The Dressrosa plateau was no longer a piece of geography. It had been completely ground down into a hollowed-out, smoking basin of pulverized white stone and bubbling, dark purple venom. The sky above had lost all semblance of natural order, replaced by a churning, bruised vortex of pitch-black and crimson clouds that violently spiraled around the colossal form of Saint Jaygarcia Saturn.
In the center of this apocalyptic landscape, a sudden, blinding eruption of kinetic energy shattered the rolling sulfur smoke.
The sacred medicine of Zou had fully taken hold. The four kings. Shanks, Charlotte Katakuri, King the Wildfire, and Marco the Phoenix stood perfectly upright alongside Norwell D. Giovanni. The critical, bone-deep wounds and suffocating fatigue that had previously brought them to their knees were entirely suppressed, locked away behind a temporary, artificial wall of absolute physical overclocking. Their veins bulged violently against their skin, glowing with a faint, volatile green hue as their stamina and Haki reservoirs overflowed past their natural boundaries.
The air didn't just hum; it screamed. Ropes of black, red, and golden spiritual lightning violently splintered outward from their shared space, striking the shattered earth and vaporizing the falling ash before it could even hit the ground.
Across from them, Saint Saturn shifted his massive, chitinous spider legs, his glowing crimson eyes rotating slowly to lock onto the newly revitalized vanguard. The deep, smoking gash that Shanks had carved into his torso was still bubbling with thick, black slime, but the Elder didn't show a single hint of discomfort. He stood like an ancient, untouchable monument of divine tyranny.
"A temporary surge of false vitality," Saturn spoke, his hollow, resonant voice carrying the absolute weight of a death sentence. "You offer up your future lifespan merely to prolong your execution by a matter of minutes. Insignificant insects. Your struggles are entirely preordained to end in the dirt."
The silence lasted only until a stray spark of Conqueror's Haki detonated against a pool of sizzling acid.
WHAM!
Before the sound could even ripple through the vacuum, the world in Charlotte Katakuri's mind's eye violently splintered into a crystal-clear, uncompressed feed of time yet to happen. His Advanced Observation Haki, supercharged by the Mink medicine, stretched his perception to its absolute limit.
Second One: Saturn would unleash a rapid, five-pronged stab using his front chitinous limbs, targeting Shanks' blind spot.
Second Two: Simultaneously, a massive, pressurized torrent of toxic venom would erupt from his maw, designed to incinerate King and Marco.
Second Three: An invisible, concussive wave of crushing force would explode from his central gaze, pinning Giovanni to the earth.
"Shanks, drop low! Marco, King, aerial cross-formation now!" Katakuri roared, his voice dropping into a deep, guttural register that commanded the battlefield.
When reality caught up, the execution was flawless. Shanks violently dropped his weight, sliding beneath the supersonic, piercing trajectory of Saturn's razor-sharp spider legs. As he slid, he swung Gryphon in a vicious, upward arc, a massive crescent of red-and-black Conqueror's Haki lightning tearing through the air and severing the tips of two massive limbs. Thick, black fluid sprayed across the stone, but before the severed pieces could even hit the ground, they dissolved into black slime and snapped right back onto Saturn's body.
High above, King and Marco synchronized perfectly. King transformed into his massive pterodactyl form, his Lunarian flames exploding into a towering, white-hot inferno of pure magma-heat. "Imperial Flame Wings!" King roared, flapping his wings to launch a barrage of massive, solid-fire constructs downward.
Simultaneously, Marco soared right beside him, his body fully wreathed in the brilliant blue and yellow flames of rebirth. He spun mid-air, channeling his overflowing stamina into a devastating, localized shockwave. "Phoenix Torrent!"
The dual elemental assault slammed directly into the massive torrent of toxic venom Saturn had unleashed. The white-hot Lunarian magma-fire literally boiled the acid into vapor, while Marco's blue flames deflected the remaining corrosive spray away from the front line. The resulting explosion of steam and kinetic force tore up the remaining bedrock, creating a temporary, blinding flash of white light.
Yet, through the blinding steam, Saturn's crimson eyes flashed with an unprecedented, terrifying intensity.
