Dear readers,
400 chapters.
It still feels surreal to write that number. What began as a small passion project has grown into something I never could've imagined—a journey that's spanned hundreds of thousands of words, uncountable hours, and the unwavering support of you, the readers. This story wouldn't be what it is without every single person who took the time to read, comment, share thoughts, or even just silently follow along.
From the bottom of my heart: thank you.
This fanfiction has become a labor of love, but like any labor, it takes time, energy, and commitment. Your encouragement has been the fuel that's kept this ship sailing, and I'm beyond grateful for it.
As we hit this incredible 400th chapter milestone, I'd like to make a humble, heartfelt request: If you've been enjoying the story and would like to support its continuation and help me dedicate even more time to this world we love, please consider joining my Patreon.
There, you'll find 85+ advanced chapters, along with 10 chapters available for free—perfect for catching up or diving even deeper into the arc. Every bit of support helps more than I can express. Whether it's just a few dollars, a review, power stones, or simply spreading the word, it means the world to me and allows me to keep creating with more consistency and care.
Thank you again for sticking with me this far. Let's keep chasing the horizon together—one chapter at a time.
With all my appreciation,[Silent_stiele]
*****
Red Port, New World
"Fufufufu…"
The low, eerie laughter echoed across the deck as a majestic ship, its sails adorned with the infamous insignia of the Donquixote Pirates, approached the towering Red Port. The grand structure loomed ahead, a gateway to Mary Geoise—the sacred land of the so-called gods.
Standing at the bow, clad in his signature flamboyant coat, Donquixote Doflamingo gazed upon the sight before him. The wind ruffled his golden locks, and his ever-present grin stretched across his face. But beneath that deceptive smile… his heart burned.
"How long has it been since I was last here?" He mused aloud, his voice laced with something unreadable—nostalgia? Hatred? Perhaps both. "This place sure brings back a lot of memories, don't you think, Señor?"
Behind him, Señor Pink stood in his usual stoic silence, cigar smoke curling around him. He said nothing, but Doflamingo didn't need a response.
Memories.
So many damned memories.
The streets where he had once walked as a king. The halls where he had been revered as a god. The place where he and his little brother had been born into power.
And then… discarded.
Abandoned.
Hunted like animals, dragged through the filth by the very people who had once knelt at their feet.
Doflamingo's fingers twitched slightly, his grip tightening at his sides. He could still remember it—every agonizing second of it.
The jeering crowds. The stones, the spit, the fists.
The cold steel biting into his flesh as he was nailed to a cross in the central plaza, left to suffer under the searing sun while the celestial mongrels and their wretched pets laughed.
Months. He had endured for months.
And in the end, it was his little brother—the only person who had never wavered—who had torn him down from that wretched place.
Doflamingo exhaled slowly, pushing down the rage that simmered just beneath his skin. He wanted nothing more than to see this entire land reduced to cinders, to watch the so-called gods scream as their ivory towers crumbled around them.
But not yet. Not yet.
Their time would come. His brother had shown him the truth—the true extent of the World Government's power. The depths of their control, their reach, their strength.
It would take decades to uproot them completely. To erase them root and stem.
But Doflamingo had never been an impatient man.
He could wait. He would wait.
And when the moment came… Mary Geoise would burn.
"Master Doffy..."
Senor Pink's deep voice cut through the cold sea breeze, pulling Doflamingo from the abyss of his memories. Draped in his raven-black suit, he gestured toward the horizon, where a small detachment of ships was approaching. The fleet consisted of a mixture of World Government and Marine vessels, their sails carrying the insignias of absolute authority.
Doflamingo's signature grin widened as he took in the sight.
"Fufufufu... leave them be," he chuckled, waving a hand dismissively. "If they weren't this cautious, I'd be sorely disappointed. Though we've been invited, we are still pirates in their eyes. This? This is just their way of posturing—asserting dominance. A petty display of power."
His smile thinned slightly, and his sunglasses glinted under the sun, hiding the burning intensity of his gaze.
