"Let's fulfill our promise from back then today," Luffy said, a confident smile playing across his lips as he tightly balled one hand into a fist.
"Alright!"
Shanks casually rested his single hand on the hilt of the saber at his waist. Between pirates, words were unnecessary; only battle remained. A thousand lines of dialogue could never rival a fully unleashed, deeply satisfying clash.
Standing to the side, Drake watched the sequence unfold in absolute bewilderment. They're actually trading blows already? Setting aside the logic behind the sudden duel, merely witnessing Luffy's pure, unadulterated confidence made Drake want to spam a screen full of praise for his younger brother.
What manner of entity was Red Hair Shanks? Prior to the sudden rise of the Legendary Four Brothers, he had reigned as the youngest of the Emperors of the Sea, an absolute master of top-tier Conqueror's Haki. His entire organization was built upon an elite combat model—a layout no other pirate armada in the One Piece world dared to execute.
After all, where would anyone find such a concentrated pool of elite powerhouses? Who didn't desire the best of the best? It was simply because genuine elites were far too rare across this ocean, forcing most crews to absorb small-time lackeys to patch up their numbers. Even Drake himself didn't possess absolute, mathematical certainty that he could conquer Shanks in a straight conflict, given that no living soul had ever witnessed Red Hair's true operational ceiling.
BOOM!
While Drake was meticulously analyzing the tactical layout in his mind, a sudden, violent gale cut through the perimeter, slamming square into his face.
BANG!
Blindsided by the unexpected kinetic force, Drake was violently hammered backward, sailing through the air. A stampede of a thousand mythical beasts instantly stormed his brain. This bastard has zero martial honor! He launched a covert ambush!
"Hehehe..." A soft, silver, bell-like laughter drifted into his ear.
Immediately following the giggle, a furious roar thundered across the cove: "You little brat, it appears your courage has outgrown your skull! You actually dared to call yourself my old man!"
Daolang sprinted forward with explosive velocity, his massive kitchen cleaver cutting through the air currents as he unleashed a continuous storm of slashes toward Drake.
Drake deployed consecutive spatial displacements, shifting across the terrain to evade the incoming steel. By this stage, he had conclusively verified their biological link. With a volatile, explosive temper like that, how could he be anyone other than his actual father?
When other souls crossed into alternative universes, didn't they usually inherit a massive, prominent family lineage? Or at the very least, they were cleanly dropped as independent, unburdened orphans with zero biological complications holding them back.
No way, I need to execute a total tactical retreat!
"You little scumbag, drag your ass back here!" Daolang roared, leaping forward in a relentless charge.
Drake initiated an immediate spatial teleportation, vanishing from his coordinate in a fraction of a second.
"You little rascal, where do you think you're running..."
The thunderous yelling sundered the heavens and earth, causing the jaws of the surrounding spectators to drop to the stone in absolute shock.
"Drake..." Witnessing the chaotic family drama unfold, Luffy was completely at a loss for words.
"Luffy! Come!" Shanks's gaze turned razor-sharp as his saber cleared its sheath, projecting a flying slash that appeared remarkably, deceptively slow as it drifted toward the young captain.
Initially, Luffy calculated that Shanks might simply be holding back the true depth of his power. Isn't this offensive velocity far too sluggish?
But as the blade advanced, he quickly registered that his evaluation was fundamentally flawed. This strike could be mapped cleanly by his eyes without even deploying Observation Haki, yet it radiated an absolute, reality-bending presence that rendered it mathematically impossible to evade.
"What?!"
Luffy's pupils shrank to pinpricks. His hands failed to initiate a single counter-movement before the devastating wave of energy materialized right against his chest.
"Armament Haki: Hardening!" Driven to an absolute defensive corner, Luffy frantically crossed his forearms before his torso to buffer the impact.
KABOOM!
The slash, which had appeared completely weightless a moment ago, slammed into his guard like a monumental mountain, immovable and absolute. Feeling the kinetic force lift his frame off the stone—looking as though he might be blasted across the horizon in the next fraction of a second—Luffy gritted his teeth to the point of fracturing, forcefully driving his feet into the terrain.
The earth beneath his boots fractured violently, his legs sinking deep into the bedrock to anchor his frame against the pressure.
Witnessing Luffy push his physical vessel to the absolute limit to intercept this opening strike, a faint wave of satisfaction surfaced within Shanks's heart. This was the exact caliber of resolve required to anchor the title of an elite powerhouse. Had Luffy faltered or experienced a structural failure during this opening exchange, his operational pacing would have devolved, rendering the subsequent segments of the battle increasingly grueling.
A ruler must continuously advance, or they will inevitably slide backward. Without an unyielding, fearless courage to sunder the line, Luffy's Conqueror's Haki would likely hit a definitive ceiling, unable to advance another fraction of a metric.
