Wang Zhi fell quiet after hearing Newgate's words.
Two days.
Could he and Jennifer really last two full days against the three Hell Kings standing in front of them?
Kaido had only just taken down a God's Knight and earned the title of the fifth Hell King. The power of the Mythical Zoan, the Azure Dragon, was famous enough to make the sea itself feel smaller.
Jennifer was a Mythical Zoan user too, but she was nowhere near that level.
And Wang Zhi?
Was he supposed to face Shiki and Newgate alone and endure for two days?
If he surrendered immediately, it would be humiliating. The Hell Pirates would never truly respect them.
But if he fought and lasted, even if the end was surrender, at least he would have dignity to stand on.
His respect would be bought with time.
So there was only one choice.
Fight.
"Hahaha! Wang Zhi, look at that face of yours, you really thought we'd gang up on you."
Shiki's grin widened, arrogant as ever.
"Today, I'll fight you one on one!"
Shiki had awakened Conqueror's Haki, his pressure alone could crush most captains. In his eyes, Wang Zhi was not worthy of forcing Newgate to step in.
Still, Wang Zhi was strong, stronger than most pirates alive. If they could subdue him, the Hell Pirates would gain a sharp blade.
They would not kill a master like that unless there was no other choice.
Wang Zhi laughed loudly, refusing to show weakness.
"Hahaha! Since you're offering, I won't insult you by refusing."
One on one with Shiki, he could last.
Two days might even be possible.
But the rest of the battlefield?
That was out of his control.
He leaned toward Jennifer and whispered a hard truth. If she could not win, she should surrender or run, but either way she had to disappear and survive.
Against the Hell Pirates, Wang Zhi could not see a road to victory, only a road to a decent ending.
The war ignited.
The moment steel rang out, some of the Rocks remnants surrendered on the spot. They threw down their weapons, refusing to die for a doomed flag.
Wang Zhi cursed them as cowards.
But the irony tasted bitter.
He himself was already preparing to surrender too. He was simply trying to buy respect through resistance, so that no one could spit on his name when it ended.
Shiki and Wang Zhi clashed in midair, Floating Fruit against Binding Fruit.
Shiki's Conqueror's Haki gave him overwhelming momentum, but Wang Zhi's Devil Fruit was better suited for a direct duel. The Binding Fruit paired with his swordsmanship made him a nightmare in close combat.
For a time, he actually held his ground.
Then Kaido moved.
He did not give Newgate any chance to claim the next opponent.
With a feral laugh, Kaido surged forward and met Jennifer head on.
She transformed into a towering giant warrior with the form of a two winged unicorn holy horse, a flying Mythical Zoan that radiated divine pressure.
"Worororo! Jennifer!"
Kaido's eyes gleamed with excitement.
"Join my Beast Division! Then we can fight for the title of the strongest division in the Hell Pirates!"
Jennifer snorted, refusing him without hesitation.
"No chance."
"Even if you beat me and I join, I'll still be qualified to build my own Division."
She had accepted the truth a long time ago. The moment Brook returned and killed one of the Five Elders, she understood it clearly.
The Rocks Pirates were finished.
She had imagined her future more times than she cared to admit. If she did not join the Hell Pirates, her only option was sneaking back to Elbaf and living quietly until death.
But Jennifer was a notorious giant fanatic, a pirate who lived for the sea. She could not crawl home and pretend to be ordinary.
So she had already prepared herself.
If she joined, she would bring her people and carve out her own banner under the Hell Pirates.
Kaido laughed again, almost disappointed.
"Worororo! What a pity!"
Then his expression sharpened.
"But take my test."
"I won't go easy on you. Not everyone is worthy of becoming a captain under the Hell Pirates!"
Kaido surged into a half dragon form, swinging the massive black kanabo Hassaikai with terrifying force as he charged.
Jennifer looked down at him, towering over twenty meters tall, over a hundred years old, while Kaido looked like a child beside her in both age and size.
But the sea did not measure strength by height or years.
It only took one clash.
One impact.
Jennifer's eyes widened as the force slammed into her bones.
This little brat's power was heavier than hers.
Mythical Zoan against Mythical Zoan.
Azure Dragon against two winged unicorn holy horse.
Even in raw oppression alone, Kaido's Azure Dragon sat several levels above her.
Kaido's voice turned almost instructional, like a warrior lecturing another mid battle.
"Jennifer."
"The three types of Haki are the foundation for standing at the top."
"Let me show you what it means to coat your strikes and bind your will into them!"
Jennifer's teeth ground.
