Like moths throwing themselves into a flame, the Marines ignited every last scrap of potential within their bodies, trading away their future for a burst of power that was brief, violent, and brilliant.
That power became a defensive line built from life and sheer will.
Behind them stood everything they were trying to protect—the lives of their comrades, the land beneath their feet, and the justice they still believed in.
Only one thought remained in their minds.
They would not allow Kaido to do whatever he pleased on their battlefield.
Even if the price was their lives, they would make him understand that there were some things brute force alone could never conquer.
That resolve, born from an instinct to protect what was theirs and a pride that refused to be trampled, shone far more brightly than anything the Super Green Blood serum could provide.
The drug could grant them power.
It could not give them courage.
That came from somewhere deeper.
Even Kaido, laughing arrogantly above the battlefield, showed the faintest trace of seriousness in his enormous dragon eyes.
These stubborn Marines had more backbone than he had expected.
No matter how violently the waves crashed against them, they kept standing back up.
"WORORORORORO!"
Kaido's laughter boomed through the sky.
"Now this is fun!"
He looked down at the Marines below.
Every time he knocked one group down, another seemed to rise and take its place.
It was almost like a game of whack-a-mole.
Yet instead of annoying him enough to stop, their persistence only stirred his destructive impulses even further.
His colossal dragon body twisted freely through the sky as though all of Marineford had become his personal playground.
Then the attacks began pouring down.
"Demolition Gust!"
Countless razor-sharp wind blades erupted around Kaido.
They swept across Marineford indiscriminately, each one sharp enough to carve through stone and steel.
The hastily rebuilt ice walls and rocky fortifications below were shredded apart almost immediately.
Ice exploded into glittering fragments.
Chunks of stone scattered through the air.
The defenses that had taken everything the Marines had to create were sliced apart one after another.
Then Kaido's enormous dragon tail rose high into the air.
Black-and-red lightning crackled around it.
"Thunder Bagua!"
The tail came crashing down like a pillar falling from the heavens.
BOOM!
Marineford shook violently.
The ground split beneath the impact.
A massive crater opened across the fortress.
Before the Marines could recover—
another strike fell.
BOOM!!
Then another.
Every blow made the supposedly impregnable fortress tremble from its foundations, while nearby buildings groaned beneath the repeated shock waves.
Kaido did not stop there.
He opened his jaws.
"Bolo Breath!"
A blazing column of fire erupted from his mouth.
But this time, he did not aim at a single target.
Instead, Kaido swept the beam across Marineford like an enormous burning plow.
The attack carved through the central plaza and the outer buildings, leaving fire raging everywhere it passed.
Structures ignited.
Smoke rolled into the sky.
The fortress began to resemble a scene from hell.
The Marine officers who had swallowed the Super Green Blood serum had initially managed to keep up.
For a short while, the artificial abilities surging through them allowed them to perform far beyond their normal limits.
Combined with their willingness to fight until death, it gave them just enough strength to intercept Kaido's attacks.
Vice Admiral Onigumo stood amid an aura of bitter cold.
Ice erupted from his hands in glittering streams, twisting through the air like frozen serpents.
With each movement of his arms, he caught incoming wind blades in layers of frost, freezing them solid in midair before they could reach the fortress.
Wherever the cold spread, even the surrounding air seemed to crystallize.
Vice Admiral Doberman had transformed into something resembling a living fortress.
A thick, stone-like shell covered his body from head to toe.
He planted himself firmly in place and endured one violent impact after another, using his reinforced body to absorb attacks that would have torn ordinary Marines apart.
Sparks exploded from his armored frame with every collision.
Yet his feet never moved.
Captain T-Bone and the others fought just as desperately.
Some used weapons to cut apart weakened attacks.
Others released strange energy waves granted by the serum, disrupting or redirecting whatever they could.
Every one of them pushed their temporary abilities to the absolute limit.
They were fighting for the smallest chance to keep Marineford standing.
But their opponent was Kaido.
And Kaido was simply too monstrous.
His attacks came without pause.
Wind blades.
Tail strikes.
Bolo Breath.
One wave followed another, leaving the Marines no time to recover.
It felt less like a battle and more like Kaido was amusing himself by subjecting them to an endless bombardment.
Every attack carried enough power to shake the earth.
Every new assault threatened to overwhelm whatever defense they had barely managed to construct against the previous one.
"GAAAH!"
Cries of pain echoed across the battlefield.
Then someone finally shouted what many had already begun to realize.
"W-We can't hold it!"
Their bodies were reaching their limits.
The powers they were using had not been developed through years of training.
They had been forced into their bodies through an external drug.
