As expected, in the very next second after Aphrodite's knee strike sent Doflamingo flying, Doflamingo's aura changed abruptly.
Lightning flickered all over his body, and even the surrounding air, soil, plants, and buildings were assimilated into lightning.
Tsuru was the first to sense that something was wrong and shouted anxiously at Aphrodite,
"Aphrodite, it's dangerous, run!"
Hearing Tsuru's warning, the smug look on Aphrodite's face froze for a moment.
She turned her head toward Tsuru in confusion, even pointing at herself and then forward.
Danger?
Danger where?
Doflamingo?
Come on, Tsuru-san!
Did you not see how miserably I beat Doflamingo just now?!
You must be jealous of me, right?!
In the very next instant after her moment of triumph, Aphrodite's body instinctively felt a sense of crisis.
It was like being stared at by a ferocious beast; she could not move, did not dare to move. Her hair stood on end, goosebumps rose all over her skin.
She slowly turned her head back. What did Aphrodite see?
Including herself, everything around her was lightning. Behind where Doflamingo's body had been, a mass of black thunderclouds was floating.
No,
rather than saying "body," it was more accurate to say it was a phantom outline made of blue lightning.
If Doflamingo hadn't deliberately formed a human shape, it would be completely impossible to tell where he actually was.
Tsuru and the other two saw that everything within a radius of a hundred meters was engulfed by lightning, and that radius was still continuously expanding outward.
High above, black clouds pressed down over the city while lightning flashed within them.
It was like the end of the world. The three of them did not dare to recklessly step even half a pace into that zone.
"Die! Fufufufufu…"
Within Doflamingo's lightning domain, every living creature and every building, apart from Enel, was reduced to ash, not a trace left behind in the world.
Doflamingo grabbed Enel and wrapped him in a spherical mass of lightning.
Then he completely let himself go. When the black thunderclouds in the sky drifted over to the area above Trebol and the others, Doflamingo encased the area around Trebol and company in spherical lightning as well.
By contrast, the marines under Tsuru's command had already, at the very moment Aphrodite died,
begun rapidly retreating. With her broad experience, Tsuru and the others certainly understood that this was the awakened state of the Goro Goro no Mi (Rumble-Rumble Fruit).
Facing a Logia with such overwhelming destructive power, it wasn't that Tsuru lacked courage, but that their strength was simply not on the same level.
With no means to restrain his ability, Tsuru did not want to make a meaningless sacrifice and urged the marines to board the warships and withdraw at once.
When the explosions and fires first erupted in the Coal-Coal Kingdom's royal square, the royal family and ordinary citizens all fell into chaos, but still, no one chose to abandon their own country.
However, when black thunderclouds began spreading from above the square as the center point, expanding outward at a terrifying speed until they covered the entire island,
it was already too late for anyone on the island to escape.
Innumerable bolts of uncontrollable lightning raged all over the island. Doflamingo no longer even had a human form, having completely become lightning.
Any lightning flash streaking past might be Doflamingo, and Doflamingo might be every drifting bolt, every spreading arc of electricity.
By the time Tsuru had led half the marines back onto the warships, she forced herself to harden her heart and immediately ordered the fleet to pull away from the Coal-Coal Kingdom.
Why was it so hard to be ruthless?
Because countless civilians and nobles on the island were casting pleading looks toward the marines, begging to be saved. With a heart that cherished justice, Tsuru desperately wanted to rescue those innocent people.
But reason told her she could not. So Tsuru gave the order to steer away from the island.
The navy certainly had its share of "soft" justice types, and Vice Admiral Saul was a classic example.
Even though Tsuru had already issued a strict order to retreat, the kind-hearted Saul did not abandon the civilians and leave.
Instead, risking his life, he stayed behind with an empty warship, repeatedly urging civilians to board and evacuate.
Sadly, only in absolute despair can one see the ugliness of human nature, and only in dire straits can one see its precious side.
In this world-ending despair, with lightning running wild and everyone terrified, fleeing on any boat seemed safer than staying on land, and nothing was safer than a navy warship.
The civilians pushed and shoved, and in just a short while the warship was packed to the brim, with not even a foothold of space left.
This left Saul, who was supposed to maintain order and handle the steering, with almost no room to maneuver.
Even so, Saul kept his smile, never losing his temper over the civilians' desperation.
And at that moment, the royal family of the Coal-Coal Kingdom arrived with the royal army, mowing down the civilians clustered by the ship's side with gunfire in order to clear out an insulated zone, then surging forward themselves in a frenzy.
Who knows if something was wrong with the royals' heads. Seeing how huge Saul's body was and how much space he took up,
they directly ordered the gunners to fire on Saul, trying to force him off the ship to make more room for the royal family and nobles.
In order not to let the civilians be caught in the crossfire, Saul had no choice but to jump into the sea and give up his spot, leaving the warship entirely to the people of the kingdom.
Once the royal family and nobles had all boarded, they instantly realized a massive problem:
no one knew how to pilot a warship.
Watching the black thunderclouds roll over their heads, the royals of the Coal-Coal Kingdom began to panic. The king went mad, ordering the soldiers to set sail, even hacking at them with his sword, but it was all useless.
No one who could sail the ship was a hard reality.
As for Saul, forced into the sea and leaving the warship to the kingdom's people because he assumed they knew how to handle it, he started swimming toward Tsuru's position.
Halfway there, Saul suddenly realized something was wrong. A warship was certainly not slow. How had it not overtaken him yet?
He glanced back, and the kind-hearted Saul fell into utter despair. His faith began to waver.
What did Saul see? A massive black bolt of lightning descended from the heavens.
… … …
Like a meteor crashing down, like the sky collapsing and the earth cracking, a black-blue flash sliced past, and the entire warship, along with that section of sea, vanished without a trace.
Saul cried, cried like a child, with snot running as he questioned the world itself, questioned the navy.
The very people he had done his utmost to save had driven him away. The evil pirates could not be punished. The "righteous" marines looked the other way. What had this world become?
Thinking back to what King Harlald had said, Saul felt he ought to return to Elbaf.
They might all be a band of savages, but he had to admit it: Elbaf was without a doubt the strongest nation in the world right now. Perhaps by going back, he could once again find the answer he sought.
He did not hesitate again. Tears streamed down his face, but with new thoughts in his heart, Saul swam onward.
In just one hour, the entire island had been ravaged by wild lightning, and even the soil itself carried electric charge.
The black thunderclouds in the sky did not disperse; if anything, they grew thicker, and from time to time lightning streaked across the heavens before suddenly lancing down toward the island in multiple bolts.
Because of the Coal-Coal Kingdom's special nature, the island's soil contained a massive amount of coal.
This caused flames to continuously erupt from the ground all over the island. Under blazing high temperatures and with lightning pouring in, the island quickly became unimaginably dry.
Strangely, the soil on the island did not degrade because of this. After being subjected to extreme heat, heavy rain suddenly poured down.
Yet the rain did not extinguish the underground fires. On the contrary, the flames seemed to burn even fiercer, creating a bizarre natural disaster landscape.
(End of Chapter)
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