Compared to the spectators, the New Navy's admirals and generals had no such leisure.
They were all assigned to patrol routes and order duties across Doragonzo Island, keeping the Expo from turning into a battlefield. That left Kizaru Borsalino, who had wanted nothing more than to slack off and enjoy the matches, feeling unusually helpless.
He never expected that an event this exciting would force him into overtime. Even triple pay could not soothe his lazy heart.
The truly wealthy guests, the ones carrying mountains of Berries and crates of rare materials, could only wait. The auction they craved would not open until the martial arts tournament reached its later stages.
Still, some major forces had their eyes on more than the auction's finale.
They wanted the pure gold ring promised to the delegation with the highest total transaction volume.
If they pulled it off, they would not only walk away with weapons, medicine, and resources in bulk, they would also have a chance to claim a ring that the entire world was drooling over.
Brook's goal was simple. He wanted to flush out the truly hidden monsters, including the ones hiding inside his own affiliated forces.
So the tournament had no faction restrictions at all.
Underground organizations. Core nations. The Revolutionary Army. Affiliated adventurer groups. Anyone could enter.
Even agents of the World Government and Marines could participate, as long as they had the courage to step onto Doragonzo Island.
The six underground dark emperors each sent out masters they had kept buried in the shadows.
The Revolutionary Army even entered Bartholomew Kuma, hoping to win a pure gold ring and turn it into supplies that could keep their cause alive.
Dragon himself had briefly considered entering as well, but he knew the moment he stepped onto the stage, one of the Hell Kings would "happen" to intercept him. The Revolutionary leader getting dragged into a public clash like that would be hard to swallow, no matter how he spun it afterward.
Many famous powerhouses did not bother with the tournament.
Even so, Brook still arranged a surprise. He brought Rayleigh into the brackets.
He wanted Rayleigh to seize a ring with his own hands, and he wanted him to serve as the final wall, the ultimate boss at the summit.
If someone even stronger than Rayleigh got forced out into the open, that would be even more interesting.
If not, then Rayleigh winning the ring would still be a gain for the Hell Guild. It meant preserving the peak strength of an overlord level veteran within Brook's camp.
And there was another reason.
In this life, Rayleigh was Hancock's adopted father.
Brook was not the type to pretend he had no favorites.
There were also fighters who wanted a seat among the Seven Impermanences. They entered the tournament for one reason, to show their faces and prove they had the weight to stand under the Hell Guild's banner.
Even Hawkeye Mihawk entered.
But he was not hunting the prize. He just wanted to see more strong opponents.
Three pure gold rings.
Brook released three of them at once.
That alone was enough to call this Expo a historical first.
In the past, even a trace of pure gold was something the world's nobles and Celestial Dragons could only dream about. Now, Brook was tossing rings onto the table like chips.
The major forces went half mad.
If the Hell Guild and Universal Government were not overwhelmingly powerful, someone would have tried to loot the place on day one.
Even so, the tournament brackets became absurd.
Several leaders from the One Treasure to Eight Treasure Navies of the West Sea Flower Kingdom joined the fight.
A kingdom guardian from another West Sea nation entered as well.
So did the captain of a royal guard from a North Sea kingdom.
The ring was not just a prize anymore.
It was a declaration of status.
…
Meanwhile, far from the noisy arenas, a man was making his own approach.
The former Marine captain, Barrels.
The one who now possessed the Op Op Fruit.
He had been searching for a chance to meet Brook, but he trusted no one, not even Brook's subordinates. He feared being trapped the moment the fruit's identity leaked.
After all, the Op Op Fruit could be exchanged directly for a pure gold ring and one billion Berries.
As a newcomer with no backing, he poured his entire fortune into purchasing auction qualifications, just to secure a setting where he might speak to Brook in person.
His plan was ruthless in its simplicity.
He would sell the Op OpnFruit publicly and demand Brook's protection in return.
Otherwise, he would destroy the fruit.
Either he walked away with endless wealth and glory, or he died on the spot.
…
Doflamingo also wanted a ring.
He had considered the tournament, but he understood his limits. Against monsters like those present here, he could not guarantee victory.
So he chose the auction instead.
He brought the Gold Gold Fruit and aimed for the finale treasure, the pure gold ring on the stage.
Brook had only publicly stated one fixed exchange price: a pure gold ring for the Op Op Fruit.
He had not mentioned any other devil fruits.
That ambiguity was exactly why everyone was gambling.
…
The secret delegation from the Grand Line's Dick Kingdom arrived with a heavy purse as well.
They carried several top tier devil fruits supplied by a Celestial Dragon family, plus the so called "rubber fruit" King Charles had tossed in as a subsidy, along with billions of Berries, all to buy their way into super VIP status at the auction.
Brook already knew the Sun God Nika Fruit had a will of its own.
