Akainu's facial muscles twisted violently, and blue veins crawled across his temples and neck like earthworms.
A roar, suppressed to the extreme and sounding less than human, exploded from deep within his throat.
"AHHHHHHH!!!"
Scalding magma surged out frantically, instantly covering the wound eroded by frost. The high temperature forcibly cauterized and sealed the blood vessels, stopping the gushing blood.
Akainu stared fixedly at the spot where Ryoma had disappeared and reappeared, the crimson light in his eyes almost turning into physical flames ready to erupt.
The shame of having his arm severed was like the most vicious curse, nearly igniting all of his reason, leaving only a pure madness to burn everything to ashes.
The earth began to let out an overwhelmed groan as deep red cracks spread in all directions with him as the center. What flowed within the cracks was not seawater, but churning lava.
"Go... to... hell...!!!"
With this final low growl, the ground of Galmoro Island's entire dock area completely shattered.
Boom! Boom! Boom...
Dozens of thick pillars of molten lava shot up into the sky from countless cracks in the ground. The seawater in the harbor evaporated instantly upon contact with the lava, forming thick steam that blotted out the sun.
"Full speed retreat!"
On a Marines Warship that had just sailed away from the harbor in the distance, a Marine Lieutenant Commander held onto the jolting railing, screaming toward the helm with all his might.
"Get out of here! Fast!"
The warship did its best to turn around and flee this death zone that was about to turn into a sea of lava.
In the towns further away, countless residents were startled by the violent tremors and the sudden red light. They pushed open their windows in terror and looked toward the harbor.
The earth trembled continuously beneath their feet, and the sky was shrouded in a crimson hue, as if a sun were rising there, radiating a terrifying heat.
The ecological environment of this prosperous port in the eastern part of the island was being completely rewritten by Akainu's solitary rage.
Ryoma stood at the center of the destruction, his expression more solemn than ever before.
He could feel that Akainu had gone completely mad. This strike was carried out with the determination to utterly erase this half of the island along with himself.
Just as that world-destroying power was about to pour out, the space behind Ryoma twisted without warning, then, like a shattered mirror, countless fine cracks appeared and broke apart inch by inch.
Immediately after, a vortex with silver light shimmering at its edges and an interior so deep it seemed able to swallow everything appeared out of thin air. An irresistible, terrifying suction then emanated from the center of the vortex.
"You've got to be kidding. Of all times..."
Ryoma cursed inwardly.
His body was pulled completely out of his control by that massive suction, falling backward into it.
"Lava Purgatory!!!"
Akainu's roar and the eruption of lava arrived simultaneously. The lava covering the entire harbor area, carrying a high temperature that would turn everything to nothingness, crushed toward Ryoma's position.
However, Ryoma's figure began to become blurred and transparent. The lava encountered no resistance and crashed straight into the spinning vortex behind Ryoma.
The terrifying energy, enough to turn half the island into scorched earth, was silently swallowed by that bottomless darkness the moment it touched the vortex, without even causing a single ripple.
Akainu's eyes, composed of lava, suddenly constricted. He saw Ryoma about to 'escape' and let out a roar of extreme unwillingness.
"NOOOO!!!"
He could not accept it!
He could not accept that the sinner who had severed his arm and trampled the dignity of the Marines underfoot would disappear before his eyes in such a way that he completely failed to understand.
Akainu frantically pushed his magma, trying to burst the vortex along with Ryoma with even more energy, but all the lava was decomposed and swallowed the moment it neared the vortex, vanishing without a trace.
In the final moment before being completely sucked in, Ryoma's gaze pierced through the distorted air. The last thing he saw was Akainu's face, completely twisted by extreme anger, unwillingness, and pain.
In the next instant, his entire body seemed to decompose into billions of shimmering points of light and was completely sucked into the vortex.
With his disappearance, the vortex rapidly contracted inward, eventually turning into a singularity that flickered once and then vanished completely.
The entire world fell into a moment of dead silence, followed immediately by destruction.
Because Ryoma had disappeared, Akainu's subsequent endless stream of lava energy lost its only outlet.
BOOM!!!
The power accumulated to its limit exploded indiscriminately in all directions.
The entire East Bay Harbor of Galmoro Island was completely wiped off the map in this terrifying energy explosion.
The earth was torn asunder, and the harbor sank into the seabed.
Endless lava filled the massive cavity, forming a giant lava lake over several thousand meters in diameter that was still boiling and expanding.
At the center of the lake, magma churned and shot high into the air, mixing with the steam clouds formed by the instantly evaporated seawater.
A massive column of clouds composed of high-temperature steam, volcanic ash, and sulfur gas rose a thousand meters into the sky, forming the clearly visible silhouette of a mushroom cloud.
The distant Marine Warship was rocked violently by a massive wave and shockwave, throwing around the Marines on board.
A Marine who had just crawled back up stared dumbfoundedly at the apocalyptic scene in the distance.
"The harbor... the harbor is gone..."
His voice became somewhat hoarse due to extreme fear.
A colleague beside him who had just woken up from unconsciousness also looked in the direction of his gaze.
Where the bustling harbor and docks should have been, there was now only a sea of crimson lava.
There were also three small Marine Warships that hadn't had time to retreat because they were too close. Half of them were melted in the first wave of impact, and their glowing red steel hulls slowly sank into that boiling sea of magma without even being able to kick up a struggling splash.
"That... that is... Admiral Akainu..."
On the outskirts of the town, countless buildings collapsed during the violent tremors, and wooden houses were ignited by the high temperature, bursting into raging fires.
The cries, screams, and pleas for help from the residents mixed together, and the entire town fell into a state of chaos and panic.
The air was filled with a mixture of sulfur and the smell of charred flesh, and black ash fell from the sky like snowflakes of death.
The volcano in the center of the island, which had been dormant for a hundred years, was also stimulated by this battle and began to spew out billowing thick smoke, foreshadowing the arrival of an even larger-scale natural disaster.
But at this moment, no one cared about that volcano anymore, because a man-made hell had already descended before their eyes.
At the edge of that newborn lava lake, the earth seemed to have been baked into dark-colored glass. Akainu was half-kneeling on the ground, his lava-like body having receded and returned to flesh and blood.
He slowly lowered his head, looking at his empty right shoulder, then looked at the distant sea of lava that represented his anger and failure.
An indescribable sense of humiliation and killing intent accumulated and swelled in his chest, finally turning into a roar that broke through the sky.
"RYOMA!!!"
The hatred contained in that roar even drowned out the rumble of the lava and the sound of buildings collapsing.
Even the surviving Marines on the warship that had fled far away seemed to hear this roar from the depths of hell.