In the New World, scenes like this were playing out one after another in every corner, as terrifying and elusive as ghosts.
Every tiny movement seemed to foreshadow the arrival of disaster.
And at that moment, the most shocking scene of all was unfolding in the dreaded Florian Triangle.
This sea had always been famous for its strange and bizarre nature, and now it was covered in a layer of fog so thick and dark it resembled ink.
The dense mist was like an enormous beast, swallowing the entire surface of the sea and making it impossible to see the path ahead.
In that deathly atmosphere, the faint, mournful groan of twisting metal could be heard, echoing across the empty waters like a wail from the depths of hell and making the skin crawl.
Three imposing Marine warships had originally been sailing steadily across the sea.
Then, without warning, it was as if an invisible giant hand had seized them tightly.
Their hulls began to tremble violently. The heavy armor plates gradually caved inward amid sharp, grating creaks, as though some overwhelming force were ravaging those sturdy war machines at will.
The soldiers on deck instantly fell into chaos, their faces filled with terror and confusion.
Before they could fully react, a mountain-crushing force suddenly pressed down on their bodies. Their organs felt as though they had been gripped by an invisible hand and yanked downward.
Some could not endure the sudden pressure and collapsed straight to their knees, blood gushing from their noses and ears like springs and staining the deck beneath them red.
"G-gravity is increasing!"
The observer's voice was filled with extreme fear. His face had already been pressed tightly against the floor, his eyes wide and full of despair.
As the gravity continued to intensify, his eyeballs were slowly being forced back into his skull. The pain was unimaginable.
Three hundred meters beneath the sea, a strange change suddenly took place in what should have been calm waters.
A massive spherical cavity appeared silently, its diameter reaching an astonishing thousand meters.
The pitch-black seabed looked like a bloody maw opening wide, greedily swallowing everything around it and giving off a terrifying aura.
Under that tremendous power, the warship's keel released one final despairing groan.
The entire vessel lost its balance and began tilting at a forty-five-degree angle.
...
All kinds of equipment and supplies aboard the ship lost control as well.
Cannon mounts, ammunition crates, and even fixed communications towers rolled toward the bow like candy, colliding with one another in a chaotic clamor.
Amid the chaos, a Rear Admiral from the Science Unit tried to activate the levitation device to respond to the sudden crisis.
But the instant he started the device, his entire body was slammed sideways into the bridge.
A teeth-grinding series of cracks rang out.
It was the sound of his alloy skeleton giving way beneath his uniform.
The gravity had already reached ten times, perhaps even fifteen times, normal levels. Against such overwhelming force, any resistance seemed tiny and powerless.
Just as everyone fell into desperation, two crimson lights suddenly shone from deep within the fog, like the eyes of a demon flickering in the darkness.
A man wearing an inverted-cross eyepatch slowly appeared at the bow of a ghost ship.
A black cloak hung over his shoulders, yet within that abnormal gravity field, it did not move in the slightest.
He was the ruler of this space.
His expression was cold and arrogant, his eyes filled with disdain and mockery.
He slowly raised his right hand, which was adorned with jeweled rings, and a purple-black orb of light began to gather at his fingertips.
The orb emitted a strange glow, and the space around it warped visibly, as if time and space had been twisted into a knot.
"The Marine Science Unit's anti-gravity device?"
The man let out a cold sneer.
His laugh spread across the sea along with the muffled sounds of bones bursting, making everyone shudder.
"That old man Vegapunk still loves playing with children's toys."
His words were filled with contempt and ridicule toward his opponent.
As his five fingers suddenly closed, an even more terrifying force erupted.
Under the impact of that power, the three once-glorious warships were crushed by the pressure of the deep sea, their wreckage instantly flattened into three metal pancakes.
Broken parts and debris flew in every direction, throwing up a massive spray of seawater.
The blood mist that burst out had no time to spread through the air before the terrifying gravity field mercilessly compressed it into a strange red sphere.
The blood sphere floated quietly in the man's palm, giving off a nauseating stench.
"Tell Kizaru—"
The man raised his head slightly, his gaze piercing through the fog as if he could see the enemy far away.
He hurled the blood sphere into the sky.
The instant it left the gravity field, it exploded with a boom, turning into a rain of blood that scattered across the sea.
The bloody scene was like the end of one nightmare, and the beginning of another.
"Send an Admiral next time."
The man's voice echoed over the sea, carrying endless threat.
...
Above another stretch of ocean stood a volcanic archipelago that looked as though it had risen from the depths of hell.
It was like a giant natural furnace, radiating a terrifying aura.
Scorching energy surged from deep within the earth's crust, covering the entire area in a bizarre and magnificent scene.
Crimson magma rolled wildly across the vast sea like an untamed beast.
Every churn looked as if the earth itself were struggling in pain, sending waves of lava splashing high into the air.
As the magma moved violently, thick sulfurous smoke rose and spread rapidly like a heavy black curtain, tightly blocking out the sky.
Even sunlight could not pierce that dark barrier, and the world instantly fell into a murky, yellow haze.
In that dangerous stretch of sea, the Marine ironclad Black Iron Fortress, once the pride of the Navy, was now groaning like a wounded beast on the verge of death.
Its steel armor, once thought indestructible, had begun to melt slowly under the roasting heat like fragile wax.
The metal surface that had once shone with a cold, stern luster was now covered in orange-red molten steel, dripping slowly down the sides of the ship.
When the scalding metal fell into the seawater, it instantly solidified into hideous coral-like lumps of metal, as though the sea itself were mocking the warship without mercy.
"Fire! Hurry up and fire!"
The captain's voice was filled with extreme fear and despair, nearly hysterical as he roared.
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