life Aura into his Kyber Crystal, further strengthening the aspect of Life within this inanimate object. Thanks to this coincidence and a dozen others, the power of the Darkness Devil Fruit and the Quake Devil Fruit that had been in Blackbeard and Whitebeard's body had been drawn perfectly into his Kyber Crystal and they were even playing nice together.
Not counting Players with cheats, living beings that ate a second devil fruit would explode due to the conflict, but a Kyber Crystal that was very used to channeling the Force was no stranger to conflict and could handle the full might of the presence and power of both Devil Fruits with ease.
Well, now was as good a time as any to perform some tests.
A white humming light engulfed Rayleigh's blood-red sword and he slashed forward. What happened next almost stopped the battlefield.
In the direction of the slash, a massive crack parted the clouds. But behind the clouds was not a sky, but a static that was painful to look at. The black spider-cage had been completely sliced through as well.
Saint Nusjuro had also been bisected, but he recovered anyway. Though he still had the presence of mind to look and see the crack that formed in the sky. It looked like Rayleigh had sliced the heavens.
The line of static closed a moment later, but it took a moment more for the battle to resume as most who saw the sight were incapable of comprehending it.
Rayleigh was not in the correct mindset to appreciate it either. He was also not in the correct mindset to worry about the lines of blood that spurted out from his sword arm due to the damage the vibrations caused to his body during the swing. A devil fruit was not an aspect of the Force so his initial usage of it was incredibly crude and volatile. He only cared that it had not affected Saint Nusjuro's stitches. So he tried the next one.
The glow around Rayleigh's sword changed from a humming white light to a flame-like darkness. This one did not damage his body just by using it, but it did seem to massively increase the sensitivity his body processed. Every background sensation that was usually ignored by the unconscious mind was brought to the foreground and amplified. Every ache, wound, and cut that could usually be ignored seemed to become a mental priority. Due to the fact that he was covered in heavy wounds, the mental feedback from his injuries was practically crippling. Or it would have been if he had been piloting his body from his brain. The Force didn't care about his pain so neither did he, thus the negative side effects of this power were ignored.
In fact, it was actually advantageous. It wasn't just his sense of pain that was amplified and unable to be covered up. All his physical senses were amplified, something that actually improved his awareness.
Saint Nusjuro noticed the change and understood that Rayleigh's previous attack was somehow amplified because of that humming light and now he felt danger from this flowing darkness. He dodged to the side to avoid the attack, but Rayleigh's amplified awareness granted him the insight to predict the Elder's movement, ensuring that Rayleigh sliced him anyway, severing his horse spine and separating his back two legs from his front half.
A moment later, the immortal Elder recovered, but Saint Nusjuro's eyes widened in shock and pain. He cried, "What?! WHAT DID YOU DO?!"
Rayleigh did not answer. He observed the part of the spine he had just cut. The separation was undone by the surrounding stitches, but the physical damage to the spine was still there. One of the nearby stitches fluttered for an instant, looking like it had been suppressed for a moment. He had his answer now. The power of the Darkness Devil Fruit could in fact interact with the stitches.
With his spine injured, Saint Nusjuro was unable to properly dodge the follow-up attacks, He tried to deflect or counter, but Rayleigh moved around him as if the Warrior God of Finance were a motionless statue.
After Saint Nusjuro experienced a short, but especially painful period of trial and error, Rayleigh had figured out how to concentrate the dark power into his sword's edge. Darkness seemed to devour everything, and by concentrating the power right into the edge, it would devour the stitches as he sliced through them. If the stitch was sliced through completely, it did not come back.
Too late did Saint Nusjuro figure out what Rayleigh was doing. Rayleigh sliced the edge of the elder's arm. He shouted familiar profanities at his silent, emotionless opponent and expected the wound to heal a moment later, but instead, his forearm aged rapidly. His flesh shriveled and cracked. It dissolved, seemingly evaporating around his bones which rapidly cracked, dried up, and crumbled into pieces.
Saint Nusjuro stared blankly at the injury, unable to process what was happening. It was then that he felt it. Something he had long forgotten. Something that took a while to even recognize because of how unfamiliar it was. Saint Ethanbaron V. Nusjuro, the Warrior God of Finance, one of the Five Elders that ruled the world under their eternal God, felt fear.
Rayleigh's testing period was over. His sword raised and he took a step toward the ancient elder, each step promising judgment.
