CHAPTER 84: CHAPTER 84: THE LARGEST SCALE, A BUSTER CALL WITH TWO ADMIRALS

"...That’s how it is, Fleet Admiral Sengoku."

In the evening, the five Headquarters Vice Admirals were directing nearly ten thousand Marine soldiers in repairing the broken main and secondary masts and the sails that had been burned to ashes.

Aokiji, meanwhile, was sitting on his beach chair, reporting the situation to Sengoku via a Den Den Mushi.

"The Rumble-Rumble Fruit... is it really that powerful?" the Den Den Mushi mimicked Sengoku’s grave expression as he asked in a deep voice.

"Ah..." Aokiji scratched his head and said helplessly, "It’s not that he’s unbeatable. I can’t beat him, but he can’t beat me either."

"The main thing is, the lightning element, just like Borsalino’s light, is just too cheap when it comes to speed."

"His teleportation is even more unsolvable than Borsalino’s ’refraction.’ He travels as an electric current, ignoring obstacles. Although my Observation Haki can see it, I can’t intercept him at all."

"He has no intention of getting entangled with me; his sole focus is destroying the warships. I can stop him from destroying the ships themselves, but I could only watch as he destroyed the masts and sails."

"..."

Sengoku fell silent on the other end.

A few seconds later, the Den Den Mushi mimicked a pained expression. "This Buster Call... that fellow Morgans has spread the news all over the world. Right now, the New World, the first half of the Grand Line, and the Four Blues are all watching the Marines’ actions."

"Therefore, the Buster Call cannot be stopped halfway. The dignity of Mary Geoise and the Marines is at stake..."

After a slight pause, Sengoku said decisively, "Since the masts are gone, use your ability to freeze the sea and proceed with the paddle wheels."

"Since that brat said that no one can stop him except Borsalino, I’ll contact Borsalino now and have him go to the New World to assist you."

"Ara, ara... dispatching two Admirals?" Aokiji remarked with a slight sigh. "A Buster Call of this scale... is only comparable to the one back then when you, Fleet Admiral Sengoku, and Vice Admiral Garp personally led the team against Douglas Bullet, isn’t it?"

"Enough with the nonsense, get moving!"

Sengoku seemed to be in a very bad mood. After deciding to escalate the Buster Call to its maximum scale, he immediately berated Aokiji: "When are you going to change that lazy, listless attitude of yours? The whole world is watching! Your failure might have already been photographed by that birdman Morgans."

"You are one of the Marines’ top powers! Your every move affects the Marines’ image in the eyes of the public."

"A Buster Call being stopped halfway by a single person? Are you trying to make the whole world laugh at the Marines’ incompetence?"

"Gran Tesoro can move too. While you’re stopped, you might be losing ground."

"So, get serious for me, now!"

After scolding Aokiji, Sengoku hung up the call directly.

"Ara, ara..." Looking at the Den Den Mushi with its head hung low, Aokiji muttered his catchphrase, but his face was filled with seriousness as he said to himself, "Actually, I’ve been serious since our eighth clash."

Aokiji was truly helpless.

If his opponent wasn’t a Logia user, or at least not a top-tier one, then even if the enemy were a New World Emperor, Aokiji wouldn’t be so passive.

But as it happened, his opponent was the user of the Logia-type Rumble-Rumble Fruit.

Among the three types of Devil Fruits, Logia was publicly acknowledged as the strongest.

Besides their wide attack range and low stamina consumption, the strongest and most unsolvable ability of Logia users was elementalization.

This ability, even with the most basic element and even for someone who had just eaten the fruit, would cause their strength to skyrocket, allowing them to become a Supernova in the first half of the Grand Line.

For a top-tier Logia user, elementalization was even more unsolvable. By incorporating Observation Haki, they could predict an enemy’s attack and elementalize in advance, making them virtually no different from being immortal.

Unless one’s strength was overwhelmingly superior, rendering elementalization useless, Logia users held the advantage in a fight between equals.

Aokiji, who had developed his Ice-Ice Fruit to an extremely high level and whose comprehensive strength was definitely worthy of an Admiral, could handle the four Emperors of the New World with ease.

