Chapter 78: Cutting Down the Elders

Chapter 78: Cutting Down the Elders

Chapter 78 Cutting Down the Elders

Rayleigh was angry. It wasn't any one specific thing, but a culmination of a lot of ridiculous little things piling up into a massive irritant that had spilled over Rayleigh's bottom line. Titan's arrogance and reckless decisions. The insane plan of the Players that relied on something that apparently didn't even work. And probably most of all, someone that Rayleigh had taught, someone who could be considered a student of his, someone who owed him a debt, had been mortally wounded.

At this point, Rayleigh still was not in any danger. He could use shatterpoint to crack open that spider-web cage, run out of the perception range of the enemies, and use today's available Tavern Travel chance to leave the world outright. It wasn't even a bad idea. He had learned just about everything he needed from this world and wouldn't gain much more from staying.

But the thought of leaving was not available at this moment. He was angry. He was angry at the players. He was angry at the Marines. He was angry at this supposedly immortal elder. He was angry at this world.

Rayleigh certainly wanted to save Ace, but the Players told him they had it covered. And Rayleigh believed them. For that, he was also angry at himself. With Rayleigh's skills, he could have chopped off the arms of every Marine and most of the Vice Admirals. None of them had the skills necessary to stop him. But just like all of the other Players, he had been treating this too much as a show, a play, a game. Yes, he was very angry at himself. Others had their reasons but he allowed himself to end up in this situation, so he could not escape the blame.

Well, playtime was over. He'd never done this before and really didn't want to because it had too many risks, but it was the only available path that might lead to the outcome he wanted.

Rayleigh became empty. Not because he let go of his emotions, but because he fed them all into the Force. His frustration, his pride, his determination, his wrath.

But Rayleigh was not a practitioner of the Dark Side. He did not feed the emotion into the Force to receive a corruption-filled power boost to use to enact his own will. Instead, he asked the Force, the whole of the Force, to move through him without Rayleigh's conscious input. Rayleigh was not a practitioner of the light or the dark. He was the one in the middle, and the whole of the Force answered his call.

Of course, Rayleigh's consciousness existed both in his mind and within the Force. Just because his brain's consciousness was not controlling his body, did not mean that Rayleigh was not in control. The main problem with this power boost method was that if the Force could convince his 'higher' mind to do something, his 'physical' mind would not get a chance to refuse. Rayleigh had never done this because he didn't know how much he would have in the final say meaning he didn't have complete control over his life and death. Still, he had at least partial control.

"Do you mind if I take this one?" Under Rayleigh's direction, the Force did not simply interrupt his teacher's match, but politely asked to step in.

The sudden change was noticed by his teacher and his teacher's sword-wielding centaur opponent. Neither could attribute any word to what was different, but it was noticeable. Without a presence in the Force, it wasn't like Rayleigh looked visually different to either of them, but both had a high enough battle sense to tell that something had changed and Rayleigh used the moment that the pair paused to observe him to ask his teacher to take over their fight.

Mihawk only considered it for a moment before nodding and walking back over to the Pacifistas and Vice Admirals trying to kill everyone else. Mihawk's actual skill with a sword was above that of his immortal opponent and he had little to gain against someone who could afford to be worse just because he couldn't die.

"Arrogant Brat!" The Warrior God of Finance sent a high-speed flying slash at Rayleigh's neck. It carried what could be called the cold breath of the underworld, promising to chill the flesh and blood of any it sliced down to the bone, but the arc of sword intent shattered as the tip of Rayleigh's blood-red sword was brought up to meet it. The cold air had less effect on Rayleigh than it did Mihawk since Rayleigh's internal Tutaminis protected him against everything but physical damage, so hot or cold to a certain degree had no effect on him.

Rayleigh casually sent a flying slash of his own which Saint Nusjuro swiped his sword to block by splitting it in half, but the split arc did not scatter. In fact, after passing around his sword, it reconnected and passed completely through the skeleton-centaur's body, bisecting him length-wise.

Saint Nusjuro's face would have been worth remembering if Rayleigh was in the mood to do so. Flying Slashes of Sword intent can be blocked and shattered by swords. This was common sense in this world.

