"Garp!"
Still airborne, Sengoku saw the God's Knights and the other Five Elders preparing to descend upon Garp.
There was no time to warn him.
Sengoku transformed in midair, his body swelling into a hundred-meter golden Buddha.
He thrust one enormous palm toward the God's Knights and the Five Elders as a terrifying mass of energy gathered within it.
"Buddha Shockwave!"
A deafening roar rolled through the air.
A colossal wave of golden energy surged toward the God's Knights and Five Elders like a blazing streak across the sky.
"Damn it!"
Sengoku's attack forced them to stop pursuing Garp and turn to defend themselves.
Their combined assault shattered the shock wave in less than three seconds.
But that was enough.
A fierce gale swept past Sengoku from behind and raced toward Luffy high above.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Sonic booms exploded through the sky, leaving the Revolutionary soldiers and World Government troops across Mary Geoise with their ears ringing.
It seemed as though the strongest fighters on both sides had already exchanged countless attacks.
In reality, only a little more than ten seconds had passed.
High in the air, the raging Luffy suddenly fell still.
He stared blankly at the blood mist clinging between his hands, unable to accept what his own eyes had witnessed.
"Why?"
"Why?!"
"My friends died right in front of me… so why can't I feel any sadness?"
"Ha… hahahaha…"
A strange laugh echoed from the sky.
Dragon, who was rapidly ascending toward him, froze for a brief moment.
He stared at Luffy in disbelief.
White flames covered Luffy's entire body, surrounded by clouds of steam produced by the intense heat.
As the leader of the Revolutionary Army, Dragon was remarkably perceptive.
He could see terrible loneliness in Luffy's eyes.
Yet what unsettled him most was that Luffy had opened his mouth wide and was laughing uncontrollably.
Luffy stopped trying to control his body and allowed himself to fall through the air.
One hand clutched his stomach, as though laughing so hard had begun to hurt.
His other hand covered his eyes tightly.
Tears streamed endlessly between his fingers, revealing the unbearable grief his laughter refused to express.
"Luffy!"
Dragon had already reached a position not far from him.
He had hoped calling his name would bring Luffy back to his senses.
Instead, it seemed to trigger another inexplicable change.
Luffy, who had been falling steadily, suddenly flipped through the air and sprang past Dragon into the sky.
He stared at Dragon with an eerie expression.
His gaze resembled that of a creature that had never possessed human emotion.
After studying Dragon for only a few seconds, he turned his attention upward.
Something in the sky seemed far more important to him.
"Hee-hee-hee-hee…"
Both of Luffy's arms stretched violently upward and plunged into the clouds.
The weightless white clouds underwent an unnatural transformation the instant his hands entered them.
Under Luffy's control, they changed shape and rapidly took on the properties of rubber.
As he pulled with both hands, an enormous net slowly spread across the sky, large enough to cover half of Mary Geoise.
"Let's see where you run now."
Luffy hurled the giant net upward.
Above him was the Marine warship from which he and the other members of the Straw Hat crew had been thrown.
The people aboard stared nervously at the enormous net blotting out the sky.
None of them had ever witnessed anything so bizarre.
Only ten minutes earlier, Luffy had been a pirate whose strength had not even reached Commodore level.
Now his power had risen at an unbelievable speed.
The moment he transformed the clouds into a rubber net, they understood that he had reached Devil Fruit awakening.
Even among them, few truly understood what an awakened Devil Fruit was capable of.
Raleigh walked out of the cabin and silently took his place at the bow, his eyes cold.
Nezumi and Cleveland stood quietly behind him.
They believed there was nothing in this world capable of defeating the man before them.
Raleigh let out a soft breath.
"What a troublesome brat. I sent you to fight the World Government, yet somehow you've turned your anger toward us."
As the body covered in white flames drew closer, the warship itself began taking on rubberlike properties.
Raleigh could already feel the hard deck beneath his feet becoming soft and elastic.
"Enough."
His icy gaze fixed upon the figure flying toward him.
Rumble!
For the first time in years, Raleigh truly entered battle.
His Conqueror's Haki swept across the entire sky like a crimson tide.
The clouds surrounding the warship were brutally torn apart and driven away by the overwhelming force.
In an instant, the sky became perfectly clear.
"I can't let you continue rampaging without purpose."
Boom!
Raleigh appeared directly in front of Luffy.
Although the body now completely controlled by Nika's will reacted in time, it was still nowhere near strong enough to withstand Raleigh's fist.
Luffy had only managed to raise both hands toward his chest when Raleigh's iron fist, coated in both Armament Haki and Conqueror's Haki, smashed into Nika's twisted grin.
Bang!
Luffy shot back toward Mary Geoise at three times the speed he had approached.
After sending him flying, Raleigh glanced at his right fist.
The thick layer of Haki covering it had been scorched through by the white flames surrounding Luffy's body. The contact had also begun turning part of his hand into rubber.
To Raleigh, however, it was nothing worth worrying about.
Conqueror's Haki surged from every part of his body and forcibly expelled the effects Luffy had imposed upon him.
Raleigh could not see it with his eyes, but his Observation Haki detected something resembling a separate consciousness.
"Nika? Joy Boy?"
"It doesn't matter anymore."
"Every one of you will die here today."
Boom!
Rather than retreat, Raleigh accelerated forward.
The currents behind him changed violently.
Countless razor-sharp wind blades formed across the sky, slicing through the air with shrill cries that drew everyone's attention.
The God's Knights.
The Five Elders.
