BOOM!
An earth-shattering burst of Conqueror's Haki exploded from Kai, an invisible tide of will racing across the battlefield.
Centered on him, pressure rippled outward—concentric waves folding the air.
Unparalleled.
Beyond comprehension.
The momentum hit like a mountain falling—an ocean rearing and breaking over men who, a breath ago, thought themselves wolves.
The pirate closest to Kai—thick-necked, grinning—lunged as if the vacant post of the Demon Pirates' Fourth Division Captain were already his.
So close.
So easy.
One grab and—
KRAK—!
The shock struck like a hammer through silk.
Thought vanished before fear could form.
Eyes rolled white; foam flecked lips.
Knees buckled.
Thud.
Dust jumped where he fell; the grin froze into a rictus.
A heartbeat later, it happened everywhere.
The pressure didn't fade—it built, sweeping outward like a storm that had remembered a name.
Every pirate surging toward Kai met the unseen wall.
"Uhh… u—gh…"
Bodies stalled mid-stride.
Eyes widened—then emptied.
Swords slipped from numb fingers and stitched themselves into the dirt.
Men pitched forward into their own shadows.
WHUM—
The wave swallowed a hundred meters in a blink and kept rolling.
Over three thousand pirates were caught in that radius—every single one within reach.
It was wheat meeting the scythe.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
First dozens.
Then hundreds.
Then the sound blurred into a continuous, shuddering rumble as thousands hit the ground.
In seconds, the horde became carpet.
By count, more than ninety-nine percent lay senseless.
Only a handful—barely a dozen—remained upright through will or luck, legs shaking so hard their blades chattered against their scabbards.
Silence welled up—unnatural, complete.
Three thousand men—wiped out in seconds.
"W-What… what just happened?!"
"Th-Three thousand of us… all gone—in an instant?"
"This—this is a nightmare…"
No answer came.
Only the wind crossing a field that breathed like a sleeping giant.
A few survivors tried to retreat and found their knees had other ideas.
One folded, palms to dirt, as if the ground might spare him if he bowed low enough.
Fear flushed greed away, leaving the raw taste of survival.
Meanwhile—
Oren the Demon stood with his officers in the lee of a shattered wall.
The laughter that had come so easily minutes ago had died and not returned.
"T-This… this can't be real," whispered Homa, the first mate and sharpshooter.
"Less than ten seconds…?"
He swallowed and looked to his captain.
"B-Boss… did you see that? What is that power?"
Oren's massive frame trembled.
He hadn't blinked since the first wave.
In his eyes, something old and unwelcome had woken.
"I've seen it," he rasped.
"In the second half of the Grand Line—the New World."
"Saw it once… and ran all the way back here."
"Swore I'd never return to that sea."
"But I never thought I'd see it again—here, today."
He looked across the field at the small boy standing in a clean circle amid a storm's aftermath.
The child's hair stirred.
His face was calm.
The world bent around him.
"That power belongs to the monsters who rule the seas," Oren said, voice dropping until even Homa had to lean in.
"They say only one in a million is born with it…"
Grin and Garson hadn't moved.
Grin's mouth hung open, a word caught behind his teeth.
Garson's fingers dug crescents into the haft of his axe.
Neither stared at the fallen; both watched the boy who had toppled them.
Oren's gaze locked on Kai.
His hands—scar-thick and certain in every other battle he'd fought—shook.
"That power is…"
"Conqueror's Haki."
The name struck like thunder arriving overhead.
Homa's knuckles whitened.
Grin swore softly, as if a smaller word could keep the larger one away.
Garson shifted his stance, bracing for a wave no eye could see.
"No… no way…"
"Could it be… that little brat?"
***
On the Marine line, frost feathered over shattered stone.
Aokiji (Kuzan) stood with hands in his pockets, lids half-lowered.
A breath misted; a collar steamed and refroze.
The admiral didn't move.
"Colonel Miz," he said, voice flat as winter.
"Hold your men."
Miz swallowed, eyes flicking from the sea of bodies to the child at its center.
"Y-Yes, Admiral!"
"Don't crowd him," Aokiji added, gaze narrowing by a fraction.
"Protect the boy."
Ice crystals skittered along the ground in a thin lace, stopping at the edge of the circle around Kai—as if even frost understood where not to tread.
Behind Miz, Marine s who had braced for a desperate push found themselves lowering rifles, the fight stolen by something larger than steel.
Aokiji watched the rings where the will had traveled, as though reading weather on a dead-calm sea.
"Hn," he murmured, almost to himself.
"So that's your answer."
He didn't smile.
But the line steadied.
***
Out in the wreck of a charge, Kai lowered his chin a fraction, as if listening to something only he could hear.
Dust around his boots settled.
The pressure was gone, but the shape of it remained—carved into air and memory alike.
No one moved.
The men who still stood didn't dare.
The men who lay couldn't.
And in that held-breath quiet, even the loudest hearts agreed on a single truth:
The sea had just changed shape.
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