Journey to One Piece

257. Character progression 100%

"Shrink, Nyobo."

The enormous staff that had devastated Marineford suddenly disappeared, and a regular-sized staff reappeared in Luffy's hands. Everyone around looked at him in fear for the first time. All this time, they had believed that this guy was probably the weakest of the four brothers, but now it seemed to be the total opposite of what they thought.

A cluster of light beams suddenly appeared near Luffy, and before anyone could react, a round kick was delivered to Luffy after the light beam materialized. Luffy narrowly dodged Kizaru's initial assault, leaving behind an afterimage of himself.

Luffy didn't stop there; with lightning speed, he struck Kizaru with his staff, who was not fast enough to dodge even with the Logia fruit and Haki. Kizaru knew what was coming, but he was still too slow to escape it.

The staff struck Kizaru right in the chest, immediately breaking some of his ribcage bones. The momentum of the staff's strike threw Kizaru off, and he was sent flying back, crashing into the already damaged Marine HQ walls.

Everyone now stared at Luffy with wide eyes. If the first encounter with Akainu could be attributed to some kind of strange Devil Fruit power, Luffy hitting Kizaru like a bug made everyone realize there was definitely more to him than they had initially thought.

However, in the next moment, Luffy's eyes slowly turned white, and he began to fall to the ground. Before his body could touch the ground, a hand reached out and caught him. It was Ken. Ken had already sensed what was happening, thanks to his Haki, but Kizaru had been too annoying and had managed to stall him for a few seconds.

The moment Luffy's crown had appeared, Ken knew that things had taken a dangerous turn. As expected, Luffy had knocked out Akainu with a single hit, and thankfully, Kizaru had left him too, only to be beaten down by Luffy. But it had been too much for Luffy, and he had lost consciousness. The power of the Monkey King was still too much for his body to handle.

Ken held his unconscious brother's body and sighed. From the corner of his eye, he saw Sabo's body slowly vanish into nothingness.

After a few seconds, Sabo reappeared in the same spot, standing upright. Upon closer inspection, one could see that Sabo's right hand was quite wrinkled, as if it were made of wood. The most horrifying thing was that there were multiple red eyes attached to it, moving and blinking on their own.

And one eye slowly closed itself. Never to open again.

Sabo just used Izanagi to erase his own death and bring himself back to life. Ace who was still on his knees smiled as he saw his brother. Unlike Luffy, he remembered the powers of Sabo and though he was incensed of what had happened but at the end he knew that Sabo would be alright.

"Lost your eye?"

"Yeah."

The others however couldn't make head or tail of it. Didn't Sabo just die, how come he was back and that too with no scar whatsoever.

"What is going on? Didn't Akainu just kill him?"

"Did you see his hand. It looks so horrifying."

The marines couldn't understand but the pirates didn't care. Since Ace's brother was safe, it didn't really matter. Sabo didn't waste more time and took Ace on his shoulder and looked at Ken who took Luffy on his back.

"Gurararara... The brothers seemed to have their back... I had fun coming here..." Whitebeard suddenly started speaking. He had a smile on his face when he saw that Ace was doing fine and would live on. It meant his sacrifice wasn't meaningless. "Marco.. After this is over... Help Straw Hat Luffy to become an Yonko, he would be an excellent one..Gurarara.. My time is almost up."

Those words echoed everywhere.

"What are you talking about pops? We are going back together. You will heal completely." Marco shouted and along with him the others did too.

"Marco.. We both know that it is not possible.. I am sorry my sons.. I couldn't be a father to you for a longer time but the times are changing now.. Straw hat Luffy just showed a glimpse of it.. Gurarara.." Whitebeard paused as he was breathing heavily. "Sengoku... Someday.. Someone will appear carrying the history of all those decades on his back and challenge the world to a fight."

"Sengoku.. You guys on the World Government all fear the immense battle engulfing the world that will eventually come. I don't care myself but as soon as someone finds that treasure the whole world will turn upside down. And someone will definitely find it. That day will come sooner or later. Gurararara.."

The others on the battlefield had already stopped fighting and the pirates knew that those were probably the last words of Whitebeard. He took a deep breath and shouted.

"One Piece is Real!"

The faces of the marines and especially Sengoku contorted as he heard that.

"You bastard."

Ken who had been running away smirked as he heard that. The famous words had been spoken even though he tried his best to escape that fate. With those words, the last life passed away from the body of Whitebeard. Ken made sure that Blackbeard wasn't here or else he would have acted immediately. His haki was in full force and made sure there were no blind spots around.

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Character progression of the host : 100%

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The moment he got the notification, his haki senses tingled and just out of reflex he employed a move. His whole body was surrounded by rib cage like bones, burning bright blue in color. And the person who just attacked was Aokiji with his spear. The spear wasn't able penetrate and was stopped the skeletal part that suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Aokiji wanted to use the shocking moment at the battlefield to attack and kill Ken.

But he wasn't successful in his sneak attack. The thing that appeared around Ken was of course, Susano.

The actual Susano of Obito Uchiha.