Reality proved that once Rocks and Newgate joined forces against the four Five Elders and the Fegarland father and son, the World Government's top combat power had basically been completely tied down by the White Wolf Alliance.
There was even plenty of strength to spare.
"Gyagyagyagya, looks like we do not need to team up this time,"
"Gababababa, then we will just start by dealing with those demonized samurai."
Dorry and Brogy laughed as they spoke.
In past battles they had always needed to fight shoulder to shoulder, clashing head on with the World Government's top fighters in order to ease the pressure on the White Wolf Pirates.
This time, they did not.
Without anyone noticing when it had happened, Magnus's crewmates had already grown to the point where they could fight admirals one on one, even surpassing ordinary admiral level power.
At the Battle of Acropolis Port, the only one who had reached admiral level was Rocks, and he had only arrived near the end.
Now, Magnus's admiral level subordinates were far from just one or two.
"Good thing Magnus came to help when the World Government invaded Elbaf ten years ago. Otherwise we would have turned into monsters like those samurai, right?"
"Ten years? Was it not nine?"
"Same thing. It was not that long ago anyway."
"…"
The number of Elbaf giants who had joined this war was actually not large, barely ten thousand. But those ten thousand giant warriors were worth more than the so called million "elite" soldiers from the member nations.
Of course, such powerful giants were not sent against fodder. Their opponents were the demonized samurai, the unfortunate men controlled by Imu.
It was precisely after seeing the fate of those samurai that the giants felt truly glad their relationship with Magnus had always been good.
Nine years ago, in the Battle of Elbaf, Magnus had not had a single strong subordinate at his side, only himself, and he had still risked his life to come to their aid.
That kind of favor was why, when they heard about this war, the giants volunteered at once and insisted on fighting for him.
Nine years was not short. For giants, though, it was something that had happened "not too long ago".
The samurai of Wano had not been so lucky.
They had entered Imu's sight at exactly the wrong time, when Magnus and the World Government were already enemies. Their closed country policy meant that when the Knights of God came, there had been no outside help at all. The gates of Wano had been shattered with ease.
At least Elbaf had Harald.
The great swordsman Ryuma of Wano had died countless years before.
In truth, while the giants' battle prowess was no weaker than that of the demonized samurai, they still had no real way to deal with immortality. To break the undying curse, you needed at minimum top grade Conqueror's Haki or extremely advanced Armament Haki. Even then, the latter could only suppress it, not erase it once and for all.
But the giants were still confident.
Because when Magnus and Tsuru had gone over the battle plan, they had thought about those twenty thousand demonized samurai from the very start. If they were not handled, that undead corps alone could very well flip the entire battlefield.
Dealing with them was, in fact, very simple.
Vmmmmm.
Magnus's Conqueror's Haki exploded between the giants and the demonized samurai. Black and red lightning swept over the ships bearing the giants and the Wano warriors, forcibly knocking the transformed samurai back to their original state.
Even Imu could not contract twenty thousand samurai in one go. That was the real reason they had not joined the battle from the beginning.
Magnus had not sealed only one charge of Conqueror's Haki for the giants.
As a result, for several minutes, his Conqueror's Haki crashed again and again over the Wano troops, each wave stripping more of them of their demonized forms.
From twenty thousand to eighteen thousand, sixteen thousand…
In less than five minutes, only a little fewer than five hundred remained in full demonic form, and they were all the strongest samurai.
The rest, now back to normal, stared blankly at their surroundings, completely lost.
To them, their memories had simply stopped at the moment Imu transformed them.
Several years had passed since Wano had been invaded. In their minds, all those years were completely blank.
Until cries of grief and shock began to ring out.
"Father!"
"Uncle Yuji!"
"Lord Jiro!"
"…"
Seeing their restored elders and uncles, many Wano warriors could not help shouting their names. They had believed that those taken by the World Government would never return to normal.
Yet Magnus's Conqueror's Haki had broken the demonic curse.
Of course, it was not perfect.
Sealed Haki or not, even Conqueror's could only go so far. It could undo many bonds, but not all of them.
Magnus had simply given the giants enough charges to make it work.
That was as far as it could go.
Conqueror's Haki repelled itself. Even if every charge had come from Magnus, sealing too many into a single place would cause them to push against each other. If he had tried to store ten or more charges in one spot, a moment of carelessness might have blown Sphinx itself into the sky.
Literally into the sky.
At that level, high grade Conqueror's Haki could already affect the physical world.
And these were Magnus's sealed charges.
After a dozen blasts, they had not fully undone the demonization, but the number of transformed warriors left on the field was tiny.
The giants could easily finish the job.
Beyond Elbaf and Wano, the third most dangerous corps on the battlefield in terms of overall strength was naturally Fishman Island's army.
One hundred thousand fishmen cut back and forth through the waves, turning the World Government's rear fleet into chaos.
On the sea, the fishmen did not need to meet the enemy head on at all. All they had to do was break the ships. Once the hulls were torn apart, the joined forces' soldiers would fall into the water in droves, ready to be butchered.
The king of Fishman Island had agonized for a long time over whether they should join the war. This was not some simple trade route dispute, but a battle that could decide the fate of their entire kingdom.
If Magnus lost, Fishman Island would never know peace again.
On the other hand…
Without Magnus, relations between Fishman Island and the humans above would never have eased at all. As it was, things had improved slightly with a handful of human factions.
Even that small change was unprecedented progress.
In the end, he had been persuaded by a young fishman, who had already become the spokesperson for a trading company despite his age.
That little fishman had said that their relationship with the World Government's humans was already terrible. Since things were already so bad, how much worse could it really get?
The sea was their natural shield.
