Rei Ao had no interest in the earth-shaking changes behind him, nor in the survivors' surging emotions.
He didn't even spare a second glance at the world he had personally rewritten.
Almost the moment Sengoku finished speaking, Rei Ao seemed to decide that everything here was done.
He tilted his head slightly, swept a cold sidelong look over the people on the sea—tiny as ants—who were staring at him with eyes full of tangled feelings.
Shock, fear, confusion, reverence… to him, it was all no more than drifting clouds.
Then he casually drew a line through the air with a finger.
"Rip—"
A pitch-black spatial crack seam tore open on command.
Its edges crackled with unstable violet-black arcs of lightning; inside was a riot of bizarre, incomprehensible chaos-colored light.
Rei Ao didn't pause. As calmly as stepping through his own front door, he walked in.
The rift snapped shut behind him, vanishing without a trace—leaving nothing to prove he had ever been there.
Only a world whose geography had been utterly transformed.
A chaotic world whose seat of power had been erased in an instant.
And a group of survivors standing on the threshold of a new era, at a total loss.
…
To Rei Ao, shifting through space was no more than a single step.
When he emerged from the tear he'd casually carved open—
a warm, damp sea breeze greeted him head-on, carrying the lush scent of tropical greenery mixed with a faint tang of salt.
Before him lay an island thick with vegetation and breathtaking scenery.
Towering cliff walls formed its natural barrier.
This was the women-only kingdom deep within the Calm Belt—Amazon Lily, also known as Kuja Island.
On the shore, three small figures were anxiously craning their necks, waiting.
They were the Boa Hancock sisters he had saved earlier.
The moment they saw Rei Ao appear out of thin air, safe and sound, little Hancock's gem-like eyes lit up with dazzling brilliance—every scrap of worry and fear dissolving into pure joy.
"My lord!"
She called out in a clear, bright voice, forgetting all pride and caution. Like a fledgling returning to its nest, she ran straight at him and wrapped both arms around his leg.
Her small face pressed into his robes, her shoulders trembling slightly.
Rei Ao looked down at the little girl—destined to one day become a beauty that would stun the seas, yet right now as fragile as a bud in the rain.
He reached out a well-defined hand and ruffled her soft, black hair.
It wasn't particularly gentle, but it carried a strangely steadying calm.
"It's fine now," he said simply.
Then, with the Hancock sisters in tow, Rei Ao walked straight into the heart of Kuja Island as if he were returning home, heading directly for the core of the country.
Their arrival—especially the appearance of an unfamiliar man—immediately threw the island into uproar.
The current empress (leader) of the Kuja, Gloriosa, a short woman with an imposing presence, appeared surrounded by elite female warriors.
She demanded answers sharply, every inch on guard.
The warriors drew bows and set arrows, snake-blades slid from their sheaths, and an invisible haze of Haki and hostility spread through the air.
And yet, in front of Rei Ao, all that so-called vigilance and enmity was laughable.
He didn't even need to lift a hand.
He merely released the faintest thread of his own presence—vast as an abyssal sea, indifferent to all things.
In an instant, it was as if the world froze. The air turned heavy as a mountain.
Every weapon pointed at him began to tremble uncontrollably, whining and vibrating—until, at last, they clattered to the ground with a chorus of metallic rings.
Those warriors—normally fierce, their Haki anything but weak—included Gloriosa herself, all went deathly pale, cold sweat pouring from them.
It was as if an invisible hand had seized their hearts and souls, making even breathing agonizingly hard, let alone forming the thought of resistance.
That wasn't killing intent.
It was something higher: the natural suppression a superior existence exerts over lesser life—an absolute gap in the essence of being.
Before absolute power, any rule, tradition, or precaution was nothing but a joke.
Rei Ao crushed all opposition with sheer presence alone.
Without even needing to speak, he became the de facto ruler of this closed-off kingdom.
Under pressure they could not resist—and a nameless awe rising from deep within—Gloriosa and the warriors had no choice but to lower their proudly held heads.
And so the dust settled.
Rei Ao took up residence in the island's most lavish, most comfortable palace.
Little Hancock stood at his side, her eyes filled with dependence and worship… and a faint, hard-to-notice unease.
She still remembered that "deal."
Her wish was to gain the power to protect her sisters, to never be bullied again—and to have the right to match the man before her, to stand at his side.
Rei Ao naturally understood what she was thinking.
He lounged slightly against a broad seat, tapping the armrest idly with his fingertips, as if considering something.
A bargain had to be honored.
And the tiny form in front of him was clearly not an appropriate state for certain "steps" to be carried out.
"Time…"
he murmured, a hazy, chaotic gleam passing through his eyes—
the reflection of a power that touched one of this world's fundamental laws.
He looked at little Hancock and said evenly, "Your wish—I can grant you part of it now. Prepare yourself."
As his words fell,
there was no chant, no complicated motion. He simply raised a finger toward Hancock and lightly tapped the air.
A formless, invisible—yet profoundly mysterious—wave enveloped her completely.
In the next moment, a jaw-dropping change unfolded.
Her body seemed to have its fast-forward button pressed a thousand times over. The river of time surged around her—yet was controlled with perfect precision.
Her petite frame lengthened and grew at a visible pace, shedding childishness and blooming into breathtaking maturity.
Her jet-black hair fell like a waterfall to her waist. Her pale skin shone with a luminous sheen. Her features opened into full beauty—so stunning it could topple nations—and that peerless charm, born of her potential for the Love-Love Fruit and her own bloodline, began to radiate naturally, uncontrollably.
It was the peak form of the future "Pirate Empress," Boa Hancock.
In the span of a blink—
the one standing before Rei Ao was no longer the little girl who had to look up at him.
But a tall, voluptuous, devastatingly beautiful woman—her eyes alone carrying a thousand kinds of allure with every glance.