That was why he did not publicly place a massive bounty on a "plain Paramecia Rubber Fruit." Doing that would only attract attention from every greedy force on the sea.
Instead, he quietly mobilized his own networks to search.
Neither Imu nor the Five Elders realized that what they wanted most had already slipped out of their hands again.
…
Another participant sat smiling behind a mountain of money, but even he felt the pressure.
The underground dark emperor known as the King of Dark Gold, Lu Feld.
He was the head of the old usury family, the Lu Family. He preferred the title God of Fortune.
He lent money to anyone, generously, almost kindly.
It just so happened that debtors rarely honored contracts. So Lu Feld often became a "violent" collector when the bill came due.
As one of the forces controlling underground finance, he was never short on funds.
This time, he wanted two things.
The pure gold ring awarded for highest transaction volume, and the finale ring from the auction itself.
But the auction had a brutal rule.
No money.
No treasures.
Only top tier devil fruits.
That forced Lu Feld to open his deepest vault.
And from that vault, he produced a fruit he had hidden even from his own people.
A devil fruit Brook had been searching for.
The Paramecia Teleportation Fruit.
The same fruit that had made Brook vanish for eight years.
The fruit with the bizarre power to teleport people to the moon.
To be honest, Lu Feld had wanted that kind of escape route for himself. But he had already eaten a devil fruit long ago, so he could only keep it as a collector's piece, waiting for the right price.
Now, a pure gold ring had finally appeared.
So he brought it out.
Because in this auction, the value of a devil fruit would be judged by Brook himself.
Which meant the winner would be decided by Brook's preference and mood.
Some forces planned to win with quality.
Others planned to win with quantity.
If one top tier fruit was not enough, then they would stack several high level fruits, then add rare materials on top, until even Brook had to pause and consider.
No one could guarantee victory.
And Brook had even said that if he saw a devil fruit that truly satisfied him, he would not mind taking out another pure gold ring.
That one line turned greed into madness.
Everyone with a top tier fruit began dreaming of immortality.
Some forces worried that Brook might simply seize their fruits and refuse the ring.
But the ring sat in Brook's hand, and no one could take it from him anyway.
All they could do was gamble that the ruler of Universal Government would not destroy his own reputation on the world's biggest stage.
This World Expo was too grand, too famous, too watched.
If Brook robbed people here, the damage would echo across the seas.
------------
North Sea, Northmarn Island.
As the North Sea headquarters of the New Navy under the New Government, Northmarn Island was now under a full scale assault.
The World Government's fleet had already broken into the harbor. Warships pressed forward in tight formation, cannons roaring as landing forces poured onto the shore.
At the head of it all, Admiral candidate Chiyan Magma charged straight into the fortress like an onrushing calamity.
A colossal magma fist rose into the sky and smashed down.
The impact shook the entire stronghold. Scalding magma and exploding shells ignited buildings on contact, and thick smoke speared upward like a signal flare.
"Kill them!"
Chiyan Magma's arms became molten torrents as he roared at his men, eyes locking onto the figure in a peaked cap near the central line.
"Wipe out every last one of these fake Marines! Traitors!"
Across the burning streets, the clash began.
Light blue uniforms surged forward, white coats met them head on, and the two tides crashed together with a violent, grinding force. Steel rang. Gunfire barked. Blood splashed across stone and sand as bodies fell in clusters.
"Anyone who retreats, dies!"
Sakaski's voice was flat and merciless.
He drew his seastone alloy longsword and strode toward Chiyan Magma without a hint of fear. If anything, there was a sharp edge of excitement in his eyes, the kind that only appeared when the hunt was finally real.
He wanted a single strike.
One clean cut, one decisive finish, one arrogant candidate for admiral collapsing on the spot.
But the moment their weapons met, Sakazuki understood.
This man was not some greenhorn who relied on elemental tricks.
Chiyan Magma did not attempt to block with a careless logia body. Instead, he brought up hardened arms, Armament Haki layered thick, and caught the seastone alloy blade with brute strength alone.
His boots scraped backward through the rubble, but he held.
"Your strength has increased."
Chiyan Magma's eyes narrowed. Something felt off, dangerously off.
The Sakazuki he had fought before did not carry this kind of pressure.
And that sword, too.
The blade looked wrong.
He remembered Sengoku's warning, the one passed down from headquarters like a curse. Wano controlled seastone mines. The Universal Government controlled Wano. That meant the New Navy would never lack seastone weapons.
Be careful.
Admiral Kukulkan had learned that the hard way, taken down by Hiruba's seastone cluster round, giving Brook the opening to kill both Kukulkan and the CP0 captain in the New World.
Chiyan Magma's gaze sharpened as their exchange continued.
