"Newgate, how long has it been since we fought shoulder to shoulder like this?"
"I literally saved you the year before last."
"That time you showed up too late. It does not count."
"…"
On the smashed-together decks of the colliding ships, Rocks and Newgate stood side by side, facing the enemies before them together.
Their fighting spirits were higher than ever.
They had fought side by side a year ago on Osgood Island, but that had been nothing more than a fighting retreat.
Once Newgate arrived and drove back the pursuers, they had thrown a pirate party, emptied some barrels, and then gone their separate ways again.
This time was different.
"If we win today, that old man will become king of the world, right?"
"Captain is not interested in that kind of thing."
"Giha ha ha, if Imu was willing to marry the old man and then kill off all the Celestial Dragons, he might even hand the throne over to her himself."
The two of them simply knew Magnus too well.
He might be a pirate, but he had never cared about money or power. The only thing he seemed truly interested in was women.
If not for that, Rocks sometimes wondered whether Magnus even counted as a pirate at all.
Money, power, women and strength.
In this world, what else did men chase?
Strength was what every man pursued, no matter who he was.
On top of that, pirates chased either money, power, women, or some combination of the three.
Rocks chased power.
There was no way he would bow his head to anyone, and his ambition to become king of the world had never faded.
Newgate was similar to Magnus.
He did not care about money or power either. He cherished his "family," but the number of times he had gone to the pleasure districts was far from small. At first he had snuck off in secret, later he stalked in openly and unashamed.
The biggest difference between him and Magnus was that Newgate was a lot more reserved about it.
Their unrestrained banter made the veins pop on the foreheads of the four Five Elders, and the two Fegarland Knights of God leaders finally snapped outright.
"Insolent!"
"How dare you insult Lady Imu!"
"Attack together!"
Behind them, all four Five Elders had already shifted into hybrid forms of their Zoan Devil Fruits. Their sizes were not enormous, but hybrid form was without question the most balanced state for any Zoan.
"Ha ha, bring it on."
Rocks gripped his long sword in both hands, and Newgate hefted his naginata. They looked at each other and grinned.
Vmmmmm.
They began with a clash of Conqueror's Haki. Not one of the eight fighters present lacked it. As rulers of the world, the Five Elders and the Fegarland father and son all possessed powerful Conqueror's Haki.
Even so, it was still six against two.
"Looks like your Haki is not that impressive after all."
Black and red lightning intertwined in the air. The surrounding warships had long been cleared away from the battlefield's core.
Anyone with a bounty over one hundred million risked fainting outright under a clash like this. That was the nature of a Conqueror's clash. Only the losing side suffered the blowback.
The black-red lightning that erupted outwards shook cracks through the decks beneath their feet. These ships were built from Adam wood, the toughest material in the world.
Even so, under that pressure, the decks still split.
Waves reared and rolled away from the battlefield's eye.
Hines Oran's ice could not even touch the core of the fight. It shattered under the pressure of the clashing Haki before it reached them.
Like the center of a storm, the shockwaves from the battlefield's heart could be felt for dozens of kilometers in every direction.
"Tch. That is insane."
Even near-admiral monsters like Roger and Garp could not help pausing for an instant when they sensed that pressure.
With their current strength, they might not even be able to step onto that level of battlefield.
It did not matter.
"Garp, today is the day you die."
"Ha ha ha, Roger, I am definitely hauling you into Impel Down this time."
Top fighters had their battles.
They had theirs.
A clash between near-admiral level fighters was just as deadly to anyone who got too close.
Back in the center.
After that initial collision of Haki, the Five Elders and the two Fegarlands realized, faces growing darker, that even with six of them they could not suppress the Haki of just two men.
"We barely got to really fight last year."
"This time, let us go all out."
Rocks laughed loudly, gripped his sword with both hands, and brought it down in a heavy smash.
"Terrifying Smash!"
He might have studied under Magnus, but Rocks's swordsmanship was nothing like his teacher's. What he inherited was Magnus's obsession with raw power, not a carbon copy of Magnus's style.
The blow fell like artillery on the Five Elders and the Fegarlands. Newgate was not about to be left behind.
"Quake: Riven Sky!"
Both attacks were wrapped in Conqueror's Haki. Seen from above, the cluster of warships at the battlefield's core seemed to sink ten meters under the pressure when those strikes fell.
Every ship in the area was forced downward, but a web of power held the sea around them up like a droplet clinging to a leaf.
The ocean did not overturn, nor did the ships sink, but the aftershocks reached far away.
The ice sheet Hines Oran had created was torn apart again, inch by inch. Even though he was not the main target, the ripples from those blows shattered the frozen surface into pieces and exposed the churning sea beneath.
On the other side, the six did not back down.
"You think the two of you can stop us?"
"Do not get ahead of yourselves!"
"I ruled this world before you were even born!"
"Ants trying to shake a tree."
"…"
Bolts of black-red lightning shot skyward and swallowed the heavens.
Not every Elder could use advanced Conqueror's coating, but at that level, what they could not do alone they could still achieve together. They refused to believe that six of them would lose to two pirates.
Boom.
A thunderous crash shook the sky from the point where the attacks collided. Winds compressed by raw power exploded outwards, spreading across the entire battlefield so everyone could taste what a true top tier fight meant.