Giovanni burst through the wall of steam, his boots shattering the stone beneath him as he used Sky Walk to close the distance with hypersonic speed. His right hand was wrapped tightly around the hilt of Ace, the steel already vibrating under the immense spiritual pressure.
But as he came face-to-face with the monstrous, elder abomination, a sudden, cold spike of raw, unadulterated survival instinct pierced through his battle adrenaline.
'This is insane,' Giovanni thought, his teeth grinding together as the oppressive, suffocating aura of Saturn's presence physically tried to crush his skull. 'This is completely different from the anime. This is way scarier than the screen ever made it seem.'
In his past life, watching the Wano and Egghead arcs on a monitor, everything had felt stylized, almost theatrical. He remembered watching Monkey D. Luffy bounce around in Gear 5, laughing maniacally, turning Saturn's giant spider form into a literal trampoline, catching his venomous spit like a baseball, and playing around with the Gorosei like they were cartoon punching bags. The anime had made them look absurd, almost like a comedic obstacle for the ridiculous antics of the Sun God.
But standing here in reality? Facing the true, unedited manifestation of a World Government deity?
There was absolutely nothing funny about it. The sheer, primordial horror radiating from Saturn was a physical weight. The air around the Elder felt ancient, rotten, and saturated with centuries of calculated slaughter and absolute authority. This wasn't a cartoon character; it was an immortal, eldritch nightmare that completely defied the natural laws of biology and Haki. Luffy's ability to play with this terrifying being wasn't a reflection of Saturn being weak. It was a terrifying testament to just how utterly monstrous and reality-breaking Gear 5 truly was. For anyone else trapped in a normal human body, facing an Elder Planet was like staring directly into a meat grinder.
"Don't daze out, Gio!" Benn Beckman's voice roared from the flank.
Beckman appeared from the left, his steel-reinforced rifle fully coated in a dense, metallic layer of pitch-black Armament Haki. He swung the heavy weapon like an iron club, delivering a devastating, sound-barrier-breaking smash straight into Saturn's temple. Lucky Roux and Limejuice followed up instantly, Roux turning into a massive, spinning ball of black-clad muscle that slammed into Saturn's rear joint, while Limejuice unleashed thousands of volts of high-frequency green electricity directly into the Elder's underbelly.
BOOM! CLANG!
The combined, maximum-power assault of the elite commanders successfully forced Saturn's colossal bulk to slide back ten paces, gouging deep trenches into the earth. But it was completely useless. The electricity crackled out, the cracked exoskeleton instantly knit itself back together with that cursed black fluid, and Saturn didn't even let out a grunt of pain. He simply raised one massive limb and casually swatted backward, the sheer air pressure of the movement launching Roux and Limejuice across the basin like ragdolls.
"Get back, all of you!" Giovanni bellowed, his eyes snapping open as he completely threw away his fear, replacing it with the feral, defiant ambition of a true transmigrator.
He planted his boots firmly into the fractured dirt, letting the overflowing, volatile energy of the Mink medicine surge entirely into his arms. He placed both hands on the leather-wrapped hilt of Ace. He didn't think about the double pain that would inevitably tear his body apart within a few hours; he didn't think about the ancient horror of the World Government. He thought only of the concept of the absolute strike. A blow saturated with enough kingly ambition to cleave through destiny itself.
Giovanni closed his eyes for a fraction of a millisecond, drawing a deep, centering breath, letting the chaotic noise of the collapsing plateau fade into absolute nothingness.
When his eyes snapped open, they blazed with a blinding, golden light.
He channeled every single drop of his spirit, his ambition, and his kingly will into the Supreme Grade steel. The legendary blade of the Pirate King responded with a deafening, metallic shriek. A colossal, tempestuous aura of pitch-black and blood-red lightning erupted from the guard, wrapping around the sword until the blade looked ten times its actual size. The sheer spiritual pressure caused the literal space and atmosphere around the sword to distort, warp, and crack like shattering glass.
"Davy Sword Style..." Giovanni stepped forward, the earth violently fracturing into a deep fissure beneath his boot as he swung the colossal, lightning-wreathed blade downward in a massive, vertical arc.
