Wanokuni, New World
"WORORORORO…!" The thunderous laughter of Kaido rolled across the graveyard of Ringo, shaking the frozen land like distant artillery.
Once, Ringo had been sacred ground. The valley had been a silent sanctuary where fallen samurai were honored. Rows upon rows of stone shrines once stood here, each carved with the names of warriors who had died with blades in their hands. Wind chimes had hung from weathered wooden posts, singing softly whenever the winter winds passed through the mountains.
Now… it looked like the aftermath of the apocalypse. The battlefield stretched for thousands of meters in every direction. The earth had been split open by monstrous impacts, entire sections of the frozen ground shattered into jagged craters. Stone monuments lay broken like bones scattered across the snow. Some graves had been completely overturned, their markers reduced to powder beneath overwhelming force.
Shrines that had stood for centuries were now nothing more than splintered debris. Snow that once fell peacefully now mixed with blood. Dark stains spread across the white ground, soaking into shattered stone and frozen dirt. At the center of the devastation stood the monster responsible. Kaido held a corpse by the neck in one massive hand.
The body hung limp like discarded meat. Armor plates were crushed inward, ribs clearly broken beneath the ruined clothing. Blood ran from the corpse's mouth and dripped steadily onto the snow below.
The lifeless body belonged to Dorian Lacasse, one of the current Seven Warlords of the Sea, pirates sanctioned by the World Government. Or at least… he had been.
"So much for being a Shichibukai…" Kaido snorted. With casual contempt, he tossed the corpse aside. The body hit the frozen ground with a sickening crack and rolled through broken gravestones before coming to rest among shattered shrines. Kaido leaned back slightly, massive horns silhouetted against the dim sky.
"I didn't know two of the government's dogs had come all the way to my country just to rob graves."
His voice carried through the wind like a distant storm. Ever since the Donquixote Family had infiltrated Wano, Kaido's mood had been foul. The idea that someone had dared to sneak into Wano Country without his knowledge gnawed at him.
So when he sensed two powerful presences lurking within the borders of his territory… He had descended personally. And for two straight days, the battle had torn apart the graveyard.
Suddenly, a massive shadow swept across the battlefield. Wings cut through the cold air as a dark figure descended from the sky. In midair, flames briefly flickered along black feathers as the enormous creature began to shrink and shift. The prehistoric form folded inward, bones cracking and reforming until the silhouette became human.
King landed lightly on the broken earth. Despite the devastation surrounding them, his landing was almost silent. His black wings folded neatly behind him as he approached the spot where Kaido now sat among the ruins like a king surveying conquered land.
"It seems… she got away." Kaido didn't even turn his head. King stood there for a moment before lowering himself to one knee. He had chased the second warlord relentlessly across Wano's frozen mountains after she abandoned her partner to buy time. But in the end— She escaped.
"Kaido-sama… forgive me." King bowed his head. "I failed to capture her." There were no excuses in his voice. Only acceptance. Kaido lazily waved a hand. One of the Beast Pirates lurking nearby stiffened immediately. The subordinate sprinted forward nervously, carrying a large wine gourd with both hands.
Before the man could even properly present it, Kaido snatched it away. He ripped the cork out with his teeth and took several massive gulps. Wine spilled down his chin.
"Do you know what they came here for, King?" Kaido nudged Dorian's corpse with his foot. The body rolled slightly. His eyes narrowed. Something about the two warlords had bothered him. It wasn't their strength. They hadn't even come close to threatening him.
Neither possessed Conqueror's Haki, nor did their abilities have the destructive power required to break through his awakened Mythical Zoan Devil Fruit defenses. And yet… They had fought him for two entire days. No matter how many times he smashed them into the earth… burned them… crushed them… They kept coming back. Like death simply didn't apply to them. Kaido frowned slightly.
"I can understand that woman's regeneration…" he muttered. "She had a Zoan ability." But his gaze shifted back to Dorian's corpse. "This one was a Logia."
And yet… He had regenerated again and again. King spoke carefully.
"The warlord who escaped carried a coffin… Kaido-sama." Kaido's brow lifted slightly. "So there was definitely a corpse… or something inside it that they came for."
King's eyes flickered briefly toward Dorian's body. "Perhaps if we had kept one alive… we could have interrogated them."
Kaido snorted. "Too late for that now." Another long drink from the gourd. Wine sloshed as he lowered it. "Find out who was buried here," Kaido ordered. "Ask those greedy samurai nobles."
His gaze swept across the ruined graveyard. "If this place held any secrets… I want to know."
"Understood, Kaido-sama," King replied immediately. As King rose to leave, Kaido looked down at his own body. Scarred. Massive. Unbroken. Not a single injury marked him despite the battle that had devastated the entire valley of Ringo.
