The tension inside the cavernous throne room was no longer quiet.
It settled inside the lungs like ash, thick with the smell of spilled mead, fractured stone, and the sharp bite of Haki gathering in the air.
Prince Loki remained seated upon the cracked bench of petrified oak, his colossal body trembling with barely restrained fury. His hands tightened around the armrests until the ancient wood groaned beneath his fingers. Each fist was large enough to close around Giovanni's entire body and leave nothing visible between his knuckles.
Far below him, standing near the towering wall of Loki's boot, Giovanni did not move.
"Blood gave you a famous name and a seat above everyone else," Giovanni said. His voice was low, yet it carried through the vast chamber without effort. "It placed a crown on your head before you were old enough to understand what one meant."
For an instant, his gaze lowered toward the bandages around his shoulder.
He understood more about inherited names than Loki could possibly know. In his first life, names had meant reputation, fear, and the expectations of the people around him. In this world, bloodlines carried even greater weight. The letter D., Roger's sword and the future he remembered had all shaped how others looked at him before they understood the man beneath them.
But Giovanni had never believed inheritance was enough.
A title could open a door.
It could not decide who deserved to stand beyond it.
"Royal blood does not give a crown weight," he continued, looking up toward Loki's furious face. "The people beneath it do."
Loki's lips pulled back from his teeth.
"You know nothing about what I carry, pirate."
"I know you do not earn respect by demanding it."
Giovanni's words remained cold and direct.
"The weight comes from every person who sleeps safely because you stood between them and danger. It comes from being the first wall the enemy reaches, not the fool who opens the gate because no one is looking at him."
A low growl rolled through Loki's chest.
"You speak as though you know what a king should be."
"I have met men without crowns who carried more authority than entire kingdoms."
Giovanni had seen Roger's legacy shape an age long after his execution. He had watched Whitebeard command loyalty without demanding worship and had followed Shanks because the man treated freedom as something shared rather than hoarded.
Loki possessed blood, strength, and a title.
None of those made him a king.
"Someone who risks children because he cannot bear being ignored is not a rebel," Giovanni said. "He is not a god, and he is not some tragic hero everyone else failed to understand."
Loki's eyes widened slightly.
Giovanni delivered the final words without raising his voice.
"You are a pathetic child."
The remaining restraint inside Loki shattered.
"WRRRAAAAAAGH!"
His roar struck the throne room like thunder.
Conqueror's Haki erupted from his colossal body in every direction. Jagged streaks of black and crimson lightning ripped through the air, scorching the floor and splitting the nearest pillars. The pressure slammed into the chamber walls with enough force to send fractures racing through the stone.
Ancient roots groaned behind the rock.
The attendants surrounding Loki never had a chance to resist. The wave struck their minds like a falling fortress. Giant bodies collapsed across the furs and overturned barrels, iron mugs spilling from lifeless hands as every one of them lost consciousness.
The petrified-oak bench split beneath Loki with a deafening crack.
Giovanni's body moved before conscious thought could catch up.
His own Conqueror's Haki answered.
The two sovereign wills collided between giant and human.
BOOM!
The stone floor burst apart in a wide ring around Giovanni. Dust and loose rubble were driven outward, while black lightning tore through the empty space between him and Loki without either man touching.
Loki's raw Haki was immense. The sheer weight of his spirit filled the cavern like a flood, strengthened by his monstrous giant body and years of rage that had never learned where to go.
But it lacked discipline.
His will crashed outward in every direction, striking walls, furniture, attendants, and anything else unfortunate enough to exist near him.
Giovanni's Haki was smaller in reach but far denser. He held it around himself like a sharpened shell, refusing to waste power on the unconscious giants scattered throughout the hall.
"LOKI! GIOVANNI! ENOUGH!"
Ida's voice thundered across the chamber.
She stepped between the shattered doorway and the spreading clash, raising the Great Ladle in both hands. Her expression held no fear of either Conqueror. There was only furious disappointment.
Neither man listened.
Loki's humiliation had carried him beyond reason. He reached for the greatsword leaning beside his broken seat and wrapped one massive hand around its hilt.
The blade rose with him.
To Giovanni, the weapon was not merely a sword. It was a wall of forged steel, wider than a house and long enough to stretch across much of the hall. The edge alone towered over him, while Loki's hand enclosed a hilt larger than the prison cell he had escaped.
"I WILL CRUSH YOU!"
Loki brought the blade down.
The air screamed beneath its weight. Wind pressure struck Giovanni before the steel arrived, tearing loose stones from the floor and driving them through the chamber like thrown shot.
A direct contest of strength would have been idiotic.
Giovanni was powerful enough to fight giants, but he was still human-sized. He could not plant his feet beneath a weapon weighing many times more than his entire body and pretend physical mass meant nothing.
Strength was not always stopping an attack.
Sometimes it was deciding where that strength would go.
Ace cleared its sheath.
Giovanni stepped toward the descending weapon rather than away from it. Sky Walk compressed beneath one foot for a fraction of a second, carrying him closer to the point where Loki's swing had committed most completely.
Advanced Armament spread across Ace.
The Supreme Grade cutlass met the side of Loki's greatsword rather than its edge.
CLANG!
The collision shook Giovanni's arms to the shoulder. The difference in mass was monstrous, but he did not try to hold it. He turned his wrists, shifted his body through the Davy footwork Renji's notebook had drilled into him, and guided the descending steel past himself.
The adjustment was small.
Against a weapon that size, it was enough.
Loki's blade passed beside Giovanni and smashed into the throne-room floor.
KABOOM!
Bedrock exploded.
The sword carved a vast trench through the centre of the hall, splitting stone, overturned furniture, and the remains of Loki's broken bench. A wall of debris surged upward, briefly hiding both combatants behind a storm of dust.
Before the prince could wrench it free, a light step touched the steel.
Giovanni landed on the flat spine of the embedded sword.
Against the immense weapon, he looked almost impossibly small. A lone human standing on a road of dark metal. Loki's fingers wrapped around the distant hilt like pillars, while his face loomed high above through the dust.
Giovanni held Ace loosely at his side.
A narrow thread of black lightning moved along its edge.
Loki stared at him, his breath coming in furious gusts that whipped Giovanni's coat around his legs.
"I AM PRINCE LOKI OF ELBAF!" he roared. "I WILL MAKE YOU KNEEL BEFORE ME!"
Giovanni looked up at the colossal prince.
Then he smiled.
It was not warm or amused. It was the sharp smile of a man who had spent his life challenging monsters far larger than himself and had never once believed height decided who stood above whom.
He lowered Ace slightly.
"Then earn it."
---
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