"Not good!"
Aokiji executed a high-speed displacement, materializing directly in the center of the secret chamber. The exact microsecond his physical silhouette broke out of the shadows, the surrounding Gorosei stood completely frozen, their minds failing to process the sudden intrusion.
"Aokiji! To think it's actually you?! Exactly what tracking vector drove your vessel into our perimeter?!" The four Elders stared with wide, completely blank eyes, their composure thoroughly fractured.
Thick layers of glacial ice began expanding rapidly across the floor beneath his boots. With a casual, detached motion, Aokiji slung his small traveling pack over his shoulders.
"If my vanguard claimed... I merely crossed your coordinates to revisit some old histories, would your networks log that as authentic data?"
The Gorosei: "..."
We would believe you in a million years, you absolute fool!
"Lord Im, this individual is the defected Marine Admiral, Aokiji. However, his active profile has updated into an alliance with the pirate factions."
"Oh? If the database verifies the anomaly, exactly what variables are halting your motor commands?" Im cast a brief, icy glance toward the four kneeling figures.
"Y-Yes, sir!"
The Elders erupted into motion simultaneously, their physical frames tracing high-velocity vectors to systematically trap Aokiji within a tight containment ring.
"Aokiji! Today, your biological existence permanently terminates at this coordinate." The four Elders compressed their fists, their internal parameters fully priming for an unrestricted, high-stakes liquidation.
Having unsealed the absolute, untouchable secrets of this chamber, Aokiji was mathematically forbidden from clearing the threshold of this sanctuary alive. The existence of Lord Im was a variable that could never be permitted to saturate the global matrix, and even if their personal inclinations leaned toward mercy, the monarch's absolute decree would never tolerate an intruder who had peered into his shadow.
"This afternoon has indeed expanded my database. For the supreme administrators of the World Government—the legendary Gorosei who command the absolute apex of global governance—to collectively drop onto their knees before another entity... I confess, my curiosity is intensely stimulated regarding exactly what manner of sovereign this Lord Im is," Aokiji noted, his sharp gaze locking onto the figure hovering atop the elevated throne.
The casual, non-lethal strike Im had unleashed a moment ago had sent a primitive, highly unstable warning screaming through his sensory systems. If his analytical processors had to formulate a single classification for the monarch's power, it would be:
Deeply unfathomable!
Even when interacting with the legendary Vice Admiral Garp, or analyzing the combat telemetry of the World's Strongest Man, Edward Newgate, his consciousness had never logged this tier of presence.
It was a cold, absolute dread that bypassed all cognitive filters to seize his internal core.
My vanguard must execute an immediate tactical retreat!
Waging an open war within this locked coordinate yielded absolute zero winning percentages.
Analyzing the defensive postures of the Gorosei and Im, it was glaringly obvious that the regime still passionately desired to restrict Im's existence from the global radar.
Perhaps... this represented his solitary operational loophole.
The exact microsecond his physical vessel cleared the threshold of this secret chamber, the legendary Im would likely freeze his offensive outputs to preserve his concealment. Under those parameters, managing a successful escape remained highly probable.
Locking down his resolution, Aokiji elementalized the left hemisphere of his frame into pure glacial ice, the environmental temperature of the chamber dropping exponentially in a fraction of a heartbeat.
"Ice Age!!"
As the phrase cleared his frosted lips, the unbridled torrent of sub-zero plasma surged outward, instantly freezing the entire floor of the sanctuary before climbing the heavy stone walls to encase the infrastructure in thick sheets of ice.
The freeze expanded toward all four cardinal directions.
At that exact microsecond, the four Elders launched their offensive vectors. Relying purely on raw physical mass, their frames vaulted into the upper airspace of the chamber, unleashing a synchronized volley of heavy punches targeted squarely at his coordinate.
Aokiji's tactical models had entirely failed to simulate that the motor functions of these aging executives could coordinate at this terrifying velocity; the displacement was completed within a single fraction of a breath.
His focus had remained heavily anchored on monitoring the behavior of the mysterious Im, hoping to run a diagnostic on how his Ice Age would interact with the monarch's perimeter.
But the incoming data delivered absolute disappointment.
The high-velocity sheet of expanding ice abruptly ground to a halt the exact microsecond it neared Im's coordinate, smoothly contouring around the base of the high throne before continuing its expansion outward.
It was as though an invisible, absolute energy field enveloped the monarch's frame, effortlessly rendering all external kinetic impacts mathematically irrelevant.
SWISH! SWISH! SWISH!
The forearms of all four Elders were densely coated in a polished, pitch-black layer of high-grade Armament Haki, projecting an immensely heavy, crushing aura across the field.
This was far from standard hard Haki hardening; it was the highly advanced, flowing output of Ryuo!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Four monumental impacts detonated simultaneously.
Aokiji frantically crossed his arms to buffer the kinetic weight, but the offensive output of the Gorosei was exceptionally savage. The moment they committed to the physical clash, their seemingly ancient, retired frames underwent a total biological optimization.
Their muscle groups expanded and tightened to their absolute maximum, unleashing an immense volume of explosive, physical force.
KABOOM!
Midway through his defensive parry, one of the heavy fists breached his guard, the impact hammering Aokiji's frame and blasting him backward across the chamber.
Sliding ten full meters across the newly frozen stone, his boots finally arrested his velocity, a thin line of fresh, hot crimson escaping his lips.
