In the hall.
Doflamingo—once a dominant force in the Grand Line and a king among the underworld emperors—now knelt on the floor, gasping for breath in a humiliated, disheveled posture.
To any outsider passing the door, it would have seemed as if Donquixote Doflamingo had just emerged from a battle between equals.
But only he and the few witnesses present knew the truth.
From the moment he launched his first attack to when he was frozen solid—
It had all happened in an instant.
Most disturbingly, Ragnar's body had never even left the chair beneath him.
"Ragnar..."
After a while, Donquixote Doflamingo managed to catch his breath.
His monstrous physique had endured the brutal cold, barely resisting the invasive frostbite.
Yet there was no trace of triumph in his expression.
Especially not when his eyes slowly climbed toward the tall, awe-inspiring figure who remained seated with calm authority. When he saw Ragnar looking down at him, eyes full of condescension, the hand Doflamingo braced against the ground clenched involuntarily.
"You don't think... you can defeat me—Donquixote Doflamingo—without even standing up, do you?"
With a sudden roar, he slammed his fist into the frozen floor:
"I am one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea!"
"I am a Celestial Dragon!"
"I am Donquixote Doflamingo... the man who will become Pirate King!"
His arrogant, thunderous proclamation echoed throughout the hall.
From the point of impact, his awakened String-String Fruit ability erupted.
Walls, floor, tables—even the ceiling—all unraveled into countless razor-thin white threads, reshaping the space into a chaotic realm of strings.
But just as the threads reached Ragnar's chair—
They stopped.
As if a rabbit had stumbled into a tiger's den.
The atmosphere alone made the threads halt, shuddering in place, refusing to trespass further.
"I feel like I've heard that line before..." said Yamato, who stood quietly behind Ragnar, tilting her head in thought.
Soon, a nearly-forgotten face surfaced from her memory—
Portgas D. Ace.
The last person who dared proclaim before Ragnar that he would become Pirate King.
"This guy's screwed..." she muttered softly, a flicker of pity flashing across her face as she looked at Doflamingo.
Unaware of Yamato's reaction, Doflamingo remained focused on the threads that had frozen mid-motion. His brow furrowed in disbelief. With a scowl, he pushed more power into his awakening.
Threads surged.
The entire hall transformed into a vast sea of white lines.
Yet Ragnar's chair remained rooted in the center—untouched.
The waves of string trembled, as if before a predator. No matter how Doflamingo manipulated them, they refused to extend further.
"Joker," Ragnar finally spoke, his voice calm and cutting, "don't throw around big words so carelessly. All you're doing... is revealing your weakness."
Then, he raised his foot—
And stepped down.
An invisible shockwave, like ripples spreading across a still lake, instantly swept across the entire hall filled with threads.
Donquixote Doflamingo, who had just awakened the String-String Fruit and turned the entire space into a sea of white threads, immediately paled.
Wherever that overwhelming wave of Haki passed, threads tougher than steel snapped and detonated like firecrackers igniting in midair.
Even Doflamingo, who reigned like a puppet master within his awakened territory, suddenly clutched his chest. He hadn't even had time to react.
Splurt—!
A mist of blood burst from his mouth.
His body shot backward like a cannonball, his feet torn from the ground.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
A string of thunderous crashes echoed across Onigashima as several buildings collapsed in succession.
Donquixote Doflamingo was left buried deep under a mountain of rubble and broken stone.
"What was that?!"
"What did he just do?!"
"How did the Young Master get launched like that?!"
The Donquixote Family cadres were frozen in disbelief.
All they saw… was Ragnar, still seated calmly in his chair, lightly stomp his foot—and the raging white threads around him simply burst apart like they were made of paper.
And their king—Donquixote Doflamingo, the former Celestial Dragon—had been blown away like a leaf in a storm.
"Just by releasing Armament Haki... he did that?!"
"What kind of monster-level Haki is that!?"
"Isn't he not even 18 yet?! What kind of freak trains like that?!"
Trebol, eyes wide and mucus dripping uncontrollably, trembled.
As Doflamingo's right-hand man and one of the most experienced in the crew, Trebol understood what had happened better than the others.
Unlike the clueless onlookers, he had witnessed it clearly:
At the exact moment Ragnar stomped the ground, he unleashed a torrent of Busoshoku Haki (Armament Haki) as vast and crushing as the sea itself.
Everything within its radius—the threads, the air, even Doflamingo—was overpowered and repelled.
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