Although in terms of overall strength and endurance, Aokiji might be slightly inferior to those monsters, he was confident he could fight for several days and then leave gracefully, provided the opponent didn’t team up with their subordinates to deal with him.

But with Karl as the enemy, it was a different story.

When Logia users fight, unless there’s a power disparity or an elemental weakness, it’s always a duel of stamina.

He couldn’t do anything to me, and I couldn’t do anything to him.

The only way to settle it was to see who could exhaust the other’s Haki and stamina first, then fight fairly without elementalization.

If Karl were just a "mortal" like Ace, who had eaten the so-called strongest Logia, the Rumble-Rumble Fruit, his strength would at best place him as a gatekeeper to the top tier of the Warlords of the Sea, on the same level as Doflamingo.

But as fate would have it, the sea was far too kind to this young man of the new era.

The Logia-type Rumble-Rumble Fruit, unparalleled two-color Haki, and a monstrous physique similar to Charlotte Linlin’s.

The latter, in particular, gave him, at such a young age, the physical fitness and Haki capacity to rival those at the very top without being inferior.

With a superior element and a stronger physique, only lacking in certain techniques and combat experience compared to the monsters, the most Aokiji could do was fight him to a draw.

As for capturing him...

Aokiji was certain that even if he and Akainu teamed up, they couldn’t do it.

The only one who could stop Karl was the oldest and most unfathomable of the three, Kizaru Borsalino.

Just as Sengoku had said, the news of the Buster Call had been sold across the world by that loudmouth Morgans, and the entire world was watching the Marines’ every move.

Morgans, knowing this topic was a huge selling point, had long since dispatched a staggering number of news coos to keep an eye on both Gran Tesoro and the ten Buster Call warships from the sky, gathering intelligence for him.

When he saw Karl’s surprise attack on the Buster Call and his success in destroying the main and secondary masts of all ten warships, an ecstatic Morgans immediately published the information in the World Economic Journal, selling it all over the world and making a massive profit.

It had to be said, Morgans’ greatest strength wasn’t making stars, but creating hype.

Star-making was just a form of hype.

Relying on his hype-creation skills and his fearless courage, his news could always capture the world’s attention.

Once a topic’s popularity was hyped up, the newspapers sold well.

Clearly...

This protracted battle between Karl and the Marine Buster Call was bound to fatten Morgans’ little treasury even more.

Neither Karl nor Aokiji knew that Morgans had already sold the results of their first clash to the entire world.

After eavesdropping on Aokiji and Sengoku’s conversation with his Observation Haki, Karl also took out a Den Den Mushi and contacted Carina and the others, telling them to continue dismantling the Golden City while having the Island Turtle pull Gran Tesoro along.

Putting down the Den Den Mushi, Karl smiled playfully. "Sending that old man to stop me? That makes things even easier."

Why did Karl deliberately remind Aokiji that besides Kizaru, even the Akainu he had never met couldn’t stop him?

It wasn’t arrogance; he was deliberately setting a trap for the Marines.

Although it was true, just as he said, that neither Aokiji nor Akainu could stop him.

But...

Ice and magma, besides being able to counter each other, could also cooperate to produce an effect greater than the sum of their parts.

The same was true for Karl and Kizaru.

If the two of them were colleagues instead of enemies, then if they teamed up, even the Emperors of the New World would have to go all out.

Karl couldn’t destroy the warships while Aokiji was protecting them, and it would be even more impossible under the protection of two Admirals.

If he had to face two Admirals, Karl would definitely choose Aokiji and Kizaru, not Aokiji and Akainu.

The latter combination of ice and magma, one for crowd control and one for area-of-effect damage, was more destructive than a Buster Call. Even with his little dragon, Karl wasn’t confident he could protect Gran Tesoro from their combined assault.

But if it were Aokiji and Kizaru, that was a different story.

Karl could definitely hold off Kizaru, blocking all of his large-scale attacks.

His little dragon could similarly hold off Aokiji, whose crowd control was strong but whose destructive power wasn’t as terrifying as Akainu’s.

As long as they could stall the two Admirals until Nami gained full control of the Golden City, then this protracted battle would be a victory for Karl’s crew.