Unfortunately for Saint Nusjuro, Rayleigh's flying slash was aura transformed into hundreds of sharpened sword aura lines compressed into a single line that was emitted from his blade and enhanced with Haki and controlled with Tutaminis. The saturation of sword lines and control of Tutaminis allowed Rayleigh to remotely recombine the split lines back into a single line. More than half the lines still dissipated, so the effect was far weaker, but it was still very strong.

Saint Ethanbaron V. Nusjuro did not understand how it worked but he did understand that he had to go all out or he would be played with by this child like Saint Saturn had been. Black smoke covered his figure and a moment later, his form was restored. Like Saint Saturn, he had undergone changes. His form was larger and he had a ribbon of darkness over his shoulders and around his back, behind his head. Ice spread from his hooves, but Rayleigh had been fighting on ice all day and it wouldn't affect him.

The Elder was unaware that Rayleigh could completely resist the chill of the underworld air he emitted and charged forward to meet Rayleigh's sword. In his mind, Rayleigh would eventually slow down due to the effect of the cold air and be defeated. This was also why Mihawk was willing to give up the fight. Mihawk was superior to the Elder in swordsmanship, but the Elder could win just by outlasting his opponent, making the fight entirely unsatisfying to the world's number one swordsman.

The other elder on the battlefield, Saint Jaygarcia Saturn, had already gained an advantage in his fight against Titan. Although Titan's defense was supercharged with Nen, his actual skill in Haki was weaker than the ancient Elder's and the spider's poisoned limbs had pierced several holes in Titan's giant form. The main reason that Titan could still fight in that state was due to the stacking self-recovery effects of being an Enhancer and having a Mythical Zoan Devil Fruit. Those attributes combined could allow him to recover from even the deadliest poisons.

Aokiji had taken his student's body and completely froze it before leaving the battlefield. Depending on luck, she might make it. Kizaru pretended to be passed out in a crater he had been smashed into by his own student. After their fight, Justice joined Geko Moria in fighting off Akainu to prevent him from killing the Marines.

As Rayleigh and Saint Nusjuro exchanged swords, the latter's expression grew more frustrated while Rayleigh's seemed empty. Almost every slash of Rayleigh's sword sliced something from the Warrior God of Finance, forcing the latter to move around and constantly shift his position while the cold air seemed to have no effect on Rayleigh. Just being close to Saint Nusjuro should cause Rayleigh's flesh to freeze and rot off. What was worse was that the slashes he dodged didn't just vanish because he dodged them. Every slash toppled a building or wall and all the buildings and walls behind them. The whole of Marineford was being turned into rubble from their fight.

Of course, the main source of frustration was not from the fact that he was losing the fight, it was from calculating the costs of rebuilding Marineford on top of the costs of the upcoming recruitment drive. Even though he noticed that Rayleigh still seemed unaffected by the cold, Saint Nusjuro literally could not comprehend losing since in his mind, Rayleigh would run out of steam eventually, freeze up, and then get cut to pieces. It was only a matter of time.

The slashes sent by Rayleigh even affected the fight of the lower-ranked Marines for their survival. If it weren't for the fact that the Marineford was built like a layered cake and that Rayleigh's fight was happening on a higher level than theirs, hundreds of Marines would have already been killed by Rayleigh who didn't bother altering his aim if someone was behind Saint Nusjuro. In this way, Rayleigh was essentially a calamity for everyone around him who did not differentiate between friend and foe. All were equal under his blade.

The main problem of using this Force-Phenomenon to become a natural disaster was that if the Force did not want Rayleigh to do something, he would not be able to do it in this state. He would either be unable to consciously think of doing it or would have to end the effect and face the backlash. Rayleigh either had to be very persuasive or the Force had to be okay with doing it. Consciously, Rayleigh did not know which it was. Did his 'higher' consciousness convince the rest of the Force that this guy needed to die or did the Force want him to die and Rayleigh was just the instrument to do it with? In either case, the immortal's time was coming to an end. The longer the fight lasted, the more of the Force was being brought down. It would be a problem if he ran away since the Force wasn't likely to let him chase a fleeing target to kill but Saint Nusjuro hadn't even thought of fleeing, so the issue hadn't come up.

