"Good, keep it up."
Seeing Don Quixote Doflamingo restrain himself, Drought Jack said with a slightly satisfied expression, then walked forward without looking back.
"Is this the weight of that man in the Beasts Pirates?"
"Kaido ran the pirate crew for half a lifetime, yet this man has only taken over for less than a month… and his prestige has already reached this level?"
"Even one of Kaido's three right-hand men treads carefully just at the mention of his name?"
Doflamingo stared at Jack's back, then turned his eyes to Onigashima Castle looming ever closer.
He hadn't even met the new master yet, but an ominous pressure already loomed over him like a giant beast baring its fangs.
Especially that colossal three-pointed double-edged sword towering in the center of Onigashima.
At this moment, it felt like it hung above his head—and above the Don Quixote family—ready to fall at any moment.
Whether it was Jack's warning or Doflamingo's own growing dread, none of them spoke along the way.
Don Quixote Doflamingo and his subordinates, usually arrogant and unrestrained, now walked in utter silence, each step careful and heavy.
They reached the door of a palace.
Jack pushed it open.
Through the threshold, they vaguely saw a figure seated in the center of the hall.
The Don Quixote family stiffened on instinct.
"Go in."
Jack took the lead and led them inside.
"True Lord, Joker has been brought."
With that, Jack knelt on one knee with his head bowed.
The sight made every Don Quixote cadre's scalp go numb.
They had dealt with Jack often since forming ties with Kaido.
Precisely because of that, they knew—better than anyone—just how unyielding and aggressive the man called "Drought" was.
"Is this really the same Jack we know?"
Trebol and the others exchanged wide-eyed glances, all swallowing hard.
It had been less than a month.
Yet the man once feared across the seas now knelt as if before a god.
"Get up."
Ragnar nodded calmly. Jack stood and silently stepped aside.
Then Ragnar looked directly at Don Quixote Doflamingo and his followers.
BOOM.
It was just a glance.
But for the cadres, it was like thunder crashing in their minds.
Their ears rang. Their vision went dark.
When they came to, their bodies were drenched in sweat, as if they'd been pulled from a stormy sea.
What horrified them even more—
Was realizing they were kneeling.
None of them even remembered doing it.
"Is this the Fifth Emperor?"
"The rumors… weren't exaggerated at all."
"The pressure from him... it's far beyond what Kaido ever gave off!"
Don Quixote Doflamingo was still standing.
But his forehead was soaked with sweat. His body trembled slightly.
He hadn't fainted. He hadn't kneeled.
But his once-proud expression was nowhere to be found.
"Don Quixote Doflamingo."
"The winged Celestial Dragon."
"So… you've come today to seek asylum."
Ragnar retracted the overwhelming Haoshoku Haki in his eyes.
But even after the pressure faded, the Don Quixote cadres remained kneeling like frightened rabbits.
Whether it was fear, submission, or simply that their legs could no longer support them—no one could say.
"…"
Doflamingo's pupils shrank. His face darkened.
The carefully prepared speech he had rehearsed over and over on the way here...
Vanished.
Not a single word escaped his lips.
He, once eloquent and domineering, stood frozen.
Not because he didn't want to speak.
But because Ragnar's words had torn through every layer of his mask.
He was exposed.
Yes.
He had come here…
To beg for protection.
Doflamingo's past — tangled in the shadows of the Celestial Dragons — had long dictated that even the title of Shichibukai could never truly shield him.
Once, he relied on Kaido's name for protection.
Now, he needed Ragnar's shadow even more desperately.
Otherwise, not even he could stand against the wrath of the Celestial Dragons and the World Government.
"Dover...!"
Trebol struggled to lift his head, veins bulging on his face.
Seeing his king silently enduring humiliation, anger trembling beneath the surface, he couldn't stay silent any longer.
But before he could finish—
"Hmph."
Ragnar exhaled a breath, cold as judgment.
BOOM!
The air distorted—an invisible pressure slammed into Trebol like a mountain dropped from the heavens.
CRACK!
His clothes burst at the seams as his body trembled violently. His bones screamed under the weight of a power beyond comprehension.
The floor beneath him shattered like glass under a giant's heel.
Web-like fractures spread across the stone floor, until—
BANG!
Trebol collapsed, crushed flat to the ground, like a puppet with its strings severed.
"T-That's... Supreme-grade Conqueror's Haki?!"
The words trembled out of Trebol's mouth.
His hands clawed at the ruined floor, trying to rise, but his body wouldn't obey.
As a former subordinate of Celestial Yasha Doflamingo, he knew about Haki.
He'd seen Conqueror's Haki flare before—Doflamingo's own, even.
But this... this was a different realm entirely.
A divine aura, ever-present, crushing everything in its wake.
This wasn't just Conqueror's Haki.
This was the will of a True Emperor.
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