Chapter 175: Loki Boards the Ship
"Ragnarok!"
"Dragon Ascent!"
Red light and green light, a flood of annihilation and a sky-splitting beam, two ultimate powers representing their respective peaks slammed together without any ornament or flourish.
For a heartbeat, heaven and earth changed color. Time itself seemed to freeze.
Boom.
Words could not capture the terror of the explosion that followed. It was the only thing that existed.
All of Fluffy Island convulsed. Rock and earth caught in the fallout melted away like snow under the noonday sun, crumbling into drifting powder.
The sea was forced back by brute force, surging away from the epicenter and baring the soaked seabed beneath.
Then, titanic waves rose, each higher than the last, mountain ranges of water racing outward from the collision point in every direction.
"T-tsunami!"
Chopper's eyes filled with tears as he bolted back and forth across the deck, hooves thudding frantically on the planks.
"Don't worry. Leave it to me!"
Yamato thumped her chest once and leaped off the prow into the air.
"Namuji Glacier Fang!"
A cone of killing cold roared from her mouth, sweeping out in a wide fan.
Where the frost passed, the charging super-waves froze solid. The onrushing sea congealed at a speed visible to the naked eye.
In barely ten seconds, a cliff of ice, towering like a wall of mountains and gleaming with cold light, stood before Rayquaza.
On Chiffon's side, things went much worse.
"Full speed! Get us out of here!"
Her face had gone pale as paper as she shouted the order.
Human effort was tiny in the face of heaven's wrath.
Before the ships could even turn, the sky-blackening wall of water came down on them like the palm of a furious god.
The shriek of shattering wood blended into one continuous scream. In an instant, the entire convoy was smashed to pieces.
…
On Fluffy Island itself, the last exchange had rewritten the map.
The original surface had been sheared down tens of meters into a massive, bowl-shaped crater.
Fluffy Island could rename itself Ramen Island.
In the center of the pit, Kai looked far from pristine. His clothes were ripped in several places, his body smeared in dust, like a vagabond dragged through a warzone.
But his eyes burned, and a huge, unrestrained grin split his face, full of deep satisfaction.
How could he not be pleased?
The enemy lay broken.
Loki's unconscious body sprawled not far away like a discarded doll, covered in wounds, blood soaking the ground beneath him.
If not for the faint rise and fall of his chest, anyone would have taken him for a corpse.
Kai walked over step by step, caught Loki by the scruff of his neck with one hand, and wrapped the other around the fallen warhammer Iron Thunder—symbol of Elbaf's royal authority.
Zzzt.
The instant his fingers touched the haft, Iron Thunder shrieked like a million birds taking off at once.
Wild blue lightning exploded from the metal, hurling itself at Kai's hand in a frenzy, trying to turn him to charcoal.
"Interesting. You even copied Mjolnir's 'chooses its master' gimmick?"
Instead of flinching, Kai laughed. His grip did not waver.
This level of lightning did not even qualify as a decent muscle relaxer.
He tightened his fingers just a little. The legendary hammer, more than ten times bigger than his whole body, scraped and shifted as he dragged it upright by brute force.
Kai hauled one giant and one hammer toward the sea.
When he reached the shore, Rayquaza was already shattering the remaining ice and cutting in to pick him up, the crew having rushed over the moment they sensed the fight end.
"The whole island's shape is different now."
From the rail, the crew stared at the battlefield—a chunk of land scooped out like it had been eaten by a god with a spoon—and swallowed hard, awe and fear written all over their faces.
"Incredible, Kai!"
"You're unbeatable!"
Everyone shouted their admiration in their own way.
"Of course. I am your captain," Kai said with an easy smile. "Tie this guy up in Sea Prism Stone chains first."
"Yes, Kai-sama!"
The gazes fixed on him were burning now, close to worship.
As expected of Kai-sama. Even a monster like that had fallen to him.
While the Beasts crew wrapped coil after coil of Sea Prism Stone around the unconscious Loki, something changed.
His eyelids twitched.
Hm?
Kai noticed at once, mildly surprised.
That tough?
Awake already?
"Ugh…"
A wave of weakness like nothing he had ever felt rolled through Loki's body, swallowing him whole. He forced his eyes open.
The first thing he saw once his vision focused was a handful of annoying little insects staring at him.
No, wait.
Why could he see them directly?
Where were the bandages?
A clear voice cut into his spiraling thoughts.
"Kai, his eyes are so…"
Yamato pointed at Loki, stopping halfway through.
So what? Hideous? Evil? Disgusting?
Hmph.
In an instant, Loki mentally ran through every description he had ever heard, all soaked in revulsion and fear.
He snorted inside and prepared to shut his eyes again. If he could not see them, he would not have to care.
But Yamato blinked and finished, utterly guileless. "So cool."
…What?
Loki's eyes snapped open again. Instead of joy, the compliment hit him like someone stepping on a cat's tail.
"What kind of eyesight is that? These cursed eyes have nothing to do with 'cool'!"
Yamato flinched at the shout, then tilted her head and pointed at his face again, genuinely puzzled. "But they are cool."
