As soon as Uta and Brûlée received the message, they entered the Mirror-World and ran toward Whole Cake Island.
…
Cain circled through the sky for nearly an hour.
By the time he approached the waters near Whole Cake Island, Katakuri finally contacted him as well.
After learning of Cain's plan, Katakuri quickly told him what was happening on his side.
"What?! The cake was destroyed?!"
Cain froze at the news, and even his flying speed slowed down considerably.
Without the cake to suppress Big Mom's craving fit, leading Kaido over right now would be like pouring oil onto the fire.
What was he supposed to do now?
He was currently flying around in the sky, walking Kaido like a dog to stall for time.
But he had already delayed him for an entire hour. By all rights, Big Mom's side should have been resolved by now.
Yet the cake was gone.
At this rate, forget stalling him a little longer.
Even "walking Kaido" itself was going to become a serious problem.
If this dragged on too long, Cain was afraid he would be the one getting walked instead—and Kaido would drag him around for the entire night!
Busy contacting all sides, Cain completely failed to anticipate that Kaido's movements would be even faster than expected.
A fierce wind howled behind him.
A massive tornado, filled with broken stones and shredded leaves, came crashing toward him.
The tornado carried countless wind blades that slashed against Cain's dragon body, producing a continuous series of metallic impacts.
Cain hurriedly put away the Den Den Mushi and twisted his dragon body sharply, spinning wildly in the opposite direction to create a reverse tornado that canceled out the attack in midair.
"Oh! Finally done running, brat?"
Seeing Cain block the attack, Kaido did not look surprised at all.
Instead, he grinned savagely and lowered his body, violent Haki rising around him.
"Advanced use of Conqueror's Haki, plus the same dragon form as me… In the past, I would've had a hundred different ways I wanted to kill you, brat."
"After all, this sea doesn't need that many conquerors, and it definitely doesn't need a second dragon!"
"But now…"
Kaido's dragon body coiled in the air as he burst into wild laughter.
"Wororororo! Worororororo!"
He stared fiercely at Cain, undisguised excitement burning in his eyes.
"You've got a good grasp of Conqueror's Haki coating, and your development of the fruit hasn't embarrassed me either…"
"You're lacking battle experience, but your strength is indeed pretty good. I have to admit, those hard clashes just now got my blood boiling. You've made me excited!"
"Hey, hey, don't say things that sound so easy to misunderstand!"
Cain looked at Kaido's huge face, flushed from alcohol, and felt deeply uncomfortable.
Kaido did not care at all and directly stated his decision.
"That old hag Linlin only knows how to play family games. Wasting a fighting force like you on desserts and tea parties is a disgrace."
"On this boring sea, you're the first brat who can take my kanabo head-on."
'Hey, hey, I told you, stop saying things that sound wrong. And what the hell do you mean by your kanabo? No matter how I think about it, that sounds weird.'
Cain grumbled inwardly.
Kaido continued, "Killing you would be fun, but now I've got a better idea. Instead of waiting to rot on that stinkingly Wholecake Island, come with me!"
"This boring world will be overturned sooner or later by a greatest war, and my Beasts Pirates are the only war machine capable of ending this era!"
"I'll personally forge you into the most terrifying weapon of this age."
"Come, brat! Become my right-hand man and join me in turning this world upside down! Wororororo!"
They had just been fighting, then Kaido had said he would drag Cain back with him.
Now, somehow, it had suddenly turned into recruitment.
Cain truly could not understand him.
But when Kaido mentioned training him, Cain remembered something Rayleigh had once told him while he was training Conqueror's Haki coating.
…
"You don't seriously think that just because you've learned Conqueror's Haki coating and have your fruit ability, you can stand against Kaido, do you?" Rayleigh asked him seriously.
"Huh? Isn't that how it works?" Cain asked, puzzled.
"Idiot. Even if you learned all of Kaido's techniques, Haki, and abilities right now, you still wouldn't be able to beat him. You would definitely lose," Rayleigh scolded in a deep voice.
"Do you think improving your strength is as simple as copying a template? By your logic, you also trained Garp's Iron Fist and walked the same path as him. Now you've even mastered Conqueror's Haki. Do you think you can beat that old man?"
