Chapter 75: The Battle of Marineford

Chapter 75: The Battle of Marineford

Chapter 75 The Battle of Marineford

Before removing himself from the side of the ship, Rayleigh said aloud, "Open, Babylon."

With that, his En expanded further and seamlessly merged with his other sense-enhancing systems. Thanks to this, he sensed the next attack before it came and removed himself from the ship's hull an instant before the Gojo Player appeared in front of him with a palm-thrusting gesture.

The future he saw of that palm pressing him through the ship and destroying that ship changed the moment he removed himself as she stopped the motion of the attack he would have dodged and readjusted the attack as fast as he moved to dodge it. The aim of her attack updated almost the instant he moved, but there was a tiny delay. He didn't care what her build was, if she could keep up with him, his years of training speed would have been for nothing.

Rayleigh continued dodging future attacks while analyzing the Gojo Player's capabilities. He needed to disrupt her movement so he asked aloud, "What's your name? Honored One? Heaven's Chosen? Number One Under Heaven? Limitless? Untouchable?"

Although Rayleigh used his modified version of Shave to gain distance, the Gojo Player reduced the space between them while expanding the space behind her to catch up almost instantaneously and when he tried going very far from her, she displayed the ability to directly skip the distance and teleport.

To anyone watching the pair, they appeared to flicker in and out of visual range over and over.

Seeing that she didn't answer, Rayleigh taunted, "Are you not confident in your ability to hold a conversation? Are you a Neet or Keyboard Warrior who fears face-to-face conversations?"

Still nothing. He wondered if silence was a requirement for her Hatsu, but that was a rather silly requirement. It was more likely that she knew of many abilities that required conversation to initiate and refrained from speaking to prevent their activation. But didn't that mean she lacked confidence in countering some abilities? If she lacked confidence, she was not invincible, so there were certainly many ways to beat her.

The first and most obvious was to exhaust her. It was clear that her techniques all required more Aura than his own did. Rayleigh used Aura to boost his speed, but she directly used it to move and attack. She had far more aura than he did due to being a 20-Talent Hunter Player, but it should not be inexhaustible. Rayleigh did notice that the expanded aura she emitted could be reabsorbed into her body if she remained in the same location, so he dragged her along the battlefield to ensure she was unable to recycle the used aura.

Still, he didn't know how long it would take her to exhaust her reserves, and fighting like that wasn't exciting. If she was a real threat, he might be forced to fight in such an unsavory way, but she was looking down on him too much and she was not capable of killing him. Not that she knew it yet.

After getting a feel for her style, Rayleigh stopped dodging and went on the attack. The instant the distance between them was shortened, it felt like multiple battering rams were shot in his direction.

Rayleigh used a combination of the Force, Haki, and Kō to strike the battering rams of expanding aura and partially deflect them, allowing him to get closer at the cost of a small injury. His Shū and Haki coated his borrowed sword and sliced at the silent Gojo's shoulder with enough force to split her diagonally, but the expanding force of aura had no problem expanding more and more as his weapon drew closer to her skin. His attack slid off and an unblockable force struck his chest, cracking some ribs and sending him all the way to the wall of the inner harbor.

Before Rayleigh could remove himself from the wall, she reappeared and thrust out with another palm strike. However, the attack was deflected using Rayleigh's telekinesis and only cracked the wall next to him, something that helped him get loose. Another sword swing was deflected by her expanding aura which was followed up by another blast of expanding aura. He tried to dodge it but it was like a wall was thrown at him.

This hit only sent him a few hundred meters though, giving him more information on her attack capabilities. When her attack was concentrated, it did the most damage but was dodgeable. When it was not dodgeable, the attack was more spread out and did not hurt that much.

Although their fight was loud, flashy, and insane to watch, the pirates and Marines had better things to do than observe as the outbound video and radio signal stopped and a dozen more robot bears came out and attacked the ships outside the harbor. The real one was fighting the large-headed pervert but the rest could shoot lasers from their mouths and hands similar to that of Kizaru's laser attack.

Rayleigh continued his attack attempts while further analyzing her aura. It wasn't like he could just cut through it as easily as Bogard had his own. That happened mainly because Rayleigh didn't know it was possible and his aura was very simple. This Player's aura was far from simple. If the aura that Bogard cut through had been like the color red, then this Player's aura was like the entire visible color spectrum while also bouncing back and forth between infrared and ultraviolet. He'd be able to do it eventually, but it would not be simple.

