Your Idiot Highness

Kozuki Oden stopped short as he watched two figures emerge from the lightning.

He did not know them.

And yet—

The man in front made him sense danger on instinct.

Oden tightened his grip on his two swords, his knuckles taut and his brow furrowed.

"...What's going on?"

He muttered under his breath. For the first time, an unease he could not explain stirred within him.

Behind him, the Whitebeard Pirates were already on edge.

Fighting the Marines was nothing new to them.

Sengoku, Garp, Zephyr...

They had heard those names plenty of times and fought those men just as often.

Against men like them, they could at least fight.

Their captain would meet them head-on while the officers led their brothers against the Marine elite, trading punches and bloody blows of the blade—

Even if they lost and retreated, they could do it with satisfaction and dignity.

But the man before them was different.

Azure Dragon Rock.

To pirates of the New World, that name was practically synonymous with natural disaster.

Meeting him on an island was fortunate by comparison. The terrain was complicated enough to give them room to maneuver.

But meeting him at sea—

That was truly rotten luck.

Thunderbolts would come crashing down, with no regard for whether they struck an officer or a foot soldier.

Each bolt left someone charred before they could even scream.

Almost every time, they had escaped only because Newgate had forced a tsunami toward the Marine warship, disrupting the Marines' vision and breaking their formation.

It was not that they were afraid to fight.

They simply could not.

And now, beside Rock stood the man known as the "magma monster."

Akainu Sakazuki.

Getting close to him meant stepping into a magma inferno.

His name meant that anyone who entered his