Ethanbaron's excitement climbed higher with every passing second. If they won this war, the World Government would not only seize a massive batch of top tier Devil Fruit users, they would also rip the Hell Pirates' Devil Fruit recycling technology right out of their hands.
With that, the World Government's power would expand beyond anything the world had ever seen.
They would tighten their grip on the seas, crush resistance, and even erase the New World, that filthy pirate paradise, and drag it fully under their rule.
Ethanbaron was still laughing when Shiki and Redfield's killing pressure crashed down on him again.
"Hahaha! Pathetic. A dying struggle!"
He wasted his Conqueror's Haki without the slightest restraint. Reinforcements had arrived, and Shiki and Redfield were clearly running on fumes.
The winner was already decided.
The moment the Quasi God Knight, Sheila, delivered Sengoku onto the battlefield near Hawaii Island, he froze, eyes solemn. The scene reminded him of the Second God Valley War eight years ago. The same cruelty, the same sea of corpses.
"Knight Sheila!" Sengoku barked. "Bring Zephyr, Garp, everyone, here immediately!"
His voice was steady, but a deep unease surged inside him.
It was the warning of his Great Buddha Fruit.
Michael was gone.
Completely gone.
Even Sheila could not find him.
At first, Sheila had assumed Michael captured the Second Generation of Hell and escorted them to Mary Geoise alone. But as he searched along the way, terrified Michael would turn his anger on him, he ran into Navy forces and heard the report with his own ears.
The Second Generation escaped.
No one saw Michael.
Not even once.
That left only a guess too absurd to say out loud.
Was Michael dead?
And then Sengoku remembered something else.
That Brook the Navy claimed to have seen, the Brook they assumed was just a Devil Fruit fake.
His scalp went cold.
That Brook might have been real.
Sengoku forced Sheila to teleport nonstop, dragging him to the New World battlefield at top speed. Now, seeing no sign of Brook anywhere, Sengoku finally exhaled.
He made it before Brook.
He spotted Shiki and Redfield still pressing Ethanbaron, and he moved to support at once. He also intended to warn everyone that Brook might return.
Sheila, meanwhile, vanished instantly. He knew he was already in deep trouble, and if he could not make amends, he was finished. He rushed to teleport the Navy's heavy hitters over as quickly as possible.
Ethanbaron saw Sengoku approaching and turned even more vicious.
Victory was right there.
"Hahaha! Golden Lion, Red Earl, you're dead!"
As long as Sengoku held Redfield in place, Ethanbaron would carve through the exhausted Shiki and end this.
Then the Hell Pirates would collapse.
"Oh no! Redfield, run!"
Shiki shouted, suddenly pulling back. He retreated in a panic, dragging Redfield with him, tension flashing across his face.
"Running?" Ethanbaron's grin twisted as he chased, bloodthirst rising. "You think I'll let you go?"
This was the chance. The chance to finally crush the Hell Pirates.
And Ethanbaron loved nothing more than stomping on someone already sinking.
As Ethanbaron chased them farther and farther from Sengoku, Sengoku's heart screamed danger.
"Lord Ethanbaron! Don't chase!" Sengoku roared, his body expanding as he transformed into a giant Buddha. "Brook might appear again!"
Ethanbaron's stride faltered for half a heartbeat.
Brook?
At that exact instant, his Observation Haki erupted in frantic warning. His muscles twitched. His expression changed violently.
Then a voice slid into his ear like ice.
"Yohoho. It's not that I might appear."
Ethanbaron's blood turned to frost.
"It's that I'm truly back."
Brook.
The whisper sounded like the Underworld itself had opened behind him.
Ethanbaron had not fully stabilized after forcing his body into a chase. His stamina was low, his footing imperfect, and there was no room left to react fast enough.
The Seven Star Demon Sword struck.
A single thrust, heavy enough to shake the entire battlefield, drove straight through Ethanbaron's chest.
The world seemed to shudder.
The other three Elders saw it, and their eyes turned red on the spot.
"Brook!! Stop!"
They roared, throwing everything into breaking free from their fights, flying toward Brook at full speed.
"Yohoho!" Brook laughed, cruel and bright. "What a delicious Devil Fruit ability."
His hatred poured into every motion.
"But I won't give you the chance to escape."