One side effect of Rayleigh's usage of the Force was the change to the environment. For one, the clear sky became very cloudy and thunder rolled overhead even though rain did not descend. Even those with a Force presence did not notice the connection between the change in weather and Rayleigh. None of the Players here had gone through extensive Jedi training and even if they felt something, they did not have the training or experience to understand what that something was.

The one who was happiest with this change was actually Geko Moria. He shouted to Justice, "Hey! The sun is gone! Give me your shadow!"

Justice was having a hard time against Akainu and the bear robot. Akainu had ordered it to kill Justice and it was immune to Justice's light attacks and stronger than his physical attacks could damage. If he was the only one fighting, it would be fine, but he was also trying to keep the other Marines around him alive and he was only keeping up thanks to the help of Crow and Stoner. Justice shouted back to Moria, "I'm a little busy right now!"

Moria replied, "Just let me take your shadow if you don't want to die! You'll get it back, okay? I don't want to die either!"

"Fine! Just do whatever!" Justice shot a scattered shotgun of light at Akainu to break his lava form into pieces. It didn't hurt him, but it did slow him down enough for Justice to have a free moment to run over to Moria who snipped off Justice's shadow before taking it and running off in the direction of Whitebeard's corpse.

Moria already tried pushing some of his stored shadows into that corpse earlier, but the corpse wouldn't take it. That meant he needed a stronger shadow. But if he took the shadow from someone and that someone was touched by sunlight, that someone would turn to dust and die. After death, their shadow would also die. This instant death effect wasn't useful if Moria was killed while taking the shadow, so he couldn't just take Kuma's or Akainu's shadow to kill them since they knew his tricks, and none of the Vice Admirals on their side were strong enough to produce a shadow that could support Whitebeard. He couldn't ask Mihawk either since the latter knew how dangerous it was to be without a shadow while this young Marine probably did not.

While Moria was trying for his Hail Mary, Rayleigh's eyes never left his opponent. Other than the Wills required to maintain his Sword of Babylon, the remaining Wills were all focused on this one target under the direction of the Force. This state wasn't something he could go into halfway, it was all or nothing, so he wasn't paying the slightest attention to his surroundings or the people around him like he usually would while in combat. He could leave this state whenever he wanted to, but his 'wants' were not 'fully' in his control at the moment. He had given his wrath to the Force and in exchange, became the wrath of the Force. In this state, he was both his strongest and most vulnerable.

Not that his opponent could take advantage of this. It would have to be someone else. Because he was incapable of paying attention to others, it was entirely possible for someone else to kill him right now because the calamity he called down could just as easily be his own, but the sword-wielding immortal in front of him was not capable of doing so when he had Rayleigh's full attention.

This state was incredibly risky, but as long as he didn't die, he could bring the world down upon everyone around him.

In this state, Rayleigh was not simply slicing Saint Nusjuro up for fun. In this state, Rayleigh was not even capable of having fun or enjoying what he was doing. The entirety of the Force had essentially become his brain and he was using it to calculate how to perform the task the Force required his body to perform, the execution of the man in front of him. Using the whole of the Force as a computer, Rayleigh was slowly able to perceive things he had not seen earlier. With every slice, more and more was revealed.

In Rayleigh's newly adjusted perception, this man was covered in stitches. The stitches did not sew the man's pieces together though. They appeared to sew the man to the world. So the man's static state had been sewn onto the fabric of the world. This form of immortality had drawbacks. It meant that his state would never change. He could never get stronger or more skilled. But the benefits were also obvious. If he was broken or impaired, the world itself would restore him as naturally as water would flow downhill.

So to kill this man, Rayleigh had to cut the man's connection to the world. This was not easy. Though Rayleigh claimed to have a knock-off version of the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, Rayleigh's sword could not interact with these stitches no matter how much he tried to slice his sword against them. The Force was far from all-powerful. Shatterpoints only worked on physical and living things, but this immortal was only an imitation of life, a well-preserved photograph of what once was, pretending to still be. These stitches had no Force presence and the Force in Rayleigh's sword did not interact with them.