Sakazuki pressed forward in silence, strikes fast and vicious, refusing to give him breathing room.
Chiyan Magma accepted a minor injury just to confirm what his instincts screamed. In a flash of movement, he tested the blade and felt the biting suppression through the contact.
"So it's real," he growled. "Seastone."
Sakazuki's mouth curled.
"Scared now, respected Admiral candidate?"
The taunt landed exactly where Sakazuki wanted it to land.
Chiyan Magma's expression twisted, but he did not panic. He adjusted, stance lowering, eyes turning colder.
"Hmph. Don't think you can do whatever you want just because you have seastone."
He sneered and flexed his fingers, magma bubbling around his knuckles.
"Once I'm prepared, it's not as deadly as you think. Seastone can suppress me, sure. But my magma can stop that sword just the same."
His grin turned savage.
"It can melt it. Destroy it."
Then, as if to prove his point, Chiyan Magma pushed the exchange into a brutal gamble.
"Today I'll show you what a top tier logia really looks like!"
He forced his body into an early shift, turning molten at the last possible instant, and ignored the seastone alloy blade driving toward his chest.
Instead, he hurled a blazing magma fist straight at Sakazuki's head.
A trade.
A gamble on speed, power, and timing.
Sakazuki's eyes sharpened.
"Early elementalization? Effective, sure."
He pulled back with a snap of movement, dodging by a hair's breadth as the heat washed over him. The black sheen of Armament across his arms was not meant to block the fist, it was just enough to endure the furnace like temperature as he slipped away.
"But it depends on whose Observation Haki is better."
Sakazuki released his grip.
The seastone alloy sword stayed behind, lodged in Chiyan Magma's chest.
Sakazuki retreated in one clean motion, hands already moving.
A seastone dagger flashed into his palm.
A seastone pistol snapped up into position.
He stabbed the dagger toward the massive lava fist as it came, and at the same time fired the pistol toward Chiyan Magma's head.
Chiyan Magma's focus shifted instantly.
Dagger. Bullet. Seastone.
For a fraction of a second, his attention locked onto the immediate threats.
And that was when Sakazuki smiled.
Chiyan Magma felt the crisis too late.
Not from the dagger.
Not from the pistol.
From the blade buried in his chest.
"BOOM!"
The seastone alloy sword detonated.
A violent blast ripped outward from inside his body. Molten chunks sprayed across the battlefield, mixed with blood and torn flesh, splattering stone and burning debris alike.
The shockwave staggered even nearby soldiers, both New Navy and Marine alike, as if the island itself had flinched.
Sakazuki froze for a heartbeat.
He stared at the wrecked figure, stunned not by his own move, but by the sheer ruthlessness of what Brook had prepared for him.
When Brook had explained the sequence through Den Den Mushi, the timing, the weapon order, the detonation, Sakazuki had hated it.
He had wanted a clean victory. A fair one. A battle won with strength alone.
But now…
The result was terrifyingly efficient.
Too efficient.
Chiyan Magma fell, smoke and steam rising from his ruined body, the fight ending before Sakazuki had even truly warmed up.
For a second, Sakazuki did not know how to feel.
Victory?
Disgust?
Shock?
Then his face changed.
Wait.
If Magma died, the Magma Fruit would reincarnate somewhere else.
And Sakazuki needed him alive.
He needed to capture him, extract the fruit, claim it.
Before Sakazuki could move, the ground behind him exploded.
A lava fist burst upward with an enraged roar, molten spray ripping through scorched earth.
He lived.
Chiyan Magma lived.
Sakazuki did not panic. Instead, something like fierce satisfaction surged through him.
Good.
This was better.
He did not want the Magma Fruit handed to him like a reward for following instructions.
He wanted to take it.
He wanted to defeat Chiyan Magma with his own hands and prove he deserved it.
The lava fist smashed him away.
Sakazuki tumbled across rubble, flipped, and landed in a crouch, boots carving grooves into the ground as he stabilized.
When he raised his head, he finally saw Chiyan Magma clearly.
The man's body was riddled with bloody holes, steam hissing from every wound. He stood upright through sheer will, eyes red with rage, magma boiling around him like an unstable volcano.
"Aaah!"
Blood poured from his mouth as he glared at Sakazuki with hatred so thick it almost had weight.
"Sakazuki! Universal Government!"
"I will destroy you!"
He had come to the North Sea filled with ambition, convinced he would crush a traitor commander in a single overwhelming strike.
Instead, he had nearly died on first contact.
He had been cautious. He had guarded against seastone.
And still he had been ambushed by a weapon designed to kill him from the inside.
It was hard to defend against.
Worse, Sakazuki had predicted his early elementalization.
Chiyan Magma's rage burned hotter than his magma.
He stared at Sakazuki like he wanted to melt the entire island just to erase him.
.....
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