Chapter 811: The Hidden Threads of Destiny
Kaito Shirogane scrutinized the seemingly carefree Straw Hat Luffy. At his current timeline, the other party had highly likely not awakened his Nika form yet. In terms of pure strength, he wasn't even worth mentioning to the current Kaito Shirogane.
In fact, even if the entire Straw Hat crew teamed up, they wouldn't last more than a few seconds against him.
But Kaito Shirogane still curiously observed this weak yet perceptive plot character.
Under the amplification of the Martial God's Ultimate Intent, it was impossible for most people to sense his presence. Their feelings towards him mostly originated from affinity or a hidden malice from his previous [Absolute Evil] state.
But Luffy had been consistently sensing Kaito Shirogane. He even sensed that Kaito Shirogane harbored no ill will towards them.
Therefore, even though he could tell Kaito Shirogane wasn't a good person, he didn't exhibit any extreme reactions.
"Hey, Straw Hat kid, if I... well, if someone suddenly killed all your companions right now, what would you do?"
Leaning against the ship's railing, Kaito Shirogane spoke, startling everyone, including Ritsu.
The meaning and subtext of this sentence revealed terrifying malice.
But what felt twisted and bizarre was that the person speaking seemed to exude flawless goodwill, as if he were genuinely giving a reminder or asking a question. Ritsu instinctively clenched and unclenched her hand. She almost thought Lord Mercenary Tao was relapsing into his old habits and was about to commit a bloodbath here using these plot protagonists.
Although taking direct action against plot protagonists in any world would cause the World's Will and the inertia of destiny to target the perpetrator...
And most top-tier Reincarnators wouldn't attempt such a thing...
But... that was Lord Mercenary Tao! That... King of Monsters!
If it were Lord Mercenary Tao, he could probably accept making an enemy of the world...
Ritsu was completely conquered by Mercenary Tao's terrifying power and tyrannical style, so she subconsciously prepared to follow his lead.
"I'd send him flying, of course!"
Straw Hat Luffy gave his answer very firmly.
With a smile on his face, Kaito Shirogane shook his head.
"What if the person who acted was someone you couldn't possibly match, the kind who could defeat you with a flip of their hand? What would you do then?"
Anger without power only turns into a farce.
Kaito Shirogane felt little towards Luffy's instinctive reaction.
In truth, he had no intention of attacking Luffy either. Rashly killing Luffy in this world would highly likely trigger a collapse-like change in the plot.
Knowing that Kakarot had already appeared, killing Luffy at this moment wouldn't be simple.
Kaito Shirogane suspected that if he acted now, Kakarot would directly teleport over and obliterate him the next moment.
The guys from the Machina Court clearly understood this as well, which was why they only used technology and force to prevent Reincarnators from contacting the Straw Hat Pirates, without any intention of attacking the Straw Hat Pirates themselves.
But precisely because of this, Kaito Shirogane became even more curious.
Since plot protagonists possessed such strong inertia of destiny and protection from the World's Will, how on earth were those [Black Kings] born?
To be more precise...
In Kaito Shirogane's eyes, the figure of Straw Hat Luffy before him elongated, and his hair cascaded down his back. But the teenager before him, with a bright smile and a carefree attitude towards everything, was far from matching the Black King Luffy in his memory.
If harming a plot protagonist is this difficult, how exactly did those guys manage to repeatedly devastate various timelines, ultimately leading to the birth of the [Black King]?
Kaito Shirogane tapped the air lightly, causing layers of shockwaves to ripple outward. Behind him, something invisible began to turn.
Pfft!
Kaito Shirogane's fingertip pierced the air, and a thread of crimson-white Ki arrow pierced the sea, running through a massive sea monster that happened to break the surface at that moment, jaws wide open to bite.
There's a problem here!
There was a problem regarding the birth of the Black Kings.
Kaito Shirogane noticed the anomaly here and quickly further confirmed that a top-tier powerhouse on the destiny side must have had a hand in this matter.
Such obvious logical loopholes couldn't possibly go unnoticed by so many top-tier Reincarnators.
So there was only one possibility: someone had conducted massive destiny-side interference or cognitive manipulation regarding this matter.
Causing all groups that could vaguely come into contact with the [Black Kings] to not conduct further detailed exploration and thinking regarding their birth.
Merely staying at the level that the Black Kings were born from overly tragic pasts, becoming Dark Kings seeking revenge against Reincarnators.
"This is truly... interesting."
Kaito Shirogane had even more curiosity and expectations for the Infinite Dimensional Space. Clearly, this Space was more complex than he thought. The Reincarnators might not be the entirety of the Space.
