Chapter 297: Kaido, Thoroughly Beaten Into Submission
Once the feast wrapped up, the group event still had a little over two days left to run—plenty of time for the Dimensional Chat Group's members to properly unwind in the One Piece world.
Lately, after all, everyone's days had been split between awakening Ki, grinding monsters in the Arena, running group missions, or handling business back in their own home worlds.
The whole point of a group event was to actually give everyone a real chance to rest.
Frankly, the treatment here put every "great" employer he'd known back on Earth in his past life to shame, by leagues.
None of those companies could exactly send you on a cross-dimensional vacation, could they?
If any company back on Earth could actually pull that off, they wouldn't be running a company anymore—they'd have already gone and announced themselves to the entire galaxy.
So yeah, the Dimensional Chat Group's benefits package was genuinely excellent. The one real downside was that events never ran long enough—the longest one on record, the Mid-Autumn Festival get-together, had maxed out at five days.
This New Year's event, by comparison, only ran three days total. Genuinely short. A few more days would've been perfect—ideally another ten-plus.
Though, granted, ten-plus days would probably be enough on its own. Drag it out much longer than that and it'd probably start feeling like a slog anyway.
Fishing rod in hand, Ryū sat on a dry, flat stretch of reef, thoroughly bored, patiently waiting for a bite.
Not that he had much else to do—might as well get some fishing in. The One Piece world had an absurdly wide variety of fish, most of them oddly shaped in one way or another, so fishing here genuinely interested him.
Of course, the only reason he was out here at all was because a certain youkai sage had dragged him along, insisting she was going to catch a Sea King!
Yukari sat perched on the reef right next to him. Looking at the thin, delicate fishing rod in her hands, Ryū seriously doubted that flimsy little thing could reel in anything substantial.
Let alone something ten-plus meters long, or dozens, or even hundreds of meters like some of the Sea Kings out here.
The One Piece world had no shortage of colossal Sea Kings—some rivaled entire islands in size. Even an Admiral would probably struggle to shrug off a direct collision with something that big.
Ryū suddenly recalled a scene from the original One Piece canon—Jack the Drought, one of Kaido's Three Disasters.
He'd apparently once picked a fight with some enormous sea beast, only to get sent flying straight into the ocean with a single hit, thoroughly wrecked.
No wonder Sea Kings ranked among the One Piece world's Ancient Weapons—that kind of world-ending power made a lot more sense given just how strong Sea Kings actually were, and how absurdly many of them there were out there.
Which made Ryū seriously suspicious that Yukari was just full of hot air here.
That thin, spindly rod—was she seriously going to reel in a Sea King with that?
Landing a fish that weighed even a few dozen pounds with that rod already sounded like a stretch.
Fish underwater packed serious force behind them—sure, nothing close to Yukari's own strength, but the rod and line themselves looked like they'd snap under the strain regardless.
And yet the youkai sage sat there, perfectly still, looking dead serious about the whole thing.
Ryū shook his head, resigned, and slipped his consciousness into the Dimensional Chat Group—only for his mouth to twitch the second he saw what was going on in there.
He let out a wry, defeated chuckle and muttered, "Sitting so still like that, I actually thought she was taking this fishing thing seriously. Turns out she's just glued to the chat."
Sure, everyone in the chat group was physically together in the same world now, face to face—but nothing said they couldn't still chat in the group.
After all, people were now scattered anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand meters apart. Nobody wanted to shout across that kind of distance to hold a conversation.
That's exactly where the Dimensional Chat Group came in handy—effortless conversation, no matter the distance between them.
Kaguya-sama: [Image] [Image] [Image] Isn't this snowy scenery gorgeous? Umaru and I came out to a smaller island right next door—the climate here is a WORLD apart from wherever the feast was.
Kaguya-sama: The feast site's probably in the middle of summer right now, but this little island, barely 2,000-plus meters out, is already buried in a full-on snowstorm!
My True Form Is Cola: The snow scenery really is gorgeous, and there's all sorts of weird little animals running around up here too. Suddenly feeling the urge to catch one and take it home as a pet.
My True Form Is Cola: [Image] @Edward Newgate, Whitebeard-ojii-sama, can this animal actually be kept as a pet?
Edward Newgate: Gurararara, that particular animal's got fantastic meat, and it's got a real gentle temperament too—as food...ahem! I mean, as a pet, no issues at all.
Street-Corner Illustrator: I'm over on a different island, a hot spring one—it's absolutely packed with hot springs, big and small, all over the place.
Street-Corner Illustrator: [Image] Ta-daaa, cute yukata selfie incoming!