"Let them watch. Let them pretend they hold the reins. Soon enough, they'll understand what it truly means to cross the Donquixote Family."
The air was thick with tension aboard the flagship of the detachment. At the bow, a man stood tall, a cigar clenched between his teeth, the embers glowing like molten rage. Sakazuki, newly appointed Admiral of the Marines, watched the approaching pirate ship with barely contained fury.
Tch. Damn scum.
His fists clenched, magma pulsing just beneath his skin, his very presence exuding raw menace.
"Pirates like him should just be burned to ash," Akainu spat, his voice a low, menacing growl. Smoke curled from his mouth as he exhaled, his glare locked onto Doflamingo's vessel like a predator stalking prey.
"If we strike now, we can eliminate an Emperor of the Sea in one move. The snake has slithered out of its den, and he's foolish enough to come with only his butler at his side."
The thought alone sent a wicked thrill through him. After all these years, after what that bastard did at Sabaody... Akainu's hands twitched, aching to strike, to crush, to erase Donquixote Doflamingo from existence.
But before he could dwell on it further, a cold voice cut through the tense air like a knife.
"Admiral Sakazuki... know your place."
The words were soft, yet they carried a weight that made even the most hardened Marine officers stiffen.
Standing beside him, clad in a pristine white tailored suit and an emotionless mask, was a CP0 agent. Her presence alone was enough to command silence. She turned her masked face toward Akainu, her voice smooth, feminine, but ice-cold.
"You have your orders, and you will follow them. Doflamingo is a guest—invited by the Elders themselves. Cause trouble, and you will face the consequences."
Akainu's jaw tightened, his teeth grinding against the cigar. The CP0 agent took a step closer, her voice lowering but carrying a chilling edge.
"And tell me, Admiral... what makes you think you can best Donquixote Doflamingo in a straight fight?"
Akainu's head snapped toward her, a scowl darkening his face, but she did not flinch.
"Do not let your arrogance blind you."
She tilted her head ever so slightly, as if scrutinizing him, measuring him—not as a superior, but as a foolish soldier who had yet to grasp the true scope of the world.
"You may have earned the title of 'Admiral,' but do not mistake that for invincibility."
Her words slithered into the air like a viper poised to strike.
"Doflamingo is no mere warlord, no disposable pirate you can crush with brute force. He stands among the Emperors of the Sea—a throne that is not gifted through titles or rank, but through blood and steel. The weight of that title is measured not by fame, but by the fear they command."
She let the words hang for a moment, her gaze unyielding.
"He did not ascend to that position by accident, Sakazuki. He earned it—by stepping over the corpses of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands."
The ship seemed to fall into a hush, the Marine officers present now glancing between the CP0 agent and the Admiral. Even Akainu, for all his fury, said nothing for a long moment; he knew that he didn't hold much sway within the ranks of the Holy Land despite being promoted to Admiral.
The CP0 agent turned away, looking toward the approaching ship.
"Underestimate an Emperor of the Sea at your own peril."
Akainu exhaled sharply through his nose, taking another deep drag of his cigar. The embers glowed furiously, but he said nothing. For all his hatred, for all his seething rage, he could not deny one truth— The moment they set foot in Mary Geoise, this was no longer his battlefield.
As the ships closed the remaining distance, the air grew heavy with unspoken tension. The looming shadow of the Red Line cast its presence over the sea, while the towering Red Port stood as an unwavering gateway to the sacred land above.
The moment they were within boarding range, the CP0 agent stirred, her masked face turning toward Sakazuki.
"Admiral Akainu, you and the Marines are to remain with the ships. I will handle this matter."
There was no room for argument in her tone—it was an order, not a request.
Before Akainu could even respond, the CP0 agent, along with a contingent of World Government operatives, launched themselves into the air, their forms flickering as they utilized Geppo (Moonwalk). With flawless precision, they descended onto the deck of the Donquixote flagship, their movements practiced and graceful.
