The first unit was led by Marco and Locke, who had secured the prison mines of Udon.
The second unit, commanded by Kenshin and Kyoshiro—now revealed to be none other than Denjiro of the Akazaya Nine—spearheaded the forces from the Flower Capital.
The third unit was under the direct command of Kin'emon.
Together, the fleet composed of these three allied vanguard divisions pressed forward through the waves, their bows locked entirely onto the coordinates of Onigashima.
By this time, the island fortress had completely caved into absolute chaos. A brief timeline prior, the imperial scouts had successfully locked their sensors onto Yamato, only to log a catastrophic data error: the Young Master was standing in total military alignment alongside the newly crowned Yonko, Fire Emperor Ace.
The fallout of that discovery had directly engineered the pulverized ruin of the main plaza.
King the Conflagration stood at the precipice of the fortress, staring down at the approaching armada as his features hardened into an expression of absolute bitterness.
His analytical models had completely failed to project a scenario this disastrous.
"Establish an immediate encrypted link to Shogun Orochi! Upload our current telemetry data and command his structure to route every available domestic asset to reinforce our lines!" King executed a swift tactical adjustment, his voice dropping to a freezing pitch. "Furthermore, issue a maximum-priority mobilization directive to the Tobiroppo!"
"If those wildcards refuse to deploy their attributes during a crisis of this magnitude, exactly what structural utility do they preserve within our empire?!"
"Understood! Initiating immediately!"
A low-tier infantryman scrambled to comply, his fingers trembling violently as he dialed the frequency into a nearby Den Den Mushi to transmit the signal.
"Emergency broadcast! Is this the headquarters of the Shogun's Ninja Corps?! The defense perimeter of Onigashima has sustained a total breach! We demand immediate military leverage!"
"What did you just output?! Shogun Orochi's life signs have been permanently deleted?! Then exactly what asset is anchoring that communication node?!"
"Your... your father?" The infantryman blinked, his cognitive processing hitting a severe bottleneck before he violently erupted into a torrent of raw, unedited curses. "Are you kidding me?! Exactly whose father do you claim to be, you son of a—?!"
Clack!
Before the operator could complete his verbal tirade, the Den Den Mushi suddenly severed the link, its head dropping into low-power mode as the transmission died.
"The line was forcefully disconnected?!"
The guard's face flushed an absolute crimson with pure rage. Overridden by frustration, he violently slammed the snail straight into the stone floor, pulverizing its shell.
SMASH!
"I dare you to launch another verbal insult, you wretched piece of trash! If my unit ever extracts your true geographic coordinates, I will personally rewrite your layout until—"
"You will execute exactly what under my jurisdiction?"
A cold, monolithic voice suddenly resonated from the absolute blind spot behind his shoulder. King had closed the distance.
Because his features were entirely obscured behind his signature leather mask, the surrounding troops were blind to his precise facial metrics, yet the sheer, suffocating drop in his decibel track delivered a terrifying tier of raw frost.
"A-Ah! Lord King... I was merely..."
"Face deletion!" King's glare was completely devoid of human mercy. Reaching out with a single hand, his iron grip clamped around the operator's throat, hoisting his mass off the ground.
An asset foolish enough to destroy a critical piece of communication infrastructure during the opening phase of a total war was a variable that required immediate elimination.
CRACK!
The sharp resonance of a severed spine echoed across the stone, and the soldier's vital signs instantly dropped to absolute zero.
The surrounding infantrymen of the Beast Pirates instinctively scrambled backward by several paces, their collective throats tightening as they swallowed their saliva in pure dread.
The entire plaza dropped into a motionless, terrified quiet.
Ace stood off to the side, his features completely static and unbothered by the internal execution.
At this microsecond, his high-tier scanning arrays were focused entirely on the distant upper atmosphere above the marine grid. A colossal, catastrophic energy signature was currently traveling across the sky at extreme velocity, charting an intercept course toward the island.
