"What on earth is going on?! The Straw Hat Pirates? His two older brothers... Who the hell are these people?!" Orochi grew increasingly frantic the more he processed the intelligence files.
He was entirely blind to the Straw Hat kid's identity.
He had absolutely zero data on who his older brothers were either.
Yet, simply reviewing a single piece of incoming text caused his composure to completely fracture. The Straw Hat kid's oldest brother, Fire Emperor Ace, commanded a global status that sat perfectly parallel to Kaido.
He was an entity firmly anchored at the absolute apex of the pirate world—one of the sovereign Four Emperors ruling over the seas!
This variable was far too terrifying.
The solitary reason Orochi had previously operated with absolute, fearless security was because the country of Wano housed the overwhelming deterrent of Kaido's presence.
Now, a rival powerhouse holding a combat signature equal to Kaido had suddenly materialized on the board, directly aligning his variables counter to his regime.
This realization triggered a profound, suffocating wave of situational anxiety within his thoughts.
"This completely breaks our defensive projections! What is the optimal play? Fukurokuju! What the hell am I supposed to execute?!"
"Your Highness holds zero clearance to panic," Fukurokuju interjected, his voice dropping to a calm, calculating pitch. "While their vanguard features Fire Emperor Ace, our side commands the ultimate leverage of Lord Kaido. If a total war detonates, Ace's tactical algorithms will lock him into a direct clash against Kaido."
"He will possess zero operational freedom to engage our domestic forces head-on. The active threats charting an intercept vector against our lines remain strictly limited to the rebel samurai and Ace's younger brother—the asset designated as the Straw Hat kid."
"While the macro-board appears heavily unoptimized for our survival at first glance, our regime still holds an absolute, crushing strategic advantage." Fukurokuju's lips curled into a sinister, knowing smirk.
"The intruders remain completely blind to the fact that their core ranks contain one of our primary intelligence assets..."
Hearing the diagnostic readout, the frantic expression structuring Orochi's features gradually re-stabilized into a wide, triumphant grin.
Exactly! He still preserved an absolute ace hidden in his hand.
"Ahahaha...! Evaluating the parameters under that light, the samurai and the pirate scum lack the necessary weight to threaten my throne!"
"Precisely! Every micro-movement of their deployment is being systematically logged and downloaded into our database," Fukurokuju laughed.
Outside the screen, Usopp's internal processors stalled completely.
A mole!Our underground network houses an active traitor!
"This is statistically impossible... Exactly which asset has caved to corruption...?" A wave of profound, liquid-smooth shock disoriented Usopp's focus.
This wasn't a minor operational bottleneck.
The destructive yield of a high-tier intelligence leak was an open variable; at its absolute lowest output, it might cause a superficial delay, but scaled to its maximum capacity, it could systematically overwrite their entire survival probability, leading to the total annihilation of their combined forces.
Kenshin and Bell exchanged a brief, meaningful glance. This data drop was a spectacular strategic profit—a textbook instance of inadvertently planting a seed that grew into a massive harvest.
They maintained their listening posture for a brief timeline, but Orochi's internal security sub-routines were remarkably dense. From inception to conclusion, the Shogun filtered out any specific identifiers that could unmask the traitor's true biography.
Confirming that the audio stream had ceased to return any further actionable intelligence, a freezing, razor-sharp glint erupted within Kenshin's eyes. "Initiate the purge!"
BOOM!
Before the final syllable had completely cleared his jaws, Kenshin stepped into an explosive forward dash, a single fluid draw-stroke systematically rendering the sliding panels of the imperial door into neatly bisected shards.
The exact millisecond his boots breached the threshold of the royal chamber, Kenshin's targeting sub-routines locked firmly onto Orochi's coordinates. Wrenching his hilt, he unleashed a lethal intercept vector aimed straight for the tyrant's throat.
"Assassins?!" Fukurokuju's reaction parameters finally booted up. Realizing a high-tier combatant was executing a decapitation protocol against the Shogun, he tensed his muscles to throw his frame directly into Kenshin's path.