Saint Nusjuro did not skillfully move to dodge, to block, to parry, or to fight. It had been so long since the last time he felt fear that he had no resistance to it. He did not think to fight back, he just wanted to live. He shouted, "No! Wait! Spare me! PLEASE!" He might have thought to run if he had ever run before, but he never had, so his first thought was to mimic the begging that he had seen so many times in the past.
Unsurprisingly, his begging fell on deaf ears. Rayleigh vanished before him before appearing behind him. At that moment, his darkness-enflamed sword had made hundreds of tiny, nimble slices all along Saint Nusjuro's body, severing every stitch at once.
Saint Ethanbaron V. Nusjuro screamed as his body experienced centuries of aging in a moment. His bones did not even have time to fall down before they crumbled into dust.
Saint Jaygarcia Saturn, the Warrior God of Science and Defense, noticed the voice of his fellow elder shouting with an unfamiliar inflection, as he too could not recall the last time he heard fear in the man's speech.
What he saw however reintroduced him to the concept. Something impossible had happened. The Immortal Saint Nusjuro was dead.
Sweat started dripping down his forehead from the incomprehensible sight. It started pouring down his back when Rayleigh turned to face his direction.
Fortunately for Saint Saturn, Rayleigh did not step forward. Rayleigh had successfully killed an Elder and had practically laid waste to the whole of Marineford. The flying slashes sent from his fight didn't stop until they reached the Haki Enfused Spider Cage, so every building was reduced to a pile of rubble that only came up to the knee in height.
Rayleigh was also in a very reactionary state. It was already a miracle that he had been able to initiate the fight against Saint Nusjuro, but that wasn't a feat he'd be able to replicate so easily. It wasn't that Rayleigh didn't want to kill the remaining Elder. It was that the 'higher' Rayleigh couldn't justify this kill to the rest of the Force at the moment. Rayleigh still very much wanted to kill him, but he'd only be able to do so if the Elder himself started the fight.
Without moving from his position, Rayleigh lazily glanced over to where Captain Jack had been hiding in the rubble and met the latter's eyes. No words were exchanged, but thanks to Jack's relatively decent connection to the Force, the Player who started all of this got the message.
Seeing that Elder Saturn was about to flee for his life, Captain Jack shouted, "Hey! Do you know about the Mythical Devil Fruit called the Human Human Fruit Model Devil King? Did you know that the user of this Fruit is immune to the effects of almost all other Devil Fruits, but has to drain the vitality of extremely evil humans to stay alive and powerful? Did you know that the cemetery of the Holy Land of Mary Geoise hasn't changed in size in eight hundred years? Are you gonna run away back to that cattle ranch of yours where you raise the finest, most flavorful beef for your master to chew on?"
Elder Saturn's fear vanished in an instant, washed away by disbelief and rage. He roared, "WHO TOLD YOU THIS?! WHO ARE YOU?!"
Captain Jack pointed at Rayleigh and said, "He told me. The boss knows everything, even things you don't know, like the shameful secrets that your master never wants to be revealed. He knows the secret of your immortality and knows how to get past it. When you leave, he'll share it with the world, along with your master's most shameful secrets."
Funnily enough, Rayleigh was able to tell that some of the things Jack had shouted were bluffs and lies. Jack didn't know the secret of their immortality and certainly didn't know any shameful secrets of this boss figure. But Jack figured such a person would definitely have shameful secrets. If the Elder's life was in danger, Jack had to keep him from running away using something more important than the Elder's life. His master's honor.
Saturn turned to look at Rayleigh. Perhaps some part of him hoped that Rayleigh would deny such a thing, but he only saw Rayleigh's emotionless gaze and blood red sword.
The giant spider immortal decided that it didn't matter if Rayleigh really knew such things. Rayleigh knew how to kill them and for that alone, he must die. Saturn could take care of everyone else at his leisure.
Saint Saturn's body shifted in form from a spider with a human torso to a complete spider, though it had the horns of an ox, reminding Rayleigh of some Japanese Yokai folklore. It was a little shorter than the four-story tall Titan in his Golden Buddha form but far wider.
The giant spider shifted up and a black beam shot from under its torso and extended all the way to the black spider cage, connecting to it. The spider elder then placed a spider foot on the black web and vanished from place, reappearing at the other end, on the inner part of the spider cage, standing sideways. From there, a dozen more web lines were shot out. It vanished from place at reappeared at the other ends, shooting more webs.
Rayleigh didn't move and the other Players and Marines could only sit and watch in horror as the giant spider elder turned the entire cage into a massive spider web that he apparently could teleport from any point on to any other point.