Doflamingo did not move.
He remained standing at the bow, hands casually resting in his pockets, his signature grin in place. The pink feathers of his coat swayed slightly in the breeze as his sharp gaze remained fixed on the approaching Red Port.
As soon as the CP0 and World Government agents landed, they dropped to their knees in a formal display of reverence.
Even Senor Pink, usually indifferent to most things, raised an eyebrow at the unexpected display. It was not the act itself that unsettled him—Doflamingo was a former Celestial Dragon, after all—but the fact that they were doing it in public.
For all their pretense, for all their supposed superiority, the World Government was kneeling to a pirate. A gesture this blatant carried dangerous implications, and Senor's instincts screamed caution. This was why only he and Doflamingo had made this journey.
It was all part of the grander scheme. But in this game of kings and ghosts, Doflamingo was taking the highest risk.
Senor's fingers twitched slightly beneath his coat. No matter what, he had to remain vigilant—because if there was one absolute truth, it was this: The World Government never played fair.
The lead CP0 agent, still kneeling, finally spoke, her voice carrying an elegant, almost flowery lilt.
"Doflamingo-sama, we sincerely welcome you back to the Holy Land, the abode of the Gods."
Her words dripped with respect, but Doflamingo barely reacted.
His smirk remained, but beneath his tinted glasses, his eyes remained cold, dissecting everything in front of him. A pretty little performance, but he wasn't so easily fooled. The agent, as if anticipating his skepticism, continued smoothly.
"The Elders have given us explicit orders to treat your highness with the same status and reverence as a Celestial Dragon."
That was the key statement. A Celestial Dragon. Doflamingo's grin widened, but something beneath it was… off. A darkness lurked there. Senor felt it. The agents felt it. Even the salty breeze seemed to carry a sudden chill. Then, finally, Doflamingo laughed.
"Fufufufu… is that so?"
His voice was light, mocking, but the weight beneath it was suffocating. Then, his smirk twisted into something sharper, more dangerous.
"If they were truly treating me as an equal, I would have expected at least one of the Elders to personally come and greet me."
His words were slow, deliberate—each syllable sinking into the air like poison. Then, he tilted his head slightly.
"But I see they're being petty about it."
His chuckle that followed was soft—dangerously so. For a brief moment, the kneeling agents stiffened ever so slightly. Even through their masks, Doflamingo could feel their discomfort.
Good.
He let the silence stretch just long enough for it to become uncomfortable. Then, with a casual wave of his hand, he dismissed them as if they were no more than flies buzzing around his ears.
"Spare me the formalities."
His grin widened, but his voice carried a dark edge—one that sent a crawling unease through those who heard it.
"Let's get this party started, shall we?"
Then, for the first time, he turned his gaze back to the Holy Land, the place of his birth—the cage he once escaped. His voice dropped to a whisper, but the venom in it was unmistakable.
"After all these years... I'm eager to visit home."
A storm was brewing. And soon, Mary Geoise would drown in it.
****
Upper Yard, Skypeia
"Tekkai!"
Young Lucci's voice rang out like a war drum, his body stiffening into an immovable fortress.
Three Shandian warriors lunged forward, their spears aimed straight for his chest, the sharp edges whistling through the air. But the moment their weapons made contact—
SNAP!
The spears shattered like brittle twigs against an iron wall.
The warriors stumbled back, staring down at the broken remains of their weapons in stunned silence. Shame and frustration twisted their expressions—they hadn't even left a scratch.
A heavy sigh came from behind them.
"It's a disgrace to a warrior to have their weapons snap," Wyrah, their chieftain, roared, his voice booming across the training grounds.
"Your weapons are an extension of yourselves! Look at him—he's just a child, and yet not one of you can break through his defense!"
The gathered warriors murmured, heads hanging in embarrassment. The challenge had turned into something far worse—humiliation.
Then, from the crowd, a voice spoke up.
"If you're so great, Tribe Leader, why didn't we see you breaking through the boy's defense?"
