"Understood. We have the full picture now. Leave the rest to us," Kenshin said before hanging up the snail.
"Let's move!"
The engines of the Demon Warder roared to life, unleashing genuine ripples of raw energy that violently churned the surrounding sea.
BOOM!
With a thunderous blast, the vessel soared straight into the sky, its mechanical fist clenching tight.
"Break!" Kenshin bellowed. The Demon Warder drove a crushing punch forward, blasting an immense wave of concussive force through the dense, suffocating blanket of black mist.
"Im! Today, we end you once and for all!"
A massive beam of radiant energy erupted from the vessel's chassis, tearing clean through the void and hurtling straight toward the colossal shadowy eye in the heavens.
Right then, the dark celestial eye rolled slightly. In the exact same heartbeat, an endless torrent of pure darkness surged outward, colliding head-on with the ship's radiant beam in a violent detonation.
"Kenshin!" Kuzan shouted in alarm.
Kenshin dropped to one knee. As the current link, the crushing recoil endured by the Demon Warder was transferred directly into his body.
That single exchange was enough to prove the gap—Kenshin alone was outmatched.
Gritting his teeth, Kenshin forced himself back to his feet. Going down in the opening move was a level of utter humiliation he refused to accept.
Hovering aloft, the Demon Warder fired its thrusters, piercing through the dense layers of cloud and shadow.
The clash had blasted open a clearing in the local canopy, finally granting them a clear view of the airspace.
Floating directly before them was that colossal airborne island. Without hesitating, the Demon Warder touched down heavily upon the landmass.
"Someone's over there!" Bell pointed toward an outcrop along the island's edge, where a man draped in a yellow robe was visible.
"There really is someone here? Was he the one fighting Im before we arrived?"
"Did he lift this entire island into the sky too?" Locke asked, astonished.
Just who was this?
Besides Admiral Fujitora, another figure had engaged Im in battle—and anyone capable of clashing with her was certainly no nobody.
Who on earth was he?
"It's him!" Kuzan's eyes snapped wide, his voice laced with genuine disbelief.
He couldn't fathom why that man was here. By all rights, a figure of his caliber had no business wandering into the East Blue.
The East Blue was universally known as the weakest of the four seas, where even the most infamous pirates barely carried bounties of ten to twenty million Berries.
"Who is it?" Kenshin and the others turned, surprised.
It was rare to hear Kuzan speak of anyone with such astonishment.
"Shiki. Epithet: Golden Lion!"
"What?!" Kenshin gasped. The name was legendary—a titan from the era of the Pirate King, Gol D. Roger, and Whitebeard.
A true monster from the Old Era.
If he's here, maybe we can buy more time than we thought!
Just as Kenshin was recalculating their odds, Bell spoke up, his tone hesitant.
"Is... is that person really a legendary figure?"
"Hm?" The crew turned, puzzled. Why doubt it now?
The evidence was right in front of them. Levitating an island of this magnitude was impossible through brute strength alone.
Golden Lion's Devil Fruit—the Float-Float Fruit—was the only power capable of pulling off such a feat.
"Look over there..." Bell pointed. The crew followed his finger, and their jaws dropped.
The Golden Lion, who had seemed locked in an epic standoff with Im, was now fleeing for his life in absolute panic. Within seconds, the black mist enveloped him entirely.
What followed looked less like a clash of world-class titans and more like a one-sided execution.
In a matter of breaths, Shiki was coughing up blood, his eyes bulging from sheer agony.
Worse, Im seemed to be toying with him. Small, humanoid figures the size of ordinary mortals strode out from the black mist.
Each was grotesque, moving with eerie, unnatural agility. One second they were fully solid, brutally pummeling Shiki; the next, when Shiki attempted to retaliate, they dissolved into incorporeal shadow. Untouchable, yet devastatingly lethal.
From the Demon Warder, it looked as though the legendary pirate was being swarmed and beaten by a mob of demonic children, stripped of all power to fight back.
When the crew caught sight of Shiki's face again, it was a grotesque sight.
The weathered, ancient face had been battered out of shape. Massive swellings had sprouted across his features in rapid succession.
It had warped his visage to an absurd degree; while a single bump looks like an injury, a face swollen entirely uniform simply makes a person look fat.
Even his wrinkles had been stretched taut. If not for the blood coating him from head to toe, one might have thought he had undergone botched cosmetic surgery rather than a brutal beating.
Kenshin and the others finally understood Bell's skepticism. A fake. An absolute fraud. How could a legendary pirate be reduced to such a pathetic state?
"Is this guy... an impostor?" Locke asked hesitantly.
"Right?!" Bell nodded vigorously. "He has to be! How could a legendary pirate ever look this pathetic...?"
They had witnessed Whitebeard's awe-inspiring might with their own eyes. Even if such a man met an enemy he couldn't defeat, he would never end up in this state.
Looking back at Shiki, their conviction only hardened.
This guy is definitely a fake!
"No, I believe he's the real Golden Lion," Kuzan countered. "I've seen him more than once in the past. It's him, no question."
"Besides, even if someone could copy his appearance, the Float-Float Fruit's power cannot be faked."
"Well... that makes sense," Bell conceded with a nod, though he quickly furrowed his brow. "Wait, Ace-aniki and Sabo-aniki have almost the exact same power."
Kuzan's mouth twitched.
That had been a mystery perplexing him for a long time as well; their abilities were indeed far too similar.
Still, it remained an absolute rule that two identical Devil Fruit powers could not coexist in this world.
"Save me... SAVE ME...!"
Catching sight of the Demon Warder, Shiki reacted as if he had spotted a savior.
Scrambling on all fours, he came tumbling and crawling toward the ship in desperate haste.
"Actually, I think he might be a fake after all," Kuzan muttered abruptly.
He simply couldn't reconcile the pathetic creature before them with the legendary Golden Lion who had stormed Marine Headquarters decades ago, fighting Garp and Sengoku in a battle that shattered half of Marineford.
The contrast was simply too staggering.
"Trying to run? Khehehe..."
The shadowy figures leaped and bounded through the air, their eerie shrieks scraping against the ears.
In the blink of an eye, they cut off Shiki's escape route, pinning his limbs to the ground. With a casual twist, they snapped both of his arms like twigs.
The twin blades grafted to his legs were shattered into iron splinters. Golden Lion was dragged across the earth like a dead dog, brutalized at the mercy of the shadowy entities.
The gruesome sight made Kenshin and the crew feel an icy chill creep across their scalps.
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