With Edward Newgate's death, the Whitebeard Pirates officially collapsed.
The surviving division commanders were executed one after another, their heads severed without exception.
Whitebeard himself received the same treatment.
Ash acknowledged Whitebeard as a legendary figure, and considering the old man's personality, he truly should never have become a pirate.
Still, admiration and sympathy were two different things.
Ash felt no pity for pirates.
Beyond the four main ships of the Whitebeard Pirates, the fleets belonging to the thirty-eight subordinate pirate crews had also been completely annihilated.
This battle had never been fair from the start.
The Dawn Faction's recruits were not ordinary fighters.
The sixty-seven new members were all Mythical Zoan users with extraordinary potential. In terms of strength, every one of them already possessed combat power comparable to Yonko Commanders, All-Stars, or Whitebeard's division commanders at the very least.
At the very least.
With a lineup like that, wiping out thirty-eight pirate crews was effortless, especially after the veteran Dawn Faction members joined the battle later.
The subordinate crews under Whitebeard simply had no chance.
Dozens of Commander-level fighters led by several monsters standing at Admiral and Emperor level strength had descended upon them.
Losing this badly was inevitable.
Among the thirty-eight pirate captains, most possessed strength roughly equal to Marine Rear Admirals or Vice Admirals.
The stronger ones could even rank among the middle tier of Whitebeard's division commanders.
One of the most impressive was Thunder Lord.
He was a swordsman wielding a famous blade infused with lightning.
In many ways, he resembled Fossa of the Whitebeard Pirates, whose sword burned with flames.
Both men specialized in elemental swordsmanship, though no one would ever know which of them was stronger.
There was also another unexpected figure.
Yuun.
The pirate captain dressed like a warrior monk carried a massive naginata into battle.
To Ash's surprise, Yuun possessed the Cloth-Cloth Fruit, a Paramecia-type Devil Fruit that allowed him to manipulate cloth freely.
He was also one of the few captains capable of aerial combat against the Dawn Faction.
Unfortunately, challenging dozens of Mythical Zoan users in the sky was practically suicide.
Yuun's entrance had been eye-catching.
His death was even more spectacular.
More than thirty elemental attacks struck him simultaneously.
Lightning, flames, wind blades, ice, and explosive energy filled the sky like blooming fireworks.
His body vanished within the violent explosion.
The visual spectacle was honestly impressive.
Ash silently added the Cloth-Cloth Fruit to his growing collection list.
Compared to Yuun, Whitey Bay turned out to be an even bigger surprise.
Ash had originally assumed the "Ice Witch" possessed some kind of ice-related Devil Fruit, possibly even a weaker Logia ability.
Instead, she was simply a skilled swordswoman using a rapier.
The reason she carried the title "Ice Witch" was because her ship was an enormous icebreaker.
That was it.
Even Ash found it ridiculous.
As the Dawn Faction cleaned up the battlefield, more ships continued gathering at the edge of the sea.
Sali's enormous divine beast transformation and the scale of the war had attracted far too much attention.
After some thought, Ash quickly issued orders.
The Wind, Rain, Thunder, and Lightning ability users rose into the sky and unleashed their powers without restraint.
In an instant, violent storms swallowed the surrounding sea.
Towering waves crashed across the ocean.
Thunder roared endlessly while torrential rain poured from the heavens.
Hundreds of miles of ocean transformed into a disaster zone.
Even then, Ash felt it was not enough.
This time, he personally flew into the air instead of assigning Kirk.
Using his Space Ability at maximum output, Ash violently distorted space itself, imitating the terrifying shockwave effect of Whitebeard's Tremor-Tremor Fruit.
Whether it truly matched the original's destructive power did not matter.
The visual impact alone was enough.
Under the combined pressure of natural disasters and "Whitebeard's" lingering power, many opportunistic observers finally hesitated.
Still, only a few actually retreated.
Most remained nearby, hoping to scavenge something after the battle ended.
Ash had no intention of tolerating them.
The elemental users immediately redirected their attacks toward the lurking fleets.
Since they wanted to risk their lives for profit, Ash saw no reason to stop them.
Not long afterward, the battlefield was fully cleared.
Aside from the four primary ships of the Whitebeard Pirates, every remaining pirate vessel was destroyed.
Even small boats and drifting dinghies were burned down and sunk beneath the sea.
Once everything settled, another problem gave Ash a headache.
Impersonation.
The Whitebeard Pirates were much harder to replace than the Beasts Pirates or the Red Hair Pirates.
Kaido's crew had isolated themselves within Wano, while the Red Hair Pirates had only exposed their core members previously.
The Whitebeard Pirates were different.
The thirty-eight subordinate captains were all well-known figures throughout the New World.
If too many suddenly disappeared, countless factions would notice.
Creating replacement Devil Fruits was easy enough.
After eliminating Kaido, Shanks, and now Whitebeard's forces, Ash possessed more than enough stored energy.
Forging hundreds or even thousands of Devil Fruits posed no issue.
The real problem was manpower.
The Three Villages of Skypiea still had many able-bodied young people, but after expanding the Dawn Faction and assigning replacements for the Beasts Pirates and Red Hair Pirates, the available manpower had become limited.
Impersonating Whitebeard's core crew was manageable.
Replacing all thirty-eight subordinate pirate crews as well was impossible.
In the end, Ash chose the simplest solution.
He personally forged three highly recognizable Devil Fruits.
The Tremor-Tremor Fruit.
The Bird-Bird Fruit, Model: Phoenix.
And the Blink-Blink Fruit.
While Sali returned to Skypiea to gather the members of the "New Whitebeard Pirates," Ash used the Dawn's fixed spatial gate to travel to Onigashima.
There, he retrieved the Mythical Zoan user capable of creating drought clones.
Afterward, he headed to the Red Hair Pirates' territory and brought back the fake Lucky Roux.
Over the past several months, the drought clone user had significantly improved his Devil Fruit mastery.
His clone limit had increased from three hundred to nearly eight hundred.
Ash naturally intended to use those clones to replace Whitebeard's subordinate crews.
Five hundred clones were left behind before the Mythical Zoan user returned to Onigashima through the spatial gate.
Then the fake Lucky Roux used bounty posters to alter the appearance of every impersonator.
This included the fake Whitebeard and the replacement division commanders.
Nearby, Dicken, Tsuki, and the others constantly pointed out flaws.
"One is too tall."
"That one's too fat."
"The beard looks wrong."
The entire scene became unexpectedly lively.
Aside from the thirteen clones assigned as division commanders, Ash selected another sixty-seven clones to reinforce the four primary ships, including the Moby Dick.
That brought the total crew size to eighty members.
As for the remaining four hundred twenty clones, Ash planned to distribute them among the most famous subordinate pirate crews under Whitebeard.
That way, the illusion of the Whitebeard Pirates' survival would remain believable to the outside world.
===
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