"Hateful…"
Kaido's mockery cut deep because it carried truth. She wanted Conqueror's Haki, but the sea did not hand it out just because someone demanded it.
So she changed the battlefield.
Jennifer transformed fully into a Pegasus like form, wings snapping wide as she shot into the sky. She dragged Kaido with her, pulling him away from New Beehive Island.
If she could not win, she would endure.
If she could not endure, she would flee.
She believed her speed would be faster than Kaido's dragon form. If she could keep him chasing her, she could buy time.
The longer she lasted, the stronger she proved herself.
Meanwhile, far away on Greenbit Island, another net closed.
Barbossa, nearly seventy now, looked at the sudden arrival of the Hell Pirates with helpless eyes. His daughter Karina and his grandson stood behind him, tense and silent.
Brook still had not let them go.
Barbossa raised both hands, not even pretending he would fight.
"Let them go."
"They don't have Devil Fruits."
"I'll go with you."
His gaze hardened.
"And tell me, is that guy Jack dead?"
If some ordinary pirate crew had arrived, Barbossa would have fought until his bones broke.
But when he saw Shakky, Orochi, Kozuki Oden and the others, he knew the truth.
Resisting would only get his daughter and grandson killed.
An old man could die.
But he would not watch his family die with him.
Oden's eyes flared with frustration the moment he realized Barbossa meant to surrender immediately.
"Hey!"
"How can you do this!"
"I haven't even gotten started yet!"
"You have to fight me!"
Shimotsuki Toramaru and the others stared too, disappointment written plainly on their faces. They had heard Barbossa was terrifying.
Twenty years ago, his bounty had already reached a billion. In a normal era, a man like that would be the right hand or left hand of a dominant pirate crew.
But this was not a normal era.
Every major cadre of the Hell Pirates had awakened Conqueror's Haki.
The five Hell Kings now stood where the old New World overlords once stood.
This was the strongest era.
The era where the New World was truly being unified.
To be born into it and stand against the Hell Pirates was tragedy.
Barbossa spoke again, calm and firm.
"Take me back."
"Beat me all you want."
"But let them go now."
He turned slightly, voice tightening as he ordered his daughter and grandson without looking back.
"Run."
Then he looked at the Hell Pirates, eyes sharp for a man his age.
"You won't kill the innocent and weak, will you? Brook doesn't have that habit."
Barbossa held out his wrists, ready for seastone cuffs, trusting the one thing he had learned in decades on the sea.
Brook might be a pirate, but he was not the kind that butchered civilians.
And he ruled his men with iron discipline.
For now, that was the only mercy Barbossa could gamble on.
-------------
New World, Silent Island.
The moment Brook's shoes touched the damp soil, he felt it, that wrongness in the air. Thick, heavy, like the island itself was holding its breath.
Still, he was not surprised.
In this world, "normal" was the rarest treasure of all.
There was Gourmet Island, where the land itself was made of food. There was Virgin Island, where the adult women offered their first blood to outsiders. There was Female Fist Island, where the roles were reversed and the women were the ones who crushed men like paper.
Compared to those, a cursed fog island barely qualified as an introduction.
Brook moved through the pale mist, heading toward the hospital shaped building at the heart of the settlement. Its outline was half swallowed by the fog, as if the island was trying to hide it.
"I just hope Marshall D. Tim is still here…"
Teach had given him enough information.
This island was full of monsters, twisted things created by Tim's so called medical genius, and many of them had combat power worth mentioning.
Over the years, Marshall D. Tim had used her black technology to reshape countless lives. Her goal was simple and disgusting.
Create another "perfect alien" like Teach.
But without Rocks's genes and without the resources needed to keep feeding the experiment, she had failed again and again. She had never managed to produce a true subject that could hold more than one Devil Fruit power.
Even so, she had advanced in two directions, body modification and soul modification.
Teach's two sisters had been born here.
Yet they were unstable. They had only split out a second personality, not a real second soul.
Then Brook saw her.
Messy black hair that looked like it had lost a fight with a storm. A wide women's hat, almost like a witch's, casting shadow over sharp eyes. A white doctor's coat stained by years of secrets.
Marshall D. Tim.
The moment she laid eyes on Brook, her face went pale.
"There's an intruder!"
Her voice cracked through the fog.
"Sharon! Alyssa! A stranger's on the island!"
"Kill him!"
"Yes, Mother!"
Two little girls, no older than eight or nine, appeared with matching smiles that had no innocence left in them. They ran to a row of blood red cages and threw them open with practiced hands.
The sound that followed was not human.
The girls pointed toward Brook like they were giving orders to dogs.
