"You dare raise a hand against my Sweet Commander!?" Big Mom's face contorted with monstrous fury. She curled her massive hand into a fist and threw a heavy punch toward Drake.
"Bring it on." Drake channeled his spatial energy, unleashing a shattered burst of air to meet her strike.
The moment their fists collided, a colossal shockwave generated by the impact swept out, violently blasting away everything in the vicinity.
BOOM!
"Agh...!"
The surrounding foot soldiers were completely cleared out in an instant, and deep fractures began spidering along the stone walls on both sides. Drake's lips curled into a subtle smirk.
It was exactly as he had anticipated. The sheer strength and aura of a Yonko had completely transcended the boundaries of ordinary men; simply by standing there, she could project an oppressive presence that defied all common sense. Big Mom's terror lay not only in her catastrophic destructive potential, but also in her near-impenetrable defensive capabilities.
Yet, her most frightening asset was her overwhelming presence.
Those who climbed to the position of a Yonko were not merely monster-level combatants in a physical sense; the sheer potency of their Conqueror's Haki could manifest as a physical force of pure terror. Big Mom's screeching at her tea parties, for instance, possessed a weight that could utterly suppress anyone in her domain.
Drake couldn't attribute that to anything other than her Conqueror's Haki, yet it functioned differently from standard Haki. After all, if it were merely an exceptionally powerful surge of Conqueror's Haki, a simple pair of earplugs wouldn't be enough to neutralize its effects.
Drake ultimately defined it as a specialized, catastrophic aura unique to those at the absolute pinnacle of monsters.
But now, he found himself entirely immune to this crushing presence—and that fact alone meant his overall strength had officially graduated into the tier of a Yonko!
"Haaah...!" Drake's arm vibrated with intense frequency as his spatial power erupted once more.
"Hmm?"
"What is this...?" Big Mom's mouth fell open slightly, a flash of genuine astonishment crossing her eyes.
BOOM!
The localized shockwave expanded violently, forcing both combatants to leap backward simultaneously to reset their stances.
"T-They're actually evenly matched!?" Within the Mirro-World, Chopper and Carrot swallowed hard in absolute disbelief. But the one who found it the most impossible to accept was Brûlée.
She couldn't comprehend how a man who had seemingly appeared out of nowhere could trade blows on equal terms with her mother.
An older brother of the Straw Hat kid...
Just what kind of godlike entity is this man?
"Let's move!" Nami urged, forcing down the profound shock rattling her chest. She and the others quickly resumed their frantic search through the mirrors.
At the very least, judging by the current exchange, Drake wasn't going to be easily taken down by Big Mom anytime soon. They had to seize this window of opportunity and move as fast as possible. She couldn't help but worry about their cook. I wonder how Sanji is doing right now...
At that exact moment, Sanji—intending to drop off some food he had personally prepared for Pudding—had made his way to the balcony outside her private quarters. However, what greeted him was a revelation that shattered his world, plunging his heart straight into a bottomless abyss.
It was all a lie. Every single bit of it...
His birth name was Vinsmoke Sanji, a prince of the royal bloodline of Germa 66. But in his heart, that place had never been a home, and those people had never been his family; it was merely the source of a lingering childhood nightmare. Yet, bound by the ruthless hostage threats against his benefactor, he had been forced to come to this territory. And after witnessing the absolute, crushing power of a Yonko, a profound sense of helplessness had taken root in his soul, convincing him that resistance was utterly futile.
He had reasoned that if sacrificing his own life and happiness meant everyone else would be safe, he would gladly make that sacrifice.
During his most vulnerable, despairing moments, Pudding's seemingly gentle, affectionate demeanor had appeared to him like a saving grace... and so, he had proposed.
He had genuinely believed he was on the verge of becoming the happiest man alive, but that beautiful illusion had just collapsed into dust.
The bouquet of flowers clutched in his hand slipped from his fingers, tumbling silently to the dirt below. As if the heavens themselves were weeping in sympathy for his plight, jagged streaks of lightning began to tear across the sky.
Beneath the rolling thunder and the heavy, dark clouds of the silent night, the intermittent flashes of lightning illuminated his face. Yet, there was not a single trace of emotion left on his features.
After standing frozen for an immeasurable length of time, silent, heavy tears began to spill uncontrollably from his eyes—the bitter tears of a broken man.
The rain began to fall in earnest, the cold drops instantly extinguishing the cigarette between his lips. Sanji pulled out his lighter, flicking the wheel over and over again, but the spark refused to catch against the damp wind.
The storm clouds rages on, the freezing wind howled, and the heavy rain poured down. For Sanji... the light had completely gone out of the world.
BOOM!