Eternally Seventeen: Hot springs, huh? Sounds like it could be fun.
Street-Corner Illustrator: Yukari-senpai, want to come soak with me? I brought a ton of shaved ice too—soaking in a hot spring while eating shaved ice is basically heaven on earth!
Eternally Seventeen: I'll pass on the hot springs for now—this humble self is out fishing with the dummy Admin right now. I'm catching a Sea King today!
My True Form Is Cola: Ooh...the legendary "just the two of us" scenario? Scary, scary...
Street-Corner Illustrator: So scary, so scary! Yukari-senpai, make sure you take proper precautions, or you might end up hitting the target.
Eternally Seventeen: Pffft! You filthy little corrupted-minded girl, no wonder you're able to draw those bizarre manga of yours, and have them sell so well too.
RawrSoFierce: Eriri turning out this filthy-minded—isn't that entirely because of your teaching? Talk about the rot trickling straight down from the top!
Eternally Seventeen: Admin-sama is the group's Admin, ranked above this humble self, a mere Moderator. And I'm ranked below you. So doesn't that mean you just insulted yourself too?
RawrSoFierce: !∑(°Д°ノ)ノ Damn it, I've got nothing to say to that!
[...]
Did I really just insult myself there? Ryū hadn't expected to get outmaneuvered by this youkai sage of all people. He'd let his guard down there, no question.
Clearly, when it came to playing word games with her, he was still a bit too green.
Not that surprising, honestly—this youkai sage was a master of driving inappropriate content into the chat, pedal to the metal, taking every corner at full speed without ever once easing off the gas.
Letting out a resigned little laugh, Ryū shrugged the whole thing off. It was just idle chatter in the group, after all—nobody would take any of it seriously.
Time ticked steadily onward...and word of the Whitebeard Pirates throwing a massive feast had, naturally, found its way to more than a few interested ears.
Rumor had it Whitebeard was entertaining some kind of guest.
Throwing this much of a spectacle over it meant the guest had to be someone extraordinarily distinguished.
Someone whose visit warranted this much fanfare, even from Whitebeard himself—could it be one of the legendary Golden Lions locked away in Impel Down? Only a seasoned old-timer of the seas like that would seem to warrant this kind of treatment. Otherwise, some run-of-the-mill young pirate? Whitebeard probably wouldn't bother going to this much trouble for them.
Meanwhile, out on the New World's deep blue waters, at the Beast Pirates' base—
Kaido, still wrapped head to toe in bandages, gloomily threw back a swig of hard liquor, his rugged, weathered face etched with unmistakable frustration. Anyone could tell he'd been in a foul mood for days straight, just from looking at him.
No—not just days. He'd been miserable for months now.
Because the injuries Whitebeard had dealt him still hadn't fully healed, even now.
For a monstrous constitution like Kaido's, that should have been flat-out impossible. Back in the old days, even getting beaten half to death wouldn't have kept him down more than half a week, tops—his body's recovery had always been borderline absurd.
But ever since he'd challenged Whitebeard three months ago...
Kaido's injuries still hadn't fully healed.
Traces of that damage still lingered on his body, unhealed to this day.
"How the hell did that old man get THAT strong? Like his power's shot through the roof in under a year, not a single sign of age slowing him down. And the bastard didn't even take me seriously—fought me one-handed, no weapon, nothing! And I still LOST!"
Just recalling that fight made Kaido's teeth grind involuntarily.
But underneath the grinding teeth, there was a lingering trace of genuine fear too.
That fight had been the single closest he'd ever come to death.
Honestly, Kaido spent every day of his life practically begging for death to come find him—but when death actually came knocking for real, he'd learned something new about himself: he was afraid of it too, same as anyone else. Nobody's exempt from that fear. Some people laugh in death's face right before the end—but that laughter is just fear wearing a happier mask. Their joy is their fear.
Taking a few more swigs of liquor, he muttered to himself, "That bastard's apparently throwing some kind of stupid feast lately. Making a whole big show of it, pisses me off just thinking about it."
Pissed off or not, Kaido genuinely didn't have the nerve to go pick a fight over it right now.
Because he was scared Whitebeard would beat him one-handed all over again.
If that happened twice, Kaido's reputation across the entire New World would be finished for good. From then on, anyone who heard the name "Kaido" wouldn't think "Yonkō"—they'd think "the guy who got beaten one-handed by Whitebeard."
"Damn you, Whitebeard! You're already an old man on death's door, why can't you just retire from the stage already?!"
What Kaido didn't know, of course, was that Whitebeard had at least seven or eight hundred years left in him. The man was only seventy, as it stood now.
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