With a low growl filled with boundless ferocity, Ace's powerful right hand suddenly tightened its grip. Without a trace of hesitation, he yanked upward, forcing the Supreme Grade blade—driven deep into the soil behind the nameless mound—out of its twenty-year slumber.
Clang!
A joyful sword cry, carrying an incredibly violent and unruly quality, resounded across the sea cliffs of Baterilla Island. It wasn't the mere scraping of steel against packed earth, but the sudden, resonant vibration of a Supreme Grade weapon that had once accompanied the Pirate King in cutting down everything across the Grand Line. After two decades of silence, the weapon had finally re-aligned with an even more domineering, kingly aura.
The instant the blade cleared the soil, visible arcs of dark red lightning violently erupted from the dark red metal. This wasn't a flare produced by Ace's current output; it was the residual sword intent left behind by the blade's previous master—a physical memory imprinted onto the steel after undergoing countless top-tier applications of Conqueror's Haki Infusion.
Staring at the concentrated, crackling crimson lightning coiling along the edge, Ace's dark eyes flashed with an absolute, brilliant focus.
"An extremely compressed will... physicalized destructive power."
Looking at the most intuitive demonstration of Conqueror's Haki Infusion displayed directly before his chest, the final, thin veil that Ace had been struggling to pierce through during his solitary meditations was instantly shredded by the presence of this blade. Unlike the swordsmen who feared the weight of an egoistic demon sword, Ace's lips split into a cold, dominant smile.
With a thought, he released the full, unyielding mass of his own Conqueror's Haki, letting the spiritual flood gate burst entirely.
"Now that you're awake, let's scrub that old man's traces from the steel!"
Boom!
Ace poured his ferocious kingly pressure into the hilt like a burst dam.
Two distinct manifestations of Conqueror's Haki, spanning twenty winters of separation, clashed violently along the single edge. But within a heartbeat, Roger's residual sword intent was completely consumed, overridden and replaced by Ace's far more tyrannical, youthful presence. His dark red lightning compressed to an unthinkable extreme, reconfiguring into visible bands of solid black-and-red electricity that wrapped tightly around the slender blade.
The ultimate technique of the highest seas—Conqueror's Haki Infusion.
"Let's see if a Supreme Grade weapon can withstand my baseline temperature," Ace murmured.
His fingers clamped hard against the silver, semi-enclosed crossguard, the muscle tissue of his right arm expanding. High-grade Ryuo slid over the metal like liquid oil, followed immediately by an aggressive, blistering surge of the red-gold Vermilion Bird Divine Fire, a thermal profile capable of vaporizing industrial steel on contact.
The combination of extreme physical heat and top-tier Haki Infusion was complete. If this had been an ordinary blade from a lower forge, it would have dissolved into white-hot slag the moment the currents crossed. Ace would have been forced to expend massive reserves of Haki simply to insulate the weapon from his own Zoan fire.
But Ace was built for the storm.
The Supreme Grade cutlass perfectly absorbed the heat, the extreme pressure of the Conqueror's Infusion organically fusing the divine fire with his Haki, forging a Shura sword that seemed capable of searing through the deep dark of hell.
Ace turned his boots toward the open, churning South Blue basin stretching before the cliff. He raised the burning blade high, the steel crackling with Ryuo, fire, and black-red lightning flashes.
Like a demon pronouncing a death sentence upon a civilian world, he brought the weapon down with absolute, unreserved force.
"Cut!"
There was no complex martial technique or sword form behind the motion—only the purest, most unreasonable application of absolute destruction. A single crescent of crimson fire, thousands of meters long and seemingly endless, sheared through the air like a descending sun.
Rumble—!
The entire expanse of the South Blue before Baterilla Island was cleanly halved.
A massive, bottomless trench tore through the ocean matrix, the rocky seabed that had remained dormant for centuries in the deep dark cleaved open by the blade, leaving a jagged, smoking rift. Before the displaced water could collapse back into the void, the immense heat of the Vermilion Bird vaporized tens of thousands of tons of sea water along the margins, launching massive columns of white steam straight into the clouds.
A dead silence settled over the coast. Aside from the high-frequency hiss of the boiling water, the entire region seemed to have lost its voice under the weight of that single strike.
"Phew..."
Ace exhaled a long plume of hot vapor, his dark red trench coat fluttering against the steam-laden wind. He glanced down at the long, slender blade resting in his palm. After enduring such an immense thermal and spiritual load, the steel remained flawless, without a single hairline blemish, its surface only slightly warm to the touch.
A profound satisfaction settled in his eyes. "From this hour, you carry my lineage."
He twirled the blade casually before sliding it into the scabbard at his hip. Turning his back to the cliff without a second glance, he strode toward the secluded bay where a compact scouting aircraft sat moored. He vanished into the clouds, setting a direct, high-speed course back toward the Torino Kingdom.
Time slipped past in a continuous rhythm. Over a month had passed since Ace's return to the World Tree.