Luckily this ambitious Player seemed to have bitten off more than she could chew with this build. The actual Gojo had a long list of ridiculous abilities. He could create Negative Space. He could inverse the Negative Space to create a Positive Space. He could combine them both to make an Annihilation-like explosion attack and use them to move and teleport. He could observe and calculate everything with precision so high, that his skills were used at 99.99% efficiency and barely cost his energy reserves to use. He could actualize the concept of Infinity around his body, preventing attacks from ever reaching him. And he could attack a target's mind by overloading it with information that someone without a calculation-type ability would be unable to effectively defend against.

This Player could not use any of these abilities but was using Nen to replicate them in a sense. She created an En Field around herself in which she could recycle aura, allowing her to reabsorb the aura she emitted to reuse. She could cause the aura and space between herself and a target to reduce if they were within her En field, allowing her near-instantaneous movement, and when she expanded the aura and space behind her while doing so, allowed for teleportation. The aura near her body had an automatic effect to expand the closer an attack was to her body. And she could directionalize the expansion of her aura from her body in a direction in the form of an attack.

The only thing missing was the Annihilation Attack and the Mental attack. If she had them, was that the reason for her confidence? Or did she think that Dyna Might would prove useful in a fight? The user of the Bomb Fruit had tried to chase the pair and provide assistance, but his explosion punches were practically in slow motion and his explosive projectiles were diverted with telekinesis, rendering him effectively neutered.

Rayleigh figured she had a mental attack. She was wearing sunglasses after all. Maybe the mental attack was a Hatsu that required direct eye contact so she was waiting for the right moment to remove her sunglasses, stare at him, attack his mind, and then finish him.

He could hardly wait.

Their fight continued for a few minutes and Rayleigh received an injury with each exchange. In that period, Rayleigh had to switch swords multiple times as they kept breaking, but he got a feeling for her weakness. She could not attack and defend at the same time and when she attacked, a barely visible shatterpoint momentarily appeared on the opposite side of her body. This led Rayleigh to baiting an attack, moving to her back, and striking her weak spot.

For the first time, she dodged the attack rather than take it head-on. She even spoke up, "Don't you know it's impolite to hit a girl."

Rayleigh attacked three times while calmly replying, "It's also impolite not to introduce yourself. You already know my name but I still don't know yours."

She replied, "You haven't earned my name yet," and went back on the attack. This time instead of pressing her palm against him and expanding her aura, she gathered aura into her hand and then pointed it at him before expanding it. Said expansion had the speed of an explosion and the force of a wrecking ball while also encompassing the area. Several pirates caught up in the attack were practically liquidated. Rayleigh knew he couldn't dodge so had jumped back to soften the blow and use Tutaminis to allow the shockwave to pass through his body, further weakening the physical damage.

Seeing him easily survive the attack that rendered the surrounding pirates to gory mulch, the smile on the Gojo Player's face faltered slightly. It seemed that she had finally realized that Rayleigh was not going to die so easily.

Rayleigh started using Telekinesis to raise some bits of shattered stone and ice around her and then sped forward and to the side, using the levitating pieces as footholds to turn and get around her, circling her faster than she could physically spin around. He attacked, was countered, took her back, and attacked again, forcing her to dodge which made the next attack easier. Slowly but surely, he was forcing her into a corner and soon she would be the one running.

Rayleigh still had a few Wills to spare which kept monitoring the battle. Whitebeard and Sengoku appeared to be playing an insane form of chess as both just stood at their ends of the battle while commanding the movements of their troupes to counter the plans of the other party.

Titan, a well-tanned Player that looked of European descent showed up and started wrecking the bear robots outside and leading the Whitebeard pirates into the inner harbor. He took the form of a giant golden Buddha which had Sengoku pissed since he was the original holder of that Devil Fruit and seeing it used on the side of pirates infuriated him.

Justice used his strength to push Titan back, but even if Justice was physically stronger than Titan, the Golden Buddha Player was tougher than the Light Fruit user and could take every hit that Justice dished out.