"...CONQUEST!!!!!"
The moment of impact did not produce a sound. The sheer magnitude of Conqueror's Haki released swallowed the auditory spectrum entirely.
A blinding dome of white, crimson, and black light erupted from the point of contact, expanding outward with cataclysmic speed. The remaining stone foundations of the Dressrosa plateau were instantly vaporized into fine dust, creating a massive, smooth-walled open crater that pierced deep into the island's crust.
Giovanni's blade cut flawlessly. The saturated Conqueror's Haki sliced cleanly through Saturn's dark formal coat, through his thick, armored exoskeleton, and split the colossal spider-god directly down the center of his torso. A massive, smoking chasm opened up across Saturn's body, spraying a fountain of thick, black ichor into the air as the red-and-black Haki lightning actively burned against his internal organs, violently disrupting his biology.
For three agonizing seconds, the energy dome crackled, illuminating the devastating, perfect wound.
Then, the energy slowly dissipated. The wind howled softly across the newly formed wasteland.
Giovanni stood three paces away, leaning heavily on the hilt of Ace, which was planted firmly into the dirt to keep his trembling legs from collapsing. His chest was heaving in violent, ragged rhythms, sweat and blood dripping from his chin.
He looked up, expecting to see a fallen god.
Instead, the thick, black slime inside Saturn's split torso began to bubble with an unholy, frantic velocity. Before their very eyes, the massive, burning chasm simply... closed. The flesh knit back together, the shattered exoskeleton smoothed over, and the dark formal coat reformed without a single trace of ash or blood. The Conqueror's Haki had burned him, yes, but his unnatural immortality simply reset the damage completely, leaving Saturn standing perfectly upright, entirely undamaged.
The attack had done absolutely zero permanent damage.
Giovanni stared at the pristine, unblemished chest of the Elder Planet. A weary, breathless laugh bubbled up from his throat, and a mocking, self-deprecating smile stretched across his face as he looked back at the heavily breathing young prodigies surrounding him.
"Hey... Shanks," Giovanni gasped out, wiping a stream of fresh crimson from his lips with the back of his hand. "I don't know about you... but when you hit a guy with the absolute maximum cheat code in your inventory, and he doesn't even have to use a health potion to fix it? That's usually the game telling you to log out of the server."
Shanks let out a tense, ragged chuckle, his hand tightening on Gryphon. "What are you talking about, Giovanni?"
"I'm suggesting we tuck our tails and run like hell," Giovanni said, his voice carrying a mocking, sharp edge as he gestured toward the monstrous spider. "We can't put this thing down. Not today, and certainly not with our stamina running on a ticking clock. If we stay here, we're just giving this old fossil free target practice. Let's get the hell out of Dressrosa."
On the far ridge of the crater, Admiral Kizaru sat propped up against a shattered boulder. His yellow-pinstriped suit was torn, and his hand was still firmly clutching the massive, Haki-burned puncture wound in his stomach that Giovanni had given him earlier. His light particles were flickering weakly, his usual lazy, carefree demeanor entirely replaced by a grim, exhausted focus.
"Moshi moshi... Saturn-sei..." Kizaru spoke, his drawn-out voice carrying a rare trace of genuine strain. "These brats... they are far more troublesome than the Navy records indicated. Their coordination is quite exceptional, and that Giovanni boy is a complete anomaly. If they choose to scatter and run, it will be quite difficult to secure them all in my current state. Perhaps... you should use the summoning circle... and call the other members of the Gorosei to lock down the island?"
Saturn slowly turned his massive head, his crimson eyes flashing with an ancient, terrifying arrogance as he looked down at the injured Admiral, then back at the retreating pirates.
"There is absolutely no need, Borsalino," Saturn sneered, his deep, hollow voice vibrating through the stone floor with absolute finality. "To call the others for a handful of fleeting, insignificant rookies would be a disgrace to the Holy Land. Their medicine will fade, their bones will shatter, and the world will remember why we sit at the peak. I alone am more than enough to purge these insects from the face of history."
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