novelraw Chapter 444 444: Absurd! Everyone Dies in the Explosion and Kizaru Gets the Chicken Dinner
Chapter 444 444: Absurd! Everyone Dies in the Explosion and Kizaru Gets the Chicken Dinner
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The silver windproof lighter in Whitebeard's hand glinted under the sun. His thick thumb rested against the striker wheel.
"Pops! Don't do it!" Jozu's voice cracked with terror from behind the scrapped car.
The hulking commander was trembling. He knew all too well what would happen if a bucket of high-purity gasoline was ignited in such a confined space.
"At this range, the fire is definitely going to drag us down with them!" Marco clutched his bleeding shoulder, trying to yell a warning.
But Whitebeard completely ignored his sons' terrified roars. His commanding gaze swept over the ten-square-meter slaughterhouse before him. This was exactly the ending he wanted. Since everyone had lost their supernatural powers, he would use the purest form of destruction to draw the curtain on this farce.
The yellow, viscous liquid dripped steadily from Kaido's Level 3 Helmet. The pungent chemical fumes immediately stung their eyes, forcing them shut. Kaido raised a hand twice the size of a normal man's and haphazardly wiped his face, feeling the slick, greasy texture of gasoline. The Governor-General of the Beasts Pirates finally snapped. After dominating the seas for decades, when had he ever been threatened with a bucket of gas?
"NEWGATE, YOU LUNATIC!" Kaido bellowed hoarsely, his vocal cords tearing from sheer fury. "ARE YOU TRYING TO TAKE US ALL DOWN WITH YOU!?"
Raising the warped cast-iron pan with both hands, Kaido stomped his thick thighs against the ground, kicking up half a meter of mud. Soaked in gasoline, he charged straight at Whitebeard, determined to smash the old man's skull before he could strike the flint.
"STOP HIM! HURRY UP AND STOP THAT MADMAN!" Sengoku lay completely flat, desperately trying to shrink his body and merge with the mud, yelling at anyone listening. But who would dare? And who possessed the strength?
Watching Kaido charge, the grin on Whitebeard's face only grew wider.
"Gurarararara!" His booming laughter struck pain into their eardrums.
Click. A crisp scraping of metal. The flint sparked, and a tiny, fragile orange flame danced on the edge of the Blue Zone. In this air thick with gasoline vapors, that tiny flame was an invitation from the Grim Reaper. With a flick of his wrist, Whitebeard tossed the lit lighter. It traced a beautiful arc through the air, landing flawlessly in the gasoline-soaked mud.
There was no suspense. With a deafening BOOM, a blinding pillar of fire erupted from the earth. The violent flames raged like a primordial beast unleashed from its cage, instantly swallowing the entire final circle. The rolling heat waves warped and distorted the very air. Agonized screams echoed endlessly from within the sea of fire.
Doflamingo didn't even have the strength to crawl. The fire found him first, using the remains of his gasoline-soaked pink feather coat as the perfect accelerant. The blaze engulfed his entire body in the blink of an eye.
"Newgate! I won't let you off even as a ghost!" Doflamingo shrieked in absolute despair. His signature arrogant laugh morphed entirely into a harrowing wail before his body dissolved into a beam of white light, completely eliminated from the system.
Nearby, Garp and Sengoku—the two old comrades—failed to escape their fate. Garp's beard was burned clean off. As he swatted at the flames licking his clothes, he cursed furiously.
"Sengoku, you old bastard! I told you to run!"
Sengoku's eyes streamed with tears from the thick smoke. The M416 Assault Rifle in his hands was already glowing red-hot.
"You have the nerve to blame me, you prick?! If you hadn't turned back to pick up that garbage gun, we would've made it out!"
The two Marine veterans, with a combined age of over a century, pointed fingers and screamed at each other amidst the inferno, throwing their high-ranking prestige entirely to the wind before simultaneously turning into flashes of white light and disappearing. Shanks clutched his face with his hand, rolling uselessly on the ground in a desperate attempt to smother the flames with muddy water. But a fire fueled by high-purity gasoline couldn't be extinguished so easily. The flames mercilessly swallowed him whole, and the captain of the Red-Haired Pirates was frustratingly forced out of the game.