Wonder Woman and her crew had shown up and were assisting the Whitebeard Pirates with breaking out of the ice created by Goddess of Ice. There had been a time when Goddess of Ice and Wonder Woman were evenly matched, but Goddess of Ice had trained far harder than Wonder Woman did and completely surpassed her in power and skill, allowing her to counter Wonder Woman's entire crew and hold back Whitebeard's remaining fleet.

At one point a really ugly Pirate stabbed Whitebeard through the stomach, something that shocked the Division Commanders, Pirates, and Whitebeard himself. The idiot had apparently been tricked into doing so and ranted about what he had been tricked into thinking to justify the attack. After a quick reality check, he realized he'd been tricked. And what did Whitebeard do? Nothing. Whitebeard appeared to be a, "Don't cry over spilled milk," guy and forgave his idiot crewmate for being an idiot.

Gojo Girl twisted to the side, shifted back, teleported, struck out, destroyed the ground they were standing on, moved out of the way, blocked, and ducked under the onslaught of Rayleigh's constant attacks. She did in fact have a Hatsu-Force skill that allowed her to move in whatever way was most efficient and flawless, but it seemed that Rayleigh's skill had surpassed the calculation limits of her ability's understanding of flawless. She was not worried though. Her final attack had never failed her, and she suspected the conditions to release it would soon be met.

One of Rayleigh's Wills which continued to pay attention to the surroundings noticed that the flow of the world had been shifted again. Luffy was back up and charged forward as if on drugs.

Because Luffy had gone down earlier, the Admirals had taken opponents of their own, and said opponents did not allow them to get back in Luffy's way. Whitebeard took on Akainu. Marco took on Kizaru. And Diamond Dude took on Aokiji. Titan had also fought his way in. The Player who had the same Devil Fruit as Ace, Fire Queen, had arrived and started fighting Goddess of Ice, leaving Titan free to make his way to the Execution Platform. Ideally, he wanted to free Ace himself, but seeing Luffy charge forward, he instead elected to keep Sengoku occupied.

Sengoku had fully intended to stay at Ace's side until the execution, but seeing Titan use his own fruit against the Marines enraged the Fleet Admiral enough to make him join the fight.

Because of this, there was a path from Luffy to Ace that only had Vice Admirals defending it.

Seeing this, Sengoku paused his fight with Titan for a moment and shouted, "All Marines, open fire on Ace now! Execute him at once!"

Ace was a user of a Fire Logia fruit, but he was bound by shackles that rendered his devil fruit impotent and his body unable to use Haki. A single bullet he could survive, but Sengoku's command caused hundreds of Marines to point their guns at Ace, an unmoving target.

A dozen Vice Admirals charged Whitebeard, piercing his body with various weapons and giving Akainu a moment to heat the stone around Ace into Magma. Stoner tried to merge with it to turn it into a wall or move Ace, but he couldn't safely merge with such hot stone. He wasn't a logia user after all.

Seeing hundreds of Marines pointing their weapons at his brother, the drug-empowered main character shouted with all his might and willpower, "STOP!"

His emotion-filled voice carried with it a command that held the weight of the world. Over a thousand Marines and a decent number of puirates between Luffy and Ace felt that weight press down on them and immediately passed out.

Only the Players and Mihawk were not surprised at the blatant display of Conqueror's Haki. Everyone else of the tens of thousands of participants of this battle, Pirate and Marine alike, looked at Luffy as if they were looking at a monster.

Whitebeard smashed the Marines that impaled him and pulled the weapons out of his wounds before shouting, "Alright you bastards!" The affection in his voice made it clear that he was referring to his own crew. Loud enough for the entire base to hear, Whitebeard exclaimed, "Use all your strength to support Strawhat Luffy!"

With this declaration, a wave of pirates accompanied Luffy as he rushed toward Ace and the only Marine who remained to defend him, Vice Admiral Garp.

The Warlords tried to get in his way but were blocked by other Warlords in an almost comical manner. Mihawk had to be seen doing something so he attacked Luffy. When the former Warlord Crocodile got in his way, Mihawk didn't bother trying to get past him. As long as it looked like he was trying, no one could say anything. The Robot Bear and several of his copies tried to attack Luffy, but the Pirate Empress Boa Hancock got in their way. Since they apparently had 'Friendly Fire' turned off, they could not attack. The shadow using Gecko guy was stopped by the Shark-looking Fishman's Fishman Karate. That left Doflamingo but he seemed content just attacking small fry and playing around. Unlike Mihawk, he didn't care what he was seen doing.