During these weeks, Ace spent his hours stabilizing his grip on the newly mastered Conqueror's Infusion, testing the air current dynamics with the giant raptors in the canopy, and occasionally harvesting the apex sea predators that surfaced near the shoals.
Deep within the hollowed trunk of the world tree, a different breakthrough was reached.
"Hahaha! The parameters are stable! It's complete!!!"
Dr. Indigo, his face hollowed by massive dark circles, was leaping erratically across the laboratory table. His workstation was cluttered with a chaotic array of extracted roots and rare flora, his hand clutching a glass vial that emitted a deep, ethereal blue luminescence.
"Indigo, your synthesis was perfect! The Trinol Ann specimen we harvested from the roots completely neutralized the genetic toxicity within the SIQ stock solution!" Chopper cried out, his large eyes welling with tears of academic relief as he clutched his tiny hooves together.
After more than a month of continuous failures, having filtered through half the scrolls in the ancient library and compiled hundreds of local herbs, the team had finalized the world's first stable human talent enhancement serum—codename: Limit Breaker.
Click.
The heavy timber door of the laboratory bay swung open, and Ace walked into the room. The new Supreme Grade blade hung silent at his waist, his dark red trench coat settling around his frame as his boots tapped against the wood.
"Captain! The asset is secure!" Chopper ran forward, hoisting the dark blue vial with his hooves.
"This is the final refinement?" Ace took the glass, tracking the slow, viscous movement of the liquid inside. "What are the core metrics?"
"Ace, this compound doesn't degrade the nervous system or turn the subject into a mindless beast like the previous formulas!" Chopper explained, his voice taking on a strict, professional weight. "Its primary function is the systematic elevation of a subject's natural developmental limit!"
"If an individual's genetic baseline originally capped their physical strength metric at one hundred, no amount of training could push past that ceiling without causing severe internal trauma. But once this serum integrates with the bloodstream, their structural threshold is expanded to two hundred or more. Every hour spent in the yard from that point forward yields double the efficiency."
Chopper paused to draw breath, and Indigo quickly moved to supplement the report. "Furthermore, Captain, the expansion of the genetic limit triggers three powerful physical transformations!"
"First: an accelerated metabolic cycle and a reinforced digestive tract. The subject's ability to process nutrients jumps significantly. Large quantities of food can be converted into raw vital energy in minutes to repair tissue damage and restore stamina."
"Second: the total liberation of the five senses. Perception matrices—specifically auditory and visual detection—will achieve extreme sharpness."
"Third: a benign density mutation within the bone structure and muscle fibers. This establishes an absolute baseline for the crew's long-term endurance and defensive mass."
Hearing the clinical breakdown, Ace's lips curved into a cold, satisfied smile. With this serum integrated into their routine, combined with the regenerative properties of his own fruit to lock in training effects without physical bottlenecks, the officers of the Eclipse Pirates were about to enter a period of rapid evolution.
"However, Ace..." Chopper's ears drooped slightly, a trace of medical concern tempering his excitement. "The cellular reconfiguring process is agonizingly painful. If the subject loses consciousness due to the trauma, or fails to ingest enough raw caloric energy during the shift, the evolution halts instantly, regardless of whether the target limit was reached."
"Furthermore, the precise yield varies by individual baseline. The greater the subject's natural talent, the smaller the percentage of direct improvement—but the lower threshold will be permanently raised across the board."
"A minor obstacle," Ace remarked, slipping the blue vial into the interior pocket of his trench coat. If his vanguard couldn't survive a fraction of physical agony to clear their limits, they had no business standing on a warship built to overturn the world.
"Clean work," Ace said, turning his gaze back to Indigo. "Compile the text volumes and the remaining Ann flora harvested from the valley. What is our current yield?"
"Captain," Indigo reported respectfully, his posture rigid. "The wild Ann specimens are extremely rare on these branches. We had enough mass to forge only twenty vials of the Limit Breaker serum. Dr. Chopper noted that the remaining root stock must be transferred to the ship's automated greenhouses for domestic cultivation. Mass production won't be achievable until large-scale agriculture is established."
"Twenty is sufficient for the officer block," Ace noted, his eyes cutting across the massive cathedral-like vault of ancient medical texts. "Inform the local chieftain that our business here is settled. Little Eclipse, launch the drone detail. Have the mechanical arms clear the shelves and transfer this entire library into the lower decks."
Just as Chopper let out an excited cheer, running out to notify the native village, and Indigo began packing the glass terminals, Ace's eyes snapped toward the western coastline.
In that exact microsecond, his Observation Haki captured a massive, distinct aura approaching the world tree—a presence heavy with an immense sense of isolation, exhaustion, and old weariness.
"Oh?"
Ace's lips curled into a dry, amused smile as his fingers brushed the hilt of his new blade. "It looks like the South Blue decided to send us a true guest before we clear the port."
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