Giovanni shot through the exposed roots of Yggdrasil like a cannonball.
Each kick against the air produced a compressed blast behind him, sending dust and loose fragments of stone tumbling through the ruined shafts. He did not carve blindly through the ceiling. Even with Mihawk's presence pulling at every instinct in his body, enough of Gaban's lesson remained for him to recognize the occupied chambers above and the civilians still moving through the Underworld. Instead, he followed the existing ventilation shafts, abandoned transport tunnels, and cracks created during his battle with Loki. It was still reckless. Just not suicidal.
"GIOVANNI!" Ida's furious shout followed him through the cavern. The sound rolled upward through the roots, carrying enough force to make small stones shake loose around him. "You come back here this instant! I have not finished with either of you!"
Giovanni ignored her. His boots struck the air again, BANG! He changed direction sharply, passing through a narrow gap between two enormous roots. The opening was wide enough for giants to use as a maintenance passage, but to Giovanni it felt like a canyon cutting through the heart of the tree.
Mihawk's Haki continued to spread across Elbaf.
Giovanni felt it against the scar running diagonally across his chest. The old wound had healed years ago, but the flesh still remembered the blade that made it. Every pulse of Mihawk's presence brought their first duel back with merciless clarity: the sword descending, his own stance breaking, and the horrifying realization that every technique he had trusted was being read before he finished forming it. He remembered the deck splitting beneath his feet and the taste of blood filling his mouth. He remembered trying to rise while his arms refused to obey him, staring into Mihawk's golden eyes as the swordsman judged him and found him unfinished.
Giovanni's hand tightened around Ace's sheath. For three years, every improvement had carried the shadow of that defeat. Rayleigh's training, the Davy forms, the Future Sight awakened against Katakuri, Advanced Armament, Conqueror's coating, Sky Walk, and every scar collected in battles against monsters who ruled the sea. Even after all of it, one question had remained beneath every victory: 'Would it be enough against him?'
The calm Giovanni had displayed while saving the village began to fracture. His Haki pressed outward in brief, unstable pulses, cracking stone along the edges of the shaft. He immediately dragged it inward again, but the effort was rougher than before. Gaban had taught him how to compress his storm; Mihawk had taught him where that storm was born.
'He came here,' Giovanni thought, another blast beneath his foot driving him higher. 'He crossed Elbaf looking for me.'
A grin spread across his face. It was not the restrained expression he had worn before Loki. It was wild, eager, and uncomfortably close to the reckless young swordsman Mihawk had defeated years earlier. The difference was that Giovanni now understood the flaw. He simply did not care enough to stop.
Below him, Loki stared at the opening Giovanni had disappeared through. For several seconds, the giant prince remained frozen amid the shattered throne room. His broken crown rested somewhere beneath the rubble, his fur cape hung in ribbons from one shoulder, and the side of his ear still burned where Ida had twisted it.
Giovanni had insulted him in front of his followers. He had challenged his strength. He had treated Loki's crown as though it carried no meaning. Yet the instant another warrior's presence touched Elbaf, Giovanni had turned his back and left. No conclusion. No acknowledgment. Not even a final insult. He had simply decided that Loki no longer mattered.
The realization struck the prince far harder than the human's earlier accusations. Black sparks flickered around Loki's clenched fist. "He left."
"Do not," Ida warned, turning toward him.
Loki's sharp eyes lifted toward the broken ceiling. "He walked away from me."
Ida planted the Great Ladle against the floor, the impact shaking the entire chamber. "And you will remain here until we finish discussing the village you nearly destroyed."
Loki looked down at her. The difference in size between them was enormous, but Ida's expression did not change.
"You are not following him," she said.
Loki's jaw tightened. "I was not asking."
He seized his greatsword and dragged it from the trench. The colossal blade tore chunks of bedrock loose as it rose, sending shattered stone crashing through the hall.
"Loki." The warning in Ida's voice would have stopped most people on Elbaf, but Loki was not most people.
He slammed one foot into the damaged wall, and the stone exploded. A giant-sized opening tore through the upper side of the throne room, exposing another network of roots and ancient tunnels. Rather than follow Giovanni through passages too narrow for his frame, Loki created his own route.
"You ungrateful, overgrown—"
Loki launched himself upward before Ida could finish. His tremendous body struck a broad root above the throne room. The ancient wood bowed beneath his weight but did not break. He pushed off it, crossed the open space, and landed upon a stone ledge built into the interior of Yggdrasil.
To a human, the terrain would have been an impossible world of cliffs and suspended islands. To Loki, the great roots and giant-built platforms became stepping-stones. He leaped again, each landing sending tremors through the Underworld. His sword dragged behind him, carving trenches through the larger roots and stone shelves as he climbed.
"I am the prince of Elbaf!" Loki roared into the shafts above. "No human walks away from me for another duel!"
Ida watched him vanish. For one long moment, she said nothing. Then she lifted the Great Ladle with both hands, the expression on her face promising that Loki's punishment had just become far worse.
