Roya leapt upward, soaring through the gaping hole in the ceiling he had opened earlier, landing smoothly on the surface.
The Shadow Rider String Puppet followed close behind—dragging its true master, Donquixote Doflamingo, whose body remained helplessly bound within its core, unable to resist.
Jinbei and Law climbed up from below just in time to witness six imposing figures breaking through the perimeter of the ruined battlefield.
Three of them were well-known faces—the Navy's Three Admirals, with whom they'd just clashed days earlier.
The other three were unfamiliar, but their aura was so overwhelming that it made even the Admirals seem lesser by comparison.
At that moment, Fujitora raised his sheathed sword and pointed diagonally to the sky.
A strange gravitational pull surged forth from his blade, connecting with a distant meteor from outer space.
With a forceful slash downward, he directed the meteor to come crashing down—hurtling straight for Roya like divine retribution.
In a flash, a massive five-meter-wide meteor, trailing fire and tearing across the sky, hurtled down with terrifying momentum.
But the Shadow Puppet leapt forward, arms extended. Dozens of thick strings burst from its hands and instantly wove into a dense web.
With uncanny precision, it caught the meteor in the net—absorbing its kinetic energy and flinging it aside.
Commander-in-Chief Kong roared, "Doflamingo! You dare betray your master?!"
Yet Doflamingo, still in an unformed string state inside the puppet, couldn't speak a word.
He could only scream in his mind:
"It's not me! I didn't betray anyone! Roya took control of my puppet!"
Truly the definition of suffering in silence.
And the puppet wasn't finished. It raised a hand—and fired a Bullet Thread, aiming straight at Kong's face.
Kong finally exploded:
"Attack! Kill all four of them—full force!"
Fujitora had already braced himself—sword drawn horizontally as gravitational energy surged and accumulated at the blade.
Just before the Bullet Thread reached them, he slashed down hard:
"Gravity Blade: Raging Tiger!"
A devastating wave of compressed gravity surged outward, intercepting the thread and lashing back toward Roya.
The Bullet Thread was torn from its path and whipped backward, riding the gravitational shockwave straight at the Shadow Puppet.
The wave pulverized every ruin in its path—crushing them into powder. The resulting shockwinds kicked up a massive dust cloud that covered everything.
When the wave reached Roya, it erupted, unleashing chaotic gravitational pull that shredded everything nearby.
"Is it over?" Kong asked, squinting into the churning cloud.
Fujitora's expression suddenly twisted in shock.
"Everyone, fall back!" he bellowed—instantly retreating at full speed.
Then it happened.
The dense smoke and dust behaved as if sucked into a vacuum—spiraling inward toward a single point.
Seconds later, the battlefield was eerily clear, and floating in the air where the shockwave had hit—
Was a tiny pebble the size of a fingertip.
The Shadow Puppet caught the stone, then hurled it like a bullet.
"DODGE IT!!" Fujitora screamed, panic gripping his voice.
To him, through Observation Haki, that tiny pebble wasn't small at all.
It was a monstrous sphere of energy, easily over 50 meters wide.
The others stared at him like he was insane.
Fujitora sprinted a full hundred meters away, coated himself in Armament Haki, and curled into a defensive crouch.
Green Bull sneered, lifted his leg, and brought it down in a sharp axe-kick—striking the pebble head-on.
"Shit!" he cursed the moment his leg made contact.
Because it wasn't a rock.
It was a hyper-compressed sphere of gravitational energy—a ticking bomb.
The "pebble" exploded.
Every grain of it radiated terrifying, concentrated force, firing outwards like thousands of hypervelocity projectiles.
It became a storm of the most lethal shrapnel imaginable, blanketing the entire battlefield sector indiscriminately.
In seconds, the buildings and terrain within that arc were leveled—obliterated.
Green Bull struggled to stay upright—but was clearly on the verge of collapse.
His pristine navy uniform was gone. His body was riddled with holes—clean punctures from one end to the other.
His right leg—blasted clean off at the shin.
Sweat poured from his face, rinsing away the blood that soaked him, forming a puddle beneath his trembling foot.
Yet despite the severity of the wounds, his body began to regenerate at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Such rapid healing was incredibly rare.
Behind him, Kong stood in stunned silence.
He had known Roya was powerful—had prepared the full might of the Navy's elite for this assault.
Yet in a single exchange, the most resilient among them—Green Bull—was nearly killed outright.
The Three Admirals were now frozen—completely intimidated.
This wasn't a raid.
It was a mass suicide.
Fujitora, who had run far enough and fully shielded himself, remained unharmed.
But his mind was filled with turbulent questions.
"That energy… it was clearly a gravity-based explosion formed by extreme compression.
I haven't even mastered that technique yet.
Could it be… the one using it was that Shadow Puppet Doflamingo?"
"Then that means Roya really can replicate other people's powers.
And not just mimicry—he surpasses the original.
And it's not temporary… he can retain them indefinitely."
"If that's true… he might as well have every Devil Fruit power to himself."
"If someone like that ever chose to turn against the world…"
"Who could possibly stop him?"
Fujitora turned in dazed disbelief. His wide-open eyes were filled with nothing but white—seeing through Observation Haki.
Everyone on the battlefield was overcome by fear.
Everyone—except Roya, who stood unbothered, radiating a calm and enigmatic presence he couldn't decipher.
Then suddenly—he saw it.
A wave of malice surged violently from Kong's body, like black smoke erupting from a volcano.
He didn't understand the source—but a sense of wrongness flooded Fujitora's mind.
"Did I… make a mistake… joining the Navy?"
"If even the Supreme Commander of all forces harbors such hatred and darkness…"
"Is the Navy truly fighting for justice?"
Then the scream came.
A furious roar so loud it pierced his thoughts like a poisoned needle—
It was Kong, red-faced and humiliated:
"Roya! How dare you destroy the scientific division's legacy!!"
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