Because Conqueror's Haki was precisely that manner of ethereal, conceptual force. It was impossible to refine through standard training protocols; its structural depth scaled exclusively alongside the absolute spirit of the user.
"Aaargh!!" Luffy's eyes bulged from the crushing strain as prominent veins spined across his arms and legs. Compressing his lower limbs with tremendous velocity, thick plumes of steam erupted from his skin.
Gear 2 exploded into action.
BOOM!
Right then, Shanks drove a fresh surge of power through the edge of his saber, unleashing a shockwave that cleanly blasted Luffy backward.
However, this tactical development rested entirely within Luffy's calculations; his Future Sight had already mapped the sequence a microsecond before it materialized.
"Boundman!" Mid-flight, Luffy transitioned into his Gear 4 form, rocketing straight back toward Shanks like a guided missile.
"Gum-Gum King Kong Gun!"
He unleashed his ultimate offensive capability right out of the gate, driving a colossal fist infused with Advanced Conqueror's Haki straight toward Shanks's perimeter.
BANG!
Faced with the monumental impact, Shanks's expression remained perfectly tranquil. Striking his heel against the stone, he unleashed another continuous flying slash.
KABOOM!
The blade clashed square with Luffy's fist, and the resulting shockwave of raw energy completely annihilated the surrounding landscape, shattering the bedrock into powder. Shanks's eyes turned a piercing crimson, and an invisible, crushing domain wrapped entirely around Luffy's frame.
The surrounding space vibrated under the weight.
BOOM!
In the next fraction of a second, for some inexplicable reason, Luffy was violently blasted backward once more, his compressed Gear 4 form dissolving instantly upon impact.
"Luffy! Observe closely—this is the true reality of an absolute powerhouse!" Shanks commanded. Driving his boots off the earth, he materialized directly before Luffy's face in the next microsecond.
His saber carved through the air currents with deliberate, slow grace, condensing a massive concentration of volatile energy across the void.
"Aaargh! This isn't Advanced Armament Haki... what on earth is this power?!" Luffy cried out in total bewilderment.
This was a specialized breed of energy his vessel had never encountered before—a force that sat entirely above the tier of standard Conqueror's Haki infusion!
"Snakeman!" Luffy realized with absolute clarity that trading blows in a straight physical clash was a mathematical impossibility. His solitary path to victory lay in utilizing pure evasion to bypass the incoming strikes!
Leveraging the absolute speed of his form compounded by his Future Sight, Luffy maintained total confidence that he could weave out of the trajectory. Yet in the next microsecond, his cognitive sanity was pushed to the brink.
For some inexplicable reason, his high-velocity movement suddenly ground to a crawl, his physical vessel completely failing to execute the motor commands generated by his brain.
Even though I can see the future, I can't move to evade it!
"What?!"
"Conqueror's Haki Infusion!" Left with zero operational window to escape, Luffy drove his fist straight into the path of the strike.
The Advanced Conqueror's Haki of his Snakeman form collided fiercely with Shanks's specialized slash.
CRASH! KABOOM!
The outcome was absolute; Luffy was once more violently blasted across the clearing by the sheer kinetic weight of the impact.
"Ah..."
What terrifying power is that?... Why does it feel so profoundly familiar...
Luffy had experienced the unique nature of the energy packed into Shanks's slash with absolute, physical clarity. He was entirely certain that Shanks hadn't deployed his full operational capacity; it was merely a casual, passing strike.
This was a total disparity in technical mastery. To realistically anchor the title of an Emperor of the Sea, a voyager required a baseline defensive metric and a raw, monstrous strength capable of deflecting Shanks's standard slashes. Luffy clearly lacked that refined structural depth at his current stage.
Although global intelligence networks had formally designated him as one of the new Emperors, his raw destructive output still trailed a fraction behind the established metrics of Big Mom and Kaido. That was a matter of raw, biological physical mass.
Refining his vessel to naturally yield that caliber of power would require a substantial timeline of quiet accumulation. However, the specialized force Shanks was currently deploying felt as though it had been custom-engineered to match his own potential. If he could master this precise methodology to exponentially scale his offensive output, he would truly solidify his seat on the throne of the Yonko.
"You've likely deciphered the underlying nature of the force I am utilizing, haven't you?..." Shanks noted, his gaze resting on the young captain.
"Conqueror's Haki!" Luffy choked out the words with immense difficulty.
In the span of a single minute, he had effectively exhausted his entire tactical arsenal, yet he was still left desperately struggling to scrape together a basic defense. He had operated under the assumption that Advanced Conqueror's Haki infusion represented the absolute peak of power across this ocean—but looking at the reality before him, it was merely the beginning...
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