And yet… He didn't look satisfied. To truly put Dorian down, he had ultimately needed to crush him with Conqueror's Haki. Every other attack, even his mythical dragon breath, seemed ineffective without haki imbued into it… The man had simply regenerated. Kaido's thoughts drifted.
In his entire life, he had only seen that level of unnatural resilience from one group. The shadow rulers of the world. The God's Knights who served the World Government from the darkness. His eyes narrowed slightly.
Was this infiltration their doing…?
If the World Government had sent those two here… Then what exactly were they looking for in Wano? Kaido's gaze drifted across the battlefield. Then slowly toward a young figure standing nearby. A new recruit within the Beast Pirates. The teen showed extraordinary potential.
Kaido had personally instructed King to train him. His name was Jack. But more importantly… Jack was a Fish-Man. Which meant something Kaido had ignored for years suddenly became very relevant. Wano today… was not the same Wano that existed centuries ago.
The ancient capital… Old Wano… Now lay completely submerged beneath the sea. If the thing Kaido sought had once been there—then it might still be down there. And that thing was the very reason Kaido had conquered Wano in the first place. The Road Poneglyph.
Kaido's eyes shifted toward the young pirate. "Did you find anything down there, Jack?" The teen stepped forward immediately. His posture straightened with fierce intensity. His eyes burned with admiration, bordering on fanatic devotion. Jack had watched the two-day battle unfold.
He had seen Kaido reduce two Shichibukai to nothing. To him, it had looked like the wrath of a god. And in that moment his belief had hardened completely. Under Kaido… He would become strong enough to fulfill his vengeance. Jack lowered his head respectfully. Then looked up.
"Kaido-sama…" Jack stepped forward, his voice trembling with a mixture of excitement and reverence. "…your suspicions were correct. Beneath the waters of present-day Wano Country… there is an entire civilization buried below."
The young Fish-Man paused for breath, still visibly overwhelmed by what he had witnessed. "And the scale of it… it's unimaginable. The ruins beneath the sea are tens of times larger than the Wano we see on the surface today."
For a moment, the cold wind passed silently through the shattered graveyard of Ringo. Kaido took another long pull from the wine gourd.
"I don't care about all that history." His voice came out flat, irritated. "…Did you find the stone I told you to find?"
The question landed like a hammer. For Kaido, ancient ruins and lost civilizations meant nothing. Only power mattered. Jack hesitated. The boy instinctively glanced at the other Beast Pirates subordinates who still lingered nearby, nervously surveying the destroyed battlefield.
"Well… I didn't exactly find the Road Poneglyph you asked me to locate, Kaido-sama… but…" Kaido's eyes narrowed slightly. He sensed the hesitation instantly. With a lazy flick of his hand, he dismissed the surrounding pirates.
"Get lost. Go dig through whatever remains of this graveyard. I want the history of this place." The men immediately scattered. Some rushed off toward the ruined shrines to investigate the graves. Others moved to reinforce Wano's borders, tightening the island's defenses after the unexpected intrusion by the Seven Warlords of the Sea.
Within minutes, the battlefield fell silent. Only three figures remained amid the devastation. Kaido. King. And Jack. Kaido waited for several seconds, watching the horizon as the wind dragged snow across broken gravestones. Then he spoke again.
"Alright…" His voice was quieter now—but far more dangerous. "What did you find down there?" Jack straightened. "I did find a Poneglyph, Kaido-sama." That caught Kaido's attention.
"It was inside one of the old shrines belonging to the Kozuki Clan. It wasn't a red one… just a regular stone." He continued carefully. "But that shrine also contained something else… many unfinished stone blocks. Large ones. Discarded."
Kaido frowned. "What are you trying to say, brat?"
Before Jack could answer, King spoke. "I believe I understand." Kaido glanced sideways at his right-hand man. King folded his wings slightly as he explained.
"From what I know, the Kozuki Clan were the ones who created the Poneglyphs. They possessed a secret stone-carving technique that was passed down to them from the Void Century—possibly even from the Ancient Kingdom itself." King's gaze drifted toward the distant mountains.
"If Jack discovered shrines filled with unfinished blocks… then it's possible he stumbled upon one of the locations where the Kozuki clan crafted or practiced making Poneglyphs."
Jack nodded quickly. "And Kaido-sama, we already know that aside from the four Road Poneglyphs, there are dozens of regular Poneglyphs scattered around the world."
He swallowed.
"Each one contains fragments of history from the Void Century." Kaido fell silent. What King said made sense. He wasn't ignorant of the existence of the other stones. The real problem was something else entirely. No one alive could read them.
The cursed script carved into the Poneglyphs belonged to a language lost to time. Only one person in the world was known to decipher them. A young woman relentlessly hunted by the World Government. Kaido's mind briefly brushed against the name before discarding it.