Heavy footsteps approached from the passage beyond the ruined doors. Gerd entered first, ducking beneath a fractured arch while carrying a medical pack against one hip. Toki followed beside her with Hiyori held close, the small human girl appearing tiny even in comparison with Giovanni, let alone the giants around her. They stopped at the sight of the throne room. The walls cracked, the bench split in half, several of Loki's attendants lying unconscious across the furs, and the floor carved by trenches from weapons large enough to flatten houses.
Hiyori stared upward through the new opening in the ceiling. "Where did Gio go?"
Ida slowly turned toward them. "Headed for another fight."
Gerd's eyes moved over the damage. "And Loki?"
"To make the same decision for a different reason."
The Great Ladle creaked in Ida's grip. Gerd glanced at Toki. "Should we stop her?"
Toki studied Ida's expression. "No."
"Good," Ida said.
Hiyori stepped out from beside her mother and looked at the severed edge of Loki's cape lying beneath the rubble. "Were they fighting?"
"They were," Ida replied.
Hiyori frowned. "Why?"
Ida opened her mouth, then closed it again. Explaining the pride of two Conquerors to a child suddenly seemed more exhausting than fighting either of them.
Hiyori looked between them. "Will Gio lose?"
Toki lowered her gaze to her daughter. She remembered Giovanni's wounds after Wano, his confidence, his promises, and the strange way his knowledge sometimes reached beyond anything he should have known.
"I do not know."
Hiyori absorbed the answer with the seriousness only a child could give it. Then she looked back toward the ceiling. "He will come back."
There was no question in her voice.
Far to the south of Elbaf, the air carried a very different kind of darkness.
Gecko Moria stood aboard his ship as it moved through a narrow channel between the giant cliffs. Fog crawled across the black water, hiding the damaged mast and the shadow bats circling high above the deck.
Several giants' shadows writhed within the stretched darkness at Moria's feet. They belonged to the three woodcutters his men had taken near the southern forest. Their bodies would not survive sunrise without them, but Moria had never considered that his concern. His attention remained on the island.
A flock of shadow bats returned from the east, their wings folding into the darkness around him as they fed impressions into his mind: fractured stone, enormous bodies lying across a ridge, and a spiritual pressure sharp enough to make lesser creatures flee.
Moria's eyes widened. "Dracule Mihawk."
The name left his mouth with none of the confidence he used when boasting before weaker enemies. He knew exactly what Mihawk represented. A swordsman who could end his voyage before Moria finished summoning a shadow.
His first instinct was to turn the ship around. Then another presence moved through the island, hotter and familiar: Norwell D. Giovanni.
Moria's lips twisted. The last time he had seen Giovanni, the young swordsman had been heavily wounded after Wano, exhausted and burdened by the people he was protecting. Even then, taking him had been more difficult than Moria expected. Now the human's Haki had grown monstrous.
Going near him alone would have been idiotic. Going near Mihawk would have been worse. But if the two fought each other...
Moria looked toward the eastern mountains. The elite giants were already down. Giovanni had just escaped imprisonment and fought the pen beasts. Mihawk had crossed the island and defeated the vanguard. If Loki's presence was moving in the same direction, there could soon be three powerful combatants tearing one another apart.
Moria did not need to defeat any of them. He only needed one body to fall unconscious. One shadow from a man like Mihawk or Giovanni could create a zombie beyond anything currently under his command. Even the shadows of the defeated elite giants would be worth the danger if their protectors became distracted.
His fear remained, which was why he would not approach openly. Moria stretched one arm toward the deck, and his shadow separated from his feet, rising into a grinning copy of his body.
"Doppelman."
The shadow double slipped over the railing and vanished into the fog. Moria himself remained near the stern, close to the escape boat.
"Change course," he ordered.
One of his crew members hesitated. "Toward the eastern ridge?"
Moria glared at him. "Not all the way, idiot. We circle beneath it and wait."
The pirate swallowed. "For what?"
Moria grinned. "For someone stronger than us to make a mistake."
The ship turned east. Above it, shadow bats spread across the fog, flying toward the distant clash while Moria kept enough distance to flee the moment either swordsman looked in his direction.
On the eastern side of Elbaf, Giovanni burst from the roots of Yggdrasil.
Moonlight washed over the mountain. The eastern ridge had been destroyed. Deep fractures crossed the plateau, entire shelves of stone had tilted toward the cliffs, and giant weapons lay scattered across the frozen earth. Shields larger than fortresses had been split. Spears had been driven through distant walls. Heavy chains stretched across the broken ground.
Giovanni landed in the centre of the devastation, his boots striking the stone with a sharp crack. Dust rolled away from his coat as he slowly raised his head.
Eleven elite warriors of Elbaf lay across the shattered ridge: Hajrudin, Stansen, Bjorn, Sig, Thormann, Gantonio, D.D. Tee, Rhodes, Raideen, Kiba, and Blyue. All defeated. All alive.
And standing alone beneath the moon, Yoru resting beside him, was the man who had carved the permanent scar across Giovanni's chest.
Dracule Mihawk.
---
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