An entire month passed in the blink of an eye.
The Savior Group had already entered large scale war with the World Government, especially across the New World. Battles erupted daily, and the tension across the seas reached a breaking point. For thirty days straight, the world trembled.
At three in the morning, beneath a thin crescent moon and scattered stars, disaster descended without warning.
The dark sky began to rumble.
From afar, it looked like a river of meteors tearing across the heavens, dragging blazing tails of fire and piercing the night with deafening sonic booms. It was magnificent, almost beautiful.
But they were not meteors.
They were massive warheads.
Each one carved a burning trajectory across the sky, advancing with unstoppable force. Their numbers were overwhelming, forming a torrent that illuminated the heavens and drowned out the stars.
Alarms rang throughout the entire Totto Land Sea.
Lucien was jolted awake. Through the surveillance feed transmitted from the outer perimeter, he saw the blazing torrent stretching across the sky.
His amethyst eyes instantly darkened.
"Notify everyone. Enter the Mirror World immediately."
His voice was low and steady, but the killing intent beneath it was suffocating.
Across Cake Island and every island within Totto Land, members of the Savior Group received the order. Without hesitation, they dove into the nearest mirrors, vanishing into the Mirror World.
"They moved first. Very well."
Lucien's expression turned cold. He grabbed a Den Den Mushi and strode down the palace steps, stepping directly into the mirror embedded in the wall.
Behind him, Katakuri, Cracker, Blackbeard, Bullet, Hancock, Crocodile, and the others followed.
The torrent of warheads entered Totto Land's airspace.
Like roots spreading underground, they divided into countless streams, each wave streaking toward a different island.
The main force, however, targeted Cake Island.
The World Government had chosen annihilation.
Hundreds of millions of civilians lived across the islands of Totto Land. None of them understood what was descending from the sky.
"What is that?"
"It's beautiful…"
People stepped outside their homes, gazing upward in awe as the fiery trails grew larger, closer.
Then they fell.
A blinding white light erupted.
The night transformed into false daylight.
Island after island vanished as mushroom clouds connected sea and sky. Shockwaves expanded outward, shoving the atmosphere aside in violent rings. Small islands, medium islands, large islands, all were erased in an instant.
Hundreds of millions died without even the chance to scream.
The sea receded unnaturally before roaring back in towering tsunamis that pierced the sky. Hurricanes formed instantly. The ocean floor ruptured as submarine volcanoes erupted in fury.
The Totto Land Sea ceased to exist.
The surrounding waters evaporated completely, revealing a vast, black abyss where Cake Island once stood.
The tremors spread outward.
The Whitebeard Sea shook. The Beasts Pirates' territory shook. Even the Red Hair Sea trembled. The entire New World was dragged into a storm of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and endless hurricanes.
It was as if the world itself had been punched.
On the Red Line, Sengoku, Kong, the Admirals, the Five Elders, and countless World Government officials stared toward the distant horizon, where only a blinding white radiance remained.
Even the Red Line quivered beneath their feet.
No one spoke.
This surprise attack had been ordered personally by that shadowed ruler. The objective was singular, wipe the Savior Group from existence and cripple the New World beyond recovery.
None of them had fully grasped the destructive scale of what had been launched.
Now they did.
If even the Red Line trembled, then Totto Land must have been reduced to nothing.
Perhaps it rivaled an Ancient Weapon like Pluton.
No one dared to confirm it aloud.
From high above, if one could look down from the edge of space, they would see the atmosphere itself being shoved outward from the epicenter. The shockwaves radiated from Totto Land across the New World.
At the center lay an enormous exposed seabed, a sunken scar carved into the ocean.
The weather would never be the same again.
It was even possible that the New World's infamous climate had been shaped by similar bombardments in the distant past. A truth buried alongside the Void Century.
Dawn arrived slowly.
The sun rose over a New World that was still screaming.
Corpses floated across shattered seas. Entire islands collapsed into the ocean. Hurricanes and tsunamis raged like primordial beasts that had slipped their chains.
Every minute, more land disappeared.
More lives were erased.
More than half of the New World was devastated in a single night.
Three thousand meters above the abyss where Cake Island once stood, Lucien hovered in the golden light of morning.
Even from that height, he could not see the bottom.
Golden Lion Shiki, Monkey D. Dragon, Garp, Whitebeard, Kaido, Redfield, Rayleigh, and others emerged from books within the Mirror World, standing suspended in the air.
They released their Observation Haki to its limits.
The results were horrifying.
"Master, should we move now?" one of them asked.
Despite the emergency retreat, they had only preserved the core combat power. Nearly half of the Savior Group's overall forces had been wiped out in an instant.
Lucien's face was expressionless.
He did not care about the billions who had died.
But being ambushed angered him.
He had always been the one to play dirty. Now someone had dared to play dirtier.
In the art of shameless cruelty, someone had challenged him.
"Not yet," he said calmly.
His amethyst eyes shifted toward the Red Line.
"Playing dirty with me," he muttered, voice soft and cold, "I'll make you regret being born."
He would not rush in recklessly.
He would wait.
When Da Ivan exceeded a thousand units, he would introduce the World Government to the true meaning of annihilation.
Caesar had conducted all research within the Mirror World. The bombardment had not affected production.
Soon after, newspapers flooded the seas.
"Extra! Extra!"
"Totto Land Sea Erased, New World Plunged into Catastrophe!"
"Savior Group Annihilated Overnight!"
"World Government Deploys Ancient Weapon!"
"Hundreds of Millions Dead!"
"Natural Disasters Continue to Ravage the New World!"
The headlines spread across the Four Seas and the Grand Line.
Public outrage exploded. People cursed the World Government in private, yet no kingdom dared to oppose it openly.
The message was clear.
The World Government was absolute.
Soon, newspaper agencies that pushed too hard disappeared. Records were seized. Reports were altered. Mentions of that night were systematically erased.
Just like the history of eight hundred years ago.
Meanwhile, World Government forces hunted down any surviving remnants of the Savior Group.
The official conclusion circulated quietly.
Lucien.
Whitebeard.
The core leadership.
Dead.
Lucien remained suspended above the abyss, silent, watching the broken sea.
The world believed he had been erased.
That suited him perfectly.