"Yes!" The Five Elders nodded in unison without a single trace of hesitation.
When it came to Lord Im's directives, their solitary mandate was total execution; variables like operational difficulty or physical impossibility did not exist. These were parameters Lord Im never condescended to consider. Had they harbored a single shred of raw doubt, their vessels would have mathematically failed to survive until the next sunrise.
"Mm," Im nodded slightly in approval, before shifting his gaze to a photograph clutched in his hand.
The image cleanly captured the physical profile of Nefertari Vivi, the princess of the Arabasta Kingdom—and a former companion of the Straw Hat Pirates.
"Her... have you successfully secured her asset?"
Hearing the question, a dense, suffocating silence settled over the Five Elders. Not a single soul formulated a verbal response.
"Speak!"
"N-Not... not yet..." The bald Elder, whose skull was completely bare of hair, broke out into a thick layer of cold sweat, his vocal cords failing to sustain a stable rhythm.
"Hmm?!" Im didn't offer an extended commentary; he merely let out a passing, icy snort.
Yet the shockwave of presence forced the seemingly supreme Five Elders to instantly drop onto both knees, their chests pressed toward the floor.
"Lord Im! A single day! Grant us a solitary day, and I shall personally deliver this girl before your perimeter!" the bald Elder pleaded frantically.
BOOM!
Im merely swept a massive hand out from beneath his ceremonial robe, and a completely invisible, crushing gravity slammed down upon the bald Elder's frame, violently hammering his skull straight into the polished stone floor.
CRASH!
A massive pool of fresh crimson rapidly leaked from beneath the bald Elder's head, staining the marble. Yet throughout the entire trauma, his vessel failed to emit a single syllable of agony. It wasn't a question of personal pain tolerance; rather, he simply lacked the absolute courage to make a sound before the sovereign.
"Ten hours," Im commanded, withdrawing his massive hand back into the darkness of his sweeping sleeve, his facial parameters remaining entirely masked from their sight. His voice, as always, carried zero traces of human emotion.
"Yes, sir!" the fractured Elder choked out with desperate haste.
Throughout the entire sequence, the remaining four Elders maintained absolute stillness, failing to register a single behavioral shift or project a single fraction of sound.
"Hmph!" Im let out a final, detached snort, waving his arm. "Execute your exit."
The moment they cleared the threshold of the hidden sanctuary, the Five Elders maintained a sterile silence, marching briskly until they crossed into their standard administrative chambers.
This was the localized grid where they handled the daily governance of the world regime.
"Lord Im's incandescent fury is entirely rationalized by the data. This Princess Vivi—her asset must be cleanly neutralized and secured!" the Elder with the distinct mustache stated with supreme severity.
"The operational parameters are exactly as mapped, but the intervention of the Revolutionary Army's Sabo complicates the trajectory..." the Elder with the sharp beard murmured, tracing his facial hair as an expression of profound caution hardened his features.
When answering Lord Im, they fundamentally bypassed their own cognitive reasoning filters. To analyze or hesitation before the monarch was the literal equivalent of signing one's own liquidation warrant. Lord Im demanded absolute, unyielding compliance.
As for the specific logistical maneuvers or whether the objective defied standard physical laws—that was strictly an administrative problem for the Elders to solve. The monarch analyzed nothing but terminal outcomes.
An unstable answer meant death. A flawed outcome meant death.
"Hmph! That Sabo of the Revolutionary Army can no longer be permitted to breathe. Given that he has actively extracted Princess Vivi from our dragnet, his existence poses a structural threat to our authority!" the spectacled Elder declared, a lethal, icy gleam flashing across his lenses.
"Agreed," the remaining Elders nodded in unison, rapidly finalizing their administrative decree. "Deploy the command channels immediately: CP0 and the Marine Admirals are to initiate a synchronized deployment. This crusade must permanently liquidate Sabo and crush his vanguard!"
"Concurrently—under no circumstances is Princess Vivi's biological life to sustain terminal trauma!"
"Understood!" a high-ranking Marine officer anchoring the communications desk barked, snapping a sharp salute before executing high-speed notifications across the global network.
Throughout the entire conference, not a single soul referenced the catastrophic cranial trauma sustained by the bald Elder. Even the victim himself didn't dare register a single fraction of internal resentment.
"This timeline... the Revolutionary Army must be entirely annihilated!" The expressions of all five supreme administrators were cold as winter stone.
Historically, they hadn't allocated significant strategic focus toward the containment of Dragon's network. Back then, the scale of the organization failed to pose a realistic existential threat to the regime; the solitary asset that commanded respect was their Supreme Commander—Monkey D. Dragon.
But over a quiet timeline, the Revolutionary Army had optimized its subsystems, forging itself into a colossal titan that the regime could no longer ignore. Previously, even when two Marine Admirals were deployed simultaneously to execute a localized purge, their combined combat mass had failed to achieve a definitive victory.