His attention returned to Jack. The boy reached inside his shirt and carefully pulled out a tightly wrapped bundle. Layers of cloth were folded around something fragile. When Jack unwrapped it, he revealed an ancient book. It looked like something that should have long since turned to dust.
The cover was made of dark, cracked leather that had hardened like old bark. Moss clung to its edges, and thin strands of pale fungus had grown along the spine over centuries of damp darkness. Parts of the binding had fused together with mineral deposits left behind by years of seawater exposure.
The pages inside were brittle and yellowed, their edges curled and warped from moisture. Yet somehow… The book had survived. Faded ink still lingered across the fragile pages like ghosts of words that refused to vanish.
"This is something I found inside one of the shrines, Kaido-sama." Jack held it out carefully. "Most of the ruins I discovered are completely submerged… and many of the shrines are empty."
He pointed toward the sea beyond the mountains. "But some of them have hidden entrances that connect to tunnels from the surface. Those chambers remain dry… untouched by the water."
King gave a small approving nod. "Well done." The simple praise sent a surge of pride through Jack. King stepped forward and took the ancient book from Jack's hands. If anyone else had asked for it—perhaps Queen-sama, or even Ryuji-sama—Jack might have hesitated.
But King was different. Within the Beast Pirates, there was only one man Kaido truly trusted to guard his back. King. Everyone else was merely a subordinate. Jack's eyes burned quietly with ambition. He didn't want to stand alongside Queen or Ryuji as another Calamity of the Beast Pirates.
No. Jack wanted something far greater. He wanted to stand where King stood. To become the one Kaido trusted above all others. The left hand to Kaido's power. While King remained his right. As King slowly opened the ancient book, the brittle pages crackled softly in the cold wind. Kaido leaned forward slightly.
King handled the ancient book with surprising care. For a man known across the seas as one of the most ruthless commanders of the Beast Pirates, his movements were almost delicate. His gloved fingers turned the brittle pages slowly, mindful that even the slightest pressure might cause them to crumble into dust.
The paper crackled softly with every movement. Ink faded by centuries of damp air formed strange characters across the pages—symbols sharp and angular, carved by a language long erased from the world. The wind howled faintly across the ruined graveyard of Ringo, rustling the pages as King studied them.
After several moments, he stopped. A quiet sigh escaped him. He closed the book and lifted his gaze toward Kaido, slowly shaking his head.
"The script… means nothing to me." He tapped the cover lightly. "From the structure of the symbols, it appears to be the same language used on the Poneglyph itself."
Kaido's expression didn't change. That answer had been expected. Without someone capable of reading the ancient script, the book might as well have been a brick. Kaido's gaze shifted toward the young Fish-Man standing before him.
"How much of the underwater Wano did you actually explore?" Jack straightened immediately. "Barely a fraction of it, Kaido-sama." His voice carried no excuses—only honesty. "I returned immediately after finding the first Poneglyph."
He paused briefly before continuing. "Even with my ability to move freely underwater… exploring the entire submerged city would take a very long time."
Jack's eyes darkened slightly as he recalled what he had seen. "There are too many layers beneath the sea." He gestured vaguely toward the distant coastline. "Collapsed districts… buried temples… sealed tunnels… and entire chambers hidden beneath other chambers."
Jack clenched his fist slightly. "Without records from the ancient families of Old Wano, there is a high chance I may overlook important locations."
Kaido fell silent, thinking. Then his gaze shifted toward King.
"King." The Lunarian stepped forward slightly. "Take that book to Queen… and have him show it to Caesar Clown as well." Kaido's voice grew colder. "Let those two rats examine it. If there's anything unusual about the book, anything at all, the material or ink, I want to know."
King nodded. "Understood."
Kaido continued. "And pay a visit to the samurai clans." His eyes drifted across the ruined graveyard. "Those nobles love hoarding history like it's treasure." His voice hardened. "Dig out every record they have regarding Old Wano."
The wind whipped across the battlefield, carrying the scent of blood and broken stone. "It seems," Kaido muttered, "I've underestimated this country."
His eyes narrowed. "First that snake Doflamingo… and now the World Government….If those bastards are willing to send their dogs all the way here just to dig through a grave and sniff around my territory…" He kicked Dorian's corpse lightly. "…then Wano may be hiding far more than just a Poneglyph."
Kaido took another long drink from his wine gourd. "I want to know everything." His voice dropped into a low growl. "I don't care what methods you use." A pause. "Find the hidden secrets of Wano."
King bowed slightly. "It will be done, Kaido sama."
Kaido turned back toward Jack. "You…brat," Jack snapped upright. "Continue exploring the underwater city," Kaido gestured lazily. "I'll have King assign a few sharp men to assist you."
His eyes gleamed faintly. "They'll map the terrain and record whatever you uncover."
Jack lowered his head deeply. "Understood, Kaido-sama."
