Upon the sea, with Whitebeard's flagship Moby Dick as the core, more than a hundred massive warships had been chained together by the pirates with giant iron links, forming a vast blockade fleet and a colossal battle platform.
At the very front of the Moby Dick's deck stood Whitebeard himself, flanked by Red-Haired Shanks, Charlotte Linlin, Kaido, and the Revolutionary Army's leader, Dragon—former Emperors of the Sea and sworn enemies, now standing shoulder to shoulder.
Beside them spread the second echelon of fighters: Marco, Vista, Ivankov, and others, extending outward along the deck formations. Behind them gathered the elite combat units of the pirate crews and the Revolutionary Army.
Every soul stood ready, grim and focused, prepared to meet the unknown enemies surging toward them.
The first signs of disturbance came not from the horizon, but from the sea itself.
The once-still surface began to shudder violently, the trembling so great that even the massive ten-kilometer-long warship formation rocked beneath their feet.
From this alone it was clear—the terrible currents below were being churned up by the alien bio-weapons advancing from the deep.
In the blink of an eye, vertical walls of white water rose from the sea ahead of the fleet.
Veteran pirates knew instantly—each wave meant a colossal creature was cutting through the depths, its spine slicing the ocean into plumes of spray.
Though Roya's body had not yet arrived, his spiritual sense had already surged forward beyond the battle line, meeting the fastest of the bio-weapons head-on.
One by one, he tried to halt their consciousness, pressing into the primitive will of their low-level AI.
But the creatures ignored his commands, single-mindedly obeying only their original directive: attack.
Roya attempted to rewrite their command feedback, only to find such tampering would take far more time than the situation allowed.
"As I thought," he murmured coldly.
"These things truly are tools born for slaughter. Once given a kill order, they cannot be stopped.
That means there's only one way—kill them, and kill them fast!"
In a flash, Roya appeared above the foremost creature. It had not yet broken the surface, charging at full speed toward the fleet from beneath.
With a flick of his hand, Roya cast out a rope of spiritual sense. The strand cut cleanly through the sea and looped perfectly around the neck of the creature—an enormous, rat-like monstrosity.
At his will, the rope constricted, unleashing titanic force.
The beast's momentum halted at once, and its rotting, cratered upper body was wrenched violently out of the ocean.
From the fleet rose a chorus of gasps and shouts.
Pirates and revolutionaries alike were staggered by the size of the giant rat.
More astonishing still was the fact that despite its body being riddled with decay, it had been capable of such blinding speed beneath the sea.
It proved what Roya had said: their grotesque outward forms were but disguises.
Their true power lay hidden within—the enormous stomach-sacs in their abdominal cavities.
Only by destroying those sacs could the monsters be stopped!
Suspended in the air, Roya tightened his grip, when suddenly he sensed danger.
From within the rat's body came a violent energy surge—then an instant later, the beast exploded!
In the split second before detonation, Roya spread a vast net of spiritual sense, catching all of the rat's flesh and the shockwave of energy within it, letting none escape.
But the blast was not the end.
The shredded chunks of rotting flesh abruptly reshaped themselves into countless one-foot-long rats.
Each was covered in festering wounds, oozing with vile green pus.
It was obvious—these were plague-rats, carriers of pestilence, designed to spread disease and mass casualties.
"Hmph! Petty tricks—you think you can fool me?"
With a cold snort, Roya twisted his net, grinding the swarm of plague-rats—and the AI controlling them—into pulp.
The remnants collapsed back into black, viscous life-matter, which Roya gathered neatly into his net of sense.
Cheers erupted from the fleet.
Seeing Roya so effortlessly thwart the plague-rat's self-detonation and contagion assault, the pirates and revolutionaries roared with renewed morale.
Even the weakest of the pirates felt their blood surge hot, their fear of the unseen enemy beneath the waves burned away.
Without pause, Roya darted to intercept the second bio-weapon.
At that same moment, no fewer than seven of the creatures surged to within a kilometer of the battle line.
With waves exploding around them, all seven burst from the sea at once!
They soared nearly a hundred meters into the air, descending like seven colossal cannonballs upon the chained fleet.
Each was monstrous in its own right, hideous and twisted.
The most compact of them was a blood-red, one-horned demon bull.
In midair, it flipped downward, aligning head-first.
Its massive, obsidian-hued horn glinted with malice as it speared directly toward the Moby Dick's deck.
"COME!"
Whitebeard roared, his voice booming like thunder.
His entire frame swelled, muscles bulging as though inflated, and with a stomp of the deck, he launched himself upward, Murakumogiri drawn behind him.
By the time he reached the peak of his leap, he had regained the full, towering physique of his youth.
With both hands, he swung his greatblade upward in a devastating arc.
The weapon, wrapped in crackling black lightning, met the bull's horn head-on.
There was no wasted flare of energy—every ounce of Whitebeard's might was driven inward, detonating within the beast through a technique of internal force explosion.
From the feedback reverberating along the blade, Whitebeard knew at once: his strike had shattered the creature from horn to hoof, its entire body atomized into dust.
In midair, the demon bull's body disintegrated, falling apart into fragments, leaving only a massive stomach-sac, which crashed heavily onto the Moby Dick's deck.
At the same instant, Roya arrived, dragging another sac he had seized.
With threads of spiritual sense, he bound the demon bull's sac tight, sealing its activity so it could not mutate into a second form adapted for battle with Whitebeard.
After felling a bio-weapon in a single stroke, Whitebeard took a moment to gauge his body.
He found that through his recent recovery, and relentless cultivation of the advanced "Life Return" technique taught by Roya, his body had almost entirely returned to its peak.
A surge of unyielding spirit burst forth from him.
With a battle cry, blade in hand, Whitebeard charged toward the next foe.
Pls drop some power stones supper me at my
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