Chopper's innocent translation made every woman on the ship go pale. They'd all seen that damn gorilla. The thing was massive, intelligent, and apparently had very specific tastes.
Sanji's hand trembled so hard that ash fell from his cigarette. "The fuck did you just say?!"
"HOOHOO!"
"It wasn't me!" Chopper jumped back, startled by the sudden edge in Sanji's voice. "I'm just translating what I heard!"
"Who did you say he wants to marry?!" Sanji's eyes were hidden behind his hair, but his tone had dropped to something dangerous.
"Wait, how can you even understand what that thing is saying?!" Chopper was shocked. He could understand animals because that was part of being a reindeer. Vivi could hear "whispers." But Sanji?
"HOOHOOHOOO!!"
In that instant, something snapped. Maybe it was destiny colliding with fate, or maybe it was just the territorial instinct of a male sensing competition for a mate.
Flames erupted around Sanji's body.
"Like hell I'm letting some perverted gorilla get anywhere near Robin!"
Without another word, he shot forward like a rocket, even using Geppo to run through the air.
The rest of the Straw Hats blinked in confusion.
Zoro scratched his head. "Did the cook just awaken some kind of beast instinct? Don't tell me he's got gorilla blood in his family tree."
"Really?!" Chopper's eyes went wide. After all, he and Vivi could both understand animal speech, so maybe there was a logical explanation for Sanji too.
"So Sanji's dad is a gorilla!" Luffy concluded with absolute confidence.
Even Usopp, who was frantically firing exploding eggs at the distant horde, couldn't help but blurt out, "Humans can't have kids with gorillas!"
"Then the cook's just not human. Problem solved," Zoro said with a shrug.
"That makes sense!" Goliath chimed in.
"Totally reasonable," Bon Kurei agreed.
"None of that makes any sense!" Nami snapped, pointing ahead frantically. "Is now really the time for this discussion?! Another wave of beasts is coming, and I could just fry them all with lightning, but Sanji rushed out there! What am I supposed to do?!"
"Just shock him along with the beasts," Zoro suggested. "He'd probably be happy to get electrocuted by you anyway."
The other crew members nodded in agreement, like this was perfectly logical.
Nami was speechless. These people were insane.
But then the atmosphere shifted. Luffy and Zoro's expressions both hardened simultaneously, their eyes locked on something in the distance. The sudden change in mood caught Nami completely off guard.
Robin's voice was quiet. "Shiki."
Only then did Nami turn and spot the blonde man floating in the sky above them.
Shiki reached out almost lazily, and one of Usopp's exploding eggs dropped neatly into his palm like he was catching a baseball.
"So this is the thing that's been making all that noise?"
Usopp froze in shock. His exploding eggs traveled as fast as bullets, and this guy had just plucked one out of the air like it was nothing. But he wasn't about to waste the opportunity. He triggered the C4 charge inside the egg.
BOOM!
The explosion erupted in the sky, smoke billowing outward.
"Yes!" He pumped his fist. A C4-level blast at point-blank range, even a thirty-meter Sea King would take serious damage from that.
He'd seen what his explosives did to those beasts. Many of them were already dead or dying from his bombardment. And this was a sneak attack at close range. No matter how strong Shiki was, he had to have taken some damage, right?
But as the smoke began to clear, something small emerged from the explosion.
A tiny black chicken, no bigger than Usopp's fist, popped out of the dissipating smoke.
"Cheep!"
And then it exploded.
This time, the blast was incomparably stronger, a B4-level detonation.
The shockwave tore through the sky. A mushroom cloud swelled at incredible speed, expanding outward in all directions. Within seconds it had covered over a kilometer, and it was still growing rapidly.
"I hit the jackpot!"
Through countless test launches of his exploding eggs, he'd worked out the probability rates:
F-level bombs had about a 1-in-10 chance of producing a black chicken that would upgrade the explosion.
E-level: about 5% chance.
D-level: maybe 2%.
C-level: only 0.1%.
The odds were ridiculously low. In all his testing and combat so far, he'd only seen a C-level bomb produce a black chicken once before.
And now it had happened again, jumping straight to B4 level.
The blast wave spread violently through the air, and even the Going Merry was being pushed backward despite the Jet Dials at full power.
"The blast is way too strong!" Goliath shouted. "The Merry's going to get caught in the explosion!"
