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The moment their wills collided, Elbaph screamed. The air between King Harald and Prince Loki warped violently, as though reality itself recoiled from the meeting of their Conqueror's Haki. Black lightning tore through the sky in jagged arcs, spiraling outward like veins of destruction.
The massive branch of the World Tree groaned beneath their feet, bark splitting, roots screaming as if the ancient giant itself felt pain. For an instant, neither moved.
Father and son. King and prince. Two titans born of the same ancient bloodline, standing at opposite ends of an unbridgeable divide. Then Harald roared.
"LOKI!"
He surged forward, his colossal blade—Skjoldbrandr, a weapon forged in the age of the ancient giants—swinging down with enough force to cleave mountains. The sword was wrapped in dense Armament Haki, layered with Conqueror's Haki so intense that the blade never truly touched the air around it; it repelled it.
Loki met the strike head-on. Ragnir howled as it came up in a brutal arc, lightning exploding outward as hammer and sword collided—or rather, refused to. The space between them detonated.
A dome of black lightning and compressed air erupted outward, obliterating everything within a thousand meters. Entire longhouses were vaporized. Giant warriors watching from afar were thrown off their feet as though struck by a hurricane.
The World Tree shuddered. High above, the heavens split, clouds torn apart as if clawed open by invisible hands. Harald slid back a single step. Loki didn't move at all.
"Have you lost your mind?" Harald thundered, planting his feet, muscles bulging as he forced his haki to surge higher. "You would kill your own kin? Defile Elbaph with civil war?"
Loki's laughter rang out—low, bitter, and filled with contempt.
"Kin?" he spat. "Those parasites poisoned the only woman who ever treated me like a son."
Lightning crawled across his shoulders, his arms, his face, illuminating an expression twisted with rage and grief.
"And you," Loki continued, eyes burning into Harald, "you knew they hated her. You knew what they were capable of."
Harald grit his teeth. "I did not know—"
"—YOU CHOSE NOT TO KNOW!"
Loki vanished. The ground exploded where he had stood as Loki reappeared above Harald, Ragnir raised high, lightning spiraling downward like a divine executioner's axe.
"JÖTNAR HAMMER: RAGNARÖK FALL!"
The hammer came down. Harald crossed his blade just in time. The impact was cataclysmic. The World Tree's branch cracked open, a canyon splitting through its ancient bark. Shockwaves rippled across Elbaph, flattening forests miles away. The clash sent a pillar of lightning straight into the heavens, visible even from the far seas.
Harald was driven to one knee. His eyes widened—not in fear, but in grim realization. He's grown stronger. Not by a little. By a terrifying margin especially after his loss to Rosinante. Loki pressed down, muscles swelling, haki roaring like a living thing.
"You grew complacent," Loki growled. "While you bowed to gods and governments… I grew into a monster."
Harald roared back, veins bulging as he forced himself upright, shoving Ragnir away with explosive force.
"Then I will break that monster!" he bellowed. Harald spun, swinging Skjoldbrandr in a wide arc.
"ELBAPH ROYAL ART—WORLD-SEVERING SWEEP!"
The slash tore through the air, creating a crescent-shaped shockwave large enough to blot out the horizon. Mountains in its path were bisected cleanly, oceans split apart as though cut by an invisible blade. Loki didn't dodge. He charged into it. Ragnir spun once in his hands, lightning condensing around the hammerhead until it glowed white-hot.
"THUNDER GOD FORM—SKYBREAKER!"
Hammer met shockwave. The slash shattered. Not dispersed—shattered, fragments of compressed air exploding outward like shrapnel, carving new canyons into the land below. Loki burst through the attack, hammer swinging in a brutal backhand. Harald barely managed to block.
The force sent him skidding backward across the World Tree's branch, gouging a trench hundreds of meters long. Ancient roots snapped and fell like broken ribs. Loki was already there. He grabbed Harald by the chestplate and threw him. The King of Elbaph flew.
His massive body crashed through three branches of the World Tree before slamming into the main trunk itself. The impact sent a shockwave through the entire tree, leaves raining down like a storm. Harald coughed blood. Still, he stood.