And crucial to remember—the defensive front back then had been anchored solely by their Chief of Staff, Sabo, alongside a handful of Division Commanders. This performance metric conclusively verified that the Revolutionary Army's active operational depth had broken past the tier of a conventional Yonko fleet.
Should the World Government fail to unleash its absolute arsenal at this precise juncture, the future would inevitably distort beyond their capacity to salvage.
"Transmit the operational directive to Akainu: he is to temporarily freeze all standard field operations targeted at the pirate factions. Every single asset under his command must pivot to launch a total, unrestricted purge against the Revolutionary Army. Mathematically forbid them from establishing a single buffer zone!"
"Yes, sir!"
As the executive core of the World Government, the Five Elders possessed exhaustive data logs charting the baseline behavioral patterns of their adversaries. The solitary attribute that rendered the Revolutionary Army terrifying was their peerless operational security and hidden sanctuaries. Ordinary intelligence networks had zero capacity to map their precise coordinates.
Currently, the subversives were riding a wave of massive global momentum. If the regime failed to strike with crushing force to permanently erase them in this exact window, they would simply execute a total tactical dispersal, slipping back into the shadows. Once they went dark, tracing their nodes would become an impossibility.
They had to deploy a thunderous, absolute blitzkrieg to pulverize the Revolutionary Army in a single strike.
"WHAT?!"
Deep within the central war room of Marine Headquarters, Fleet Admiral Akainu's face twisted into a mask of pure, molten rage. His hand compressed the casing of the transponder snail so violently it nearly shattered into pieces.
"You expect my central command to divert 100% of our combat mass to track the Revolutionary Army?! While casually abandoning our active engagements against the pirate armadas?!"
Akainu had already finalized a comprehensive strategic blueprint: he intended to deploy high-velocity strike teams to swiftly liquidate two rogue Warlords, maximizing the institutional prestige of the Navy. Concurrently, he planned to split his baseline divisions to systematically mop up the shattered remnants of the Big Mom Pirates, while anchoring a steady defensive front to buffer any potential maneuvers from the revolutionaries.
But looking at the active directive handed down from the Holy Land, his entire layout had been rendered entirely obsolete.
To Akainu's absolute worldview, the existential threats that demanded immediate, permanent sterilization were the Legendary Four Brothers. Yet with the rogue Warlords and the revolutionaries fracturing the Navy's operational capacity, stretching their lines to concurrently wage war against two independent Yonko fleets was a structural impossibility.
"Heed the mandate, Akainu! Process and execute the directive immediately!" a heavy, raspy voice barked from the speaker of the snail—the distinct tone of the bald Elder.
Akainu gritted his teeth so fiercely the enamel nearly fractured under the sheer tension. Forcing his volatile, volcanic temper under a layer of absolute restraint for several agonizing seconds, he finally squeezed out the syllables: "Understood!"
"As long as your parameters align!" the bald Elder snorted with immense, arrogant authority, before abruptly severing the transmission.
The atmosphere within the grand hall turned perfectly frigid. Akainu's face was completely ashen, his jaw snapping shut so hard he bit his premium cigar cleanly in two. The half containing the live ember tumbled to the stone floor, scattering sparks.
A heavy, absolute silence choked the room. Although the assembled flag officers had been restricted from hearing the specific audio log of the transmission, a glance at the snail's physical properties verified exactly who anchored the alternative side of the line. And seeing Akainu pushed to this level of volcanic fury proved the incoming command crossed all baseline metrics.
At this exact fraction of a second, not a single soul possessed the raw courage to step forward and trigger his temper.
After an extended, dense silence, Akainu leveled his absolute decree: "Recall every single fleet currently engaged in field operations against the pirate factions! Deploy 100% of our naval mass to initiate an all-out crusade against the Revolutionary Army! Give them zero breathing room to buffer the blow!"
"WHAT?!"
The command hit the assembly like a physical shockwave, throwing the flag officers into total confusion. The revolutionaries hadn't initiated a single aggressive maneuver against their active perimeters. Protocol dictated they prioritize the immediate crises fracturing the seas, yet their supreme commander was ordering an instantaneous pivot to hunt the Revolutionary Army?
"Execute the directive!" Akainu offered zero analytical breakdown. Leaving the room with that solitary, unyielding phrase, he marched straight out of the war council.
The remaining naval commanders were left staring at each other in total bewilderment.
Right then, a towering figure leisurely pushed himself up from his seat and strolled toward the exit with an unbothered, casual stride. It was none other than Vice Admiral Garp.
The assembly: "..."
"Vice Admiral Garp, regarding our alignment..."
"Execute the directive..." Garp casually waved his hand, clearing the threshold without a single backward glance.
Within a remarkably short window, a thoroughly bizarre phenomenon rippled across the grand line: pirates worldwide watched in total astonishment as the Marine strike fleets that had been relentlessly hounding their heels executed a total, synchronized withdrawal.
The Navy was mobilizing its absolute mass at terrifying velocity, condensing its global fleet toward a singular, hidden coordinate...