Reunion with Imu, Confrontation

Just as Dragon was considering whether to step in and help his old man, Oak ignored Garp and Aokiji, whom he had nearly beaten into collapse, and looked toward the distant horizon.

"Has it... finally arrived?!"

Ever since learning that his identity had been exposed to the Navy higher-ups, he had been waiting—waiting for some monster to come looking for him. He believed that once the other side learned he had emerged from the Rainbow Mist, they would definitely come for him.

And now, they had come!

A mysterious and overwhelmingly powerful aura spread over the waters of Loguetown first. Its reach was vast, stretching across all of Loguetown and the seas dozens of kilometers around it. Violent shockwaves rose, making every building in Loguetown tremble uncontrollably.

"This is..."

Dragon immediately snapped back to his senses and looked up. A tiny black dot had appeared on the distant horizon, rapidly enlarging in his vision. He was stunned by that aura. It was a kind of power he had never felt before, yet it carried a faint trace of familiarity, as though he had encountered it somewhere in the past.

Aokiji also raised his head, narrowing his panda eyes, swollen shut from the beating.

"Where did another monster like this come from?!"

He could feel the power contained within that aura. It was no weaker than what Oak had made him feel—perhaps even stronger. It nearly pierced through his soul.

He wondered when this world had become filled with so many monsters. First there had been Oak, and now an even stronger one had appeared. He seriously suspected that his position as a Navy Admiral was fake. Otherwise, why had he run into people stronger than himself one after another today?

Garp's expression, meanwhile, was somewhat complicated as he looked upward.