The air boomed.
From Kai's feet, willpower erupted in a perfect ring, a pressure front that rolled out a hundred meters in every direction like a collapsing sky. Dust leapt from the stones in ripples. Torches guttered. The very air seemed to bend.
Those closest to him—the hostages—took the full brunt first. Terror-widened eyes went glassy; whites rolled up; foam flecked lips.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Bodies toppled in waves. Five hundred-plus nobles and royal guards slumped into boneless sleep, not dead—just out cold, breath still rising and falling.
Then it hit the pirates using them as shields.
Steel clattered like a rain of bells as blades slipped from numb hands.
Clang—clang—clang!
Snarls froze on faces, then turned slack. One after another, over a thousand men pitched forward, froth bubbling at their mouths, eyes rolling white.
Less than a heartbeat.
All down.
No survivors among that line—hostages included—everyone asleep on the floor.
The ring kept expanding, washing past the door and through the surrounding cordon—the mass of three thousand who'd ringed the warehouse to watch the show. Smirks died mid-curl. Knees buckled. All at once the black sea of bodies folded, row after row collapsing like wheat under a storm.
Only a scattered few with iron wills rode it out.
Kai's Conqueror's Haki was no longer the raw burst from months ago. Battle after battle had tempered it, honed it from a spark into a thunderhead. He wasn't at the level of "coating" attacks with it like the legends—but compared to his first awakening, this was an entirely different beast.
Anyone under a ten-million-berry bounty? Gone—lights out.
The ones still standing were the monsters: Sword-Lion Gart himself, his four officers with eight-figure bounties, and a tiny handful of hardened killers.
Everyone else had been erased from the fight by a single pulse of will.
Silence pressed in.
Four thousand pirates lay strewn across the ground, not a sound save for the soft hiss of settling dust.
Gart's face had gone pale beneath the scar raking his eye. He stared around him, breath frosting in the sudden chill crawling up his spine.
"Th-this…" His throat worked. "What—what was that?"
His officers were no better—eyes wide, knuckles white on hilts that now felt very, very small.
"All of them… down," one croaked. "In a blink."
Gart swallowed hard, mind racing, then snagging on the only answer that fit this impossible scene. His pupils shrank.
No way… That pressure—
Conqueror's…? From a four-year-old?
He looked at the small figure standing calm amid the carnage, and the more he thought, the colder he felt.
Across the field, Lucci found himself frozen as well—expression finally cracking.
In one breath, four thousand men…
…This kid—what is he?
And with the entire battlefield sleeping at Kai's feet, the real fight was about to begin.
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