"You think strength alone makes you right?" Harald roared, blood dripping from his beard as he raised his blade once more. "I carry Elbaph on my shoulders! I chose mercy so our people would survive in a changing world!" Loki landed before him, the ground cratering beneath his feet.
"And you let her die for it." Those words struck harder than any hammer. For the first time, Harald hesitated. That hesitation was all Loki needed. Loki's Conqueror's Haki exploded outward again, more violent than before. Giants across Elbaph collapsed unconscious. Even the sea beyond the island churned violently.
"JÖTNAR DOMAIN—WRATH OF THE STORM KING!"
The sky turned black. Lightning rained down in relentless fury, each bolt guided by Loki's will, striking with pinpoint precision. Harald deflected what he could, but dozens of bolts struck him directly, blasting armor apart, searing flesh.
Still, Harald advanced. Through the storm. Through the pain.
"I am your father!" he roared, driving his blade into the ground, stabilizing himself. "And I will not abandon you to hatred!"
Loki snarled. "You abandoned her first."
The two charged simultaneously. Hammer and sword collided again—this time fully, steel finally meeting steel. The impact produced no sound. For a fraction of a second, there was only silence—then everything exploded.
A blinding flash of white and black lightning engulfed the World Tree's upper canopy. The shockwave tore open the sky itself, clouds splitting apart in a vast circular pattern stretching to the horizon.
Elbaph shook as if struck by an ancient god. When the light faded, both giants were still standing.
Locked. Hammer against blade. Blood dripping from both. Neither yielding. Neither victorious.
The storm raged on. And far below, the fate of Elbaph hung in the balance—waiting to be decided by the next strike.
"Put out the fires! Don't let them spread!" The roar of a giant guard thundered across the collapsing branch as he cradled terrified younglings against his chest, his massive strides shaking the ground as he carried them toward safety. Sparks and embers rained from above, carried by violent winds stirred by clashing titans. Flames crawled along shattered longhouses and ancient bark alike, feeding greedily on resin and splintered wood.
Fire and lightning—the twin banes of Elbaph. And Prince Loki, consumed by wrath, had become the living embodiment of both.
"No—!" another voice cut through the chaos, heavy with authority and bitter clarity. "It's already too late!"
Elder Jarul stepped forward, his sword striking the bark with a sound like a funeral bell. His sharp eyes swept across the devastation with grim precision. He saw what the others could not—or perhaps what they refused to accept.
"This branch is lost," Jarul declared. "Evacuate everyone immediately. Do not waste time trying to save it."
The guards froze for a heartbeat, disbelief flashing across their faces. "We must sacrifice the branch," Jarul continued, his voice unyielding. "Move everyone to safer ground. Now!"
Reluctantly, the giants obeyed. Horns were sounded. Orders rippled outward. Warriors abandoned futile attempts to smother the flames and instead turned their strength toward rescue—lifting rubble, clearing paths, and carrying the wounded and the young away from the inferno.
Above them, the clash continued. Lightning split the sky again as Ragnir descended, the thunder of its impact rolling across Elbaph like the roar of a wrathful god. The branch shuddered violently, massive fissures tearing through its ancient bark. Entire sections collapsed, falling away into the abyss below in burning fragments.
Jarul's grip tightened on his sword. He could see it clearly now. King Harald was holding back. Every movement, every strike—it was restrained. Measured. A father's hesitation weighed upon each blow. Harald fought not to defeat his son, but to stop him. To endure. To wait. And that restraint was tearing Elbaph apart.
Jarul alone—perhaps among all giants—understood the truth. Harald had not reshaped Elbaph's destiny through ideals alone. No. In a land where warrior blood ran thicker than law, strength was the ultimate authority. Tradition did not bend to words. It bent to power.
Harald had broken customs older than recorded history, not through propaganda or mercy, but because he was—without question—the strongest giant Elbaph had ever known. Without that strength, his vision would have died the moment it was challenged.
Jarul's gaze followed the king, locked in combat with his own blood. When Harald stops holding back… The elder exhaled slowly. This branch will not survive it.
"Guards...!" Jarul barked, turning sharply. "You—move to the main trunk. Form a containment line. Use everything you have to keep the fire from reaching it!"