So Rayleigh could only keep trying, keep swinging his sword. Every swing would be slightly different. If a hundred attempts did not work what about a thousand? Ten Thousand? A Million? A Hundred Million? As long as a method existed, the Force would find it through the process of elimination. That is, as long as Rayleigh's body had not broken to pieces from the strain or run out of aura before that point.

As their battle raged on, Whitebeard's eyes opened.

"What is going on?"

Moria was thrilled. The corpse took the shadow. Immediately after a shadow was placed into a body, the body was affected by the instinct of the shadow and the memories of the body. The fresher the body, the higher the memory quality. Usually, this was a downside, so Moria never revived fresh corpses because it took too long for them to fall under his control. Now, though, this side-effect was a boon. Moria pointed to the side and shouted, "Akainu is over there, go kill him!"

Whitebeard did not move. He observed Moria, observed his wounds, recalled his final moments, and looked over the battlefield.

For a dead man, he was pretty quick to come to a conclusion. "Who's shadow did you take Moria? If it is one of my son's, I will kill you."

The pressure from the old man's words felt like a mountain on Moria's shoulders, making it difficult to even breathe. "What?! No! It was Kizaru's disciple, that kid fighting Akainu over there! He volunteered it and I even told him I'd give the shadow back!"

Whitebeard looked over and felt a connection to the kid, something he could easily attribute to the shadow granting him a fake-life. He said, "Then you'd better keep your word Moria."

Zombies could not use the Devil Fruits they had when they were alive, but Whitebeard didn't need it. He could barely use his strength today because of his health issues. Ironically, being dead removed all of those issues. It didn't affect his ability to use Haki either since he was given the shadow of someone capable of using all three forms of Haki. Before, using all the strength of his body would have killed him. Now, he can truly go all out. The zombie smiled as blood dripped down his face. It was time to remind the Marines why he was feared.

Mihawk watched the Zombie Whitebeard with some interest after cutting down the final Pacifista. The only robot remaining was Kuma, but the man's Devil Fruit made attacking him difficult, as he could push away any attack sent toward him, no matter how strong. He got a feeling that the battle would be ending soon though, so he decided to exchange a few blows with that giant spider elder since the younger user of the Golden Buddha Fruit did not seem to be fairing so well.

When Whitebeard's zombie rose, Rayleigh felt something interesting. There was a slight resonance of Whitebeard and a presence inside his Kyber Crystal. It was only for a moment and faded right after, but it made Rayleigh and the Force acutely aware of both new presences in his now purple Kyber Crystal. Neither were aspects of the Force, so the Force had not paid attention to them until now, but since the power of the Force was not being very useful in helping him cut this immortal, The Force's one-track mind was more open to alternatives.

After a moment of analysis under the full power of the Force, Rayleigh understood what was inside his Kyber Crystal. This understanding would have left him shocked in normal circumstances, but he was currently unable to feel emotions, so it was accepted without issue. Previously, he knew that he had drawn the laws of Space Vibrations and Darkness from Blackbeard using Psychometry through Rayleigh's sword, but he thought he was only copying the man's understanding of the laws. He didn't think that he had somehow actually drawn the full power of both Devil Fruits into his Kyber Crystal.

Devil Fruits required life to exist. It was possible to fuse an inanimate object with a Devil Fruit, but that was only when the Devil Fruit provided the aspect of Life, so only Zoan Fruits could be 'fed' to objects. A Kyber Crystal is alive. Furthermore, Rayleigh's Hatsu poured his Nen, his Life Aura into his Kyber Crystal, further strengthening the aspect of Life within this inanimate object. Thanks to this coincidence and a dozen others, the power of the Darkness Devil Fruit and the Quake Devil Fruit that had been in Blackbeard and Whitebeard's body had been drawn perfectly into his Kyber Crystal and they were even playing nice together.

Not counting Players with cheats, living beings that ate a second devil fruit would explode due to the conflict, but a Kyber Crystal that was very used to channeling the Force was no stranger to conflict and could handle the full might of the presence and power of both Devil Fruits with ease.

Well, now was as good a time as any to perform some tests.

A white humming light engulfed Rayleigh's blood-red sword and he slashed forward. What happened next almost stopped the battlefield.

In the direction of the slash, a massive crack parted the clouds. But behind the clouds was not a sky, but a static that was painful to look at. The black spider-cage had been completely sliced through as well.