The only pair who weren't paying attention was Akainu and his opponent, the Zombie Whitebeard.
Despite the fact that zombies usually lose their former personality quickly after being brought back with a shadow, Whitebeard seemed in high spirits as he beat the ever-loving shit out of Akainu over and over, making the crater the man was in deeper and deeper.
Akainu was already three-quarters dead even before Zombie Whitebeard joined the fight and Whitebeard couldn't resist taunting the lava-fisted admiral like Akainu had taunted Ace.
"Let's see if Old Dogs can really learn new tricks. Play Dead Akainu."
"You know, it's really lonely in the netherworld. You should come back with me to the other side."
"Are you alright Akainu? You look even worse than I do, and I'm already dead."
If Akainu was at his peak condition, he'd be able to convert his vitality directly into heat and turn this island into a volcanic crater, but he was now in a similar state to when Whitebeard had arrived, heavily weakened and needing to use most of his energy to keep himself together.
Akainu shouted for the Marines to help him, but the ones who sided with him to kill the others had been taken down by Justice and the others could only stare at Akainu with contempt and hatred.
Whitebeard encouraged this. "What's wrong Akainu? See something you don't like? But you must be used to that by now considering how often you've probably seen your own reflection in the mirror."
Crow and Stoner could no longer tell which of these two possessed the Magma fruit since Whitebeard was now the one dealing out the third-degree burns.
Understandably, Akainu was pissed beyond all reason. The fact that Whitebeard was already dead was forgotten. The fact that using the depths of his Fruit's power required vitality he didn't have was forgotten. Akainu burned himself to the point he was painful to look at and shot forward with the intent to incinerate Whitebeard off the face of the earth.
Whitebeard smiled and reeled back his fist. Even without his devil fruit, those watching the collision felt that they saw an illusionary crack, though it was impossible to tell if it was real or not.
When the blinding light faded, all of Whitebeard's right side was gone along with most of his torso and spine.
The only thing remaining of Akainu was his legs. As a Logia trained in Haki, a Haki attack would not have the same effect it would on an untrained Logia user. But there was a limit to this.
The pair of legs fell over and the magma started cooling down. The fact that it did not reform showed that life had faded from the pieces. Akainu had been killed.
Whitebeard collapsed since a body without a spine could not support the rest of his weight, but since he was already dead, this didn't have much of an impact, other than preventing him from walking. He looked around and saw Rayleigh's fight, but had no interest in taking part. This world belonged to the youngsters now.
Usually, removing the shadow from a Zombie would require Moria's intervention or salt. Whitebeard on the other hand was not the usual zombie. Simply by willing it, the shadow split from his body. His eyes closed with a peaceful smile.
Justice didn't even notice his shadow return as he continued trying to put a dent in the primary robot bear. Not only was Kuma far tougher than the other Pacifistas, but his devil fruit power let him push away any attack Justice tried that he was confident would have destroyed him.
After Saint Saturn turned the entire inner cage into his own massive spider web, he started attacking Rayleigh. Condensed shots of spider silk more powerful than a cannon fired one after another from a 'safe' distance. Saint Saturn could teleport through his webbing to any point on his web so there was no problem shooting from a distance and teleporting when Rayleigh got close. No matter how fast Rayleigh was, he wasn't faster than his teleportation.
What happened next was something that would endlessly bother Rayleigh for a very long time. His sword did not raise to deflect or block the shot. With his physical defense reduced to zero, that blow was easily enough to kill him and the Force wasn't taking any proactive action to make Rayleigh defend himself. From the Force's perspective, Rayleigh was currently one with the Force. If he was dead, he'd still be one with the Force. So there was no real difference. The Force would not take action to protect his life. If he died, he died.
Rayleigh was about to exit this Force-Phenomenon state to defend himself, but Captain Jack jumped out and partially deflected the shots with his own sword. Only partially because one of them still grazed Rayleigh, ripping a layer of skin off his shoulder.
Though annoying, the conditions had been met. Rayleigh turned to face Elder Saturn and swiped his sword.
This time, the hundreds of silk-thin lines of sharpened sword aura that shot out from his blade did not remain concentrated into a single line, but spread out.
Instantly, the massive spider-web holding the giant spider in the air was shredded to pieces. This kind of tactic should have been obvious, but as long as Elder Saturn remained in physical contact with his web, he could apply armament Haki to it with one of his legs, preventing it from being cut so easily. The problem was that a moment before the lines cut the webs, Rayleigh had used telekinesis to push the web beneath the specific Haki using leg down an inch. The instant that the webs were cut, the Haki using spider leg was not in contact with the web.