Because the Marines could, at most, dispatch two Admirals.

Of the three Admirals, unless they were at Marineford, Mary Geoise would not agree to Sengoku sending Akainu out.

At all times, one Admiral had to be stationed at Marineford.

"Ice Age!"

At that moment, Aokiji’s voice, overheard via Observation Haki, reached Karl’s ears.

The next second, he witnessed a scene that truly changed the face of the world.

He was dozens of nautical miles away from the ten warships.

But when Karl looked down, the surging sea below him, and the sea for an unknown number of miles beyond, had turned into a vast, white ice field.

"This range... it’s truly absurd."

A rare look of amazement appeared on Karl’s face.

Because as far as his perception could reach, all he could see was a frozen sea.

What did this mean?

It meant that the area of the sea frozen by Aokiji was even larger than Karl’s perception range.

Even with his unparalleled perception, Karl couldn’t see the end of it.

...The Ice-Ice Fruit.

As one of the top-tier Logia abilities, although the Ice-Ice Fruit’s physical destructive power couldn’t compare to the all-burning Magma-Magma Fruit or the explosively powerful Glint-Glint Fruit, its area of effect was the strongest among all Logias, in addition to possessing a low-temperature cold air that was just as deadly as other top-tier Logias.

At least, based on Karl’s knowledge of Logias, no Logia user could compare to Aokiji in terms of range, including himself and Sakazuki Akainu, who won the battle for Fleet Admiral on Punk Hazard and turned half the island into a volcano in the original story.

In the main story, Aokiji once helped refugees by using his Ice-Ice Fruit ability to freeze the sea.

The frozen sea could be walked on by ordinary people in one direction for a week without melting.

Assuming an ordinary person can walk 40-60 kilometers a day, the minimum range of Aokiji’s frozen sea would be 280 kilometers, and the maximum range an astonishing 420 kilometers.

In this world of seas, the Ice-Ice Fruit possessed an absolute range advantage that other top-tier Logias did not have.

It was precisely this ridiculously unreasonable freezing range that allowed Aokiji, who was several years younger than Akainu and Kizaru, to be promoted to Marine Admiral alongside them.

BZZZZT...

After marveling at Aokiji’s Ice-Ice Fruit, Karl’s wrist and part of his arm, shining with blue-white lightning, detached from his body.

Dozens of nautical miles away, above the Buster Call warships that were repairing their masts and moving across the ice with their paddle wheels, a dazzling blue-white light once again condensed.

But this time, no lightning pillar struck down.

The area covered by the blue-white light was not directly above the warships, but over the ice field in front of them.

RUMBLE...

A deafening roar of thunder echoed in the clear sky.

Similar to Kizaru’s Yasakani no Magatama, bolts of lightning, both large and small, rained down like a torrential storm.

CRACKLE...

The power of each bolt of lightning was enough to destroy a small sailboat.

As they fell like a barrage, a series of explosions immediately rang out across the ice field.

Countless cracks spread out in all directions, creating craters of various sizes and depths.

The intense electrical heat melted the ice surface.

When the warships, using their paddle wheels, drove onto the ruined ice surface, it was as if they had stepped into a trap, falling into the seawater filled with broken ice.

"Ara, ara... is he trying to compete with me in a battle of attrition this time?"

Seeing this, Aokiji instantly understood Karl’s intention.

His goal was still to prevent the warships from advancing.

It was just that he had switched from close-range attacks on the masts to long-range attacks on the ice field.

"But... my colleague is coming soon. This method won’t work on me."

Aokiji, unaware that Karl’s Observation Haki could eavesdrop, muttered to himself.

Then, he began a new round of battle with Karl.

Unlike the first round of attacking and blocking, this time it was a competition of who had more stamina.

Without a doubt, the advantage in this round of contest had shifted from Karl to Aokiji.

With the logistical supplies of ten warships and Life Return, even though Aokiji’s physical constitution was not as good as Karl’s, his stamina would not lose out to Karl’s.

And so...

Aokiji continuously released cold air to freeze the sea, while Karl continuously released ten thousand volts to destroy the ice field.

The ten warships moved, then stopped, moved, then stopped...

A day passed just like that.

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