With Kizaru's departure, the air inside the Fleet Admiral's office grew heavier rather than lighter.
The battle from decades past left marks too deep to simply fade.
"Sengoku, how many years has it been since that fight?" Garp asked suddenly.
"If I count carefully, it should be about forty years, right?" Sengoku replied, though a trace of uncertainty lingered in his voice. Keeping exact years had never been his strength.
"Yeah — forty years gone. Their era is over. Even if he's awakened now, so what? We were the ones who locked him away back then; we can do it again." Garp spoke with a brash confidence.
Sengoku did not share Garp's ease. Two former rookies who once answered to Rocks — Kaidou of the Beasts and Charlotte Linlin — had, over decades, risen to the ranks of the Four Emperors. Whitebeard had become known as the strongest man at sea and likewise claimed his place among the emperors, perhaps the mightiest of them all. And the man whom Rocks had once pinned his hopes upon had not been silent for nothing. How could his awakening not stir a storm across these seas?
Sengoku felt a chill. After decades of painstaking toil to preserve a fragile peace, the return of this one man threatened to shatter it all. The unease pressed on him like a weight.
Inside Impel Down — Level 6, the Eternal Hell.
Lucian Vale regarded the man before him with calm eyes. Even restrained by iron-hard Sea-Prism Stone shackles, the prisoner radiated an aura that could have leveled the world.
This was the user of the Momo Fruit, the so-called "World Destroyer" — Bundy Waldo.
"Wahahaha! Your captain is dead! I never imagined you brat would still be breathing. That truly surprises this old man!" Waldo sized Lucian up, his tone casual, though a flicker of stunned recognition passed across his face.
"Waldo, as long as you're alive, I'm hardly the first to fall before you," Lucian replied nonchalantly.
Waking after forty years and meeting an old comrade lifted something inside Lucian — oddly cheerful in such a hellish place.
Waldo laughed, a booming, heartened sound, and said no more. The moment felt, in its own warped way, like a reunion.
"Waldo, your 'World Destroyer' title doesn't mean much. Without your Devil Fruit, you're a toothless tiger!" Lucian shook his head with a grin.
"You kid! Look who's talking — you're no different. If it weren't for these shackles, you'd be out already, wahahahaha…" Waldo crowed, savoring Lucian's plight.
In the old days, neither man had been saintly. Waldo had been hunted by the Marines for attacking Celestial Dragons, betrayed by the World Government's intelligence network [CHIPARPOL], and left to believe his own crew turned on him. His temperament warped; he spent his days dreaming of annihilation. Lucian, on the other hand, had relentlessly sought stronger opponents — each victory speeding his assimilation of Aizen's inheritance.
"Sorry — been here for decades. My body got used to these things; I just didn't take them off immediately," Lucian said with an apologetic shrug.
"You always—"
Crack! Crack!
Before Waldo could finish, the Sea-Prism Stone manacles — the very things Devil Fruit users feared most — snapped from Lucian's wrists and ankles with a crisp, clear sound.
"Ah! That's more like it. Waldo, what were you saying? I always do?" Lucian flexed his hands and shot him a playful look.
The onlooking pirates swallowed hard. Sea-Prism Stone's hardness was legendary—swords that cleaved islands couldn't cut it. Yet it had simply fractured on Lucian.
"Ding! Congratulations, Host — you've earned 99 reputation points…"
The system chimed, and reputation points poured in for the bold feat. Lucian felt a lightness in his chest. At this rate, by the time he left Impel Down, he might well muster enough renown to summon a Shinigami.
"What did you use to break those Sea-Prism Stone shackles, brat?" The prisoners erupted into questions as the reality settled in.
Those confined on Level Six were all fearsome figures with bounties in the hundreds of millions — men who dreamed of ruling seas or remaking the world. None would remain willingly if not bound by Sea-Prism Stone. Even Waldo, tempered by countless battles, now stared at Lucian with greedy, covetous eyes.
"Kid, why aren't you affected by Sea-Prism Stone? Aren't you a Devil Fruit user?" Waldo asked, voice trembling.
"When did I ever say I was a Devil Fruit user? If Sea-Prism Stone could bind me, I'd have died long ago out at sea." Lucian rolled his eyes and continued: "Don't worry, Waldo — I'll free you. But before I break you out, there's something I must take care of first."
A tremendous force burst forth from Lucian's body. The pirate who'd just called him "brat" didn't have time to react before the pressure pinned him hard to the floor. Bones groaned as if they might snap under the strain.
"Anyone who dared call me 'brat' — their gravestones' grass has probably grown three meters high by now. Over the years, you're the first to call me that. I admire your courage — but remember it in your next life."
Lucian's voice was cold.
A famed pirate with a bounty of hundreds of millions shrieked. His body ruptured like a bomb, exploding in a sickening display. Blood filled the air, metallic and bitter.
In that instant, every great pirate in the Eternal Hell realized that titles and powers meant nothing here. To Lucian, they looked no different from ordinary men.
One by one, they met his gaze with wary, fearful eyes — afraid that if they hesitated a single second, they would suffer the same fate.
Lucian swept them with a cold glance and spoke slowly: "Don't look at me like that. If I wanted to kill you, you'd be dead already. I can free every single one of you — but once freed, you must serve a purpose. If you fail to perform, then today you will all die."
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T/N:
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