Shing!
Right at that microsecond, a slender, gleaming ninjato materialized out of thin air, the razor-sharp edge coming to a dead halt mere millimeters away from his carotid artery. A flat, icy voice cut through his audio receptors: "Freeze."
Bell cradled his straight-edged blade with an expression of absolute, liquid-smooth detachment.
CLEAVE!
Kenshin's katana whistled through a flawless horizontal arc, the sheer kinetic force instantly separating Orochi's head from his shoulders, sending the skull vaulting through the air.
The execution velocity governing this sequence was simply too extreme. The exact microsecond Kenshin initialized his movement, Bell had synchronized his own displacement loops perfectly.
Standing just beyond the pulverized remains of the outer door frame, Usopp remained frozen in his tracks, his mouth hanging wide open in pure, unadulterated shock.
From inception to conclusion, the total elapsed timeline of the raid spanned a mere handful of seconds. His physical frame had barely finished advancing a single step into the corridor, yet the vanguard had already finalized a maximum-priority decapitation protocol?
"You two... exactly what brand of godlike monsters are you supposed to be?!"
This display of raw, overwhelming force was more than enough to leave the great God Usopp thoroughly stunned for a century.
A conflict operating at this tier of mechanical efficiency held absolute zero requirement for his unique sniper utility. What exact strategic reason prompted them to drag his system along to a hot zone to begin with?
"AAAGH!!" The surrounding courtesans and entertainment assets let out a synchronized, throat-shredding shriek, rapidly scrambling out of the sector to escape the blast radius.
"Brother Kenshin, his primary life signs have yet to enter a state of total deletion," Bell noted abruptly, his sensors tracking the core signature.
"What?! He survived that?!" Usopp stammered, stepping into the room with wide eyes.
The visual data before his sensors clearly verified that the Shogun's physical frame had been completely deprived of its skull. How could a biological organism tolerate a structural deficit of that magnitude and preserve its vital systems?
"My database logs your survival parameters perfectly. Re-boot your motor controls and stand up," Kenshin commanded flatly, his blade maintaining its guard. "The Mythical Zoan properties of the Snake-Snake Fruit, Model: Yamata-no-Orochi, allocate a grand total of eight independent life reserves to the user's ledger. The strike I just deployed merely extracted one of those slots from your system. He won't expire from that."
Bell cast a highly analytical, surprised glance toward the swordsman. Within his historical records, Kenshin's core coding was fundamentally unaligned with providing verbal explanations.
During their shared campaigns anchoring the Drake Pirates, the swordsman's verbal output consistently hovered near baseline zero; he rarely chose to download his logical parameters even for his own trusted crewmates.
Yet, facing the Straw Hat sniper, he had explicitly broken his standard protocol to deliver a direct data briefing.
This behavioral variance completely defied his historical algorithms.
What Bell's tactical planners omitted from their calculations was that Kenshin, having operated as one of the absolute earliest assets to enlist under Drake's flag, harbored a highly specialized, unvoiced sentiment toward the Straw Hat Pirates. It was the natural result of continuous exposure.
Straw Hat Luffy was their captain's blood brother, which mathematically translated to his crewmates being classified as high-priority allies of the Drake Pirates. To Kenshin's worldview, the Straw Hats were verified comrades—friends.
Furthermore, integrating his experiences with the Drake Pirates had systematically unsealed the heavy, suffocating layers of his historical trauma. Facing confirmed allies, his system naturally prioritized absolute transparency.
Evaluating the timeline of his interactions with Usopp over the current solar cycle, Kenshin had developed a genuine, deep-seated appreciation for the sniper.
Despite his baseline fear metrics constantly operating at maximum capacity, the man had successfully infiltrated the most heavily fortified enemy stronghold in the Capital, single-handedly stabilizing his coordinates within a hot zone to execute his mission.
Plus, his rhetorical talent for marketing commercial assets like Toad Oil was spectacular.
Interfacing with an anomaly of his caliber was highly engaging.
"Hehehehe...!"