Fighting Rayleigh in this state was like fighting a quantum supercomputer. As long as there was a way to win, he would take the shortest path to that way, ignoring all obstacles or common sense. The only reason Nusjuro took so long was because he didn't know how to proceed and had to brute force it until he found a suitable way.
Thanks to specific, targeted uses of telekinesis, the Spider Elder was not touched by a single one of his webs as he fell to the ground and before he even reached the floor, Rayleigh was there, sword in hand.
Rayleigh circled the spider three times, over, under, and around, slicing every stitch with a sword that carried an edge that devoured all light.
The moment that Rayleigh was certain he got the last stitch, he exited the Force-Phenomenon state, allowed his sword of Babylon to shatter while placing his Kyber Crystal into his pocket, crossed his legs, sat down, and barely set up an automatic recovery state before completely passing out.
A day later, Rayleigh woke up on a ship. Thankfully, he was neither in cuffs nor chains, so he had a good idea of what happened.
Before the details could fade anymore, Rayleigh went over the fight and his Force-Phenomenon state. In theory, that state maxed out Rayleigh's skill level in all areas. If Rayleigh trained his skills for a thousand years, he would at most equal his skill level in the Force-Phenomenon state. Even if it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be, he'd rather never use it again.
The only reason he might use it in the future was due to the breakthrough he had when it came to using it this time. Rayleigh had been able to convince the whole of the Force to go with his Will, and he did it in a way that was different from the Dark Side. If he did it in the future, it might be easier. Confidence had been the key it seemed.
Rayleigh once compared the Force to a school with different aspects of the Force being represented by different groups. Every group had a different opinion and there was no single group that could command all the other groups. At least that was what Rayleigh thought at first. Now Rayleigh had some ideas on how to do just that. There were in fact people in schools that everyone listened to. These people had two characteristics. Just two. They were true to themselves, and they were confident about it.
Odd as it seemed, this was a breakthrough in how Rayleigh used the Force. At first, he thought that he essentially had to appease every group at the same time. This was basically like bribing everyone. But bribes only worked in the long run if they escalated. In real life, bribes were only used until blackmail material was found.
Instead of trying to please every part of the Force at the same time, Rayleigh could get the entirety of the Force to listen to him as long as he was himself and he was confident in what he wanted. After all, he was also a part of the Force. If he was himself, then he was the Force. If he was confident in doing something, then the Force would be confident in doing it too.
However, there was a slight problem with this approach. Rayleigh did not know who he was. This wasn't a Kung Fu Panda situation. Rayleigh simply lacked variety when it came to life experiences to know enough to know how he would react to everything. If he did not know how he would react, how could he say that he knew himself? Letting someone who didn't know how he would react in a situation try to convince others in the same situation was about as effective as letting someone who had never stepped foot onto a battlefield try to convince soldiers to die for their country.
Thankfully, this issue wasn't difficult to resolve.
Moreover, Rayleigh had other benefits from his foray into pseudo-godhood. He may have never understood the full potential of his Kyber Crystal if he hadn't gone so deep into the Force. Were it not for what he learned, he may have thought it was a problem and erased the fruits using his Lightsaber customization kit. At the moment, Rayleigh had no idea how to draw out the power of the Devil Fruits in his Kyber Crystals. He could do it before because he was in a Maxed Out Skill state, but now he was back to normal and needed to figure out everything from scratch.
The door to his room on the ship opened and Titan walked in. "Good to see that you're up. I knew an Enhancer like you would recover soon. It only took an hour to drag the doctor away from you. He kept screaming about dying this and edge of life that. But a flesh wound like that only needs a nap and a meal to recover from, right?"
Rayleigh, in a well-practiced motion, skillfully raised a single eyebrow at Titan's poor attempt to dodge responsibility for the clusterfudge that was this fight.
Titan only held Rayleigh's gaze for a moment before letting his head fall and sighing, "Alright, I'm sorry for dragging you into this."
Rayleigh asked, "Is Ice alive?"
"Yeah. Captain Jack has some Force Healing skills for Easy Masteries and slowly helped her recover as Aokiji thawed her out."
Rayleigh released a breath of relief and asked, "So what was the point of all this? Did you just want to force the Marines into committing suicide?"
"What? Oh hell no. No, the plan was much bigger than that. I'll have some food prepared for you in ten minutes. Come out and I'll have Jack explain everything."
