Chapter 271: Ivankov's All-Out Struggle

BANG! Fujitora thrust out a single palm, effortlessly blocking the incoming strike, before sweeping his gravity-infused blade forward in a powerful counter.

"Gravity Blade: Tiger!"

A roaring blue tiger burst forth, its crushing kinetic weight blasting Ivankov backward through the air. Even while tumbling out of control, Ivankov strained every fiber of her strength to unleash her signature technique once more.

"Death Wink!!"

"Newkama Karate: Master Kick!"

A massive, tree-trunk-like leg whipped through the air, stirring up howling gales as it drove a brutal kick straight toward Fujitora, who was charging toward Dragon.

Fujitora, seemingly anticipating the counter, glided backward in a swift microsecond maneuver to dodge the blow, drawing his blade across the open air in a sweeping horizontal arc.

"Horizontal Gravity!"

An invisible, terrifying weight saturated the domain before Fujitora, causing the surrounding spatial fabric to groan under the crushing pressure.

Ensnared in the gravity field, Ivankov coughed up a spray of fresh blood under the oppressive force. At the absolute threshold of defeat, she executed a desperate Wink once more, forcing her body out of the localized gravity zone.

Before she could even draw a breath of relief, cold sweat drenched her entire frame—the gravity field she had just escaped was continuing its trajectory, heading directly toward Dragon's coordinate!

"Not good!"

"Death Wink!!" Ivankov snapped her eyelid violently toward Fujitora, discharging a massive shockwave straight from her eye.

Sensing the incoming threat, Fujitora held his sword vertically before his chest to absorb the blow.

KABOOM!

"Curse it all!" Ivankov's expression turned dreadfully dark as she watched the compressed gravity field continue its relentless advance.

Though her strike had disrupted Fujitora's rhythm, the gravity field had already been unleashed; she had ultimately failed to halt its path.

"Dragon!!"

Every Revolutionary Army officer on the field watched the scene in mounting terror. In a war of this scale, the Supreme Commander's status dictated the morale of the entire force.

Should Dragon sustain a critical hit, it would deal a fatal, irreplaceable blow to the Revolutionary Army.

"Admiral Fujitora!" The Marines cheered in unison, their morale surging wildly at the prospect of the Admiral injuring Dragon.

"Sir Issho..." The Marines who had previously served under Fujitora clenched their fists, unable to contain the hot blood surging through their veins.

"Hmph... Exceptionally well executed, Issho," Akainu noted from atop the elevated platform, the corners of his lips curling into a triumphant smirk.

"It will hardly be that simple," the sword-wielding Elder murmured, his hand tightening subtly around his blade's hilt, his expression exceptionally grave.

"Winds... arise!" Under the watchful gaze of thousands, Dragon slowly raised his right arm, offering a gentle, sweeping push forward.

WHOOSH...

The temporarily settled battlefield erupted into a howling tempest once more, as colossal black wind dragons materialized one after another, hurling themselves straight into the path of the gravity field.

Directly opposite him anchored Admiral Fujitora.

Halfway between the two combatants, the black dragon roared toward the heavens, forcing a stark, visible boundary to cut across the sky—one side completely clear, the other painted a dark, turbulent grey.

ROAR... KABOOM!

The cataclysmic collision of the two powers generated a violent shockwave that swept across the entire theater, forcing thousands of soldiers below to squeeze their eyes shut against the blinding dust.

It felt as though the very heavens and earth were trembling.

When the tempest finally subsided and the dust cleared, the troops managed to catch sight of both figures. Seeing Dragon still preserving that completely calm, unruffled expression, the Marines felt a cold, primitive dread creep down their spines.

What... what manner of monster was Dragon?!

An attack from an Admiral had been neutralized by him so effortlessly!

At that exact microsecond, a thunderous roar echoed from high above. The troops reflexively tilted their heads upward, only to discover that a gargantuan meteor had materialized in the upper atmosphere without anyone noticing.

The meteor was actively plunging toward the Holy Land, burning through the atmospheric layers as it ripped a massive, yawning void clean through the cloud cover.

"What... what on earth is that?!" both Marines and Revolutionary Army soldiers who were ignorant of Fujitora's capabilities gasped in utter terror.