A group of seasoned warriors responded at once, their expressions grim but resolute. They knew the cost of failure. If the flames spread to the World Tree's trunk, the damage would be immeasurable—an injury to Elbaph itself.
As they moved, another thunderous clash shook the branch, sending a wave of heat and pressure rolling through the air. The bark beneath Jarul's feet cracked audibly. He planted his weapon and steadied himself, eyes never leaving the titanic silhouettes wreathed in lightning and haki.
"This was inevitable," Jarul murmured, more to himself than anyone else. "Two titans cannot share the same sky."
****
The island trembled with every impact. It was a barren, wind-scoured land far from any government chart, its cliffs scarred by old bombardments and its central plateau carved into a natural arena. Hundreds of Revolutionary cadets ringed the battlefield in disciplined ranks, their eyes wide, breaths held, bodies tense with awe. This was not a demonstration meant to inspire.
This was a trial by combat. At the center stood Gladius—young, lean, sharp-eyed—his coat discarded, boots planted firmly against fractured stone. Sunlight refracted strangely around him, bending and splintering as if the air itself were crystallizing in his presence. Veins of translucent crystal crawled across his arms and shoulders, glimmering faintly with internal light.
Opposite him stood Livia, Commander of the Revolutionary Army. She rolled her shoulders once, casually, yet the motion carried a predator's grace. Then her body shifted.
Bones cracked—not in pain, but in controlled metamorphosis. Her silhouette expanded, muscles swelling beneath skin that darkened and hardened. Silver-gray fur burst forth along her arms and spine, claws extending with a metallic scrape against stone. Her face elongated, eyes burning gold beneath a mane of wild hair.
An Ancient Zoan: Werewolf Model. The air thickened with killing intent.
"Begin," Zephyr said calmly.
The world exploded. Gladius vanished in a burst of fractured light—Soru, but faster than the eye could follow. Where he had stood, jagged crystal spires erupted upward, impaling empty air as Livia tore through them in a blur of claws and fangs. She was fast—terrifyingly fast.
Her footwork shattered stone, every step leaving craters as she closed distance with predatory instinct honed by decades of war. She swung once, claws wrapped in Armament Haki, the strike aimed to decapitate. Gladius twisted mid-motion.
His body partially crystallized, the claws screeching against faceted crystal instead of flesh. The impact sent shards flying like glass rain, but Gladius was already moving—Geppo, chaining step after step through the air with unnatural precision.
"Crystal Logia…," Zephyr muttered, arms crossed. The cadets barely understood what they were witnessing. This wasn't raw power. This was control. Gladius reappeared above Livia, his leg hardened into a prism of razor-edged crystal.
"Rankyaku."
The kick came down like a guillotine. A crescent of compressed air and crystal screamed toward the ground, slicing clean through the plateau and carving a canyon straight through solid rock. Livia leapt clear at the last second, the shockwave ripping fur from her arm as she skidded backward.
She laughed. A feral, delighted sound. "Good," she said, teeth bared. "Very good." She vanished.
Not dodged—vanished. Gladius's instincts screamed. He crossed his arms just as Livia appeared behind him in a burst of dust and pressure, her fist already descending.
"Shigan—Wolf Fang!"
The blow landed. The sound was like a cannon firing point-blank. Gladius was driven straight into the ground, the earth collapsing inward as crystal raced across his body to absorb the impact. The ground split, but Gladius rolled with it, dispersing the force through controlled shattering, then reforming mid-motion.
He came up on one knee, blood at the corner of his mouth. And he smiled. The crystal around him surged outward. Dozens—no, hundreds—of crystalline constructs burst from the ground, spears, walls, and blades forming instantaneously. The battlefield became a labyrinth of lethal geometry.
The cadets gasped. This was no wild Logia usage. This was architecture. Livia charged anyway.
She smashed through crystal walls with brute force, her Armament Haki flaring, claws tearing through structures that would have impaled lesser fighters. Yet every time she broke one formation, another adapted—angled to redirect, layered to absorb, shaped to funnel her movement.
Zephyr's eyes narrowed. "…He's trapping her." Not with power. With positioning.
