Chapter 577: Surprise
The God's Knights.
Katakuri had heard of this organization before. The Charlotte family's intelligence capabilities were never in question.
The legend was that they were formed from the elite among the Celestial Dragons.
Yes — the elite among the Celestial Dragons.
Even after eight hundred years of decay, the Celestial Dragons were not entirely composed of waste. Within that lineage, genuinely exceptional individuals had always existed.
The Five Elders themselves were Celestial Dragons, after all. If the entire group were incompetent, it was hard to imagine how they had managed to rule the world for eight hundred years.
What had begun as nineteen founding families had multiplied across eight centuries until their number could fill a small city. That scale of population was precisely why their existence placed such an enormous burden on the rest of the world. And from a group that size, it was no surprise that remarkable individuals occasionally emerged.
Among those remarkable individuals, the ones with a talent for combat had been deliberately selected and cultivated, then organized into a single body. That was the God's Knights.
Knights formed from those who considered themselves divine, built for the purpose of protecting the supreme existence.
Their secondary function was resolving disputes within Celestial Dragon society itself.
No one outside could judge a Celestial Dragon. That had always been true. A Celestial Dragon could do anything to the outside world without consequence. But internal disputes within the group were a different matter — when both parties were Celestial Dragons, someone had to determine who was right.
The God's Knights served that purpose. They even held the authority to pass judgment on Celestial Dragons.
But more important than any of that was their combat capability.
Celestial Dragons were few in number. Even the exceptional fighters among them would be difficult to compare favorably with the finest warriors the open seas had produced. But the complication was this: the Celestial Dragons ruled the entire world. They commanded the resources of every nation.
The most refined techniques.
The most powerful Devil Fruits.
The most advanced technology.
When all of that was concentrated into a single fighting force, producing what might be the strongest military unit in the world was not so difficult to understand.
Katakuri felt the muscles across his body tighten involuntarily.
Individually, one or two of them were nothing to panic over. But each of them was extraordinary in their own right, and together they constituted something genuinely frightening. The leading figures among them were not below the foremost shield of CP0 — not even close.
This was the God's Knights. This was the Celestial Dragons' ultimate fighting force.
Their strength couldn't quite be said to match the Navy Headquarters at its former peak, but compared to the Revolutionary Army or the NEO Navy as they stood today, they were probably equal — or perhaps slightly beyond.
Add the CP0 to that —
And they might genuinely have surpassed the Navy Headquarters at full strength.
The World Government was a terrifying thing.
"So you are Charlotte Brûlée."
The leader of CP0 — the one known as the foremost shield — stepped deferentially to the side and made way as the two groups converged.
The commander of the God's Knights, a man whose face showed his age, walked to stand before Brûlée.
"— Yes!"
Brûlée was frightened. She kept her head down, not daring to look the man in the eye. She was afraid of giving herself away. She nodded hard once.
"Good. We're counting on you."
The Celestial Dragon raised a hand and clapped her on the shoulder.
Beside her, every muscle in Katakuri's body went rigid.
"The mirror!"
The man turned.
A large mirror was brought forward immediately and placed in front of Brûlée.
"Then let us depart."
The old Celestial Dragon turned back to look at Brûlée once more.
"Yes. Yes, of course."
Brûlée could only nod meekly. Then she stepped straight through the surface of the mirror.
A moment later her head poked back out from inside. "Ready — you can come through now!"
The Celestial Dragons didn't move immediately. The leader looked back toward the CP0 agents standing respectfully to the side.
"Then let us go ahead and clear the path for the lords."
Under the foremost shield's lead, the CP0 agents filed quickly into the mirror and disappeared into the other space.
"Now it's your turn."
The old man tilted his chin slightly toward Katakuri and Mihawk.
Cautious to the last.
Katakuri noted this internally and then stepped through the mirror.
Not that any amount of caution mattered now. The moment they had decided to adopt his suggestion and use Brûlée's ability, everything had already been set in motion.
Mihawk followed with a smile, dragging the still-wrecked Bullet along behind him.
Then Moria.
The remaining members — Pizarro and the others — had no choice but to walk into the mirror under the watchful eyes of the God's Knights surrounding them, cursing Katakuri silently with every step.
Only after every last person had entered did the God's Knights follow their leader through.
In the instant before he stepped inside, the old Celestial Dragon's entire body had tensed, his fists going black with Haki.
But nothing happened.
He stepped into the mirror world and found what greeted him was a strangely dreamlike space — a land blanketed in colors as sweet-looking as candy.
A land, yes. Even though outside this space they had been thousands of feet in the air, the mirror world presented itself as solid ground.
And not simple flat ground. In every direction, warped hills rose up, and twisted peaks blocked out the sky above them.
The old man looked down. Below him, the CP0 agents had already formed up in position, and the hired fighters stood in a disorganized cluster.
"Now then — where are they?"
He asked impatiently.
"Locations and distances in the mirror world correspond to those in the real world." Brûlée answered with careful delicacy.
"Is that so?" The old man nodded. "Then let's move!"
The group broke into a run toward their target bearing.
Pluton's position kept shifting, but the general direction was clear enough. All they needed to do was find a mirror somewhere in this empty expanse.
And indeed, they hadn't gone far before a scattering of light-catching surfaces appeared across the plain ahead.
The old Celestial Dragon's face broke into an eager smile.
But at that exact instant —
"Ice Age!"
"Meteor Volcano!"
"Yasakani no Magatama!"
Three battle cries shattered the silence of the space all at once.
Katakuri's trident had already materialized in his hand. Mihawk's hand had already closed around his blade's grip.
And the Pirate Empress had simply launched herself into the air.
Here's your surprise.