Saint Nusjuro had also been bisected, but he recovered anyway. Though he still had the presence of mind to look and see the crack that formed in the sky. It looked like Rayleigh had sliced the heavens.

The line of static closed a moment later, but it took a moment more for the battle to resume as most who saw the sight were incapable of comprehending it.

Rayleigh circled the spider three times, over, under, and around, slicing every stitch with a sword that carried an edge that devoured all light.

The moment that Rayleigh was certain he got the last stitch, he exited the Force-Phenomenon state, allowed his sword of Babylon to shatter while placing his Kyber Crystal into his pocket, crossed his legs, sat down, and barely set up an automatic recovery state before completely passing out.

A day later, Rayleigh woke up on a ship. Thankfully, he was neither in cuffs nor chains, so he had a good idea of what happened.

Before the details could fade anymore, Rayleigh went over the fight and his Force-Phenomenon state. In theory, that state maxed out Rayleigh's skill level in all areas. If Rayleigh trained his skills for a thousand years, he would at most equal his skill level in the Force-Phenomenon state. Even if it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be, he'd rather never use it again.

The only reason he might use it in the future was due to the breakthrough he had when it came to using it this time. Rayleigh had been able to convince the whole of the Force to go with his Will, and he did it in a way that was different from the Dark Side. If he did it in the future, it might be easier. Confidence had been the key it seemed.

Rayleigh once compared the Force to a school with different aspects of the Force being represented by different groups. Every group had a different opinion and there was no single group that could command all the other groups. At least that was what Rayleigh thought at first. Now Rayleigh had some ideas on how to do just that. There were in fact people in schools that everyone listened to. These people had two characteristics. Just two. They were true to themselves, and they were confident about it.

Odd as it seemed, this was a breakthrough in how Rayleigh used the Force. At first, he thought that he essentially had to appease every group at the same time. This was basically like bribing everyone. But bribes only worked in the long run if they escalated. In real life, bribes were only used until blackmail material was found.

Instead of trying to please every part of the Force at the same time, Rayleigh could get the entirety of the Force to listen to him as long as he was himself and he was confident in what he wanted. After all, he was also a part of the Force. If he was himself, then he was the Force. If he was confident in doing something, then the Force would be confident in doing it too.

However, there was a slight problem with this approach. Rayleigh did not know who he was. This wasn't a Kung Fu Panda situation. Rayleigh simply lacked variety when it came to life experiences to know enough to know how he would react to everything. If he did not know how he would react, how could he say that he knew himself? Letting someone who didn't know how he would react in a situation try to convince others in the same situation was about as effective as letting someone who had never stepped foot onto a battlefield try to convince soldiers to die for their country.

Thankfully, this issue wasn't difficult to resolve.

Moreover, Rayleigh had other benefits from his foray into pseudo-godhood. He may have never understood the full potential of his Kyber Crystal if he hadn't gone so deep into the Force. Were it not for what he learned, he may have thought it was a problem and erased the fruits using his Lightsaber customization kit. At the moment, Rayleigh had no idea how to draw out the power of the Devil Fruits in his Kyber Crystals. He could do it before because he was in a Maxed Out Skill state, but now he was back to normal and needed to figure out everything from scratch.

The door to his room on the ship opened and Titan walked in. "Good to see that you're up. I knew an Enhancer like you would recover soon. It only took an hour to drag the doctor away from you. He kept screaming about dying this and edge of life that. But a flesh wound like that only needs a nap and a meal to recover from, right?"

Rayleigh, in a well-practiced motion, skillfully raised a single eyebrow at Titan's poor attempt to dodge responsibility for the clusterfudge that was this fight.

Titan only held Rayleigh's gaze for a moment before letting his head fall and sighing, "Alright, I'm sorry for dragging you into this."

Rayleigh asked, "Is Ice alive?"

"Yeah. Captain Jack has some Force Healing skills for Easy Masteries and slowly helped her recover as Aokiji thawed her out."

Rayleigh released a breath of relief and asked, "So what was the point of all this? Did you just want to force the Marines into committing suicide?"