A few chuckles followed, and another warrior chimed in.
"Your weapon snapped too, Chief. Should we be the ones lecturing you?"
All eyes turned toward Wyrah, who awkwardly scratched the back of his head, his once-booming confidence suddenly nowhere to be found.
"Ahem... That's not the point! I—uh—was merely testing his endurance, you see?"
More laughter rippled through the crowd. Even young Lucci, standing unscathed, allowed the faintest smirk to cross his lips. But none laughed harder than the white devil perched comfortably on the young boy's shoulder.
"Oh, this is rich! Big guy, they're tearing you apart worse than your own weapon!"
The Shandians all flinched. That bird…
That demon in disguise…
The sheer precision of its mockery had many of them contemplating throwing themselves off the edge of the Sky Islands just to escape further ridicule.
Wyrah cleared his throat, trying to regain some dignity. "Boy... just what are you made of?"
Lucci, still as composed as ever, loosened his posture, his sharp golden eyes scanning the group of warriors before him. Then, in a voice far too calm for a child, he spoke.
"You're all rushing."
Silence fell as the Shandians listened.
"It has only been a few weeks since you were exposed to the knowledge of Haki. Some take decades—even their entire lives—to master its true essence. And even then, no one truly knows the full extent of its power."
He closed his eyes briefly, recalling the words of his own mentor.
"Learning Haki is not about strength, nor speed. It is penance. It is the forging of will. There is no limit to how far one can hone their will, because will itself is boundless."
The Shandians remained still, absorbing his words. Wyrah's brows furrowed.
"So you're saying... Haki has no limit?"
Lucci's smirk widened slightly. "Tell me, Chief, does your spirit have a limit?"
Wyrah opened his mouth to speak—then stopped.
It was a question with no simple answer.
The warriors, still holding onto the broken remains of their weapons, tightened their grips. For all their pride, all their warrior instincts—none of them had truly understood the sheer depth of Haki until now.
Even Wyrah himself had underestimated it. Lucci tilted his head slightly, gaze sharp.
"In the end, the difference between victory and defeat is the strength of one's will. And my will—"
The boy's aura flared ever so slightly, like a beast waking from slumber.
"—does not yield."
The warriors stiffened. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
And then—
"Oh no, look at their faces! They just realized they've been swinging sticks like idiots this whole time!"
The tension in the air shattered like the spears from before, thanks to that bird—that white-feathered menace—who was now laughing so hard he nearly fell off Lucci's shoulder.
A few warriors twitched, their minds racing with the same question: how was a bird able to speak so well?. One of them actually took a step toward the edge of the training ground, which was next to the Cloud River.
"Don't do it, Karu!" a fellow warrior shouted, grabbing him before he could swan dive into oblivion.
Even Lucci, for all his composure, let out a small exhale that might have been a chuckle. Wyrah groaned, rubbing his temples. "Alright, alright. Training dismissed; let's take a short break before this damn bird drives someone to jump for real."
A little further away, Dora stood poised, her massive fist clenched tight, wrapped in a suffocating layer of jet-black Haki. Despite her colossal size, she still looked small in comparison to the towering ancient tree before her. But its immensity would not save it.
BOOM!
The air quaked as Dora's fist rocketed forward, smashing into the tree's enormous trunk. The impact was instantaneous—a thunderous explosion rang out as the mighty tree was annihilated, its wood and bark splintering into a million fragments. The sheer force of the impact sent debris flying in all directions, erasing the tree from existence in the blink of an eye.
"I DID IT! I DID IT!" Dora roared, her booming voice shaking the earth beneath her massive feet.
Her pet snake—a creature almost as unruly as she was—slithered around wildly, seemingly sharing in her uncontainable excitement. But as I watched her celebrate, I simply shook my head, unimpressed.
She thinks she can fool me with brute force?
Dora had been pestering me non-stop about the Lightning Logia Devil Fruit ever since I got my hands on it. She wanted it desperately, eager to gain the power to summon and command lightning.
