Want to read ahead? Join my Patreon for just $7 to get early access to all upcoming chapters!
> Patreon.com/NegativeTranslations
─────
Chapter 401: The Navy's Strongest Lineup Assembles
The atmosphere in the center of Windmill Village's square was somewhat comical. "Stew my goat to go with your booze? Keep dreaming, you old bastard!" Fleet Admiral Sengoku felt the veins bulging on his forehead as he pointed at the roaring Whitebeard and cursed. His plan to borrow Marco as a combat medic had completely fallen apart. In truth, Sengoku himself felt the situation was absurd; the dignified Navy Headquarters actually bowing down to ask a Yonko for help. But Proprietor Bai Ye's warnings about "Hell-mode difficulty" and "wouldn't last three seconds" meant he couldn't afford to be careless.
"Sengoku-san, there's no need to beg these damn pirates," Akainu Sakazuki sneered, stepping forward with a lit cigar clamped in his jaw and a dark scowl on his face. "It's just a dungeon from another world. Do you really think it can stop the Absolute Justice of our Navy? As long as our firepower is enough to burn everything to ashes, we won't need any healers!"
Kizaru Borsalino stood with his hands in his pockets, his lips curled in a slight pout. "How terrifying~ Sakazuki. But I have to agree, bringing pirates along would really smash our Headquarters' reputation."
Sengoku rubbed his throbbing temples. Taking an all-DPS lineup to fight an unknown God-tier boss offered zero margin for error. If they slipped up and the Navy's highest fighting forces were wiped out in a dungeon, the World Government would collapse entirely by tomorrow morning.
"Fleet Admiral Sengoku, I have a proposal," Aokiji Kuzan suddenly spoke up. He scratched his curly hair and exhaled a breath of frost, his gaze more serious than anyone had ever seen it. "Since the risks of an unknown God-tier dungeon are too high, why don't we challenge a 'known' one?"
Sengoku blinked in surprise. Garp's eyes, however, lit up instantly, and he broke into a massive grin. "Kuzan, my boy, are you talking about… that place where you ate dirt?"
At this, both Akainu and Kizaru turned their heads. The upper echelons of the Navy all knew that Kuzan had recently been ordered to test Bai Ye. He had entered something called a "Mid-Level Dungeon" and was beaten black and blue, lasting barely three minutes. Even his proud Ice-Ice Fruit abilities had been rendered completely useless. This was an incident Garp had been mocking him about for ages.
"Yeah, exactly," Kuzan replied, feeling no shame. Instead, his face grew solemn as he recalled that terrifying experience. "That dungeon is called the Eye of the Moon. The boss inside is a man named Uchiha Madara."
Kuzan's voice echoed in the air, carrying a faint, almost imperceptible tremor of lingering fear. "My Ice Age, he neutralized with a flick of his wrist. Those black orbs floating behind him completely countered my Devil Fruit powers and shattered my Ice Block: Pheasant Beak. What's worse, he uses an invisible attack, and… a terrifying illusion that makes you lose consciousness the second you look at it."
Listening to Kuzan's description, Akainu let out a disdainful snort. "Losing to a few black orbs just proves you've grown slack, Kuzan. My magma will burn that Uchiha Madara and his trees to ashes!"
Kuzan merely glanced at Akainu, not bothering to argue. Anyone who hadn't witnessed Six Paths Madara with their own eyes could never comprehend that suffocating, despair-inducing pressure. It was the power of a god, something completely beyond human comprehension.
"I think Kuzan's proposal is viable." Sengoku stroked his chin, his eyes sharpening. "Since it's a Mid-Level Dungeon that Kuzan has already experienced, even if we trigger the large-scale raid mode, the difficulty should be manageable. We can use this opportunity to build our teamwork and test the system's so-called 'contribution score' and 'Authority drops'."
"Most importantly…" Sengoku paused, glancing at Garp and then at the three Admirals. "If the five of us together can't even take down the boss of a Mid-Level Dungeon, we might as well all resign right now!"