That first exchange marked the moment when all eight fighters truly began to go all in.
Of the Five Elders, Topman Warcury, whose defense was the strongest, charged first. He was one of the two strongest of the five.
"Rooooooar!"
His roar erupted alongside his Conqueror's Haki, turning it into a solid shockwave that crashed down on Rocks and Newgate. At the same moment, Izanbaron V. Nasujuro, in a half-human bone-horse form, and Fegarland Lucas drew their blades and attacked Rocks from the flank.
On the other side, a huge sandworm wrapped in black smoke surged forward, and on either side of it rushed the hybrid forms of Jaygarcia Saturn and Fegarland Claude.
Six of the World Government's top fighters attacking together. Even Magnus would have to risk everything to withstand that sort of assault.
Rocks and Newgate, though, were two men.
They split the pressure and trusted each other with their backs.
Almost no top fighter possessed that kind of mutual trust.
Most relied on Observation Haki to sync with allies, reading each other's intentions and moving together.
Rocks and Newgate were different. Their cooperation was built on trust first and Haki second.
In the past, that had never existed among top pirates.
No matter when or where, they always kept a thread of suspicion reserved for their backs. Even the six fighting side by side now feared that if Rocks and Newgate went mad, they might drag one of them to the grave.
Immortality could withstand one or two hits infused with Conqueror's Haki.
Too many, and you still died.
They were on the same side, but each was guarding his own interests.
"The old man was right. You really are the scum of the world, the parasites of nations, the trash of society. You cannot even trust the people next to you. How are you supposed to beat us like that?"
Rocks's sword clashed with Nasujuro's blade and Lucas's sword. A gigantic boar, Topman Warcury in full beast form, bore down on his flank.
Rocks only sneered.
After trading one blow with Nasujuro and Lucas, he twisted and moved, turning to meet Newgate's enemies instead.
If they had been fighting alone, the moment after unleashing such a strike would have left them drained, perfect targets for the enemy.
But two fighters working together could cover that opening for each other.
In the next heartbeat, it was Newgate bracing his naginata against the boar's charge, while Rocks dove into close combat with Saturn and Claude.
Shepherd Ju Peter, the sandworm, had already been smashed through the deck by Newgate's first clash with him. Only the Adam wood hull kept the ship from exploding completely under that hit.
If it had, no one on their side would have shed a tear.
It was Imu's flagship.
On the other hand, just one ship away, on the Millennium Falcon, the current flagship of the White Wolf Pirates, Linlin looked like she might cry as she watched the damage.
"You two bastards!"
In this case "thrown" meant slammed off the Millennium Falcon onto Ortega's flagship. Ortega and Stephens dragged themselves up from the shattered deck and stared at Linlin in fear.
Their efforts had done nothing.
As a peak practitioner of Armament Haki, Ortega had never before faced an enemy who completely shrugged off his blows.
She only looked like a slightly oversize teenage girl.
Young Linlin.
But every time their fists met, Ortega felt as if his hands were about to snap.
If not for the regenerative power of his undying body, and the fact that a Mythical Zoan user like Stephens was also there to share the beating, he doubted he would have lasted this long.
If they wanted to suppress this girl, two of them were not enough. They would need at least three.
And even if he looked around for help…
Where would the World Government find any spare hands?
The intensity of the fight on the Elder's front line had far surpassed his expectations. He had thought six top fighters would easily crush Rocks and Newgate.
Instead, their teamwork had given the pirates a greater-than-double effect, while the six on their own side struggled to mesh. Split up, they could have pressed the pirates back. Together, they had been dragged into a fifty-fifty brawl.
The battle in the sky was not much better.
The titanic demon Imu had summoned, plus Mars, Marcus Maz in his bird-snake form, were only barely managing to hold Harald in his Azure Dragon state back.
The only flying Elder was mentally cursing non-stop.
Why did everyone else get to gang up on their opponents?
Why was he the one getting ganged up on?
Imu's demon was stronger than a standard admiral level fighter, and combined with Maz it caused Harald real trouble.
But it was still only trouble.
When he saw the tides turning against the World Government, Harald sometimes simply took the hit from both enemies and then lowered his head to spit dragonfire down at the battlefield.
To him, it was just spit.
To the fighters scrambling across the cracking ice below, it was fire from the heavens, burning everything it touched.
The gap between the very top and the common soldier was like that between gods and mortals.
Calling this war a battle between gods was no exaggeration.
For the White Wolf Pirates, it was more than that.
It was the battle to butcher the Celestial Dragons, to trample those who called themselves "gods" underfoot.
The tide had turned.
In the past, every battle had seen the White Wolf Pirates at a disadvantage. Magnus had always had to fight several foes alone, holding back the majority of the enemy's top forces so his side had any hope of winning.
Time had changed everything.
At the very top, Magnus's side now held the advantage.
High above, the wind howled.
Both Imu and Magnus could survey the entire war through their Observation Haki.
The situation favored Magnus across the board.
He looked at Imu and smiled.
"Imu, if you have any trump cards left, go ahead and use them."
"Otherwise…"
"By the time you lose to me, you will not get the chance."
(End of Chapter)
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