Gladius appeared again, stepping through his own constructs as if they were doors. His movements were seamless—Tekkai layered beneath crystal skin, Kami-e blending with partial Logia dispersion. Every Rokushiki technique flowed into the next, refined beyond his age. Even CP0 elites, trained from childhood, struggled to achieve that level of integration.
Zephyr knew. He had trained some of them. Livia finally broke through the maze, skidding to a halt as Gladius stood waiting, arm fully crystallized into a massive lance. Their eyes met. For a heartbeat, the world stilled. Then they struck.
Haki collided. Crystal met Claw. The impact sent a shockwave ripping outward, flattening the watching cadets despite their distance. The sky above fractured with pressure, clouds spiraling apart. For three seconds, neither moved.
Then Livia grinned and shoved him back with raw strength, landing lightly as Gladius slid across the ground, boots carving trenches.
He glanced briefly toward the sidelines, where a young girl with pink hair stood perfectly still, posture immaculate, eyes sharp and observant.
Reiju, the personal disciple of the Heavenly Yaksha. She hadn't moved once. Zephyr nodded to himself. Whoever trained them, he thought, did not allow shortcuts. Not even Cipher Pol's Aegis Division—praised as the government's finest—instilled basics this ruthlessly, this completely.
"The Donquixote family truly knows how to groom monsters…" Zephyr's gravelly voice carried quietly over the still-smoking battlefield, his single good arm folded across his chest as his keen eye remained fixed on Gladius. The young man stood amid shattered stone and fading crystal, breathing steadily, posture composed—as if he had merely completed a warm-up rather than gone head-to-head with a Revolutionary commander.
"I'd stake my remaining limb on it," Zephyr continued, a faint smirk tugging at his scarred face. "Rosinante had a hand in devising that training regimen. There's no mistaking it." He exhaled slowly.
There was only one man Zephyr had ever known who could survive Garp's hellish training and emerge stronger for it—who had trained under both Monkey D. Garp and himself and had the insight to extract the best from both extremes.
Rosinante.
A monster shaped by fists and ideals alike. Back in his Marine days, Rosinante had endured what broke prodigies and refined it into something terrifyingly efficient. Zephyr could see it now—woven into Gladius's movements, into the seamless blending of Rokushiki, Haki, and Devil Fruit mastery. It was not brute force.
It was structured.
"Hahahaha—" Diamante laughed, waving a hand dismissively. "You jest, Zephyr-san." His tone was light, almost amused, as if the idea itself were exaggerated.
"Gladius is strong, yes," Diamante said, eyes never leaving the field. "But a monster? Hardly. He still has years of relentless work ahead of him before he could even be considered for that title."
At his side, Reiju nodded calmly—so naturally, so casually, that it struck Zephyr harder than Diamante's words. As though it were obvious. As though it went without saying. Within the Donquixote family, there were only two individuals who truly carried the mantle of monsters.
Their young master, Rosinante… and Lucci. Compared to those two, everyone else—including themselves—was merely above average. Zephyr's gaze finally shifted from the battlefield to the pair beside him. His expression hardened—not with anger, but with sheer disbelief.
The young man he had just witnessed could already rival vice admirals in raw combat ability. Gladius was barely in his late teens, and yet his foundation eclipsed elite Cipher Pol agents—men and women trained from childhood, molded into weapons by the World Government itself.
And yet—this was "above average"?
"…You're telling me," Zephyr said slowly, choosing his words with care, "that the Donquixote family possesses talents even stronger than the young man I just witnessed?"
He couldn't hide the curiosity in his voice. Nor the unease. Zephyr had spent his life as an instructor. He lived for discovering rare, unpolished jewels—talent that could reshape the battlefield and, perhaps, the world. Even now, he loathed the single greatest regret of his life:
That he had not fought Garp harder to take Rosinante under his sole mentorship.
Because in all his years, Zephyr had never encountered talent as frighteningly complete as Rosinante's. And if Diamante and Reiju were being modest— Then there existed within the Donquixote family individuals who could rival even him.
Diamante's smile thinned, no longer playful. "There are," he said simply.
Reiju's gaze sharpened, her composure never wavering. "The standard of our family isn't measured against the world," she added. "It's measured against what the Young Master demands." Zephyr felt a chill crawl up his spine because he knew the kind of standard who was trained under someone like Garp would set.
