The gargantuan lance fell from the heavens, piercing straight through the clouds and crashing down toward Kaido.
Everyone had assumed Ace would die in the explosion. Yet in a mere flash, the tables turned completely, and their absolute master, Kaido, was the one in grave danger.
"Wororororororo..."
Kaido transformed into his hybrid form.
This was the ultimate state for an Ancient Zoan user. Kaido, who had never previously unveiled this form before the masses, shifted into it without a moment's hesitation.
Evidently, he placed immense weight on Ace's attack. Or rather, he lacked absolute confidence that he could effortlessly parry it.
"Thunder... Bagua!"
Kaido violently swung his iron mace, smashing it directly against the tip of the giant lance.
The spearhead and the mace collided with a deafening roar.
BOOM!
The ocean beneath Kaido's feet was instantaneously blasted clear, revealing a colossal black void to the onlookers.
Up above, the cloud layers ruptured completely, leaving the sky looking as though it had been cleanly split in two.
RUMBLE...
Met with resistance, the lance paused for a fraction of a second before plunging violently straight into the sea.
BANG!
The ocean surface violently erupted, sending massive walls of water cascading down over the area like a sudden torrential downpour.
At the same time, the colossal shockwave drove the sea-stone currents outward in every direction. Monstrous waves slammed heavily into Onigashima, sending countess jagged rocks flying into the air.
Every single spectator stood frozen, dumbfounded.
What tier of combat was this?
If that lone lance had struck Onigashima instead of the sea, the entire island fortress would have likely been bisected on the spot.
Amidst the shock, King's sharp gaze instantly locked onto a lone silhouette breaching the crest of a massive wave.
A massive dragon frame was flying directly toward Onigashima, and from the beast's underbelly, fresh crimson fluid was leaking continuously.
Kaido was bleeding.
With a single execution strike, a prominent, painful laceration had been carved across Kaido's body—an anomaly he hadn't sustained in decades.
It was a deep gash from the tip of the spear.
The nature of the wound verified that if the strike had connected cleanly with his torso, it would have cleanly perforated his entire frame.
High in the sky, thin beads of sweat began to ripple across Ace's forehead. Drawing that monumental lance had placed a significant strain on his stamina pools.
"Are you alright, Ace...?" Yamato asked softly, reaching up with her delicate hand to gently wipe the sweat from his brow.
That solitary strike had thoroughly stunned her as well.
It was far too strong.
She had zero data on how Ace had scaled his attributes to this apex tier within such a limited timeline, but she knew he must have endured a grueling regimen of training and trials that surpassed normal human tolerance.
A maximum-output attack of that scale undoubtedly demanded an immense expenditure of energy.
"I'm fine. Shall we advance the line?" Ace noted after a brief pause.
"Mmm!" Yamato nodded heavily, her jaw tightening. "Just a microsecond ago, my biological ties to that monster were permanently deleted!"
"From this microsecond forward, I am the man destined to claim the mantle of Kozuki Oden!"
"Excellent! Let's move!" Ace responded, charting a high-speed heading straight toward Onigashima.
Concurrently, three distinct pirate battleships slowly breached the horizon tracks, materializing before the crowd.
Luffy stood at the vanguard, his arms crossed over his chest as his signature wide-mouthed grin broke across his features.
The pirate flags whipped violently against the gale. On the deck, every single fighter stood with their hair blowing in the wind, their expressions frozen into a mask of pure, uncompromised gravity.
They were entering a total war.
"Straw Hat! Our ship just stole the lead vector from your crew, ahahaha...!" Eustass Kid roared arrogantly, thrusting a dismissive hand gesture toward Luffy's coordinates.
"Huh?!" Luffy's eyes dilated in pure irritation. Glaring across the water, he barked, "Our crew holds zero clearance to lose to a low-tier faction like yours!"
"Nami! Maximize our acceleration parameters!"
SMACK!
In the next fraction of a second, a massive, swelling lump materialized on Luffy's head.
"Open your eyes and run a diagnostic on the environment first!" Nami shrieked, her face a mask of pure despair.
"Eh? What's the deal?" Clamping a hand over the bump, Luffy focused his gaze forward.
Only then did he register that a gargantuan, mountain-shearing tidal wave was actively charging toward their coordinates. The Kid Pirates, having rushed ahead, were already locked directly beneath the shadow of the aquatic wall.
It looked as though their ship would be systematically pulverized into fine splinters within the next microsecond.
"A... a tidal wave?! Exactly what variable generated a wave of that magnitude...?" Luffy gasped, his eyes widening in pure disbelief.