Wiping the blood from his jaw, Aokiji's expression turned exceptionally grim, his mental processes shifting into a state of severe, high-alert focus.
These old relics—who historically did nothing but lounge in their administrative offices—commanded a physical combat mass that was thoroughly terrifying.
Even if an individual was structurally incapable of securing a winning percentage against him in a one-on-one duel, their collective synchronization meant that even if two Marine Admirals were deployed to this room today, they would still face an absolute, structural defeat.
Did these five old monsters truly represent the idle, retired high command of his memory?
Exactly how many ancient, untouchable secrets did the World Government preserve behind its walls?!
The question flared brightly within Aokiji's mind, before his logical filters forcefully compressed the data.
His active survival metrics were rapidly entering a highly critical hazard window; he had zero resource margin to waste on historical puzzles.
"Ice Spear!!" A cold, razor-sharp brilliance erupted from Aokiji's pupils, thick clouds of freezing vapor continuously pouring from his palms.
A colossal, hyper-dense lance of glacial ice crystallized within his grip. Driving his boot violently into the bedrock, spiderweb cracks sundered the stone beneath his feet.
The lance thrust forward with the speed of a striking dragon.
SCREECH!
The absolute edge of the lance sundered the air currents with a high-velocity shriek as Aokiji drove the point straight toward the chest of the nearest Elder.
"Hmph! Face the line!" The target Elder's eyes snapped wide, his muscle fibers executing another massive surge as he maintained his absolute Ryuo output.
He drove a bare fist straight into the oncoming point of the ice lance.
KABOOM!
A cataclysmic physical impact sundered the airspace, and deep, structural fractures rapidly expanded across the length of Aokiji's ice lance.
A smirk had barely begun to form on the Elder's lips before a primitive, absolute wave of sub-zero temperature erupted from the fractured tip.
The freezing vapor ran along the kinetic vectors like a ravenous beast escaping its cage. The point of the lance transformed into an absolute, high-velocity emission node, instantaneously encasing the Elder's colossal frame inside a massive, solid monument of ice.
This specific application was a tactical concept his networks had analyzed and derived from the thermodynamic logs of Portgas D. Ace's combat techniques.
By concentrating a massive volume of sub-zero thermal energy to detonate from a singular, structural point, the resulting freeze-factor scaled multiple decibels beyond his standard output.
Its raw potency was undeniably terrifying.
Yet Aokiji's face remained entirely clear of satisfaction, his expression turning even more severe.
Because the residual shockwave of the thermal discharge had once again failed to register a single fraction of impact against the mysterious Im.
It was cleanly, effortlessly neutralized at the boundary.
This entity was a force his combat systems mathematically could not conquer!
SLASH!
Right then, the Elder wielding the spectacles materialized on his flank, a legendary, unsheathed katana slicing across Aokiji's side with blinding velocity.
A sharp, wet tear sundered his flesh, fresh crimson spraying across the white ice.
"Ngh..." Aokiji let out a muffled grunt of pain. Coalescing a fresh ice spear in his palm with high-velocity speed, he swept the point back to intercept the swordsman's line.
CLANG!
Steel met ice in a high-decibel ring. Aokiji's lance cleanly deflected the trajectory of the legendary katana, before thrusting forward to bury itself deep into the Elder's shoulder, a violent puncture wound instantly fracturing the tissue.
The moment the strike connected, before Aokiji could coordinate a subsequent movement vector, the Elder executed a lightning-fast redirection of his blade, driving the edge straight into Aokiji's chest cavity.
CLANG!
A sharp, metallic resonance sundered the air. Aokiji had already coated his chest with a dense layer of Advanced Armament Haki, barely managing to arrest the terminal depth of the thrust.
Nevertheless, the razor-sharp edge of the katana remained embedded in his chest, a steady stream of dark blood pooling against the fabric of his vest.
It had failed to achieve a total, fatal penetration.
Almost concurrently, the remaining two Elders closed the distance from his left and right flanks, one launching a brutal, Haki-infused kick while the other drove a heavy fist.
With his survival metrics entering an absolute critical hazard window, Aokiji let out a low, guttural roar, unleashing the absolute capacity of his Logia fruit to saturate the entire chamber.
"Ice Burst!!"
In a fraction of a millisecond, countless colossal, razor-sharp ice spikes erupted violently from the stone, rocketing outward to smash the three advancing Elders clear out of his perimeter.
Fresh crimson painted the upper airspace as they were thrown back.
Throughout the entire room, jagged, monumental ice spikes continued to grow in a manic, chaotic sequence; the sheer, kinetic sharpness of these constructs was so extreme that even high-level Armament Haki failed to guarantee absolute protection against the points.
Deciphering the brief tactical window, Aokiji threw his entire physical acceleration into a maximum-velocity sprint toward the massive exit gates. He possessed the tactical intellect to realize that his area-of-effect attack had merely inflicted minor, non-lethal lacerations upon their frames; it failed to pose a permanent structural threat.
He had to clear the threshold immediately.
Yet there existed an asset whose speed parameters completely outclassed his calculations. The exact microsecond his boots neared the heavy wooden gates, a colossal fist materialized out of the frost, slamming squarely into his face.
BOOM!
Aokiji's physical vessel was hammered down with monumental, crushing weight, crashing heavily into the frozen stone floor below.