With one merciless slash, he cut Ethanbaron cleanly in two.
Underworld ghost energy surged, wrapping around the two halves like chains, freezing them solid, smothering the strange red light pulsing inside. Brook crushed the corpse without hesitation, cleaving, kicking, shattering it into fragments until nothing remained whole.
Then he snatched the Supreme Grade blade, the Shodai Kitetsu, and tossed it to the Seven Star Demon Sword.
"Seven. Devour it."
Brook's grin widened, vicious and satisfied.
"I want you to become a true divine weapon."
He swallowed Ethanbaron's soul in one gulp.
A wave of bliss rolled through every part of his body, as if his cells were drinking for the first time in years.
Brook opened his mouth.
And the battlefield answered.
Ghosts rose everywhere, streams of souls tearing free in the chaos and flooding into him like a tide. The cold terror of his presence spread across the sea, heavy enough to make even hardened killers feel their hearts tighten.
Shiki and Redfield moved instantly, stepping in front of Brook as shields.
Linlin, Newgate, Kaido, and Oden also rushed over, forming a wall between Brook and the three remaining Elders.
"Brother Brook!"
"Master!"
"Captain Brook!"
The Hell Pirates erupted, their voices shaking with emotion.
Their souls were back.
And the moment he returned, Brook had already dropped a Five Elders.
Victory, suddenly, was no longer a dream.
"Yohoho!" Brook laughed again, voice ringing. "An Elders' soul is far better than that God's Knight, Michael."
The three remaining Elders stared at him, teeth grinding.
Eight years.
Brook vanished for eight years, and still came back alive.
Imu miscalculated.
And Ethanbaron paid for it.
As the two sides faced off, Crocus hurried in, treating Shiki and Redfield and restoring their strength at speed.
On the other side, Sheila's light flashed again and again as he teleported more monsters onto the battlefield, Zephyr, Garp, and others arriving in succession.
But the moment Sheila saw it, his stomach sank.
The battlefield that had been a chaotic slaughter had turned into a rigid standoff.
The Elders' rage was so thick it felt like pressure on the skin.
And one of them was missing.
Sheila's eyes landed on Brook.
He understood it instantly.
He was finished.
-----------
The three remaining Elders locked their eyes on Brook, still unable to accept what had just happened.
Ethanbaron, their companion for centuries, had been erased right in front of them.
And the one who did it was Brook.
"You came back alive."
Peter's voice scraped through clenched teeth. Eight years on the moon, and this monster still returned.
"Yohoho! Thank the goddess of fate," Brook sneered. "One day I'll make you enjoy the moon too."
If he ever crushed Imu for good, he would build a prison up there and throw every last one of these monsters into it.
" Sengoku!" Figarland forced his rage down and spoke low. "Are all the Navy's top fighters here?"
Sengoku stared at the slaughtered sea, at the bodies of Marines scattered like driftwood, and grief tightened in his chest.
"Two admirals, eight vice admirals," he answered heavily.
If this kept going, the Navy would drown in its own blood. The Hell Pirates had grown into a force that could match the World Government head on.
Even the Navy could not suppress them anymore.
Figarland's killing intent sharpened into a command.
"Sengoku, Zephyr, Garp, you handle Newgate, Shiki, and Linlin. Peter, you deal with Redfield. Mars and I will strangle Brook."
The three Knights of God and the newly arrived vice admirals stayed tied up with the Hell Pirates' leaders, Kaido, Oden, and the rest.
"Before Brook fully absorbs Ethanbaron's soul, move," Mars said quickly. "We don't know his current level. We learn it through blood."
Ethanbaron died to a sneak attack, drained after fighting Shiki and Redfield. That was the only reason it looked so easy.
Mars was right.
Brook's strength before that strike was not fully restored. The power he stored through the pure gold ring, plus what little he recovered on the spaceship, was nearly burned away when he fought Michael.
That was why he hid, stealing souls from the battlefield in silence, refusing to expose himself.
Then he struck.
Then he devoured Ethanbaron.
Then he began devouring everything.
Only then did his power truly return, and even rise a step higher.
Now, with the Elders and the Navy coming for his throat, Brook did not flinch.
"Let's use the fact that old Imu still isn't here," Brook said coldly. "Cut off his wings."
Every Elder that fell meant Imu lost strength.