"It's a meteor summoned by Admiral Fujitora! Magnificent! At that scale, it will definitely crush Dragon!" a Marine Vice Admiral who had served alongside Fujitora shouted, his eyes shining with fanatical excitement.

The sheer size of the descending meteor comfortably outclassed any astronomical anomaly he had previously witnessed; the raw kinetic weight it carried was a variable no mind dared calculate.

"WHAT?!" The rest of the battlefield stood frozen in absolute, wide-eyed shock.

To think that a meteor of that scale could be summoned by human hands... The Marine Admirals... just what manner of monsters were these people?!

A unified realization washed over both Marines and subversives alike: this was no longer a conventional war; it was an absolute cataclysm capable of destroying the world.

A Marine Admiral and Dragon—these were titans standing at the absolute pinnacle of global combat power.

A battle between figures of this tier completely sundered all baseline logic; a single stray strike carried more than enough destructive weight to pulverize a sovereign island.

Should a bombardment of this magnitude continue to rain down upon the Holy Land, the sacred city would preserve absolute zero chance of survival, facing nothing short of total annihilation!

Or perhaps... even the vast Red Line beneath their boots, which spanned across the entire world...

It can't be! The terrifying thought had barely crossed their minds before cold sweat soaked through their uniforms.

The premise was far too horrific to process!

And yet... perhaps... there truly existed a non-zero probability of such a reality...

What manner of future awaited this world once the dust finally settled?

Once this war concluded, let those who managed to survive witness the answer with their own eyes!

After all, on a battlefield of this scale, who could truly guarantee their own survival...

"Dragon!!" Koala shrieked in terror. That meteor was simply too colossal!

Even Dragon might fail to...

"Koala, watch out!" Hack threw his frame directly before Koala as a cold blade glinted through the air. Purtch! Fresh crimson sprayed across the stone.

"You hardly have the luxury to let your focus wander, little girl!" a voice chimed in right beside them.

"Marine Vice Admiral Momousagi!" The Revolutionary Army soldiers frantically closed ranks around her line.

"Koala, Hack, are you two all right?!"

"Not good!" High above, the meteor had breached the lower airspace, causing the Revolutionary Army officers to pale in absolute horror.

"Commander Dragon..."

"Death Wink!!"

A solitary silhouette suddenly rocketed straight into the high heavens. It was Ivankov—her frame scaled up to giant proportions—lying horizontally across the air currents face-up.

A continuous cadence of high-density shockwaves erupted frantically from her eyes.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Thick cascades of rock fragments rained down as the shockwaves hammered into the meteor, yet the colossal mass showed zero signs of checking its terminal descent.

"STOP RIGHT THERE!!" In the next microsecond, twin streams of fresh blood gushed from Ivankov's eyes as a gargantuan, phantom eye projection manifested around her entire frame.

"Ultra-Sized: Death Wink!!"

The high-velocity, descending meteor was struck squarely by the colossal beam, a massive crater blasted deep into its core as a jagged fracture webbed across its entire surface.

Compounded by the intense atmospheric friction, the meteor violently sundered into two main sections, shedding countless burning fragments into the surrounding sky.

"Ivankov!" Dragon watched the giant frame of Ivankov tumbling helplessly out of the sky, his eyes narrowing subtly.

"Go!"

With a single sweep of his long sleeve, a gentle current of wind glided under Ivankov to cushion her fall. As the wind safely deposited Ivankov onto the back of the gargantuan cybernetic bird behind him, an extraordinarily tyrannical pressure erupted from Dragon's frame.

Countless black wind dragons surged continuously from his body, violently blasting the cascading meteor debris away from the field, scattering the burning fragments harmlessly into the distant sea.

Before the assembly could even process their awe, another meteor—equally massive as the first—suddenly broke through the clouds directly above them.

"WHAT?!" The Revolutionary Army soldiers—who had just drawn a breath of relief—instantaneously turned pale with shock.

"Curse them! This is far too despicable! Commander Dragon explicitly redirected the initial meteor fragments away from the field to avoid inflicting indiscriminate slaughter on their own Marines, yet they persist without a single shred of restraint!"

"Utterly shameless!!"

Every single soldier on the field had witnessed the previous exchange with absolute clarity. Commander Dragon possessed more than enough leverage to guide those falling meteor fragments straight into the Marine ranks, yet he had deliberately chosen to dump the destruction into the empty ocean zones adjacent to the plaza.