Chapter 176 (Patreon)

For someone from another world whose strength had already reached the level of the Sage of Six Paths, entering an apocalyptic world ravaged by a mutated virus was almost unfair. It was like a max-level player stepping into a beginner area.

To ordinary people, the zombies were terrifying.

A single bite meant infection, and anyone who fell to them would soon rise as one of their own.

To Mihawk, however, they were no more difficult to cut down than dead branches.

A zombie’s weakness was its head. Even after losing its limbs or having its body torn apart, it would continue moving as long as its brain remained intact.

Mihawk’s attacks ignored that condition entirely.

Every swing of the small cross-shaped blade brought true death. It did not matter whether he struck the head, chest, arm, or leg. As long as his blade severed one of the Lines of Death revealed by the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, the zombie’s existence would reach its end.

The Mystic Eyes did not merely inflict physical damage. They perceived the death already present within all things and allowed Mihawk to bring that inevitable conclusion forward with a single cut.

Tokonosu City, Japan.

2:20 p.m.

The virus was spreading at a terrifying rate. With every passing minute, more people were infected and transformed into zombies.

The narration might call them zombies, but the people of this world had yet to give them a proper name. To the survivors, they were simply the dead.

A world that had been peaceful only a few hours earlier had suddenly descended into unprecedented chaos.

Despair hung over the entire city.

Faced with death, people revealed sides of themselves that might otherwise have remained hidden forever. Some abandoned their families to save themselves. Others betrayed their companions for the slightest chance of survival.

Yet there were also those who refused to leave one another behind, choosing to face death together rather than escape alone.

Scenes like these were unfolding all over the world.

On a street that climbed toward a nearby hillside, Mihawk walked along the middle of the road as though he were taking a casual stroll.

Mihawk held the small blade he normally wore around his neck in his right hand, while his left swept his long silver hair away from his face.

Thick, dark fluid stained both his hair and skin. Beneath the afternoon heat, the blood and decaying flesh clinging to him had begun to give off an unpleasant smell.

Mihawk no longer knew exactly how long he had been in this world.

He had also stopped counting how many zombies had fallen to his blade.

All he knew was that something inside him was beginning to change.

A heavy pressure had settled in his chest. It did not interfere with his breathing, but it left him restless and irritated. The calm state of mind he normally maintained had begun to fray some time ago.

It felt as though something unpleasant had become trapped inside him with no way out. He wanted to shout, curse, or split the entire street apart simply to release it.

Yet his expression remained cold.

Anyone who saw him now would have assumed that the entire world had somehow offended him.

Mihawk was fully aware of the change.

It was not killing intent. Killing intent was deliberate and focused, something he could release or restrain at will.

This was different.

It was the residue left behind after spending hours surrounded by blood, decay, screams, and death. Someone who took pleasure in slaughter might eventually allow that violence to seep into their mind until it distorted their very nature.

Mihawk would never permit that to happen.

Dracule Mihawk’s template had given him more than swordsmanship and Haki. It had also allowed him to experience the unshakable state of mind possessed by a swordsman who had reached the summit.

Together with his own will, that experience kept the deepest part of his mind perfectly calm.

This atmosphere would never control him. If the death saturating this world had any value, he would refine it into his swordsmanship and nothing else.

Several zombies staggered toward him from farther up the street.

The small blade swept through the air in a single casual motion.

The zombies came apart as the blade crossed their Lines of Death. Heads, limbs, and pieces of their torsos struck the pavement, yet not one of them continued moving.

Mihawk walked past their remains without slowing down.

“Please… help me…”

A trembling voice suddenly came from beneath a car parked at the side of the road.

A heavyset, middle-aged man crawled out and threw himself toward Mihawk, wrapping both arms around his right leg.

“I can pay you,” the man pleaded. “I’ll give you as much as you want. Just take me home!”

“Let go.”

Mihawk looked down at him without emotion.

“I can give you money! A lot of money!” The man tightened his grip, his eyes wide with terror. “Please! I don’t want those things to bite me! I don’t want to die!”

Mihawk pulled his leg free without harming him.

The man opened his mouth to plead again, only to freeze when he met Mihawk’s gaze.

The red rings within Mihawk’s eyes seemed to narrow upon him. There was no anger in them and no need for a spoken threat, yet the man’s instincts screamed that he should not touch him again.

His face went pale, and he hurriedly backed away.

“I have no use for your money,” Mihawk said. “Find somewhere secure and stop shouting. Otherwise, they’ll hear you before you reach the end of this street.”

The man nodded frantically before scrambling back toward the nearest building.

Mihawk turned away and continued up the road.

The encounter had done nothing to ease the pressure inside him. If anything, that only confirmed that it was not some mindless urge to hurt another person. Killing an innocent man would have achieved nothing except stain his blade with a meaningless death.

What Mihawk felt came from spending hours staring directly at death itself.

By now, the number of zombies he had cut down had already passed a hundred.

No matter where the small blade struck, severing a Line of Death caused the same result. The zombies fell silent and never moved again.

At first, the process had seemed repetitive. However, Mihawk was not simply killing zombies. He was studying the strange boundary between life and death that existed within them.

These creatures were already dead, yet the virus forced their bodies to continue moving. Despite that contradiction, the Mystic Eyes could still perceive another death within them.

That made this world an ideal place for what Mihawk wanted to accomplish.

Until now, his Mystic Eyes and swordsmanship had still functioned as two separate powers. His eyes perceived the Lines of Death, and then his blade followed the path they revealed.

The two actions occurred so quickly that most opponents could never distinguish between them, but the separation still existed.

Return to One had proven that the two paths could be brought together. By combining seventy-three compressed Ranged Slashes with the Line of Death he had perceived, Mihawk had produced an attack powerful enough to permanently alter the landscape.

However, that technique was still an imperfect fusion.

It was an all-or-nothing attack that forced his mind to process too many Lines of Death at once while maintaining control over every compressed slash. The strain it placed upon his brain proved that he had brought the two powers together through force rather than truly making them one.

Mihawk did not want the fusion to remain limited to a single ultimate technique.

He wanted it to become the foundation of his entire swordsmanship.

Years earlier, after the Konoha Crush, a single look from him had nearly caused Hinata to faint.

That had been one of the earliest signs of his Conqueror’s Haki.

That power had long since awakened.

Mihawk could now control it freely and even coat the small blade with Advanced Conqueror’s Haki.

The pressure accumulating within him had nothing to do with awakening another form of Haki.

What he sought here was entirely different.

The Breath of All Things allowed him to hear the rhythm of what existed. Observation Haki allowed him to follow its movements and glimpse where it would be in the future. The Mystic Eyes of Death Perception revealed the end awaiting it.

Those abilities should not have to operate one after another.

They needed to become a single perception answered by a single swing of his blade.

The moment his eyes perceived death, the small blade should already be moving along the path required to sever it. Eventually, even that distinction should disappear. Seeing death and cutting it would become the same action, performed without conscious thought.

Every zombie he faced gave him another opportunity to approach that state.

With each swing, the movement of his blade became a little less deliberate. The small blade occasionally reached a Line of Death before Mihawk consciously directed it there.

The change was small, but it was undeniable.

Once that understanding accumulated far enough, the remaining boundary between his eyes and his sword would disappear completely.

Mihawk had not come to this world to learn how to kill.

He was here to make death itself part of his swordsmanship, until perceiving it and severing it became one and the same.

What awaited him at the end of that path was the completion of the sword he had begun forging with Return to One—a sword capable of bringing death to anything, even that which had already died.