Garp cracked his knuckles, the joints popping loudly as a fanatical thirst for battle ignited in his eyes. "Wahahaha! I've been itching to meet the bastard who put Kuzan down in three minutes! Let's go pay the man!"
With a sweeping gesture, Sengoku led the Navy's strongest lineup toward Bai Ye's booth in a formidable procession. The surrounding pirates hastily cleared a path, their eyes filled with wariness. Five monsters who stood at the absolute pinnacle of the sea teaming up—it was a lineup of pure insanity.
Bai Ye was reclining in his chair, sipping a cup of black tea with a faint smile as he watched the Navy brass approach. "Have you made your decision, Fleet Admiral Sengoku?"
"Proprietor Bai Ye, we'd like to open a large-scale raid dungeon." Sengoku took a deep breath and slapped a World Government black card onto the table. "Our target: the Eye of the Moon dungeon that Kuzan visited previously."
"Oh? Out for revenge, are we?" Bai Ye raised an eyebrow, giving Kuzan a half-smile. Snapping his fingers, a blinding pillar of golden light crashed down from the sky, enveloping the five Navy legends. "That will be one hundred million Berries for a large-scale Mid-Level Dungeon ticket. May your martial fortunes be ever prosperous."
Whoosh!
The pillar of light shot into the heavens, and the five highest fighting forces of the Navy vanished from the square. The scene shifted. Scorched earth. Crumbled ruins. The air was thick with the suffocating stench of blood and burning ozone. A massive, broken divine tree pierced the clouds, its canopy so vast it seemed to blot out the sky itself.
Sengoku, Garp, Akainu, Kizaru, and Aokiji landed firmly on this dead wasteland. "Is this the world Kuzan was talking about?" Kizaru adjusted his yellow sunglasses, looking around. "The environment is frightfully harsh~"
Akainu's right arm had already transformed into churning, dark red magma. Drops of it hit the ground, instantly melting the rocks into a bubbling crimson liquid. "Where is the rat hiding? I'm going to melt him down right now!"
Suddenly, Garp's Observation Haki screamed in warning. The grin vanished from his face as he violently snapped his head up, staring dead at the top of the divine tree. "Above us!"
The group looked up in unison. High in the sky, amidst the howling winds, stood a man in a white robe holding a black shakujo staff. He looked down upon them from his lofty perch. His skin was as pale as paper, and two horns protruded from his forehead. Nine spheres, black as the deepest ink, floated silently in a ring behind his back. But what made their scalps prickle the most was the crimson, tomoe-patterned Rinne Sharingan sitting dead center on his forehead.
Uchiha Madara!
Sengoku stared upward, the pupils behind his round glasses shrinking to pinpricks. Even when facing Whitebeard in his prime, or when cornering Golden Lion Shiki all those years ago, the Fleet Admiral's heart had never hammered this wildly. That wasn't a human presence. It wasn't even the presence of a living creature. Floating in midair, the white-robed man felt like a colossal, bottomless black hole, unapologetically devouring every trace of light and life in his vicinity.
"Kuzan, is this the… Uchiha Madara you spoke of?" Garp's playful demeanor was completely wiped away, replaced by an unprecedented grimness. His battle-hardened Observation Haki was currently shrieking in his brain, reacting like a wild beast that had just stumbled upon its natural predator, instinctively urging him to flee this death trap.
"Yeah, that's him." Kuzan exhaled a breath of frost, trying to steady his stiffening fingers. Even having faced it once before, that overwhelming sense of powerlessness in the face of a god clung to his bones like a dark curse. "Don't let your guard down, gentlemen. In front of that guy, elemental intangibility is a complete joke."
Before Kuzan could finish, the harsh, bubbling sound of boiling magma interrupted him. "Hmph! Stop boosting the enemy's morale and destroying our own prestige!"
─────
Support this fanfict by leaving Positive Review, Comments, and Power Stones.
For Advance Chapters:
> Patreon.com/NegativeTranslations