The maritime currents had been perfectly stable a moment prior; this sudden turbulence defied his immediate tracking files.
This massive displacement was, of course, the direct environmental fallout of Ace's previous lance strike.
"Secure your positions and brace for impact!" Jinbe bellowed. Snatching the helm with his iron grip, he stabilized their trajectory, steering the Thousand Sunny straight through the heart of the wave.
Facing the apocalyptic wall of water, Chopper stared up blankly, his vocal tracks entirely frozen by terror.
"Leave the calculation to me," Luffy grinned. Taking a decisive stride forward, he planted his boots at the absolute tip of the bow, a dense layer of obsidian Armament Haki rapidly coating his forearm.
Inhaling a massive breath of air, he forced the current down his windpipe.
"Fourth Gear: Bounce-Man!"
Transforming into his compressed, high-elasticity form, Luffy drew his fist back to accumulate maximum torque, forcing his Haki to flow smoothly.
"Ryuo..." Luffy murmured, slowly sealing his eyelids as his supreme internal-destruction energy condensed at his knuckles.
The remaining members of the Straw Hat vanguard kept their eyes locked onto their captain, thoroughly fascinated to see what tier of advanced Haki he had mastered during his training.
The gargantuan wave arrived without latency, looming directly over their perimeter.
Nami and Chopper swallowed hard, their internal panic metrics spiking.
Zoro and Sanji maintained an unblinking focus, methodically tracking their captain's movements.
BOOM!
Luffy's eyelids snapped open, and he drove a heavy fist straight into the wall of water.
The colossal kinetic displacement tore a massive, clean cavity straight through the center of the tidal wave. A pristine transit tunnel materialized before them, and the Thousand Sunny smoothly glided through the void without sustaining a single scratch.
"Wahahaha!" Chopper cheered, his excitement exploding.
"That destructive output is incredible, Luffy...!"
The corners of the core vanguard's lips curled into proud smirks. Their captain was mathematically expected to deliver nothing less than perfection.
"Shishishishi...!" Luffy deactivated his Fourth Gear parameters, casually resting a hand against his leg as he re-stabilized his balance.
The Thousand Sunny plowed forward through the open swells with zero restrictions.
The Straw Hat flag fluttered proudly against the sky.
Zoro and Sanji stepped forward to flank Luffy's coordinates, Sanji bringing a lighter to his cigarette to draw a deep, long stream of smoke.
Zoro rested his palm against the hilts of his three named swords, his calm gaze locking onto the battlefield ahead.
Behind the Sunny's rearguard, the Kid Pirates and the Heart Pirates slowly re-aligned their transit headings. While the massive wave had presented a moderate tactical complication, it failed to compromise their survival metrics.
Within a limited timeframe, the generation defining the Worst Generation—the Straw Hat Pirates, the Heart Pirates, and the Kid Pirates—officially matched coordinates with the active theater of war on Onigashima.
"Hey! Over here! Turn your audio receptors over here...!" a frantic voice suddenly drifted from their flank.
"It's Usopp!" Chopper yelled, running to the railing to track his waving hand.
"Brothers..." Usopp declared, crossing his arms over his chest to project an image of absolute, unyielding confidence.
However, completely hidden beneath the structural barrier of the ship's railing, his lower limbs were vibrating with an intense, uncontrollable rattle.
From the absolute initialization of the macro-war to this exact microsecond, Usopp's internal processors had been thoroughly overloaded by world-class combat statistics.
First, the Akazaya Nine had engaged Kaido. While their early trade of blows appeared to return an even balance, the exact microsecond the Emperor scaled up his output, the loyalists suffered immediate, total combat failure.
Then came the high-intensity duel separating Bell and Jack the Drought.
An absolute, crushing victory. Watching the execution from the adjacent tiles had sent severe shockwaves through his nervous system.
It was an absolute zero-distance observation experience; he could literally hear the razor-sharp wind tracks of Bell's techniques whistling past his nose.
Talk about an extreme stress test on his safety parameters.
Finally, the cataclysmic clash dividing Ace and Kaido had left his cognitive processing entirely stalled on the spot. What brand of godlike entities were trading blows on this board?
The monumental scale of Ace's fire lance had permanently downloaded a high-priority horror file into his psychological database.
Even at this current millisecond, his leg muscles had failed to complete their recovery protocols, leaving him completely unable to execute standard transit movements.
If his coordinates hadn't been anchored securely aboard the Kyoshiro Syndicate's flagship, freeing him from the requirement of directly entering the physical fray, his system would have faced a total crash long ago. He had successfully maintained his post as a long-range auxiliary asset for an extreme timeline.
Now, his family had finally entered the hot zone.