No matter how much humans hated them, only a small portion dared risk everything to hunt merfolk.
As long as the World Government existed, those people would never vanish.
Since that was the case…
Why not fully side with Magnus?
Stretching out your neck and shrinking it back, the executioner's blade would fall all the same.
If they won this gamble, Fishman Island would usher in a new age of peace with humanity. If they lost, things would simply go back to how they had always been.
If Magnus fell, they would end up where they started anyway.
They had never really had a choice.
The king of Fishman Island had been convinced.
That was why a hundred thousand fishman soldiers had gone to war. Most were street punks from the Fishman District, and if you looked closely you could see plenty of merfolk in the ranks as well.
A fishman's physical strength was ten times that of a human.
But in the water, merfolk were even faster and more agile than fishmen.
The instant they appeared…
They smashed dozens of World Government ships, sending tens of thousands of Marines and member nation soldiers into the sea.
On land, those Marines might have traded a few blows with the fishmen. In the sea, no matter how well a human swam, they had no chance against a fishman of equal level.
"Damn those fishmen."
"Wasn't Fishman Island a member nation? Why are they helping the White Wolf Pirates?"
"What member nation? They pulled out of the alliance when Magnus founded the White Wolf Alliance. Traitors, the lot of them."
"…"
Many Marines who did not know the whole story cursed as they fought, treating Fishman Island as backstabbers. But in the eyes of most fishmen…
The World Government had never treated them as their own in the first place.
So what betrayal?
In the sea, the destruction the fishmen caused surpassed anything anyone had imagined. There were plenty of strong fighters among the Marines and member nations, but the fishmen made no attempt to fight those people directly. They smashed the ships first, then hunted those who fell.
One hundred thousand fishmen pinned down nearly a million troops in the rear.
They forced Hines Oran to turn back.
As this era's Ice-Ice Fruit user, he had poured ninety percent of his strength into his Devil Fruit. He had long since developed it to the very limit.
"Ice Age."
In an instant, ice covered more than ten kilometers of sea, freezing countless unfortunate fishmen where they swam.
But the price of splitting his focus was a single slash from Tokikazu Amatsuki that severed his arm.
"Relying on immortality to act without fear, are you? You really underestimate an old man like me."
Returned to his younger self by the youth potion, Tokikazu's expression was calm. He might not be able to completely kill Hines Oran, but he had studied how to use Haki to suppress the undying curse.
He was old. Without the potion developed by Stussy he would not even be standing here. His Haki could no longer grow in raw strength, but his skill could.
"Hmph. You think you have already won?"
In his heart, Hines Oran had lost count of how many times he regretted agreeing to the World Draft. But now that he had accepted Imu's power and gained an undying body, there was no road back.
All he could do now was fight to the end and pray his side would be the one left standing.
His Ice Age turned a war of more than two million into a land battle all over again, but not a complete one.
Compared to a real island, the ice sheet Hines had created was not particularly sturdy. It was barely ten meters thick.
In a mortal war, that thickness would have lasted for days with no risk of breaking. Here, though, they were in the middle of the greatest war this world had ever seen. It was not just great pirates and vice admirals. There were fishmen who could punch through the ice as well.
Within minutes of the Ice Age turning the sea to ice, the frozen plain of more than ten kilometers was riddled with craters and fractures.
Even so, there were footholds now.
The giants fought the samurai of Wano, while the current members of the White Wolf Pirates, Ripley and the other veterans, clashed with the Knights of God's regular troops.
"What a lively scene. Garlin, do you think we are going to die here?"
"No."
"Wow, that is some confidence."
"…"
After the Battle of Acropolis Port, the Marines had not been the only ones to see new stars rise. Among the Celestial Dragons, several exceptional talents had come to the front as well.
Most Tenryuubito were trash, but, undeniably, some of them embraced a doctrine of elite education.
The Fegarland family, commanders of the Knights of God, were a prime example.
The young man here was the third generation scion of the Fegarland line.
Fegarland Garlin.
His grandfather was the commander of the Knights of God. His father had once been the vice captain of the same order, before he died at the Battle of Acropolis Port.
"I will wash away Father's shame myself."
Always treating it as a stain, Garlin, barely in his twenties like Roger and Garp, stared with blazing eyes at the remaining members of the White Wolf Pirates.
Yet with all the top level fighters engaged elsewhere, the strongest present on that section of the battlefield, Ripley, did not spare him a glance. In the ranks of the Knights of God, Garlin's aura barely matched that of a great pirate. Among the God Knights, he was obviously at the bottom.
A great pirate in his twenties was impressive among the Celestial Dragons.
To Ripley, who had watched monsters like Rocks and Newgate grow up, it was nothing special.
"Everyone, let us go."
With the admiral class out of reach, it was up to great pirates like Ripley to hold the line. Fortunately, she was not alone.
Magnus's old crew still stood with her.
Roya, Edd, Lily, Dean… even Kureha, supposedly retired, and Sphinx's old goat doctor had been dragged to the front as support, healing the wounded.
"This will be the final battle."
"We cannot drag him down now."
"He is not going to go easy on that woman Imu just because she is pretty, is he?"
"Hey, Lily, have a little faith in your own man."
"The youth potion, huh. It really is something."
"…"
They had weathered storm after storm. Even if the scale of this war exceeded anything they had seen before, in these veteran pirates' eyes, it was no different in essence.
It was still just a battle.
And in the end, the ones who decided victory were not them.
It was Rocks and Newgate's battlefield.
It was the battlefield where Magnus himself fought.
(End of Chapter)
[Check Out My P@treon For +20 Extra Chapters On All My Fanfics!!][[email protected]/euridome]
[Thank You For Your Support!]