Loki choked on his words.
Watching his stunned expression, like his entire worldview had just cracked, Kai quietly chuckled from the side.
So this was what they meant by a straight ball cracking a tsundere.
Yamato glanced around at the others. "I'm wrong?"
"They're unusual, but I wouldn't call them ugly," Reiju said calmly, shaking her head.
"Right. I think they're full of mystery. Very interesting," Hiyori added softly, her eyes warm.
"They're one of a kind. Super cool," Bonney said, hands sketching big circles. "I wish I had eyes like that."
"It's just a different color and shape. No big deal. I thought you wore bandages because you were blind," Ace said with a shrug.
They all chimed in—curious, impressed, or simply unimpressed by the supposed "curse."
Loki braced himself for the sting he knew too well and found… nothing.
No disgust. No fear. No whispered "demon eyes."
He had carried this pair of "devil eyes" his whole life, bearing isolation and malice because of them.
Now, by some twisted joke, the first people to neither fear nor hate them, even to praise them… were his enemies.
The irony nearly broke his brain.
In the end, he could not help himself. He opened the eyes he despised one more time.
"You idiots have no idea what these eyes represent," Loki spat, turning his head aside. "You don't know the terror behind them."
His tone was full of complex, tangled emotion—anger at being "accepted" by enemies, and a flicker of something he refused to name.
Kai only smiled like it all made sense. "Demon eyes, right? Your mother threw you away the moment you were born because of those eyes."
To be fair, Loki's yellow, slit-pupiled eyes were unsettling at first glance. But you got used to them.
As far as Kai was concerned, Loki was just born into the wrong world.
In his last life, people would have killed for such a unique pair of eyes. He could have paid for a Cullinan with the livestream revenue alone.
White hair and odd eyes used to be unlucky omens. In an age of streaming, they were a natural two-dimensional protagonist build.
Hearing Kai lay out his past like a file report, Loki flinched.
"How do you know that?"
Then he latched onto the most obvious explanation. "Right. You're Elbaf's king now. Of course, those old fossils would tell you."
Since the only other witness that day was Jarul, who'd lost his memories along with the sword to the head, it was the only thing that made sense.
If Jarul had remembered, Loki would never have had to flee as a patricide.
Kai did not bother to correct him. "Not yet. But I might be able to fix that."
If the sword in Jarul's skull had caused the amnesia, then taking it out was the first step.
And who better for delicate cranial work than someone with the Ope Ope no Mi? If that was not enough, throw the Heal-Heal Fruit in on top. Between the two, there was no way they could not fix one old giant.
Seeing Loki still wavering, Kai dropped the real hook. "Loki, you haven't realized it, have you? You weren't born in the wrong era. You were born at exactly the right time."
One sentence dragged Loki back decades.
Back when he'd begged to join the Rocks Pirates and been sneered at and turned away as "too young."
He snapped out of the memory and looked at the man in front of him—just as arrogant and wild as Rocks had been. "You think you're Rocks? He was a lot stronger than you."
"Rocks? No. I've never wanted to be a second Rocks. He lost."
Kai spread his arms, presence crashing outward, as if he meant to embrace the whole world. "I've only ever wanted to be Kai. The one and only Kai."
Sunlight speared through the clouds at that moment, laying a golden halo over him.
Loki dropped his gaze, silent for a long time.
Was this truly the best moment to throw himself into the rushing tide of fate?
Had the era capable of overturning everything finally arrived?
The man in front of him had beaten him fair and square. Would he become the next Rocks?
No. He would not be Rocks.
He would be Kai.
When Loki raised his head again, the confusion and conflict were gone. Only bedrock resolve remained. "If you can't make my dream come true, I'll walk away any time I like."
As long as he could destroy the world and fulfill his destiny, what did it matter whose ship he sailed on?
Kai's smile sharpened. "Deal."
"…"
The crew's eyes nearly fell out of their heads.
He really pulled Loki aboard.
"Hold on. Where are we supposed to put him?" Viola blurted, pointing at Loki's enormous frame.
The giant was at least sixty or seventy meters tall. Lying down, he was almost as long as Rayquaza herself.
His old raft had been completely obliterated in the storm of their battle; there was not even a decent plank left.
"That part…"
Kai smiled and turned to Hiyori. "Depends on you, Hiyori."
"Eh? Me?"
She pointed at herself, startled, then realized he meant her flame cloud ability.
"Have your clouds carry him for now. Later, we'll whip up a temporary raft for our new crewmate," Kai said, neat and simple.
Once they got back to Elbaf, the giants' master shipwrights could custom-build a flagship worthy of Loki's status.
"Leave?"
"You ask this old lady first!"
A roar like a demon out of hell crashed over the sea, packed with crushing presence.
Kai followed the sound.
A massively round old woman, nearly nine meters tall, was hurtling toward them on a white cloud, jaws open in a feral snarl.
At her feet, three towering figures stood steady, auras razor-sharp.
Charlotte Linlin had arrived—with Katakuri, Smoothie, and Cracker at her side.