After the Dark-Dark Fruit awakened, its suppression of other users felt like having seastone bullets pumped into your veins and then being chained head to toe.
That was why Rocks had feared no one in his own crew—
yet he fell before Garp and Roger.
Two masters of pure Haki.
While Garp and Whitebeard forced a path through the chaos, Roger's desperate assault became Rocks's downfall.
His Awakened darkness invaded Roger's blood,
searing into his bloodline factor itself.
Unless Roger could travel decades into the future and meet Vegapunk—
to undergo the kind of cellular rebirth that once cured Bonney's jade-scale disease—
there would be no cure.
Only three Awakened fruits could possibly undo it:
the Op-Op Fruit, to heal at the cost of a life;
the Sick-Sick Fruit, to exchange one illness for another;
and the Nika form, the Sun-God's power that could drive away darkness.*
But those three awakenings were near-impossible.
One granted immortality, one was almost mythical, and one had not appeared for eight hundred years.
So Roger's fate was sealed—
to sail the world searching for answers while the darkness slowly ate away at him,
until sickness claimed him even as he became the Pirate King.
Now Rocks had dealt the blow of a lifetime,
and it wounded even him.
Blood dripped from his chest into the darkness below as he looked at Roger and smiled wider and wider.
"Roger! Are you willing to pay that price?"
His voice thundered through the valley.
He wasn't wrong—
as long as Roger lived as a pirate, the hunt would never end.
Could anyone really run forever?
Impel Down was full of pirates who had simply grown old and weak before capture.
Unless one trained heirs loyal unto death, the cycle never stopped.
In Rocks's age, pirates had no "family," no "crews of comrades."
They were insects on the same ship, waiting to stab the captain when he weakened.
Rocks refused to die like that, an aging king surrounded by vultures.
If he must rule, he would rule forever.
Why not seize immortality, unshakable power, and replace the Celestial Dragons themselves?
Whitebeard, Shiki, Linlin—he had planned to make them the new Elders and Admirals,
while he ruled unseen behind the curtain.
"Just one more step!" he howled.
"Roger, you ruined everything—I was one step away!
One day you'll do worse than I ever did!"
Darkness thickened, stripping Roger's skin and bloodline.
"My Haki nullifies fruit effects—it's useless, Rocks!" Roger shouted.
His three-colored Haki had reached its peak. He refused to believe a fruit could harm him.
A burst of black smoke flared—yet all it did was erase the Love-Love Fruit's lingering charm.
Why? Even an awakened fruit shouldn't act like that.
"You're ignorant!" Rocks sneered.
"The Dark-Dark Fruit is unique.
It rewrites blood itself.
If it cannot turn my body into pure element, then it compensates another way.
Heaven is fair—it took my control of the sea but gave me dominion over life itself.
Tell me, Roger—do you regret it now?"
He flung Roger backward, blade sliding free.
Roger fell from the sky, blood trailing behind.
Above him, the darkness raged, and the madman who cursed the world's betrayal gave the savior of the seas a wound that would never heal—
corruption of the bloodline factor, the Dark-Dark Fruit's ultimate strike.
It was the mirror of the Op-Op Fruit's awakening—one steals a life to grant immortality,
the other sacrifices itself to condemn.
"I regret nothing!" Roger shouted into the abyss.
"I don't believe you," Rocks laughed.
"Unless you swear never to seek a cure, never to be hunted, never to be hailed their savior!
Hahaha! This world's a farce—only I see clearly!"
He was no longer human.
Behind him, the abyss twisted, forming a monstrous shadow with a gaping maw that devoured him whole.
"I offer myself to the demon—
and the rest of you to the Reaper!"
Rocks sacrificed himself, fusing with the devil within.
"Roger!"
Rayleigh slashed apart the encroaching tendrils and caught his captain's limp body on his back.
"You idiot, always acting alone!" he scolded.
Roger laughed, breath rattling.
"Rayleigh, our era is just beginning! Even if my life's running out, the world will never be the same!"
Madness.
But Rayleigh only cursed inwardly.
In later ages, no one would know the truth—that the man called Pirate King had once borne a hero's wound to save the world.
"Roger!"
Garp smashed another mass of darkness with his fist.
"Oi, Marines—stay back! We'll protect the captain!" Jaba roared, his twin axes cleaving tendrils apart as the crew formed a wall around Roger.
"Save your breath! Rocks is the one who deserves to die!"
Zefa's fist shattered another wave as he stood beside Garp, guarding the rear.
Most others—fruit users all—were barely standing.
Even Whitebeard and Shiki could only keep their Haki flaring to shield themselves.
The weaker ones teetered on madness.
Several Marine vice-admirals with Zoan powers lost control entirely, overtaken by demonic will.
They would later be subdued and imprisoned in Impel Down, becoming tireless wardens who never slept again.
"No one escapes! No one!"
Rocks's laughter froze every heart.
His voice overlapped with something else—
a deeper, colder tone that made skin crawl.
"Perhaps…"
The demonized Rocks floated amid the dark.
In his final moments his mind echoed back and forth with the devil itself.
"Why do we, the ones with D, keep meeting?"
"Is it chance… or destiny?"
"Maybe someone long ago thought the same as me."
"If so, he must have succeeded—and now moves the world from the shadows."
"Otherwise, where did the legend of the Op-Op Fruit's immortality come from?"
"The Will of D never dies with bloodlines."
"Whose will did I inherit—and who will walk my path next?"
"Roger, Garp—you can't escape it. The Will of D!"
The demon's whisper never left the darkness.
Only Roger, half-conscious on Rayleigh's back, turned at the sound.
"You two can hear me, can't you?" Rocks's voice faded.
"Then don't forget—find the answer."
He laughed—and vanished from their minds.
A stabbing pain shot through Roger's skull.
The Will of D. The hidden ones. The answer.
"You two"…?
Roger possessed the ability to hear all things—
but who was the second one the voice spoke to?
He looked across the ruined valley, now a maelstrom of screams and shadows.
Among them was a young man—Sharn—
ordinary, almost invisible.
And at that moment,
the Will of D stirred again—
awakening anew.
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