And the monsters poured out.
A bloody triangular head dragging a cleaver.
A nurse, warped and swollen, somehow both seductive and revolting.
A faceless creature that spat sulfuric acid, missing hands as if someone had removed them on purpose.
A two headed zombie dog.
A giant crawling hand.
A worm with a human face.
One after another, nightmares stitched together with medicine and madness.
They moved like they had done this a hundred times.
Brook's eyes narrowed.
"Disgusting."
His voice was quiet, but the cold in it was sharper than steel.
"Even Abefu's zombie army wasn't this ugly."
If Tim's "genius" only produced trash like this, then she had no place in his research team, not for a second.
He would take the skill.
Then he would erase the filth.
Brook's gaze sharpened as he studied them. Even their souls felt wrong, incomplete, like someone had cut them apart and sewn them back in the dark.
"Cutting souls…"
He lifted the Seven Star Demon Sword.
One casual swing.
A blade of sword light flashed through the fog.
The island screamed.
In an instant, most of the charging monsters collapsed, shredded as if they had never been alive at all.
The sight broke the girls' courage.
Sharon and Alyssa froze, then turned and ran.
This invader was too strong.
Only their mother could handle him.
"Mom! Mom!"
Their voices trembled as they sprinted toward the ruined hospital.
"Oh no! He's a monster!"
Brook followed, unhurried, as if he was walking through someone else's nightmare.
The moment he stepped through the hospital's broken entrance, the world changed.
Fog thickened, swallowing walls, swallowing distance. Shadows stretched and twisted into shapes that should not exist. The air felt heavier, like he had stepped into a different place entirely.
His Observation Haki cut off.
The outside world vanished.
Brook's eyes gleamed.
"Yohoho… what is this?"
"An illusion? A pocket world?"
"It feels real."
Then Tim's voice shook from deeper inside.
"You… you're Brook!"
"The overlord of the New World!"
Marshall D. Tim was trembling so hard her legs barely held her upright. She looked like she wanted to crawl into the floor and vanish.
Why was a pirate overlord here?
Had Teach been exposed?
Damn it.
Did Teach betray her?
Brook's tone was calm, almost polite.
"Marshall D. Tim."
"Come with me."
"Teach wants to see you."
As he spoke, the Seven Star Demon Sword pulsed. Hundreds of ghosts spilled into the space, flooding the hallways like a black tide.
Tim's breath hitched.
No.
This space could hold him for a moment. Just a moment.
Brook must have used some ability to read Teach's memories. That was the only explanation.
Tim grabbed both girls, one in each arm, and fled.
Even while running, she could not accept losing Teach, her perfect alien. If she had known, she would never have let him join the Hell Pirates to wait for a chance to seize the Dark Dark Fruit.
Now she had only one path left.
Train her daughters until they became perfect.
Rise again.
She had thought about joining Brook, once or twice.
But her ambition was too large. She did not want to be a mere researcher under someone else's flag.
Brook watched her disappear into the fog.
His smile faded.
"Run?"
He sneered.
"I'm not some rookie crew that sails to garbage islands for an adventure."
His Conqueror's Haki exploded outward, heavy enough to shake the world into submission. The pressure hit the illusion like a hammer striking glass.
The space cracked.
Brook lunged forward, sword leading, ghost army surging behind him.
If a rat like Tim escaped, he would not deserve to call himself the ruler of the New World.
Tim looked back, eyes wide with terror.
"Impossible!"
"How can my inner world illusion break this fast?!"
Brook's voice carried no patience now.
"Do I really need three chapters to deal with someone like you?"
His ghost army swallowed the fog, drowning the three figures in darkness.
For a heartbeat, Tim vanished again, taking Sharon and Alyssa with her.
Brook's face turned colder.
Still trying to slip away.
He had intended to give her a little dignity, for the sake of her medical skill.
Now?
Now he only wanted to cripple her.
He stepped forward again, entering the new fog space she created.
This dimension felt even more stable than the Door Door Fruit or the Mirror Mirror Fruit. It lasted longer, held its shape better, like a proper cage.
Brook's sword aura roared.
His Conqueror's lightning crawled across the air.
The space shook, on the verge of shattering.
Tim's voice cracked with panic.
"Lord Brook!"
"Why do you keep chasing me?!"
"I never provoked the Hell Pirates!"
Brook's patience finally snapped.
"If you don't come out right now, I'm done playing."
"You want to die?"
"Fine."
"I'll grant your wish."
His ghost power froze the fog midair, turning the world cold and still. Red lightning spread through the dimension like veins, announcing his anger.
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