Drake and Big Mom traded another rapid succession of devastating blows, causing the stone floors of the chateau corridor to split and crack continuously.
After several exchanges, the Emperor's expression grew considerably more serious. The sheer strength Drake was putting on display had completely exceeded her expectations. She couldn't gauge the true depth of his power, which meant she couldn't predict where his limits lay. However, she could confirm one thing with absolute certainty: this man belonged to that exceptionally small circle of individuals who occupied the absolute apex of the world's combat power.
"Your name is Vale D. Drake, isn't it? You're a pirate too, so what is your actual objective in coming to my Whole Cake Island? I highly doubt a man of your caliber would launch an infiltration solely for the sake of a little brother."
She refused to believe he was here merely to protect Luffy. After all, up until this point, the Straw Hat kid hadn't encountered a single life-threatening crisis. Furthermore, pirates weren't the type of entities to mobilize their core forces over such trivial familial matters.
"Hahaha..." Drake chuckled softly, his expression entirely relaxed, though he chose not to offer an explanation.
In truth, he really had come here primarily to look after Luffy, so how was he supposed to articulate that to her? He had amassed a mountain of System side-quests over time, and during his two years of secluded training, the global landscape had shifted dramatically. Yet, his primary main quest remained unfulfilled. He didn't know exactly what tier of influence his crew needed to achieve to fully complete the quest, but he figured that staying close to Luffy's orbit was always a mathematically sound strategy. It was a perfect insurance policy.
"You're after my Road Poneglyph, aren't you!?" Big Mom's eyes flared with intense light, her presence becoming exponentially more dense.
The Road Poneglyph? Brook thought, his nonexistent eyes widening.
"If that's what you want to believe, then so be it," Drake said, his lips curling into a sharp grin. His Conqueror's Haki condensed around his form, and his overall aura spiked to a spectacular new high.
The two powerhouses stood locked in a tense standoff, their silent, radiating pressures slowly expanding through the corridor. The very air began to solidify under the strain, and the surrounding walls groaned as fractures spread rapidly.
"What's happening? What's going on?" Brook muttered, looking wildly around the corridor, completely blind to the mechanics of the pressure.
The foundations of the castle vibrated continuously as the dual pressures reached their absolute peak at the exact same moment. A flash of sharp crimson erupted within Drake's eyes as the Nirvana Rainbow Sword materialized smoothly in his grip, and he unleashed a devastating downward slash.
Big Mom slammed her foot into the stone floor, shattering the ground beneath her as she drew her right hand back. "Napoleon!"
"I'm here, Mama!"
The bicorn hat instantly transformed into a colossal broadsword. Gripping the hilt, she brought the massive blade forward to intercept Drake's incoming slash.
CLANG!!
BOOM!!
The catastrophic shockwave generated by the collision ripped outward in all directions. The stone floor disintegrated instantly, and sections of the surrounding walls collapsed, sending heavy debris hurtling through the air.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa... What kind of terrifying strength is this!?" Brook couldn't move an inch while wedged where he was, and the sheer feedback from the battle waves was beginning to make his consciousness blur. What kind of monsters are these two!?
But what shocked Brook above all else was that Drake wasn't yielding a single inch of ground. The sheer, suffocating presence radiating from his body was every bit as terrifying as that of the Yonko herself.
As expected of Luffy's older brother... The siblings in that family are truly non-human entities.
If that's the case... does this mean I actually have a chance of being rescued?
"Big Mom! Take another one of my fists!" Drake used his left hand to shatter the space ahead of him, seizing a microscopic opening to drive a heavy punch forward.
"What!?"
Big Mom had hastily stashed Brook in the cleavage of her dress for safekeeping. Coating her massive hand in thick Armament Haki, she swung her fist to clash with his blow.
"Don't get too arrogant, you little brat!"
BOOM! Fist met fist, unleashing a violent storm of compressed air.
Brook: "..."
Drake raised an eyebrow. He had naturally noticed exactly where Brook had been stashed. Originally, extracting the skeleton from a Yonko's grasp was already going to be an incredibly complex maneuver. But now, she had managed to elevate the difficulty parameters to an entirely new level!
Deposited in a location like that... how the hell am I supposed to pull him out safely?
Talk about a literal tight squeeze.
Brook, for his part, had never experienced such a tumultuous, rolling sensation in his entire life—not even when navigating the most catastrophic, towering waves of the New World...
"Yo-ho-ho-ho... This is remarkably... soft and overwhelming..."
Faintly catching the echo of Brook's signature laughter amidst the din of battle, Drake's mouth twitched violently.
...On second thought, this bastard probably doesn't even need me to rescue him at all!