"What? Oh hell no. No, the plan was much bigger than that. I'll have some food prepared for you in ten minutes. Come out and I'll have Jack explain everything."

Rayleigh nodded as Titan left and a few minutes later he found the ship's kitchen and a half dozen bowls of food with Captain Jack, Stoner, and a few non-Player members of the crew eating.

After taking a seat and filling a plate, Rayleigh looked over at Captain Jack and asked, "So why did you want to force the Marines into killing the Marines? Was it just to mess with Justice and Ice?"

Jack put down a leg of meat he was eating and tapped on the air for a moment. In the next instant, a video camera appeared. Jack explained, "When I first found Laugh Tale and all the weird text, I didn't want to write it down or have to come back, so I got this video camera from the Hunter World and turned it into an Inventory Item. I recorded everything and took it to a Scientist named Vegapunk who translated everything for me."

Rayleigh thought about it for a moment and asked, "So you recorded everything?"

Jack nodded. "That's right. All video recording tech is snail-based in this world. Snails can be detected and even disabled with Haki, but this can't. No one even recognizes what it is. After the battle, I hooked up the video to a global transmission snail and sent the video to the whole world."

Rayleigh sighed at the deviousness of such actions. "So the entire world heard that story and saw the elders order the Marines to execute the Marines just for hearing it?"

Jack nodded with a smile, "And they saw the fight as well. They saw Titan get his ass kicked and saw you kicking ass!"

Rayleigh rolled his eyes. Titan was doing fine until that elder went super mode and Rayleigh only won thanks to having his own super super mode and coincidentally having a sword that can affect devil fruits at an esoteric level. Moreover, way to much of that battle was not to his liking. Rayleigh trained his Aura to exhaustion as often as possible every day, so he had plenty, but he was two and a half minutes from empty at the end of that fight and he'd only been using the Red Sword of Babylon for about an hour. The only reason he even lasted so long was because the Force-Phenomenon state made him ridiculously efficient, otherwise he would have ran out of nen fighting Elder Nusjuro.

A small part of Rayleigh wanted to ask what happened to the Marines, but in the end, it didn't matter. Rayleigh had done enough, both for them and against them. He killed Blackbeard, two elders, two sword gods, and annihilated the whole of Marineford.

Though, there was one person he wanted to know about. "What happened to Mihawk?"

"Mihawk? He took Doflamingo with him and left. Something about finding more opponents."

It was only then that Rayleigh even remembered the flamboyant warlord. After making that strong cage, the man had completely stayed out of the entire fight. It seemed that Mihawk had some use for him though, which wasn't a surprise. Mihawk likely no longer considered himself a Warlord and he needed a new source of opponents to test his sword on.

Seeing that Rayleigh wasn't asking more questions, Captain Jack took the initiative to ask, "So what about you Swordsman? What are your plans?"

"Why are you asking?"

"Well, me and a lot of the others are going to the Jedi Galaxy. The entire place seems to be a powder keg ready to burst, and going in after the shit hits the fan will be too late."

"So you want me to come with?"

"Well, we do need a Jedi. I can take us anywhere we need to go with my Hatsu. As long as I am the Captain of a Ship, I can manipulate the needle of my compass to point where I want to go and chart a course there. That's how I found Laugh Tale and Vegapunk. I was looking for the One Piece and later looking for someone would could translate what I found. Besides, you do owe me."

Rayleigh laughed, "Ha! You were the ones who wanted the Elder dead, you were the ones who all but invited him, and you were the one who antagonized him to attack me. I don't owe you anything and I have no desire to serve on a ship driven by a Captain Jack. I've seen all the movies and his crew rarely comes out on top." Rayleigh wasn't just spouting made up nonsense. If he really owed Jack, he'd know. Jack was just bluffing and trying to take advantage of Rayleigh.

Jack shook his head, "Oh well. More fun for us then."

Rayleigh smiled, "Not so much. Just because you didn't convince me to join your crew doesn't mean you didn't convince me to go. Yeah. I'm definitely going."

Jack tried to smile at that and pretend it was good news, but he knew it was not. Rayleigh was not the kind of competition he wanted and he could only hope that they were never forced to cross paths.