The B4's destructive radius was far greater than anyone had anticipated. The balloon octopus hovering above the Merry to keep it afloat couldn't withstand the shockwave and deflated instantly with a pathetic wheezing sound.
Without the octopus providing lift, the Going Merry dropped straight toward the White Sea below.
Fortunately, they were only a few meters above the surface. The ship hit the clouds with a rough landing that sent everyone stumbling.
However, by the time the Merry crashed down, the explosion's expanding shockwave had already reached them.
The violent blast nearly tore everyone's grip from the railings. The ship rocked so hard that loose items went flying across the deck.
"Why is the explosion still getting bigger?!" Usopp was stunned by the force of the explosion.
He'd demonstrated a B1-level explosion back in Arabasta, it had been devastating, creating a massive sandstorm that reached the sky. But that had been amplified by environmental factors.
A normal B1 explosion could maybe destroy a kilometer radius and form a modest mushroom cloud. But this B4... it wasn't even in the same category.
"Incoming!" someone shouted.
As the wall of fire and force rushed toward them, everyone aboard felt their hearts sink into their stomachs.
They couldn't possibly have killed the enemy only to get wiped out by their own attack, right?
Just then, a pitch-black wall materialized beside the Going Merry. Then a second wall. Then a third. In the span of a few heartbeats, the entire ship was encased in obsidian blocks.
The crew didn't even have time to process what was happening before the darkness enveloped them completely.
Chopper touched his own face nervously. "Is this what death looks like? It's so dark and scary!"
The next instant, torchlight flared to life, illuminating everyone's terrified expressions in flickering orange light.
"AAAAH!" Usopp shrieked. "The Grim Reaper is here to take me to the afterlife! I'm too young to die! I haven't done half the things on my bucket list!"
He dramatically stuck his ass in the air and turned away from the torch like it would somehow protect him.
Marcus walked over. "You ate the Bomb-Bomb Fruit. You're immune to explosions. What the hell are you panicking about?"
"Oh!" Usopp blinked. "Oh yeah!"
He turned around sheepishly to find everyone staring at him.
"Ahem!" He cleared his throat and struck a pose. "This was all according to my brilliant plan! The legendary pirate has been defeated by my ingenious strategy! An explosion that powerful, no pirate could possibly survive it! Hahahahaha!"
He laughed maniacally.
The others reluctantly nodded. Given the scale of that blast, it was hard to imagine anyone walking away from it.
Robin's quiet voice interrupted Usopp's laughter. "Are we missing someone?"
Silence fell across the ship.
"I think..." Vivi said awkwardly, "Sanji is still outside."
"..."
"Oh no..."
The atmosphere became painfully uncomfortable. Everyone slowly turned to stare at Usopp, who looked completely lost. "I didn't... It wasn't... It's the chicken's fault! The chicken decided to upgrade the explosion, not me!"
The tiny black chicken, perched innocently on a railing: "Cheep?"
"Relax," Marcus said. "The diamond armor set I gave him has Protection VIII and Blast Protection VIII enchantments. As long as he wasn't at ground zero when it hit, even if the shockwave caught him, worst case he falls into the White Sea. The armor should keep him alive."
He'd never actually tested the armor against a B1-level explosion, let alone whatever the hell a B4 was. And he'd never tried measuring the diamond set's durability limits.
But Marcus was reasonably confident in the math.
Protection VIII was already beyond the normal enchantment cap in Minecraft. And Blast Protection VIII was similarly maxed out. More importantly, the two enchantments stacked with each other, they didn't override.
If you converted it to game numbers, the simplified version would be:
Protection IV gave 4% damage reduction per level per piece of armor.
With four pieces of diamond armor, that meant: 4 pieces × 4 levels × 4% = 64% base protection. But with Protection VIII, you doubled that to 128% protection based on diamond armor's base durability.
Blast Protection worked similarly but was specifically tuned for explosions. Each level provided 8% blast resistance per piece. With Protection VIII, that came out to: 4 pieces × 8 levels × 8% = 256% blast resistance.
Of course, those were just game stats translated to this world. The mechanics were probably more complicated.
In reality, Protection VIII scaled based on the defensive strength of diamond armor in this world, which meant 128% of diamond's already impressive durability, plus an additional 256% resistance specifically against explosive force.
Marcus didn't know the exact formula for how it all calculated together. But with defense stats that high, surviving an explosion like that should be well within the armor's capabilities.