"That aside… we'll be departing soon." Diamante's voice cut through the distant thunder of combat. He turned his gaze back toward the sparring arena, where the clash had escalated once more—crystal blooming across the battlefield as Gladius pressed his advantage, his Logia shaping the terrain itself into a weapon.
They had been here nearly a year. A year spent alongside the Revolutionary Army—training, exchanging intelligence, bleeding on the same soil, yet never truly standing on the same side. The recall had come only hours earlier. Orders from Doflamingo himself.
The sole reason they had ever come here in the first place had already been fulfilled—giving Reiju closure regarding her fractured past and the remnants of a family she had never truly known. Now, it was time to return home.
Zephyr nodded slowly. He would have been more surprised if they hadn't been recalled. The world was unraveling. The World Government's grip—once ironclad—was slipping. Water 7 lay drowned in blood and ruin. Fish-Man Island had been annihilated, its people scattered like prey across the seas. Dragon and the Revolutionaries were scrambling to gather survivors, to shelter the hunted merfolk who were now being erased simply for existing.
But there was a truth Zephyr could no longer deny. They lacked the one thing required to fight a war on this scale. Resources. Ships. Arms. Food. Safe harbors. Black-market supply lines. Every crusade, every liberation, every righteous stand had always been strangled by scarcity.
And the people standing beside him now—they could change that. Zephyr exhaled heavily. For a man who had once embodied Marine justice, the words tasted bitter on his tongue.
"…Have you asked your master," Zephyr said quietly, "about the matter I wanted discussed?" There was no command in his voice. Only a request.
Once upon a time, Zephyr would have laughed at the notion of seeking aid from pirates. But life had carved its lessons into him with brutal honesty. Justice was not clean. The world was not black and white.
The Marines he had devoted his life to—the institution he believed upheld righteousness—had proven him wrong at every turn. Not every Marine was corrupt. But the system itself? Rotten to the core. Diamante's ever-present grin faded.
The paint on his face seemed suddenly heavier, the shadows beneath his eyes deepening as he turned fully toward Zephyr.
"Zephyr-san," Diamante said flatly, "just because you insist on asking Master Doffy again and again doesn't mean the answer will change."
There was no mockery in his tone. Only certainty.
"I suppose you take us for some righteous force," he continued, voice hardening, "willing to give everything up just to save one more life." He shook his head slowly.
"No. You're mistaken." Diamante stepped forward, his presence suddenly sharp and predatory. "We are pirates," he said. "Not heroes. Not saviors." His eyes gleamed beneath the sun. "We are a family of pirates whose ambition is to rule this world one day."
Zephyr did not interrupt. He listened.
"You don't expect us to fight all your battles," Diamante continued, "only to hand over the spoils with grace in the end, do you?" A humorless chuckle escaped him. "You misunderstand us completely." Diamante's gaze flicked briefly to Reiju—silent, composed—before returning to Zephyr.
"There are only two reasons we provide subsidized goods, weapons, and logistics to the Revolutionary Army," he said. "First—your own and Dragon's past connection to Young Master Rosinante."
The name carried weight. It always did.
"And the practical reason," Diamante added, voice cold, "is that your war against the World Government serves our interests on a grander scale." He leaned closer, lowering his voice.
"Don't confuse cooperation with friendship. This is not goodwill. This is alignment." Diamante straightened, eyes narrowing. "And if you think you can exploit Ross's name to pressure us further," he warned, "you risk far more than rejection." The implication hung heavy in the air. "You risk the relationship that currently exists between our two sides."
Zephyr's jaw tightened.
"And remember this, Zephyr-san," Diamante said quietly, finality lacing every word. "If that relationship ever fractures…" He gestured vaguely toward the sea. "We lose nothing."
His gaze hardened. "But you?" A pause.
"You would lose everything." The battlefield thundered in the distance—Gladius's crystal clashing violently as the spar continued. Most of the Revolutionary Army's lifelines ran through Donquixote channels. And Diamante made sure Zephyr understood that truth completely.
This was not a warning. It was a line drawn in blood and stone. And once crossed—there would be no going back.