The sovereign of the empire had returned—Four Emperors, Hundred Beasts Kaido!
Tap, tap, tap...
Right on cue, a rhythmic succession of heavy footsteps echoed from the primary artery leading into the rear of the fortress.
The low-tier infantry rapidly split their ranks to forge a wide path, down the center of which six prominent figures walked with slow, deliberate strides.
"The Tobiroppo have arrived!"
Every single one of these six combatants projected a highly unique, oppressive spiritual field, instantly verifying to any observer that their profiles transcended the tier of ordinary fighters.
Occupying the absolute highest tier of administrative authority within the Beast Pirates—second only to the All-Stars of the Three Disasters—the Tobiroppo functioned as the absolute elite core of the empire's officer cabinet.
"King! Exactly what brand of structural failure has allowed our pristine headquarters to be reduced to this desolate expanse of rubble? If your individual leadership metrics lack the capacity to maintain the seat of Lead Performer, surrender the rank to an asset who can!"
Emerging from the vanguard of the group, a blue-haired woman thrust a finger directly toward King, her voice booming with arrogant hostility. It was Ulti.
"Hey, hey, hey... Sister, keep your parameters stable. Deploying an unmoderated verbal output against a Disaster carries an extreme deficit," Page One hastily interjected, attempting to lower her hostility index.
Ulti, however, rejected the caution entirely. Pivoting her hips, she delivered a high-velocity kick that violently sent her brother rocketing through the air.
BANG!
The surrounding common guards scrambled backward by several more steps, desperately maximizing their spatial intervals to ensure their own life signs weren't caught within the blast radius of her tantrums.
Ace's gaze casually swept across the six newcomers before his interest metrics dropped back to a total zero. While the collective capabilities of these officers were moderately respectable, their baseline attributes failed to approach the tier King commanded.
They represented an entirely negligible variable within his macro-calculations.
"The Tobiroppo..." Yamato murmured, her brow furrowing slightly as she adjusted her grip on her club.
Not a single soul among those six belonged to a submissive class; each profile was hard-coded with elite combat metrics. While an isolated officer posed zero threat to her safety, facing a synchronized cluster of six formidable wildcards simultaneously represented a potent, high-yield military force.
The Gathering Storm
Out across the churning waves, the leaders of the Kozuki loyalists were consolidated on the deck of the vanguard command ship.
Positioned at the absolute front of the line were Kin'emon, Raizo, Kanjuro, Inuarashi, and Nekomamushi. Behind their position, dozens of traditional warships plowed through the swells, every single samurai clenching a drawn blade as their collective morale scaled to absolute peak battle readiness.
Standing right next to Kin'emon, a small child draped in a soft pink kimono was desperately burning through his internal focus, attempting to force his trembling frame to project an aura of absolute composure.
This tiny asset was the sacred spiritual anchor unifying the entire rebel army—the legitimate successor to the Kozuki dynasty, Kozuki Momonosuke!
"Kin'emon!"
A secondary warship smoothly adjusted its maritime trajectory, closing the interval to draw parallel alongside Kin'emon's small command craft. Standing at the bow of the incoming ship were Kenshin and his infiltration cell.
Usopp raised a hand, waving energetically across the gap to establish communication.
"Usopp-dono!" Kin'emon bellowed, a wave of profound joy breaking through his stern features as he returned the greeting.
However, within the span of a single fraction of a second, the triumphant smiles structuring the retainers' faces vanished into absolute stone. Their visual sensors had just finalized a scan of the insignia emblazoned across the hull of the incoming vessel: it belonged strictly to the Kyoshiro Family!
The number-one absolute tycoon ruling the criminal syndicates of the Flower Capital—the most trusted, unyielding hound serving Shogun Orochi's regime!
"Usopp-dono! Exactly what technical failure has allowed your system to be captured on their vessel?!" Kin'emon shouted, his internal planners hitting a severe processing shock.