Kaido held out the longest. His monstrous muscles glowed an unnatural, burning red under the extreme heat. The Level 3 Vest and Level 3 Helmet shielded him from the most lethal initial blast of heat. Powering through the flames, he managed two more steps forward, hoisting the pan high into the air, barely half a meter from Whitebeard's head.
But a mortal body ultimately could not withstand this extreme physical destruction. Between the oxygen deprivation and the searing heat, Kaido felt his lungs expanding to the point of rupture. His colossal frame swayed twice before crashing heavily into the scorched earth in an explosion of sparks, transforming into white light as he faded away.
Whitebeard stood at the very edge of the firestorm, the intense heat curling his eyebrows. He looked down at his own hands; his fingertips were already turning transparent and ethereal. The shockwave and fringe heat of the gasoline explosion had caught him as well. Even Jozu and Marco, hiding behind the car, had been caught in the blast and ruled as receiving fatal damage.
Marco offered a bitter smile and shook his head, while Jozu let out a helpless sigh. Yet, Whitebeard felt not a shred of regret. Throwing his head back, he laughed heartily.
"Gurararara! Exhilarating!"
To take down these high-and-mighty figures in such an ordinary, mortal fashion... the remnant of the old era felt this dungeon trip was entirely worth the price of admission.
Above them, the system's emotionless voice chimed through the sky.
[Players sharply decreased.] [Blue Zone completely closed.] The blue, high-voltage electric grid—which had previously been creeping forward—suddenly collapsed toward the center like a frenzied beast. The blue lightning wove into an impenetrable net, draping directly over the sea of fire. The violent electrical currents forcibly severed the oxygen supply, entirely suffocating the remaining flames. Whitebeard's body shattered completely within the blue light, turning into a sky full of motes as he exited Erangel.
The acrid scent of gunpowder lingered in the air. The final circle, once packed with people, was now dead silent. The scorched earth was pockmarked with craters. A few deformed Level 3 Helmets rolled nearby, and the pan that had once cracked Sengoku's skull now gleamed with a blackened sheen. Several rifles, burnt down to their bare barrels, lay scattered in the muddy water. The entire battlefield was reduced to a heap of scrap metal. The wind howled through the withered tree trunk.
The system seemed to be running its final calculations, preparing to declare this unprecedented battle royale an absolute wipeout with zero survivors. Just then, at the edge of the scorched earth, less than twenty meters from the epicenter of the explosion, extremely muffled coughing echoed from underground.
Cough... cough...
It wasn't loud, but against the dead silence of the ruins, it was incredibly distinct. A half-burnt wooden plank shifted, pushed forcefully upward from below as dirt cascaded down. A hand caked in black sludge gripped the edge of the surface, grime jammed deep beneath its fingernails. Gasping heavily for air, Kizaru—crowned with a head full of mud and weeds—laboriously dragged himself out of an abandoned sewer manhole.
The Marine Admiral currently looked more pathetic than a street beggar. His iconic yellow-striped suit was reduced to a pile of tattered rags, and his face was smeared with streaks of black ash. Even his signature tinted sunglasses were completely missing. Kizaru lay spread-eagle on the scorched earth, his chest heaving violently. Staring blankly at the empty ruins around him, his mind struggled to process the situation.
Earlier, he had been chased into a dead end by the Blue Zone, a double-barreled shotgun pressed right to his forehead. He had only barely managed to escape during a firefight between other players, scrambling desperately into this foul-smelling sewer. Trapped down there listening to the endless artillery and explosions shaking his eardrums, he hadn't even dared to breathe too heavily for fear of being discovered by the lunatics above.
He had honestly thought he was going to suffocate in that stinking trench. But now... everyone above ground was just gone?
Kizaru stared numbly at the sky. Suddenly, brilliant golden light pierced through the overcast, grey horizon. Massive golden letters materialized slowly through the clouds, illuminating the entire sky over Erangel.
[Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!] Kizaru's jaw dropped. The face that constantly wore that wretched, sleazy smile twisted into a remarkably comical expression. He looked down at the foul mud coating his body, then back up at the dazzling golden letters in the sky. A feeling of utter, absolute absurdity washed over him.
"Did I... just win by doing absolutely nothing?"
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