But I held it back.
I knew Dora's nature—playful, reckless, and prone to taking shortcuts. If I gave her the fruit now, she'd abandon her Haki training entirely. And Internal Destruction—the true pinnacle of Armament Haki—was something she needed to master before she could even think about gaining Devil Fruit abilities.
And right now? She was trying to cheat her way out of it.
"Dora," I called out flatly, watching as her celebration came to a halt. "You just brute-forced it."
Her expression fell slightly.
"What you just did was nothing but raw power. You masked your haki emission to make it look like Internal Destruction, but all you did was smash it into pieces. That was not Internal Destruction. Not even close."
Dora's shoulders slumped, her expression dropping into a guilty pout. She already knew that. But still, she tried to argue.
"But... but I still shattered the tree, didn't I?!" Dora protested, her bright eyes pleading. "What difference does it make, Ross? Just give me the Devil Fruit already! I want to zap things with lightning!"
I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. This troublemaker was relentless. Fine. If she needed a lesson, I'd give her one. Stepping forward, I approached a colossal tree—one manifold bigger than the one Dora had obliterated just moments before.
Its trunk was so wide, it could have supported an entire village in its branches. Dora watched curiously, arms crossed, clearly wondering what I was up to.
"Look closely, Dora," I said, pressing my palm against the ancient behemoth's bark. "This... is what internal destruction actually looks like."
Then—
A pulse of pure Armament Haki surged through my hand, rippling through the tree's very core. For a brief moment... nothing happened. The tree quivered slightly, its leaves rustling as if stirred by a passing breeze. Dora blinked. Then she smirked.
"Hehe! Ross, you couldn't even do what I did! Maybe you should learn from me!" She pointed smugly at the obliterated tree she had destroyed earlier, a triumphant grin spreading across her face.
But just as she prepared to gloat further—a low, creaking sound echoed through the air. Dora's smirk froze. The massive tree began to sway—dangerously.
SNAP…..! CRACK!!!
A horrifying, splintering noise tore through the forest, and in the next instant— The entire tree collapsed. Not in an explosion. Not in a mess of flying debris. No—this was different. As the mighty colossus crashed into the ground with an earth-shaking BOOM, something became terrifyingly clear.
It was hollow.
The entire inner structure of the tree had been erased—its insides completely obliterated—leaving behind only an empty husk, untouched on the outside. It was as if its very essence had been destroyed from within. Dora stared in shock, her jaw hanging open. Her massive frame suddenly looked small before the destruction I had wrought.
"...What... the hell...?"
Her voice was barely above a whisper. I turned to her, my expression calm.
"That, Dora..." I said, brushing dust off my sleeve, "was Internal Destruction."
Dora was speechless. The sheer lethality of what she had just witnessed was far beyond what she had imagined. She had used brute force to shatter the tree—but I had erased it from the inside out.
Her pet snake, sensing her shock, slowly coiled around her leg, peering up at me as if trying to understand what had just happened. For a moment, silence reigned. Then—Dora finally snapped out of it.
"ROSS! TEACH ME THAT RIGHT NOW!" She roared, grabbing me by the shoulders.
I smirked. "Oh? But I thought it didn't make a difference?"
Dora froze, her eyes darting side to side.
"I—I WAS KIDDING!" she said hastily. "IT MAKES A BIG DIFFERENCE! LIKE, A MASSIVE DIFFERENCE! PLEASE, TEACH ME!"
I let out a short chuckle. At least now, she understood.
As Dora shook me eagerly, I finally relented with a sigh.
"Fine. But the moment I see you slacking, you can say goodbye to that Devil Fruit."
She immediately saluted, standing at attention.
"YES SIR! HAKI TRAINING FIRST!"
Her pet snake even mimicked her, doing a small salute of its own with its tail. I shook my head with a small smile. It was going to be a long road, but if there was one thing I knew—
By the time Dora was done training... The world wouldn't be ready for what she would become.