Garp.
Sengoku.
All of them stopped and looked upward.
A figure was plummeting toward the ground at tremendous speed, accompanied by a vast swarm of destructive wind blades.
"What is that lunatic trying to do?!"
The Five Elders and God's Knights had focused so completely on the sudden appearance of Joy Boy that they had almost forgotten the truth.
Their greatest enemy was not Luffy.
It was Fleet Admiral Christian Raleigh.
"Get out of the way!"
Both factions ordered their forces to clear Raleigh's attack path.
No one dared allow his assault to land in the middle of their formation. The resulting casualties would be catastrophic.
Rumble!
As Raleigh accelerated, a chain of sonic booms tore through the air.
The chaotic currents created by his passage were transformed through his Devil Fruit ability into even more wind blades.
Garp and Sengoku stood beside Dragon, all three staring solemnly at the figure diving from the sky.
"We can't let him destroy our position and our soldiers."
The three nodded and attacked upward together.
Although Raleigh had knocked Luffy into the Red Line, his presence was steadily growing stronger within their Observation Haki.
For the moment, Garp and Dragon turned all their attention toward Raleigh.
The God's Knights and Five Elders made the same decision.
One after another, they raised their hands and unleashed their attacks into the sky.
Sword beams and shock waves surged upward in an instant.
The world before Raleigh changed constantly.
Even while moving at such extreme speed, his Observation Haki located and locked onto every enemy he intended to defeat.
"So this is where you were hiding."
When Luffy crashed into the Red Line, the Red Hair Pirates had finally witnessed the fulfillment of the ancient prophecy.
Unable to remain hidden any longer, they rushed from their shelter and raced toward the place where Luffy had fallen.
Raleigh naturally detected them.
However, he had no intention of dealing with them yet.
He had something far more important to accomplish.
Just before the attacks from the ground reached him, Raleigh abruptly turned ninety degrees in midair and shot toward a precise location within Mary Geoise.
The Revolutionary Army looked confused when they saw him change targets.
The Five Elders, however, went cold from head to toe.
Their eyes turned bloodshot.
Without hesitation, they activated secret World Government techniques that inflicted tremendous damage upon their own bodies and raced toward Raleigh's target.
"Bastard!"
"Damn you! Stop!"
"How dare you attack that place?!"
Their furious curses had no effect on Raleigh.
His eyes were fixed upon the most mysterious place in Mary Geoise.
The Room of Flowers within Pangaea Castle.
Rumble!
Raleigh reached it before the Five Elders and crashed inside.
At the same time, the wind blades behind him tore everything in the Room of Flowers apart.
The reinforced stone walls, priceless plants, and the enormous straw hat preserved there for centuries were all shredded beneath their cutting force.
Raleigh did not stop at ground level.
His body continued drilling downward through the Room of Flowers.
After breaking through dozens of meters of earth, he entered an enormous underground chamber.
This was the legendary place where the weapons of the Twenty Kings were stored.
It was also the private training ground of Imu, the hidden master of the Celestial Dragons.
With a thunderous impact, Raleigh landed firmly upon a massive stone platform.
He raised his head.
A towering structure of countless steps rose before him, exactly as it had appeared in the original story.
But Imu was no longer merely a shadowy projection.
Imu sat upon the Empty Throne like a true emperor.
A smile appeared on Raleigh's face.
He had achieved his objective.
The reason he had forced Luffy to awaken as Joy Boy was to use him as bait—to confirm whether Imu was truly in Mary Geoise and determine how powerful Imu had become.
The plan had changed considerably.
After Nika's will awakened, Luffy had not immediately turned against the Celestial Dragons.
Raleigh had therefore been forced to act personally and draw Imu out himself.
Now that he had seen Imu, the ending was already decided.
"Mortal, your actions have greatly angered a god."
"You will pay for what you have done."
Even after Raleigh saw Imu's true form, Imu showed no concern.
Imu was already one of the strongest beings in the world—perhaps the strongest of all.
Combined with the power to control the ancient weapon Uranus, Imu had almost no equal.
The only possible opponent was Joy Boy, the Warrior of Liberation whose heart carried the Drums of Liberation.
Raleigh answered with a deeply mocking smile.
"So you're the so-called King of the Void—the god worshiped by the Celestial Dragons, Imu."
"The fact that I've reached you proves you're not an all-powerful god."
"You're nothing more than an exceptionally strong human."
"I'm human, and so are you. Why should I fear someone who spends their life hiding in the shadows?"
Raleigh's ridicule enraged Imu.
No one had spoken to Imu that way in countless years.
Even the Five Elders were merely obedient dogs before the Empty Throne.
In Imu's eyes, no other living creature could be compared to them.
That was why Imu called themself a god—to stand apart from the rest of humanity.
"I don't know whether you're able to leave that Empty Throne," Raleigh continued, "but from this distance, Uranus can no longer deliver a fatal strike against me."
Imu had not transcended humanity completely.
Even Imu could not withstand the full destructive force of an ancient weapon.
No matter how completely Uranus had been mastered, Imu would never dare fire it at Raleigh from such close range.
"Oh? You seem to know a great deal about me."
"Have you come to slay a god so you can become the new one?"
In Imu's understanding, the strongest being in the world was worthy of being called divine.
Anyone who challenged a god could only be doing so because they wished to replace the old god and take that title for themselves.
Raleigh's lips curled into an amused smile.
"A god?"
"Heh."
"I have no desire to become one."
"But I am very interested in hunting one."