What role did that King of Rats play in this matter?
And what was the stance of Sousuke, who clearly died at his hands but ultimately chose to gift him the power of miracles?
He had heard that Azure Sky had a fairly close connection with the Black King Association, being the only group among all Reincarnator assemblies that could interact with those [Black Kings] without being killed.
The Hand of God, Roland, whom Kaito Shirogane encountered in the One Piece world earlier, was also once a core member of [Azure Sky].
The other party did indeed have a special interaction with Black King Luffy in that world at the end.
After Kaito Shirogane activated the Limit-Break Spiral, his brain operated at ultra-high speed aided by Magnetic Field Rotation. His thought process jumped extremely fast, accompanied by abnormal information acquisition and retrieval capabilities.
He quickly retrieved some information from the real world.
That was something that happened before he entered the Space.
A high-tier Reincarnator with the title [Phantom Sword] was said to have accidentally obtained a [Card] in a certain One Piece world, triggering a multi-party chaotic battle because of this [Card].
Even the core team of the Throne of Illusion and Reality and members of Azure Sky were involved, eventually leading to the fall of the Azure Sky member in that world.
Phantom Sword Chu Qi fled back to the real world carrying the special card and was shot dead in a bustling city within Eastland.
Kaito Shirogane had previously only heard Li Qingzi and Black Butler talk about this story. Now he knew that the card Phantom Sword Chu Qi obtained was the Crimson Great Sin card numbered [EX051].
Driven to a dead end, Chu Qi chose to give this card to his childhood friend, Kaito Shirogane, who possessed abnormal abilities.
This was the starting point of the whole story.
But the truth and this story were clearly not that simple.
Because Kaito Shirogane had now broken free from the King of Rats' destiny lines, and simultaneously possessed multiple Authorities and traits that couldn't be affected by destiny or causality-type abilities, he could finally begin to observe this matter from a truly macroscopic perspective.
The Crimson Great Sin card appeared in a certain One Piece world and triggered a struggle involving the Throne of Illusion and Reality and Azure Sky, ultimately resulting in the fall of Azure Sky's core member [Roland].
Yet Chu Qi, who only had the strength of an ordinary high-tier Reincarnator at the time, successfully escaped with the card and was tracked. Chu Qi happened to know him, this anomaly...
Kaito Shirogane felt the giant, hidden hand behind it all, plucking the strings of destiny.
However, he still couldn't be certain whether the one who did this was that King of Rats from Destiny, or that King of Souls from the Throne of Illusion and Reality who claimed to be his Creator?!
"I see it!"
From afar, Luffy spotted the massive island where various ships were already docked. Giant balloons fluttered above it, and there were even floating neon signs in the sky.
A large number of intelligent robots flew patrols above the island, making Luffy's eyes shine brightly.
"Woohoo!"
Luffy, Usopp, and the others shouted excitedly, and Kaito Shirogane's thoughts also snapped back from their erratic jumping.
Along the way, no one from the other two factions came to attack the Straw Hat faction. He didn't know if it was because both sides already knew he had joined the Straw Hat faction.
On the edge of the island, the massive wooden raft was very conspicuous, and many Reincarnators were still on it at this time.
This group of Reincarnators had a powerful aura. After the bloody battle, the look in their eyes had also changed. Facing the robots in the sky and the occasionally seen Sons of God on the island, the Reincarnators were no longer timid.
Now that the Infinite Dimensional Space faction score had completely returned to a positive value, coupled with the overwhelming strength of [Heaven's Pilgrimage] Yoko, the Reincarnators were in much better spirits.
"Look, that's... Mercenary Tao!"
Among the Reincarnators remaining on the raft, someone suddenly exclaimed. Fenrir looked at Mercenary Tao and Ritsu arriving on the Golden Sunny with a complex expression.
"Yoko of the West District, Mercenary Tao of the East District... Hah... hahaha..."
"We're definitely going to win this time!"
Even SNOW's heart couldn't help but leap with excitement at this moment.
At a time when the Supreme Three Kings had almost no combat records, Yoko—who unified the West District and overwhelmingly defeated multiple top-tier Reincarnators and Sovereign Monarchs in the previous cycle—and Mercenary Tao—who rapidly rose in the East District and was rumored to have blasted the King of Miracles to death head-on—were the two strongest Reincarnators!
In the previous battles, the two instances of a +3 score were particularly glaring, and now everything made sense.
