"How much strength did he hold back when he fought me?"
After witnessing Ragnar slash away Whitebeard's sea shock with a single sword,
Red-haired Shanks gripped his famed saber Gryphon tightly with his only remaining right hand.
Crack—
Perhaps he was gripping too tightly.
A sharp, crisp sound like roasting chestnuts echoed from his finger joints.
But he seemed deaf to it, utterly shaken.
"..."
Ben Beckman said nothing. He simply lit a cigar, quietly,
as though only the curling smoke could quell the storm in his chest.
The members of the Red Hair Pirates, who once glared at Ragnar with hatred, now glanced at each other—
hatred tempered by awe.
Pirates... always respect strength.
Ragnar, though young, had a record that struck fear into the hearts of even the seasoned.
On the very day he became Emperor,
he stood above the Four Emperors with a dazzling and overwhelming feat—
rewriting the balance of the New World.
He ended the era of the Four Emperors.
He ushered in the era of the Five Emperors.
"He actually did it."
Charlotte Katakuri stared silently at Ragnar's back, fists clenched tightly beneath his sleeves.
"You little three-eyed brat..."
Whitebeard's eyes were like blades.
"In the era of the Four Emperors," Ragnar continued, unfazed,
"each Emperor had a title of strength upon their ascension."
"The title of Strongest Man in the World—
now belongs to me."
The moment those words fell, only Kaido showed a glimmer of approval.
Everyone else's expressions changed drastically.
The Whitebeard Pirates roared with fury,
but before they could speak, an icy voice filled with dominance chilled the air.
"Gurararara... What nonsense are you spouting, brat?"
"I'm Whitebeard!"
"Before you're buried at sea, let me remind you..."
"This era isn't called the Four Emperors, or the Five Emperors—it's called the Era of Whitebeard!"
His mocking laughter echoed as the sea, freed from the tsunami, suddenly erupted.
Translucent, earth-shaking shockwaves burst forth—
they had always been there, merely hidden beneath the earlier tsunami.
Now exposed, these shockwaves surged forward with destructive force, aimed at Ragnar.
This was what even Charlotte Linlin feared—
Whitebeard's real power wasn't the tsunami... but what caused it.
The tsunami was the opening act.
The shockwave was the executioner.
Unless one could endure the shockwave that summoned the tsunami, they'd be killed outright.
"Hmph!"
Ragnar did not retreat.
Instead, he stepped forward.
In front of countless stunned eyes,
his body expanded rapidly like a myth—growing to the size of a towering giant, nearly a hundred feet tall.
As the incoming shockwave approached,
Ragnar calmly released his three-pointed, double-edged spear,
and raised his palm to meet it.
The black flow of Armament Haki covered his hand, hardening it.
Conqueror's Haki crackled like thunder around his arm.
A divine power of apocalyptic scale surged from within him.
Boom—!
As his palm collided with the shockwave,
a deafening roar exploded into a sound wave that rippled across the heavens.
The shockwave spread outward like a raging sea, threatening to consume all.
Yet after a moment of deadlock, Ragnar let out a fierce roar—
a black lightning dragon burst from his palm, expanding with feral might.
Then—
BOOM!!
Whitebeard's shock wave was directly suppressed by a single slap. With five fingers descending like a divine palm, Ragnar flattened the raging force as if it were nothing more than a basketball, pressing it down into the depths of the seabed.
"Blade!"
Before anyone could even process the god-like feat they had just witnessed, Ragnar extended his right hand toward the three-pointed double-edged sword embedded in the sea. Swish! Swish!
The weapon, which had remained inexplicably upright and unsinking, stirred like a living creature. With a resonant clang, it broke free from the sea and soared toward Ragnar like a silver dragon answering its master's call.
Mid-flight, the blade shimmered with a brilliant silver light. Then—before their very eyes—it began to expand, the edges growing broader and longer as if inflated by the very wind.
By the time the three-pointed double-edged sword landed in Ragnar's hand, it had transformed from a five-meter spear into a titanic weapon—far grander and more imposing than even the tsunami Whitebeard had summoned moments ago.
It was even taller than Ragnar himself—who stood a hundred feet high.
"Hiss—!"
Gasps escaped from the pirates of both the Whitebeard and Red Hair crews.
The sight before them shattered the limits of their understanding.
Just the image of Ragnar—towering over the sea, gripping a mountain-sized blade—was enough to crush their spirits with sheer pressure.
He didn't even need to move.
Just standing there, he radiated a presence so overwhelming it battered at the hearts of every pirate, like tidal waves pounding against brittle cliffs.
Sure, the sea held many colossal beings.
Even the Sea Kings dwarfed ships with ease.
But not even the largest of them could compare—not in intimidation, not in majesty, not in raw, suffocating power.
The fear Ragnar inspired wasn't from size alone—it was from the crushing, godlike aura of something that stood above the sea itself.
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