"You old geezer, don't go calling someone else an old man!"
Cain clicked his tongue, then answered,
"I get what you mean. The core issue is battle experience, right?"
"Exactly. Even with the same ability, the level of mastery is completely different."
Rayleigh finally nodded and summarized,
"So if you want to defeat Kaido now, blindly imitating him won't work. First, you need to improve your mastery, and then you need to carve out a path that belongs to you."
…
Rayleigh's words faded from Cain's mind, and he looked at Kaido again.
He understood very clearly that Kaido's seemingly drunken recruitment was, at its core, still built on the suppression of force.
If Cain actually believed those words, then he would truly be close to defeat.
"Hoo…"
Cain steadied the fluctuations in his heart and looked at Kaido.
"Kaido, your offer does sound pretty tempting. But I have absolutely no interest in becoming someone else's 'weapon.'"
Cain firmly rejected Kaido not only because of his earlier considerations, but also because of another layer of thought hidden in his heart.
After all, his mission still required him to enter Kaido's camp eventually.
Because of that, he understood very well that if he accepted Kaido's recruitment too easily, setting aside whether his own Conqueror's Haki would weaken because of it, Kaido's battle-hungry personality would never believe someone could submit so readily.
With Kaido's pride, a surrender that went too smoothly would only make him more suspicious.
He would look down on Cain, test him further, or even erase him completely.
The people Kaido truly valued and saw as trusted subordinates were never obedient yes-men.
They were strong people with backbone, boundaries, and the ability to clash with him head-on.
"Wororororo! That was a clean refusal, brat!"
Kaido did not get angry after being rejected. If anything, he became even more interested.
His body twisted, and Haki poured out from him.
"On this sea, people who reject me usually don't end well. Since you don't want to become my right-hand man, let me see just how much weight that refusal of yours carries. But I'm generous enough to give you some time to think about it."
"Time to think?"
Cain cursed inwardly.
'By "time to think," you mean beating me up and throwing me into a quarry to mine, don't you?'
Before the words had even fully faded, Kaido roared and charged forward, his enormous dragon body tearing through the air with a thunderous sound.
Cain knew he absolutely could not sit still and wait for death. His eyes sharpened, and the aura around him suddenly changed.
He instantly spread flame clouds across his entire body, and the thick clouds blocked Kaido's entire field of vision on the spot.
This was the moment Cain had been waiting for.
As long as Kaido could not see, Cain did not have to worry about him copying this move too.
Although this state could only last three minutes and was extremely easy to lose control of, against the Kaido in front of him, Cain had to take a step down his own path.
Cain glanced at the churning sea below, gritted his teeth, and used a move he had never wanted to rely on.
Animal Path!
A giant claw, roughly the same size as Kaido's dragon head, suddenly reached out from the flame clouds and grabbed Kaido hard by the neck.
"UNDERSEA DROP!"
Kaido was stunned.
Before he could see what was happening inside the flame clouds, an overbearing force came crashing down, forcibly pressing him from the sky and smashing him straight toward the sea.
As Kaido fell, he raised his head and saw Cain's body crackling with lightning.
Cain had transformed back into his pink dragon form, his horns wrapped in a violent Conqueror's Haki impact as he followed the downward momentum and slammed toward Kaido.
"FOR NOW, GO STAY IN THE SEA WITH ME FOR A WHILE!"
Cain roared, pouring all his strength into this strike.
Kaido had only just stabilized himself, and he was already only a few hundred meters above the sea.
He did not even have time to adjust his breathing before Cain's attack was already in front of him.
The next second, the two giant dragons collided violently in midair.
Their roars shook the sky, and the impact of Conqueror's Haki exploded like thunder.
The enormous forces crashed against each other, and the two massive figures, wrapped in unmatched momentum, smashed heavily into the sea.
Boom!
The seawater instantly blasted open into a gigantic pit, and towering waves surged into the sky.
A wall of water hundreds of meters high collapsed with a roar.
The entire sea churned and boiled wildly.
Whirlpool after whirlpool formed and exploded, while the waves slapped against the air with deafening thunder.