In front of Bael, Kenshin and Locke were wearing calm smiles.
The Tobi Roppo had all been incapacitated, lying across the battlefield in various states of defeat. Naturally, having dealt with their own opponents, Kenshin and Locke had moved in to assist Bael. Faced with a three-on-one situation, Queen had failed to hold out for more than a few exchanges before being utterly crushed.
With his defeat, the upper echelon of the Beast Pirates was reduced to a single man: King the Conflagration. The remaining subordinates, even those at the Headliner rank, were effectively useless in a fight of this magnitude.
Law and Kid stood on the sidelines, looking at the grounded Luffy with expressions of profound annoyance. They had agreed to take down Kaido together, yet they had barely been involved in the final showdown. While they hadn't been completely idle—Law had neutralized Who's-Who and Kid had dealt with Sasaki—their achievements felt miniscule compared to Luffy's performance.
Before long, the Beast Pirates were in total disarray. Even though their numbers vastly dwarfed the samurai alliance, the loss of their core leadership meant the battle had devolved into a complete rout. Gradually, active combat was restricted to only a few pockets of the battlefield: Marco versus King, and Zoro and Sanji versus the masked agents.
"Suuuuper!" Franky shouted, leaping down from the General Franky. Throughout the battle, he had used the giant robot to steamroll through massive swathes of the Beast Pirates' rank-and-file.
The eyes of everyone on the battlefield remained glued to the sky, fixed on the fading inferno. Though they couldn't yet see the details through the smoke and heat, they watched with bated breath. In the chaos, no one noticed a small vessel slowly approaching from the distant sea.
As the sea of flames above finally dissipated, a massive silhouette plummeted straight toward the earth. It was Kaido!
"It's Lord Kaido..."
Panic surged through the Beast Pirates. It was over. Truly, finally over.
Kaido hit the ground with a sickening thud. A massive, charred wound gaped across his chest, his eyes were rolled back, and he was drenched in blood. He had lost consciousness completely. Whether he was even alive was anyone's guess.
The entire battlefield fell into a deafening silence.
"We... we lost..." After a long moment, one of the Beast Pirates finally choked out the words.
"This can't be..." The rest of the crew stood dazed, their eyes wandering toward the formidable enemies surrounding them.
"What are you looking at?! You want me to gouge your eyes out?!" Kid snarled, his glare enough to send the surrendering pirates into a fresh wave of terror.
Clang!
One pirate suddenly threw his weapon onto the stone floor. "I... I surrender..."
The declaration sent a ripple through the crowd.
"What?!" King, still locked in combat with Marco, roared in fury. His eyes were bloodshot as he glared at the man who had dropped his blade. "Do you want to die?!"
King moved to strike the traitor, but Kenshin and Bael instantly intercepted him. Behind him, Marco's gaze remained locked onto his position. He couldn't move an inch.
The enemy's top-tier combatants were simply too many and too powerful. Any single one of them was capable of holding back an All-Star. This reality, which defied everything they knew about the balance of power in the world, was playing out right before their eyes.
Why... how are there so many of them?
The elite fighters gathered here on Onigashima were enough to form two separate Yonko crews. The fact that Jack had been the first to fall now seemed like a grim omen they should have heeded. If anyone had told them this yesterday, the members of the Beast Pirates would have laughed them out of the room.
An All-Star? Those monsters? You think a random newcomer can kill one of them?
But now, they were staring at a dark, blood-soaked reality.
"I surrender too!" shouted a man with a gorilla-like arm—a Headliner.
With a high-ranking officer leading the way, the rank-and-file began to discard their weapons in droves. Within ten seconds, eighty percent of the Beast Pirates had surrendered; the rest stood wavering, their resolve crumbling.
"You bastards..." King looked at his crew in disbelief. He had never imagined that the moment Kaido fell, nearly everyone would immediately lay down their arms. This was the crew he had been so proud of? It was a bitter irony.
In his moment of distraction, Kenshin, Bael, and Marco struck simultaneously. The blades of the two swordsmen carved into King's flesh from front and back, while Marco's talons slammed down with crushing force, pinning him to the ground.
"Lord King!" The hearts of the few remaining holdouts went cold. One by one, they too discarded their weapons.
The Beast Pirates had been utterly defeated.
Kaido lay motionless in the crater. Ace landed nearby, his feet touching the ground with practiced grace, but the moment he settled, he dropped to one knee and coughed up a spray of blood. The flames surrounding him flickered out, and his body returned to its normal state.
The "Single Point Alignment: Nameless Flame Spear" was a technique that drained nearly every drop of his stamina. To ensure the strike landed, Ace had mobilized every ounce of energy in his body. Combined with the direct hit he had taken from Kaido earlier, Ace was now severely injured.
"Ace!" Luffy went sprinting toward his brother. "Hahaha... we won!"
"Luffy!" Nami, Chopper, and Usopp crowded around them. "The World Government is here! They're trying to take Robin!"
"What?!" Luffy was stunned. He looked over and finally noticed the white-cloaked agents currently engaged with Zoro and Sanji. "They're after Robin?"
"Zoro, Sanji! Leave them to me!" Luffy triggered Gear 2, his body beginning to steam as he charged toward the agent facing Sanji.
His time limit for Gear 4 had expired, and his body and Armament Haki were pushed to their limits. However, he still had the strength for Advanced Conqueror's Haki!
"Luffy, look out!" Ace suddenly screamed, his pupils shrinking in alarm.
BOOM!
A white blur suddenly intercepted Luffy, a single punch sending him hurtling backward.
"Gah!" Luffy cried out in pain as he crashed into a pile of rubble.
The sudden turn of events sent a jolt through everyone present. Standing in the center of the clearing was a man in a pristine white suit, looking impeccably groomed. Most notably, a white pigeon was perched calmly on his shoulder.
While others might not have recognized him, the Straw Hat crew felt as if they had been struck by lightning. This was a man they knew all too well—the primary culprit behind Robin's capture two years ago. The strongest assassin of CP9.
What the Straw Hats didn't know was that Rob Lucci was no longer with CP9. He was now a leader within CP0, an even higher-tier organization serving the Celestial Dragons directly.
In the two years since they last met, the Straw Hats had undergone a complete transformation, but Lucci was a combat genius whose talent was among the best in the world. In those same two years, his own strength had reached a major breakthrough.