And Brook gained more.
The war ignited again.
Both sides surged, choosing targets, restraining, dragging, and locking each other into new killing pairs.
Peter, armed with stolen Soul Soul power and the Thunder Fruit's might, unleashed everything from the start and crushed down on Redfield.
But Redfield was not someone you flattened with brute force.
His talent was terrifying, even beyond Newgate's. With thunder empowering him, his Observation Haki stood at the peak of the Hell Pirates, and one day he would reach the realm where even Conqueror's interference could not touch his sight.
He endured Peter's full pressure. His awakened thunder power blunted the damage, and until his stamina ran dry, even an Elder could not land a clean blow on his flesh.
Sengoku met Shiki in midair, the two entangling in a grinding clash that lacked the sheer brutality of Garp and Newgate. It was the kind of fight that might last until the sea ran out of waves, and still no one could swear who would fall first.
Meanwhile, the strangest pairing of all unfolded.
Zephyr, the weaker of the Navy's monsters, ended up facing Linlin, the strongest force among the Hell Pirates.
If Linlin had not spent years birthing children, how terrifying would she be?
Even Newgate could not overpower her.
She had her first two children at nineteen and twenty one, then spent the rest of her years training under Brook's relentless urging. Her Iron Balloon body had reached a level so ridiculous that even the Elders struggled to crack it.
Even without Armament Haki, her raw toughness surpassed Shiki's hardened defense.
After Brook vanished, she trained even harder, for one purpose only.
To kill the Elders and take her man back.
The first time Zephyr's Armament met her, pain exploded through his hand bones.
Facing Linlin's natural strength and steel forged physique, he felt helpless, like he was punching a mountain that could punch back.
And Linlin was not only muscle.
Her three haki's were monstrous, and she was a top Devil Fruit user.
Once Zephyr's proud Armament lost its edge, he was outclassed everywhere.
Defeat was only a matter of time.
Kaido and Oden, once suppressed and stripped of their transformations by the Elders, regained their Devil Fruit power and returned to half dragon forms. Each took on a God's Knight, jaws set on killing one and earning the right to stand among the highest officers.
Shakky stopped charging alone. She and Stussy joined forces against a God's Knight, locking him down completely. His death was no longer a question of if, only when.
Borsalino, Ashura, the three swordsmen of the same clan, the four fallen angels of Lunarian blood, Hiruba, Crocus, Dia, the merman duo Tiger and Tom, Scaredo.
One after another, Hell Pirates cadres matched up against vice admirals and CP0. Devil Fruit users with battle hardened skill, each strong enough to make the World Government pay for every step.
The captains of the affiliated crews, World, Chinjao, Woonan, Bull, Angel, Ibadombo, tore through fleets and ground the Navy's lines down.
Then something truly ridiculous entered the field.
Memory Seahorse awakened the Wasp Fruit and successfully underwent Vegapunk's gigantification experiment, transforming into a bumblebee over ten meters long. He joined Daenerys Targaryen's dragon fleet with shameless pride.
Even if he could not become a dragon, he would fly with them anyway.
Driven half mad by his obsession, Memory Seahorse relied on his awakened body to survive gigantification, then endured countless modifications, becoming a walking arsenal like Plague Quinn.
Lasers. Electricity. Flames. Poison.
He became the Hell Pirates' strongest transformer, no weaker than Shadow Demon Abefor, forged by endless wars and countless stolen memories.
A Vice Emperor class hornet was rising.
From this moment on, call him Hell Hornet, Vice Emperor class Memory Seahorse.
Or, if you preferred something shorter, Royal Madrid.
And under Daenerys' temptation, Memory Seahorse's former partner, Shakky, the vampire who had once been left behind, took command of the dragon fleet herself. With four dragons at her back, she burned Navy warships into ruin.
Together with Fisher Tiger's merman forces, they formed a double strike from sea and sky, turning into a nightmare the Navy would whisper about for years.
The battlefield did not slow.
It only grew louder.
Because now Brook was here.
<><><><><>
[Check Out My Patreon For +50 Advance Chapters On All My Fanfics!]
[[email protected]/FanficLord03]
[Every 100 Power Stones = +1 Bonus Chapter]
[Join Our Discord Community For Updates & Events]
[https://discord.gg/MntqcdpRZ9]