Drake quickly came to a halt in front of a certain cabin door because he could hear voices speaking inside.
He might not recognize the other voices, but how could he ever forget Rob Lucci's voice?
Through bits of their conversation, he confirmed that Vivi was inside. Now that he knew everyone's location, Drake had absolutely no reservations left!
"Rob Lucci! No one can save your pathetic life today!" A cold gleam flashed through Drake's eyes, and he vanished on the spot.
[System Mission: Defeat Rob Lucci. Reward: One raffle chance.]
"Pocket Dimension, open!" Drake suddenly materialized in midair. Clawing at the empty air, a black portal manifested above the Marine battleship.
Teleporting onto the deck, Drake grabbed Kuma and tossed him right inside.
"Who goes there?!" The moment Drake appeared, the Marines on the battleship panicked and raised their rifles at him.
In the next microsecond, Drake vanished again.
"Where did he go? Are our eyes playing tricks on us?" A Marine stammered in utter confusion, his mind completely blank.
"What do you mean playing tricks! Someone was clearly just standing there, and Bartholomew Kuma is gone!" a Marine officer bellowed.
Only then did everyone realize that the former Warlord, Bartholomew Kuma, who had been bound to the deck, had truly vanished.
"Look up there!"
Following the direction the man was pointing, the crowd suddenly noticed that people had appeared in midair at some point.
And it wasn't just one person!
"Aren't those the revolutionaries we captured earlier?" The Marines stared with wide eyes, their faces filled with absolute disbelief.
Floating in the air were Drake and the prisoners he had just rescued—Karasu, Lindbergh, and the others.
Under the watchful eyes of the crowd, Drake shoved the three of them into the entrance of his pocket dimension.
"Look! That man just pushed the two Revolutionary Army captains and Jewelry Bonney of the Worst Generation into that black hole!"
"What... what on earth is that..." The Marines were shocked beyond measure.
"I remember that man... He's the God of War, Vale D. Drake!" a Marine said, his voice trembling as he pointed at Drake in the sky.
"What?! The newly appointed Emperor? One of the Legendary Four Brothers?"
"Yes! It's him! Why is he here?!"
Right before their eyes, Drake moved. Clenching his right fist, a brilliant, pale white light materialized around it.
"What is he doing?!" The Marines' hearts raced as a dark shadow of dread loomed over their minds.
"I have a bad feeling about this..."
Drake threw a downward punch from the sky.
BOOM!
The monumental shockwave sundered the air, directly blasting a colossal crater into the sea and violently warping the hull of the battleship.
CRACK! SNAP!
The structural beams of the battleship began to snap continuously. As the sea violently surged inward, the Marines watched with wide eyes, completely powerless to stop it.
The power gap was simply too astronomical.
This was not a force that standard humans could ever possess. Aside from the Admirals, no one among them could withstand it!
"Hold the line!!" frantic, desperate shouts echoed across the buckling deck.
"Brace yourselves, quickly!"
A short distance away on the sea, Luffy and the others stood on the Going Guard, watching the spectacular display with highly amused expressions.
"Whoa! Drake has started the party!" Luffy shielded his eyes with one hand, looking out at the battleship as it was hammered into the sea. "Since Drake has made his move, Vivi and the others should be safe by now. Let's go!"
Sabo's fire wings erupted into motion, and Luffy unleashed his Gear 4. The two of them rocketed into the sky simultaneously.
Zoro, Bepo, and Jinbe activated their flight packs, turning into three streaks of brilliant light across the horizon.
Sanji kicked the air, moving as swiftly as if he were running on solid ground. Beside him, Kenshin was enveloped in crackling lightning, crossing vast distances in the air with each flashing stride.
In an instant, the seven of them turned into beams of light, piercing through layers of clouds as they charged toward the battleship.
Inside the ship, the moment Lucci felt the violent shuddering of the hull, he rushed straight to Vivi. The other prisoners were irrelevant; his primary strategic objective for this campaign was Vivi alone.