Completely defying standard biological laws, the decapitated mass of Orochi's torso suddenly rose to its feet, the muscles twisting violently.
"Gah?!" Usopp's eyes nearly burst straight out of his skull, his jaw snapping as his vocal tracks glitched into a frantic, disjointed stutter: "T-The... it's actually... AAAH! A fresh head just sprouted from the neck infrastructure!"
"What exact origin points do your databases hail from?!" Orochi growled, his features contorting into a mask of pure, venomous rage.
He had entirely failed to calculate a scenario where a high-velocity assassination cell could breach the absolute sanctum of his private quarters without tripping a single alarm. Was there a more profoundly humiliating variable across the entire New World board?
"My name is Kenshin. I have explicitly mapped my coordinates to this room to permanently delete your life signs from the ledger," Kenshin noted. He began condensing a heavy sheath of pure kinetic energy across his steel, choosing to cut any further verbal dialogue.
The agonizing weight of the ancient blood feud had officially settled into a state of absolute, icy clarity.
Throughout countless dark rotations of the calendar, his psychological servers had been consumed by a frantic desire to slice through Orochi's flesh as a blood sacrifice to honor his fallen parents.
But today... that blind, vengeful energy was entirely gone. His parents had been offline for a decade, and his system had successfully established a pristine, new sanctuary.
An asset entirely dominated by blind hatred was an unoptimized shell. Captain Drake had been fully aware of this exact psychological bottleneck, which was precisely why he had cleared Kenshin to navigate this confrontation as the primary authority.
That single directive spoke volumes.
The captain harbored absolute, uncompromised trust in his resolve!
Under these parameters, failing Drake's expectations was a mathematical impossibility. As the board stood today, the overarching preservation of the Drake Pirates represented the highest-priority directive in his database.
This duel was simply an administrative requirement to finalize a historic deficit.
"Orochi, face execution!"
Kenshin's blade slowly traced an intricate, geometric pattern through the air currents, an unparalleled, suffocating mountain of pure combat intent erupting from his frame.
"Cangyun Sword Style: Phantom Severance!"
FLASH-FLASH-FLASH!
In an instant, an infinite web of blinding, high-velocity slashes entirely blanketed the coordinates of the chamber. The pupils of Fukurokuju and Orochi contracted to absolute pinpricks; before their motor control centers could initialize a defensive reaction, multiple deep, crimson fountains of blood erupted across the field.
"AAAGH!!"
Following a succession of structural screams, Orochi's biological tissue expanded radically, five separate, colossal reptilian heads violently thrashing through the air, while adjacent to them were three elongated neck infrastructures that were doing nothing but spraying a continuous torrent of crimson fluid.
Within a single microsecond of execution, the Shogun had been robbed of two additional life reserves.
The sheer, visceral magnitude of the destruction was spectacular!
Usopp stood entirely paralyzed, his capacity to formulate verbal text completely overloaded by the display.
"MY LORD SHOGUN!!" Fukurokuju shrieked, his composure shattering entirely. Just as his muscles gathered tension to launch a high-speed counter-maneuver, Bell executed a flawless sub-second backstep, driving his straight-edged ninjato through a blinding horizontal arc aimed toward his right flank.
Space rippled, and a physical silhouette suddenly materialized out of thin air precisely along the path of the advancing blade. A severed arm, heavily drenched in gore, vaulted high into the upper atmosphere.
"This is statistically impossible...!" Fukurokuju gasped, his face a mask of pure, paralyzed horror.
His ultimate Substitution Technique had been systematically decoded and neutralized at the absolute microsecond of activation!
The sudden, blinding intensity of the shock was so extreme he temporarily failed to log the neurological pain spikes screaming from the stump of his shoulder.
"Do your data networks lack the baseline index that a supreme sensory calculation framework known as Observation Haki exists across this sea?" Bell noted flatly, his tone completely indifferent.
He tilted his frame, allowing a lone drop of crimson blood to slide slowly off the tip of his pristine steel, splashing softly against the stone floor.