Already dead to begin with, he naturally could not be killed again. That was the reason the wounds on Salazar’s body were recovering.
“Interesting. Is this why you dared to fight me alone?”
“The Den Den Mushi signal not going through was your doing too, wasn’t it? It can indeed delay the arrival of reinforcements, but it won’t take long. Marine support will still reach this place.
If you had stayed hidden in the deep sea, the Marines wouldn’t have had much they could do to you. But you actually came to the Red Line yourself. That’s just arrogance.”
“Arrogance? I never do anything without certainty. That’s called confidence.”
After Salazar activated his Devil Fruit ability, his outward appearance didn’t change much. His body structure remained largely the same.
It was fortunate for him that he was an undead rather than a zombie; otherwise, he might have been restrained by Nereus’s abilities.
It was said that if someone were bitten by both a vampire and a zombie at the same time, the chance of turning into a vampire was greater because of an unequal treaty between them, provided the zombie was purified first.
Such a chain of mutual restraint theoretically wouldn’t appear in these seas. And against Salazar in his undead state, Nereus didn’t find anything particularly troublesome.
Although Nereus himself bore the title of “Undying,” in essence he was not impossible to kill—he simply had many lives. With countless health bars stacked together, it created the illusion of infinite health.
Salazar had merely overlaid his own health bar with a layer of gray, making himself untargetable, but he still only had a single life.
Once the appropriate method was found, he would die all the same.
And as for how to attack the undead, Nereus happened to have some experience.
“Underworld Horn!”
Salazar threw another punch. Under the influence of his ability, even the temperature above Mariejois began to drop. Frost spread across the ground beneath their feet, and when the torrential rain fell into the area, it froze into hail due to the biting cold.
It was the same kind of shockwave as before, but this time it seemed mixed with the wails of departed souls, giving off an eerie, spine-chilling sensation.
After the guards of Mariejois had escorted the Celestial Dragons to safety, they rushed toward the battlefield. Yet before they could even approach, that frigid, deathly aura forced them to halt.
If they continued forward… they would die.
At the same time, facing Salazar’s attack, Nereus did not deploy his Conqueror’s Haki barrier as he had before. He did not even move to counterattack.
He simply stood there, wide open, allowing Salazar to strike.
“Scheming…”
That was Salazar’s first thought. The fact that his opponent stood motionless surely meant he had some ulterior motive.
But after only a brief hesitation, Salazar moved once more.
He had become a Marine partly because of his father’s influence, but to truly rise to the position of Marine Fleet Admiral, he had relied on his own strength.
Anyone who becomes powerful, no matter the path taken, develops confidence in their own strength.
No matter what ability the opponent possessed, he refused to believe his punch would be ineffective.
“You’ll pay for your arrogance!”
Sshhk!
His fist pierced straight through Nereus’s body. Whether through Haki perception or the tactile sensation of his fist, everything told Salazar this was a real, physical body.
Blood splattered out, then froze under the chilly aura. Yet a wild smile curled at the corner of Nereus’s lips.
“What’s so funny? This is the chill of the undead. It will continue to affect you. Even a Mythical Zoan user won’t be able to heal under these conditions.”
“You’re right. In this situation, self-healing really is impossible. But why would I need to heal? The one who’s fallen into a trap… is you.”
Bzz—
The surrounding darkness dissipated. The torrential rain ceased, replaced by a blood-red backdrop.
The pierced Nereus slowly dissolved, and nearby, a drop of blood rapidly expanded and swelled, soon forming another Nereus.
“Welcome to my kingdom, the kingdom of the dead, living one.”
The River of Death was originally meant to be projected outward. Only by releasing the River of Death—or the undead within it—could it affect the outside world.
And living beings other than Nereus himself could not be drawn into the River of Death.
However, Salazar’s Devil Fruit ability had turned himself into one of the dead. Through that transformation, it instead allowed Nereus to use a single life as a medium to open the gates of the River of Death and drag him inside.
“You b*stard…”
The blood flowing around him not only failed to freeze, it instead gave Salazar a scorching sensation like magma. As the user of the Undead Fruit, he had already realized just how strange this place was.
“The dead cannot be killed again in the world of the living. But in the world of the dead, you’re nothing special.”
If, in the outside world, Salazar’s health bar had been gray, then here, it was fully lit.
On the contrary, Nereus’s own health bar had completely assimilated with the River of Death. Unless this entire world was utterly destroyed, he would suffer no harm at all.
“You think… this is enough to deal with me? I am the Fleet Admiral! Pirate! Dragging me into this space inside your body will be the greatest regret of your life!
Underworld… Lament!”
If the earlier Salazar had still maintained a human form—still recognizable as a man—then now he had completely abandoned his human self.
His body swelled and dispersed, cold air and ghostly shadows spreading outward, only to be annihilated by the roaring river of blood.
In the outside world, Salazar could have tangled with Nereus for a while longer; he would not have been defeated so quickly.
But once he was dragged into the world of the River of Death in his ability user form, he had already completely lost any chance of victory.
Under Nereus’s control, the River of Death turned utterly berserk. Towering waves formed from blood surged toward Salazar like a tsunami.
To Salazar, this was a boiling sea of blood and magma from the depths of hell.
At this moment, he was not fighting a single person—he was battling an entire world.
Under the first wave, Salazar could still endure. But against the relentless onslaught that followed, his figure grew increasingly small.
When the world of the River of Death finally returned to calm, there was no longer any trace of Fleet Admiral Salazar in existence.
And what happened inside the River of Death was completely unknown to the outside world.
In the eyes of the Marine soldiers and Cipher Pol agents outside, Salazar had pierced through his opponent’s chest, causing Nereus’s blood to splatter onto him, and after that, Salazar simply vanished.
“Fleet Admiral… did the Fleet Admiral… get eaten by that monster?”
A soldier voiced the question, but no one answered him. The soldiers in the distance did not dare take a single step forward, merely staring at the scene from afar.
And behind them, Mariejois seemed to have abandoned them as well. No reinforcements were dispatched, and they could only watch as Nereus slowly departed.
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