While Yoko of the West District repelled those two Fourth Sequence formidable enemies on the frontal battlefield, Mercenary Tao of the East District had already slain two Fourth Sequence enemies somewhere unknown.
BOOM!
The aura of the Reincarnators quickly surged outward in the form of a visible bright yellow shockwave.
"Conqueror's Haki?"
Nami and the others felt that aura and were surprised and uncertain, but Kaito Shirogane reached out and touched that layer of light.
The Concussive Pulse of the Spiritual Light named [Fire of the Heart] was majestic and grand, unusually stable. This indicated that Yoko's unwavering faith in herself was terrifyingly resolute.
Ritsu's breath hitched. In the tidal wave-like light of the heart, she once again recalled Yoko's strength—a demeanor that induced despair.
"Emperor, that Nameless God of Martial Arts has appeared. According to intercepted information, the Reincarnators call him... Mercenary Tao."
"Deduced ability enhancement system is [Ki], intensity extremely high. Based on Tassadar's psionic reaction before death, the Reincarnator Mercenary Tao possesses at minimum over-spec Monarch-level destructive power."
Virtual AI assistants appeared in the form of projections, multiple appearing at once. The several intelligent AIs rapidly intercepted various information from within the island.
Using cosmic ingredients, equipment support, and various other things, they had successfully opened the cooperation threshold of this so-called international IGO first.
Not only did they gain the advantage of being the first to arrive at the host venue, but they also acquired some modification rights to the venue and limited influence over subsequent events.
Even though plot characters like Ichiryu and Midora had poor affinity with the Machina Court, Ultron had completely abandoned this aspect.
He prepared to complete this mission entirely by leveraging the overarching trend. Simultaneously, the third round of deployment could already be anticipated.
—
As long as he could confirm that this world could fully connect to those two dimensions, the Divine Court would definitely deploy higher-sequence units into the battlefield.
Time was on his side.
"Mark the special unit [Mercenary Tao] as a Third Sequence unit and sync it to the Divine Court."
In Ultron's database, there were massive cases of humans deliberately hiding their strength to defeat reinforcements sent by the Divine Court using "piecemeal tactics."
Therefore, he wouldn't believe anything about "over-spec Monarch-level." Since the other party killed Tassadar and Thor in a frontal battle, marking him directly as a Third Sequence unit was logical.
Even if the higher-tier units deployed by the Divine Court later proved the other party wasn't up to the Third Sequence, it would merely mean wasting a bit of resources.
Far better than the piecemeal tactic's results.
"Yes, Third Sequence recorded. Record synced to the Divine Court."
"The Divine Court has accepted the special deployment process."
Various information synced rapidly.
Ultron continuously shifted the images before his eyes. He skipped over that mysterious Mercenary Tao, and then moved away from Heaven's Pilgrimage, who had regrouped the Reincarnators.
He didn't even glance at Lady Crimson and her group.
Finally, he focused the image on that True God with azure-blue hair, Ouranos.
Information was processed rapidly; his performance in the previous Dimensional War had long been recorded.
Soon, in a place unnoticed by Lady Crimson and the others.
Ouranos's divine sense directly crossed the barrier of the physical world and projected across space into this special hidden space concealed within the mountain.
"Ultron, you truly live up to being the Monarch with the most brains in the Machina Court. I assume you already have a plan prepared?"
"Let me guess, you want to exchange the lives of all the other Fifth Sequence guys for Lady Crimson's life."
Although Ouranos said he was guessing, his tone sounded more like he was negotiating and stating his price.
Having participated in the previous Dimensional War, Ouranos was all too familiar with this kind of point-based competition.
This kind of point-based competition was essentially an exchange of interests among several Spaces.
Amidst mutual slaughter, they plundered each other's information.
Only the Space and the surviving favored of the gods could reap all the benefits.
Therefore, there was a most suitable "way to play" in this kind of point-based competition.
Join forces with the powerhouses of the opposing faction to jointly harvest the weak.
You kill yours, I kill mine, and both sides reap all the harvests. As long as the points were managed well, the Space would issue no penalties.
Ouranos was very accustomed to this approach.
Ultron's mechanical eyes flashed, seemingly performing point calculations.
"Acceptable. But based on the current points of both our sides, to achieve this goal, we must first harvest that group of Reincarnators."
Ouranos nodded and reminded the other party.
"And it must be done quickly. Lady Crimson has already initiated the Divine Descent Ritual. If this drags on too long, I'm afraid the harvest of this world will have nothing to do with you and me."
"First task: figure out a way to lock down that God of Martial Arts. How about... arranging for him and Son Goku to become opponents?"