"That is the standard battle fleet of the Kyoshiro Syndicate!" Standing directly behind Kin'emon's position, Ashura Doji stepped forward, his eyes narrowing into a dangerous scowl as his sensors locked onto the blue-haired mob boss standing adjacent to Usopp.
"Over the course of our twenty-year absence, the structural layout of the Capital has undergone massive re-configurations. Kyoshiro successfully appropriated the exact seat of authority once held by Master Hyogoro; he is the undisputed king of the underworld today."
"He represents an exceptionally hazardous, lethal anomaly to engage!"
Throughout the exchange, Usopp, Kenshin, and the rest of their cell maintained an absolute zero on their verbal output. Their focus was completely dedicated to executing a microscopic, real-time observation scan of every single face anchoring Kin'emon's inner circle.
The data returned from Orochi's keep was immutable: their underground network housed an active, high-level traitor, and the analytical constraints had successfully narrowed the profile of the mole down to a solitary seat among the Akazaya Nine!
They were structurally required to unmask and permanently liquidate this internal cancer before the macro-war hit its total deployment phase!
To guarantee absolute data security and mitigate any risk of the target launching an immediate evasion protocol, they had explicitly withheld the intelligence file revealing Kyoshiro's true identity as Denjiro from Kin'emon's team.
The systematic purging of a high-tier spy was a sub-routine that demanded absolute, uncompromised stealth to ensure a flawless execution.
Yet, despite burning through a significant amount of cognitive focus to analyze their expressions, the target's baseline deception arrays were performing perfectly, leaving them with a total blank on any actionable clues. The mole had integrated his cover identity with terrifying efficiency.
"Download the data regarding Kyoshiro's profile into their database now. The sub-routine for tracking down the specific traitor signature shall remain under my jurisdiction," Bell noted smoothly, cutting through the group's silent hesitation.
"This..." Kyoshiro paused briefly, his internal planners evaluating the risk index before he nodded heavily to lock in compliance. "Agreed!"
"Master Kin! My vanguard has mobilized the entire strength of the Kyoshiro Syndicate explicitly to reinforce your alignment!" Kyoshiro's voice boomed across the water.
The lines of text left the surrounding samurai thoroughly dumbfounded, their internal processors hitting a total system error.
What exact paradigm shift is this?
"You... your system just addressed my profile as 'Master Kin'? Exactly what historical data does your identity hold...?" Kin'emon stammered, his brain completely unable to compute the linguistic parameters.
The remaining members of the Akazaya Nine shifted their weights aggressively, their features contorted in absolute confusion as they struggled to parse the anomaly.
"The catastrophic Mountain God incident of our youth... the underlying variable responsible for that disaster wasn't Lord Oden's choices," Kyoshiro spoke, a proud, nostalgia-soaked smile spreading across his lips. "The crisis materialized explicitly because your system desired to swap a rare white boar for common currency, prompting you to execute the initial theft. The true perpetrator of that disaster was always you!"
"You... the assets possessing that specific historical memory log are strictly restricted to my own files and... and..." Kin'emon's pupils violently contracted to absolute pinpricks, his lower jaw trembling uncontrollably as his database finalized the re-calibration: "Your identity maps to... Denjiro?!"
"WHAT THE HELL—?!" The collective retainers of the Akazaya Nine experienced total systemic failure, their eyes bulging as they frantically scrambled to cross-reference Kyoshiro's physical features against their memories.
SHING!
Right at that exact microsecond of maximum distraction, Bell initiated his deployment.
Vaulting off the deck of his ship with zero warning, his body converted into a high-speed projectile that spanned the marine interval in a flash, dropping straight onto the deck of Kin'emon's craft.
His straight-edged ninjato cleared its scabbard with blinding execution velocity.
Bypassing every single line of defense with a fluid, unstoppable strike, the cold steel cut through the air tracks, coming to a dead halt as the razor-sharp edge pressed firmly against Kanjuro's throat.
"Your profile is the mole!" Bell commanded, his icy glare locking the traitor in place.