After returning to the Ark Maxim, Enel restored his condition using the ship's electrical storage system.
In truth, as long as he possessed the physical stamina to generate lightning, he could command the Ark Maxim to fire bolts of electricity.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Lightning strikes capable of annihilating the world shot from the Ark Maxim's hull toward the pirate ships in the harbor.
BOOM!
Each attack triggered violent explosions.
The pirate vessels varied in size, but none of their crews had ever anticipated enemies attacking from the sky.
Therefore, their cannons posed no threat to the Ark Maxim.
Even the pirates' firearms were useless due to Enel's altitude advantage.
"Damn you! Have the guts to come down and fight like a man!"
"I could cut your head off with one swing of my blade!"
Several pirates shouted in provocation.
What answered them wasn't Enel's retort, but terrifying lightning bolts fired from the Ark Maxim.
BOOM!
The pirates who had been shouting moments ago were instantly turned into charred corpses.
Immediately after, the lightning ignited the nearby ammunition stores.
"No!"
The pirates witnessing this scene nearly burst their eyes with rage, screaming in denial as they desperately leaped into the sea, hoping to survive by riding the currents.
Boom-boom-boom!!!
Violent explosions echoed far across the harbor.
The tremendous force tore apart decks and cabins, nearly cutting entire ships in half.
Seawater flooded madly into the vessels, acting like invisible hands dragging them into the abyss.
The pirates fortunate enough to survive the first wave of explosions now faced the even deadlier underwater currents.
Countless pirates who had just surfaced for air were dragged back into the depths by one whirlpool after another.
"Save—save me! I don't want to die!" A young pirate desperately clung to another pirate.
They had been companions who spent every day together, but now, they were competitors on the path of survival.
To prevent being dragged down by the current, the other pirate drew a short knife from his waist.
Without hesitation, he slashed at the young pirate's wrist.
"Go die alone! Don't drag me down with you!"
The young pirate screamed as he was pulled away by a swirling vortex.
The surviving pirate's expression remained unchanged as he swam forward rapidly.
After escaping the whirlpool's range, he luckily found a piece of a broken plank.
"Haha, I told you I wouldn't die here!"
While he had fought with his companion and struggled to grab the plank, the situation in the harbor had undergone earth-shaking changes.
All the pirate ships, large and small, had sunk beneath the waves under the combined assault of Enel and Raleigh.
The harbor was now littered with drifting planks and corpses.
Enel took a deep breath and looked up at the sky.
Unnoticed, a thick layer of clouds had gathered overhead, their danger evident from the occasional lightning flashing within them.
"Raleigh-sama, your ability is truly formidable," Enel couldn't help but marvel.
He had originally thought the Storm Fruit was merely for straightforward attacks, much like his own Rumble-Rumble Fruit, but he never expected Raleigh to wield it with such versatility.
Beyond conventional offensive techniques, Enel discovered Raleigh could coordinate his powers with others' attacks.
For instance, Raleigh could use his Fruit power to gather distant clouds or moisture from the sea surface to form thunderclouds.
Though useless to Raleigh himself, Enel thrived in such conditions, enabling him to unleash even more powerful techniques.
Another example was the Tornado Ice Block, developed jointly with Kuzan during their battle against the Golden Lion.
Though it was their first collaboration, the amplified power was astonishingly immense, giving even the Golden Lion a hard time.
Had the disparity in strength not been so great, Raleigh and Kuzan might have been able to defeat him outright.
From this, it could be inferred that Raleigh and Sakazuki could also join forces, with wind fueling fire.
Similar synergies were possible with other Logia Devil Fruits—except for Borsalino's Glint-Glint Fruit.
"Two Hundred Million Volts: Raigou!"
Since Raleigh had set the stage, Enel naturally wouldn't let it go to waste.
He directly activated his Thunder God form, levitating in mid-air.
Electricity surged in his eyes; his naturally terrifying Observation Haki needed only seconds to mark the positions of every pirate present.
"With the power of thunder, cleanse all sin from this world!"
At this moment, Enel resembled a deity seated high in the heavens, his voice devoid of any emotion.
The thunderclouds above seemed to understand his words, as bolts of lightning emerged from them, striking the sea in the blink of an eye.
Simultaneously, behind Enel, arcs of lightning coalesced into the form of thunderbolt tridents.
Under his control, they precisely targeted the slightly stronger pirates.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The terrifying thunderstorm reached its peak at this moment, countless thunderbolts splitting the air as they descended upon the sea.
The tremendous noise drowned out all the pirates' cries of regret and agony.
"All sin is thoroughly punished at this moment."
In less than half a minute, nearly eighty percent of the pirates in the area had perished.
Countless corpses and dead fish floated on the sea surface, covering it densely.
This gruesome scene didn't halt Enel's assault; his emotionless eyes continued scanning the battlefield below, like an impassive deity carrying out a mission of annihilation.
After a moment, Enel finally ceased his relentless lightning strikes.
His complexion was pale as he weakly returned to the Ark Maxim.
"Raleigh-sama, the mission is complete."
Enel lay sprawled unceremoniously on the deck, grabbing a piece of meat and devouring it ravenously.
However, since he hadn't yet mastered Life Return, eating now was merely to fill his stomach.
Several invisible question marks sprouted above Raleigh's head.
It was hard to imagine how Enel could stomach eating anything in such an environment.
Although Raleigh could also eat on the battlefield, the smell of charred corpses from the lightning strikes below was overwhelmingly pungent.
Seeing Raleigh's disgusted expression, Enel gave an awkward smile.
He put down the meat in his hand and controlled the Ark Maxim to drift away into the distance.
He was simply too exhausted to care about his manners.
In a place unnoticed by Enel, Raleigh stared coldly at a certain spot on the island.
There were several mysterious figures gathered there.
Though their faces couldn't be discerned through Observation Haki, and Raleigh didn't recognize them at all, he could sense an aura of death and a sinister presence emanating from them.
Without needing to ask, Raleigh knew they were CP0 agents.
Only CP0 agents carried those two distinct auras simultaneously.
The aura of death came from their role as assassins, while the sinister presence stemmed from their lifelong existence in the shadows—once you joined CP0, you'd never see the light again.
'It seems my guess was correct.'
'This matter, at its core, is a confrontation between the World Government and the Marines,' Raleigh thought to himself.
In truth, it was quite predictable; when the cunning hare dies, the hound is boiled.
With the fall of Rocks, a world-dominating power, there were no forces left on the seas worth waging large-scale wars against.
To maintain its rule, the World Government had no choice but to target the Marines.
Otherwise, with four veteran admirals and a group of young vice admirals whose strength was no less formidable, the Marines was fully capable of crushing the pirate forces into oblivion.
The World Government's actions weren't hard to understand—what they sought had always been balance.
When the Marines grew strong, they would suppress them; when the Marines weakened, they would suppress the pirates.
---------
Read 40 chapters ahead and support me on patreon.
patreon (.)com/Newbietranslator