Rayleigh nodded as Titan left and a few minutes later he found the ship's kitchen and a half dozen bowls of food with Captain Jack, Stoner, and a few non-Player members of the crew eating.
After taking a seat and filling a plate, Rayleigh looked over at Captain Jack and asked, "So why did you want to force the Marines into killing the Marines? Was it just to mess with Justice and Ice?"
Jack put down a leg of meat he was eating and tapped on the air for a moment. In the next instant, a video camera appeared. Jack explained, "When I first found Laugh Tale and all the weird text, I didn't want to write it down or have to come back, so I got this video camera from the Hunter World and turned it into an Inventory Item. I recorded everything and took it to a Scientist named Vegapunk who translated everything for me."
Rayleigh thought about it for a moment and asked, "So you recorded everything?"
Jack nodded. "That's right. All video recording tech is snail-based in this world. Snails can be detected and even disabled with Haki, but this can't. No one even recognizes what it is. After the battle, I hooked up the video to a global transmission snail and sent the video to the whole world."
Rayleigh sighed at the deviousness of such actions. "So the entire world heard that story and saw the elders order the Marines to execute the Marines just for hearing it?"
Jack nodded with a smile, "And they saw the fight as well. They saw Titan get his ass kicked and saw you kicking ass!"
Rayleigh rolled his eyes. Titan was doing fine until that elder went super mode and Rayleigh only won thanks to having his own super super mode and coincidentally having a sword that can affect devil fruits at an esoteric level. Moreover, way to much of that battle was not to his liking. Rayleigh trained his Aura to exhaustion as often as possible every day, so he had plenty, but he was two and a half minutes from empty at the end of that fight and he'd only been using the Red Sword of Babylon for about an hour. The only reason he even lasted so long was because the Force-Phenomenon state made him ridiculously efficient, otherwise he would have ran out of nen fighting Elder Nusjuro.
A small part of Rayleigh wanted to ask what happened to the Marines, but in the end, it didn't matter. Rayleigh had done enough, both for them and against them. He killed Blackbeard, two elders, two sword gods, and annihilated the whole of Marineford.
Though, there was one person he wanted to know about. "What happened to Mihawk?"
"Mihawk? He took Doflamingo with him and left. Something about finding more opponents."
It was only then that Rayleigh even remembered the flamboyant warlord. After making that strong cage, the man had completely stayed out of the entire fight. It seemed that Mihawk had some use for him though, which wasn't a surprise. Mihawk likely no longer considered himself a Warlord and he needed a new source of opponents to test his sword on.
Seeing that Rayleigh wasn't asking more questions, Captain Jack took the initiative to ask, "So what about you Swordsman? What are your plans?"
"Why are you asking?"
"Well, me and a lot of the others are going to the Jedi Galaxy. The entire place seems to be a powder keg ready to burst, and going in after the shit hits the fan will be too late."
"So you want me to come with?"
"Well, we do need a Jedi. I can take us anywhere we need to go with my Hatsu. As long as I am the Captain of a Ship, I can manipulate the needle of my compass to point where I want to go and chart a course there. That's how I found Laugh Tale and Vegapunk. I was looking for the One Piece and later looking for someone would could translate what I found. Besides, you do owe me."
Rayleigh laughed, "Ha! You were the ones who wanted the Elder dead, you were the ones who all but invited him, and you were the one who antagonized him to attack me. I don't owe you anything and I have no desire to serve on a ship driven by a Captain Jack. I've seen all the movies and his crew rarely comes out on top." Rayleigh wasn't just spouting made up nonsense. If he really owed Jack, he'd know. Jack was just bluffing and trying to take advantage of Rayleigh.
Jack shook his head, "Oh well. More fun for us then."
Rayleigh smiled, "Not so much. Just because you didn't convince me to join your crew doesn't mean you didn't convince me to go. Yeah. I'm definitely going."
Jack tried to smile at that and pretend it was good news, but he knew it was not. Rayleigh was not the kind of competition he wanted and he could only hope that they were never forced to cross paths.
Rayleigh gave a real smile at Jack's plight and returned to filling his stomach. Although what Jack said played a part, he knew that going back really was the best idea for him. Rayleigh needed to know himself, which meant doing lots of different things. To anyone of his age, this meant going on random adventures. The Pirate World had their adventures taken by Players, so it was better to go to a bigger stage where there was enough room for everyone.
Besides, in order to master the power of the Devil Fruits inside his Kyber Crystal, he would need more Force training, and the best place to train the Force was the Jedi Galaxy. It was time to go back home.
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