King gave a small nod of approval. But then his expression shifted slightly. "Kaido-sama… there is another matter." His tone had grown noticeably heavier.
Kaido's eyebrow lifted slightly. "And what might that be?"
King hesitated. "We have received… disturbing reports from Elbaf." That caught Kaido's attention. Elbaf. The legendary island of giants. Even Kaido, who sought dominion over the world, understood that Elbaf was not a territory easily conquered. His thoughts drifted briefly to its ruler.
Harald. A monster of a giant. One of the few beings Kaido believed capable of standing toe-to-toe with Rocks D. Xebec himself. Kaido hated the memory of his former captain. But even he acknowledged the man's terrifying strength.
"What about Elbaf?" Kaido asked with mild curiosity. King spoke carefully. "There are rumors…that the King of Elbaf has fallen. " Kaido's brow rose slightly with mild amusement. But King wasn't finished.
"And…" He hesitated again. "And someone has cut down the World Tree."
Silence. For a moment, the wind stopped feeling cold.
Then—"WORORORORORO…!!" Kaido's laughter exploded across the graveyard like thunder.
He leaned back, nearly spilling his wine.
"Alber…" He wiped a tear from his eye. "I never thought you were the type to make jokes." King didn't react. Kaido grinned. "Cutting down the World Tree?" His voice dripped with amusement. "Have you ever seen it with your own eyes, King… the world tree?"
"No, Kaido-sama," King admitted. "Everything I know about the world tree comes from books and rumors."
Kaido's voice cut across his words immediately. "I have." The laughter faded. His expression grew serious. "To reach the High West, ships must pass through the sea routes surrounding Elbaf."
Kaido looked toward the distant horizon. "Even from hundreds of miles away, you can see that tree." His hand stretched upward as if measuring its height against the sky. "It pierces the clouds…kissing the very heavens. That's how massive it is."
The air grew heavy as he spoke. "Someone cutting it down…?" Kaido scoffed. "Your imagination is running wild." He took another long drink before lowering the gourd slowly. "I doubt even the gods from those ancient myths could accomplish such a thing."
His eyes gleamed with absolute certainty. "A tree that has stood since the oldest legends of the world…" Kaido smirked. "…is not something that any man can simply cut down."
But as Kaido's booming laughter echoed across the shattered graveyard, something brushed faintly against the edge of his awareness. It was subtle. So subtle that most men would never have noticed it. Yet for someone like Kaido, whose life had been forged through countless battles across the seas, such instincts were never wrong.
It wasn't a sound. Nor a presence. It was simply a feeling. A quiet disturbance at the back of his mind. The kind of instinct that apex predators relied upon—the silent warning that had kept Kaido alive through wars, betrayals, and countless attempts on his life. His laughter slowly faded.
The wind swept through the ruined graves of Ringo, stirring loose snow across the battlefield.
"King." Kaido's voice was calm now. The shift in tone immediately drew the Lunarian's attention.
"Send a few scouts." Kaido lifted the wine gourd again, taking a slow drink before lowering it. "Verify that rumor of yours about Elbaf."
King nodded immediately. "It will be done, Kaido-sama."
Kaido rose to his feet. The sheer movement seemed to dominate the broken landscape around him. His towering frame cast a long shadow across the shattered shrines as he began to walk away from the battlefield.
As he stepped forward— CRACK. His foot came down directly onto the head of Dorian Lacasse's corpse. Bone gave way instantly. The skull collapsed beneath Kaido's weight like brittle clay, fragments scattering across the frozen ground. Blood and bone splintered outward in a dark stain across the snow.
Kaido didn't even look down. To him, it was no more significant than stepping on a dry twig. He walked past the ruined body. One step. Two. Then he stopped. The wind shifted slightly.
Slowly, Kaido turned his head. His gaze drifted back toward the now completely crushed corpse lying among the shattered graves. For a moment, he simply stared at it. That faint disturbance returned again. Instinct. It whispered quietly in the back of his mind. Something about leaving the corpse behind felt… wrong.
Kaido frowned slightly. Then he spoke. "King."
The Lunarian stepped closer. "Yes, Kaido-sama?"
Kaido gestured lazily toward the remains. "Destroy it." King followed his gaze to the broken corpse. "Don't bury it." Kaido's voice was indifferent, but there was an edge of finality to it. "Don't feed it to the Sea Kings either."
He took another drink before finishing the order. "Burn it." His eyes hardened slightly. "Reduce it to ashes." Perhaps it was nothing. Just a passing instinct. But Kaido had learned long ago that ignoring such instincts could lead to unnecessary trouble.
Better to erase the problem completely. King bowed his head slightly. "As you command."
Behind them, the cold wind continued to sweep across the graveyard—carrying away the last traces of a warlord who had dared set foot in Kaido's territory.