Rayleigh gave a real smile at Jack's plight and returned to filling his stomach. Although what Jack said played a part, he knew that going back really was the best idea for him. Rayleigh needed to know himself, which meant doing lots of different things. To anyone of his age, this meant going on random adventures. The Pirate World had their adventures taken by Players, so it was better to go to a bigger stage where there was enough room for everyone.

Besides, in order to master the power of the Devil Fruits inside his Kyber Crystal, he would need more Force training, and the best place to train the Force was the Jedi Galaxy. It was time to go back home.

*Author's Note*

Author-The next chapter won't take very long

Author-Still takes two months.

It wasn't the fight that got me, it was the growth. I always intended for this last battle to push my MC over the edge, go nuclear with the Force, and leave room to grow as a person, but it turns out that writing all that is a hundred times harder than writing fights. As an apology, I didn't do any cliffhangers and kept writing until everything was settled.

Saint Saturn's abilities are my guess. no idea if he can actually do that, but if he can teleport himself to a location and teleport others to a location and is a spider, then this set of abilities is not impossible.

Imu's Devil Fruit is also a guess, but it kinda makes sense. The only Named Move Imu uses references Chess, making him a King. The only image of him attacking is when he uses something that looks like a Devil's tail. So Devil King. As for the Sin Eating thing, that came from the idea, "What if there was an actual reason for Mary Geoise to exist? What if there was an actual reason why they cultivated the Celestial Dragons to become the worst kind of filth?" Also, what if the Devil King Devil Fruit is unaffected by other Devil Fruits? (Except for the Nika Fruit because the Nika Fruit doesn't care about the rules making it the only threat to the Devil King.) Then he would also be immune to the Immortality Surgery. So how is he staying alive? So I thought of the idea that Mary Geoise is a farm specifically for Imu. Have you ever seen an old Celestial Dragon? I mean wrinkled and walking stick old. They could easily have a slave carry them everywhere, so even if they were too old to walk, they'd still be up and about. But there are no old ones. So what if they have been harvested? It's just my theory.

The idea to have Zombie Whitebeard kill Akainu is something I have never seen before and I wanted to do it so bad. That's the main reason I didn't kill Akainu before this.

I doubt my MC will be using that Cheat mode again. It basically represented his max potential in Force skills, but leaves him too open to danger since it also represents everything wrong with using the max power from the Force. If you've watched Rogue One, then you know that the Force has no problem letting you die, even if it has the ability to save you. This is a canon fact. To the Force, you will join with it when you die. That is something to be celebrated from the perspective of the Force. It probably won't directly kill you, but it won't go out of its way to save you either.

I based the strength of the Middle on the Bendu which I'm sure some of you know, but the Bendu was pretty easily killed considering his power. Sure, the Bendu might be able to go back and forth between the Living and Cosmic Force, but that's on him. The Force itself would not stop him from dying if he was about to die, but it will give him nearly unlimited power to wield the Force, as long as he wields it in a way that keeps things balanced and it won't protect him from others trying to kill him while he is trying to kill them.

Rayleigh killing the Elders essentially helped the Marines because with them dead, Sengoku, Aokiji, and Kizaru don't have to follow their orders. (Yes, Sengoku spent the entire fight sitting on Garp, preventing him from getting up while using this as an excuse to not have to kill any of his own Marines.) But Rayleigh also destroyed the whole of Marineford. It's kinda balanced if you squint.

My MC will eventually, through character growth, be able to use the full power of the Force without any limits. The reason I didn't just give him the ability to do so from the start is because finding out a justifiable way to do it is half the fun for my side.

When Rayleigh used the Quake Fruit here, he essentially used it at full power without any buffers, so it damaged his own body. He will figure out how to use it safely later. I like the idea of the Dark Fruit's usage having the side effect of amplified senses. Not just pain, but all senses. It is a downside that can be worked into a plus. And both fruits have far more uses than just what was shown on this chapter.

I can't promise any kind of decent timeline for when I'll release more chapters, but my completionist OCD won't just let me stop posting. For now, I need to re-watch the whole of the Clone Wars and figure out what unspeakable atrocities the Players are going to get up to. What they did to the One Piece World is a warm up compared to what they will do to the Star Wars Galaxy.