Luffy charged forward until he met Garp who, for some reason, was sent flying with one punch. A stone wall came up around them which blocked a laser shot by Kizaru. A moment later, Luffy had somehow removed the inhibiting shackles that bound Ace and the son of the Pirate King had been freed.

Seeing that he was going to miss out on the rest of the fun, Rayleigh tripled his attack speed. It used up more Aura, but the battle did not seem like it would last much longer at this point.

That was when it happened. Rayleigh's sword slid off the Player's expanding aura, but it vibrated as it did so. The contact vibration flowed into the aura. Something many didn't think about when it came to vibration was that the denser something was, the faster vibrations moved through it. The aura around Gojo Girl became denser the closer an attack got to her skin due to the increase in the rate of aura expansion, but the vibration simply moved faster in the presence of a denser aura. If Gojo Satoru's Infinity could stop vibrations, then he would be unable to hear anything.

Of course, this wasn't a perfect attack, only the prototype of a possible attack. The slice's vibration was still very weak by the time it passed through her aura and it only made a small cut on her skin.

Rather than panic that her defense had been broken, she got some distance and said, "About time. And by the way." She then took off her sunglasses and continued, "My name is Crystal. You deserve to know the name of the one who is about to kill you."

Her eyes did in fact have a crystal-like sparkle. Rayleigh felt the world shift.

Crystal's trump card had too many activation requirements. First, she had to be injured by the target. But she had to be injured while going all out while using her strongest defense. Her trump card was an ultimate spear that could only be used once the ultimate shield had been breached. Next, she had to fight her opponent within her En for at least five minutes. Rayleigh had been moving around a lot when he figured out that she could recycle her aura within her En, but then he focused on attacking and stopped moving as much. Next, she had to meet the target's eyes after the first two conditions were met. Using her delayed introduction to make eye contact always worked, especially against Players who thought they were the Main Character.

As Rayleigh predicted, Crystal's trump card was a mental attack. It was actually a combination Force-Nen skill. The Force allowed someone to connect to someone else and implant thoughts and emotions into their mind. Crystal used this principle to re-create Gojo Satoru's Domain Expansion, an attack that fried a person's brain by overloading it with an unimaginable amount of information.

One of Crystal's Hatsus basically turned her brain into a super computer and her trump card connected to an opponent and hooked them up to said computer to essentially perform a DDoS attack to freeze them up. Seeing Rayleigh freeze, Crystal had the time to concentrate her aura into her strongest attack. It only took a moment, but against a skilled opponent, she would not have a moment which is where her trump card came in.

She released the aura at Rayleigh and saw him vanish into the wall. She was quite confident that he was dead, since anyone under the effect of her trump card would be 100% unable to defend themselves.

"About time."

The voice wasn't loud, but somehow it carried all the way to her in the hectic environment. Her instincts went into overdrive and sweat started raining down her neck and back. At first, she thought she was imagining it, but when she looked back, the Player who had been struck into the wall had already gotten up and was leisurely walking toward her.

"Come to think of it, although you already knew my name, I should really introduce myself anyway. It's only polite to do so."

Rayleigh looked very injured, but it was almost all surface-level. His mind may not have been a computer, but having 31 Wills meant that mental attacks of a certain type had no effect on him. The reason he took the physical attack was because it was needed if he wanted to go all out. The information she sent him using the Force could either be entirely shunted to one Will or divided among multiple Wills to even the burden and Rayleigh had done the latter.

As Rayleigh stepped forward, a thick, blood-red mist started to form around him and circled him. He had been using In to hide the mist as it formed from his injuries and theatrically released the In to make it look like the mist was only now appearing.

Covered in injuries and surrounded by a flowing, bloody mist as he walked forward seemingly gave Rayleigh the form of a demon, and the 18-year-old girl facing him flinched at his appearance.

Rayleigh raised his hand forward and the mist gathered into it. A moment later, a blood-red sword formed before him, and Rayleigh pressed the Kyber Crystal in his hand into the sword.

He said aloud, "My name is Swordsman." He then grabbed the blade and his aura seemed to retract into his body while going completely berserk and strengthening many times over.