And using those borrowed abilities at this intensity, again and again, was burning through their stamina at a terrifying rate.
Their limbs began to feel heavier.
Their movements slowed.
Breathing became ragged.
The crisp coordination they had maintained at the beginning started to break apart.
And for the first time since swallowing the serum, uncertainty began creeping into their eyes.
They had been willing to burn their lives away.
But even a flame fed by life itself could not burn forever.
...
The effects of the Super Green Blood serum were fading fast.
With every passing second, the Marines could feel the strength supporting their bodies slipping away.
At the same time, the weakness caused by the drug's backlash came crashing over them like a rising tide, relentlessly eating away at what little stamina they had left.
Worse still was the increasingly vivid sensation that their very lives were being drained away.
It felt as though countless needles were being driven deep into their bones, each pulse of pain reminding them that the power they had borrowed came at a terrible price.
Under Kaido's relentless bombardment, more and more Marines were struck down.
Their bodies were hurled through the air like broken dolls.
Blood sprayed from their mouths before they crashed heavily into the ground, the impact leaving many of them unable to rise again.
The defensive line they had fought so desperately to build had been their last barrier against Kaido.
Now it was falling apart.
Under his overwhelming assault, gaps had been torn through the formation everywhere.
The once-coordinated defenses were riddled with holes, trembling on the verge of complete collapse.
Kaido immediately noticed.
His enormous dragon eyes gleamed.
"The game's over, ants!"
With a savage grin, he raised one colossal claw.
Then brought it down.
This was not another wind blade or blast of elemental energy.
It was pure physical force.
Raw strength reinforced by terrifying Haki.
The massive dragon claw blotted out the sky as it descended, casting a shadow over the concentration of Marine officers below.
The pressure alone felt like a mountain falling from the heavens.
Then it struck.
BOOOOOOM!!!
The earth convulsed.
Stone shattered.
Dust exploded upward in a towering cloud that swallowed the battlefield.
Onigumo, Doberman, T-Bone, and the other officers had already pushed themselves beyond their limits simply to keep standing.
Against this attack, they had nothing left.
Kaido's claw smashed through their defenses in a single blow.
Their bodies were launched away like cannonballs.
Blood erupted from their mouths.
The artificial powers surrounding them flickered once—
then disappeared.
The brilliant effects produced by the Super Green Blood serum collapsed almost instantly.
One officer smashed through the remains of a broken wall.
Another crashed into a mound of rubble.
Several disappeared entirely into the ruined structures scattered across Marineford.
Whether some of them were even conscious afterward was impossible to tell.
With one seemingly simple strike, Kaido had completely shattered the core resistance the Marines had built through the serum.
The power they had purchased with their health and lifespan had ultimately been crushed beneath overwhelming strength.
"WORORORORORO!"
Kaido circled above the battlefield.
"Anyone else?!"
His roar rolled across Marineford like thunder.
The enormous dragon eyes swept across the destruction below.
Marines lay scattered everywhere.
Weapons had been knocked from their hands.
Broken flags hung limply amid the wreckage.
The sight only made Kaido's hunger for destruction burn hotter.
Kuzan watched from nearby, his eyes widening with fury.
His wounds still throbbed painfully.
Diverting the earlier Bolo Breath had already aggravated the injuries Bullet had inflicted on him, and now even the slightest movement sent pain tearing through his body.
Yet the situation before him was deteriorating by the second.
Kaido alone was already pushing Marine Headquarters toward collapse.
And Bullet had not even entered the fight yet.
Kuzan felt a powerlessness he rarely experienced.
In his current condition, overturning the battle by himself was nearly impossible.
Marineford itself now looked like a tower with its foundations cracking beneath it.
One more heavy blow might bring everything down.
Then laughter suddenly rang out from above.
"Hahahaha!"
Bullet, still standing on Kaido's back, finally stepped forward.
His grin was almost feral.
"Kaido!"
He rolled his shoulders.
"You've made enough of a damn mess already!"
Battle lust burned brightly in his eyes.
"Time for me to loosen up too!"
Bullet had been holding himself back from the moment they arrived.
Watching Kaido unleash one devastating attack after another had only made the urge to fight inside him burn hotter.
His gaze swept over Marineford.
Kaido, the so-called Strongest Creature, had torn through the Marines' defenses like they were made of paper.
One defensive line after another had collapsed.
Officers who had pushed themselves beyond their limits were lying broken across the battlefield.
Screams and shouts filled the ruined fortress below.
And to Bullet—
that only meant the battlefield was finally starting to look interesting.
His grin widened.
Now it was his turn.