Chapter 220 — Erased

Wang Xu watched Akainu Sakazuki with an expression of mild indifference and let out a long, quiet sigh.

The man had guessed what he was thinking.

"Out of the way, shorty!"

Akainu, blind to his own peril, planted a death flag right where he stood.

"I hope you understand something. There may be a head's worth of difference between your height and mine, but if you don't follow orders, I can erase that difference whenever I please."

Wang Xu looked at him coldly. "Think carefully before you say your next sentence."

"It will be your last words."

Sakazuki clenched his jaw, both fists knotted tight.

His heart hammered wildly, magma coursing across his skin. He was about to speak when he suddenly noticed the situation on the battlefield shifting.

Big Mom, Charlotte Linlin, one of the Four Emperors—who should have been lost in drunken bliss inside the Sweet Kingdom she had built for herself—had now joined the battle as well.

Only now she was like a woman gone mad, drool streaming from her lips, a grotesque and twisted parody of a living thing, attacking Marines and pirates alike without distinction.

Nor was that all: the Sweet Four Commanders under Big Mom had entered the fight too.

Most of their energy was spent merely restraining her.

No one knew what they had actually come here to do.

But with this fresh force thrown into the fray, the tide of battle turned.

One tug at a single thread, and the whole fabric moved.

Joker, Donquixote Doflamingo, who had been biding his time for just such an opening, now rode the strings he had woven, drifting slowly up into the sky, and proclaimed at the top of his voice: "I, Donquixote Doflamingo, Saint, hereby announce my resignation from the post of Seven Warlords of the Sea!"

The Warlords might look powerful, but there were still the words "under the King" sitting in front of their title.

What Doflamingo had always wanted was never to be second to anyone.

He was a man of ambition too.

At the sight, a flash of fury rose to Akainu Sakazuki's face, and he looked ready to strike Doflamingo dead on the spot: "These damned pirates—untrustworthy villains, every last one!"

Having been railed at so righteously by Akainu, Doflamingo gave a cold laugh.

"Pirates are evil? The Marines are justice?"

"That sort of thing—however many times it's written, it can always be written again!"

"Those who don't understand 'peace' and those who don't understand 'war' hold entirely different values."

"Whoever stands at the summit can rewrite good and evil!"

"Right now, this place alone is neutral ground!"

"Justice will prevail? But of course it will—because only the winners are justice!"

Doflamingo's speech had stirred a flicker of interest in Wang Xu.

"When I leave the pirate plane, I'll recruit him as a Reincarnator."

As a String-String Fruit user who knew the far reaches, Doflamingo had done considerable business with Spider-Man Peter Parker; the two occasionally exchanged intelligence and plotted against each other.

It was through this that he had learned of the Reincarnators' existence.

In truth, Doflamingo's words were not meant for Akainu's ears at all.

He was speaking to the Reincarnators present.

Doflamingo wanted to become one of them too—to sweep across the myriad realms of the heavens, roam endless planes, and enjoy a long, inexhaustible lifespan!

In the world of pirates, apart from those on whom the Op-Op Fruit user who knew the far reaches had performed the Perpetual Youth Surgery, no one could live forever!

Immortality!

That was the ultimate desire!

Because it encompassed everything humanity could ever want!

So long as one could keep living, never dying, any dream might yet be realized.

But that brat Trafalgar Law had schemes of his own; the odds of him willingly performing the Perpetual Youth Surgery were next to zero.

And so Doflamingo had resorted to this desperate measure.

Akainu Sakazuki seemed to have realized this as well.

His face darkened until it looked ready to drip magma, and he did not spare Doflamingo so much as half a glance.

Akainu turned around, his spirit and vigor surging to their absolute peak.

His life, in this very moment, blazed forth in its most intense glory.

Molten rock seethed and streamed.

The searing heat twisted the very air until it warped.

"My justice will not fail!"

"Infinite Volcano!"

Akainu's whole body became a volcano spewing magma.

In this state, he felt himself to be nature itself, fused with heaven and earth.

He was peerless, able to crush any living thing with ease.

Because his will represented justice!

Thick smoke and the stench of sulfur spread outward, utterly smothering the smell of blood in the air.

Far from reassuring anyone, it made many of the rank-and-file soldiers feel their scalps prickle and their hearts pound.

Above, the sky was choked with dark clouds.

They were dense and heavy, like black clay that might come crashing down at any moment, and within them lurked many a fierce red shadow.

As though a rain of magma might fall at any second.

The crowd fought on, gritting their teeth, silently praying that the horror overhead was nothing but their own delusion and dread.

Unfortunately, Murphy's Law chose this moment to assert itself with a vengeance.

Things were taking a turn for the worse...

A rain of magma fell from the sky.

It came down indiscriminately on all three warring sides.

The weaker rank-and-file soldiers could only die screaming in agony.

Their skin, muscle, bone, and nerve were turned to char in an instant by the extreme heat, their bodies frozen in place within the magma.

"What kind of technique is this!"

"An Awakened Devil Fruit that knows the far reaches—permanently reshaping the terrain and environment..."

"Akainu Sakazuki really is a monster!"

"Tch, what a boring Jiaming Yuan—preaching justice out of one side of his mouth while killing his own soldiers with the other!"

Many, even as they feared Akainu, found him deeply loathsome, and took him for a hypocrite.

Yes, justice demands sacrifice.

But a Jiaming Yuan who always let others do the dying, no matter how silver his tongue or how maxed his rhetoric, could convince no one.

After all, as long as it wasn't oneself who died, it was always bearable.

"Justice?"

Wang Xu regarded Sakazuki with mocking amusement: "Is this your tedious dream?"

A formless, intangible ripple of power surged out from Wang Xu and slammed into Akainu's body.

Wang Huai'an's spiritual will smashed straight through Akainu's mental defenses.

From the moment of Akainu's birth up to the present.

Every experience he had ever had, every word he had ever spoken, every thought and notion he had ever produced—all of it fell into Wang Xu's view.

"What did you do to me!"

Akainu Sakazuki, transformed into a volcano, lost that false sense of power entirely.

A chill ran through his whole body; he felt utterly without security.

As though every drop of blood, every cell, had been seen clean through.

"I gave you the chance to speak your last words. You chose not to treasure it."

Wang Xu glanced at him with a half-smile and snapped his fingers.

Crack!

The volcano was abruptly wiped away.

Every trace that Akainu Sakazuki had ever existed in this world vanished utterly and without a trace.

At the same moment, all memory of him disappeared.

A deeper understanding of the Laws of Time had enabled Wang Xujing to exert a subtle influence over certain "things that had already happened."

At a certain point in the past, a coupling that should have given rise to Sakazuki had instead seen its vital essence, by a sudden whim that seized his father, 'sprayed' upon a wall.

Akainu's existence was wiped out utterly, leaving behind in this world not the faintest trace.