No matter what chaos unfolded outside, he could ignore it, but Vivi could not be lost.
However, everything fell perfectly within Drake's calculations. He had launched that direct assault specifically to draw Lucci's focus.
Though it lasted for only a microsecond, Lucci had indeed frozen in shock just now. In that brief window, Drake had already materialized right in front of Vivi.
Flashing a grin at the charging Lucci, Drake murmured, "Long time no see... old friend..."
"What?!" Lucci abruptly halted his advance, his eyes widening in shock. He could not comprehend how Drake could be so fast!
"You look rather shocked to see me," Drake teased. In the blink of an eye, he slid right past Lucci's flank.
BOOM展开!
A heavy punch landed squarely on Lucci's chest.
The impact blasted Lucci clear out of the cabin, sending him flying backward through the walls.
"I'm Luffy's brother. Come with me," Drake said quickly, grabbing Vivi and rushing outside. "Wait inside for a bit. Once we finish cleaning up out here, we'll let you out." With that, Drake placed Vivi safely into his pocket dimension.
Vivi didn't offer a single shred of resistance because... she had just spotted Luffy outside.
"Ngh..." Lucci managed to stabilize his frame on the deck, a thin line of fresh crimson leaking from the corner of his mouth. But the moment he raised his head to assess the situation, he stood completely shell-shocked.
"Impossible!"
The Marines who had populated the deck were scattered everywhere, completely incapacitated, leaving only a few stragglers standing.
BANG!
Sabo clamped his hand around a Marine officer's skull, crushing it instantly before tossing the body onto the deck. The headless corpse rolled right to Lucci's boots.
SHING!
Zoro and Kenshin executed a synchronized lethal slash, fresh blood spraying across the wooden planks.
"You pigeon-bastard!" Luffy suddenly dropped from the sky, throwing a knocked-out Marine Captain to the side. Glaring fiercely at Lucci, he growled, "You actually dared to kidnap Vivi!"
"First it was Robin, and now it's Vivi..." Luffy snapped his eyes up, a lethal crimson light exploding from his gaze. "I am absolutely going to send you flying today!"
"Gum-Gum..."
"With just you?!" Lucci glared back, his eyes burning with fury. When it came to pure combat, he had never feared anyone.
Furthermore, he had traded blows with Luffy not too long ago. If Luffy thought he could defeat him now... ridiculous!
"Shave!" Lucci vanished instantly mid-sentence, materializing directly on Luffy's right flank in a fraction of a breath. Staring at Luffy, who hadn't even initiated a defensive shift, Lucci let out a cold sneer. "Hmph... die!"
"Tempest Kick! N-Ngh..." Just as Lucci went to unleash his kick, he suddenly hacked up a violent mouthful of blood. Before his cognitive systems could even register the displacement, Luffy's fist had already buried itself deep into his torso.
"Impossible!" Lucci's face warped in sheer horror. He had absolutely zero data on how Luffy had moved.
Exactly what variables had initialized this shift?
Evaluating the combat metrics Luffy had displayed during their last engagement, it should have been structurally impossible for him to inflict this caliber of trauma with a single strike.
What terrified him most, however, was the anomalous, unyielding aura currently swirling around Luffy's frame. That presence felt exactly like a ravenous, mythical beast.
The exact microsecond it fully erupted, it would possess more than enough mass to sunder the world itself!
"Gum-Gum Jet Gatling!!" Luffy mobilized the absolute totality of his Conqueror's Haki, his Conqueror's Domain opening to its absolute limit.
The destructive weight behind every single punch literally sundered the atmospheric grid.
Without a single exception, the entire barrage hammered squarely into Lucci's frame. Under the crushing pressure of the fists, distinct, visible indentations fractured Lucci's muscular structure one after another, fresh blood continuously spraying from his lips.
This is catastrophic!
Retreat!
Catching a solitary fraction of a statistical window to survive, Lucci frantically deployed his Moonwalk, launching his battered frame into the upper sky currents.