Cleaned Out and Fled with Everything

Rektol spread his arms.

His ten fingers curled slightly upward, the knuckles unnaturally pale from the strain.

He pushed the Float-Float Fruit's power to its current limit. The second heart in the right side of his chest pounded furiously, like an overloaded heavy-duty water pump, hammering an enormous volume of blood and energy into his veins.

The air around him emitted a buzzing sound, as if it could no longer bear the burden.

It was like tens of thousands of horseflies beating their wings beside his ears at once. The light above Rektol's palms warped violently, and even breathing became viscous.

"Faster." Rektol forced out the two words. His voice was so hoarse it sounded as though he had swallowed a handful of coarse sand.

Cracker didn't dare waste half a second.

He dropped to his knees in seawater that reached his ankles. Both hands slammed down on the floor tiles, which had already been shattered completely. The fat on the backs of his hands trembled violently.

"Rise!"

Cracker bit through a bit of flesh in his mouth and spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva.

The magnetic field spread in every direction without a blind spot.

Pure-iron safes, gem-encrusted famous blades, lead cylinders containing the Celestial Dragons' wealth, and Pure Gold rolling all over the floor were forcibly kneaded and compressed by invisible magnetic force.

The shrill scraping of metal echoed back and forth through the treasury.

A colossal metal composite sphere more than fifty meters in diameter took shape in midair. Gold bricks and iron plating clamped tightly together, not even letting a single drop of water through.

Nearby.

Katakuri tore away the tattered strips of cloth obstructing him.

Cyan scales surged out from beneath his skin once more. Without the slightest hesitation, he entered his Mythical Zoan hybrid form.

His body was forcibly stretched to five meters tall. The muscles of his thighs and arms bulged like rocks. His sharp dragon horns thrust straight into the dust falling from the ceiling.

He strode over to the pile of rubble.

He extended a large hand covered in cyan claws and seized the half-broken horn atop Kaido's head.

As if holding a stinking sack of garbage upside down, Katakuri lifted the over-a-hundred-kilogram Kaido into the air.

Kaido was completely unconscious.

His broken ribs protruded grotesquely beneath his skin. Dark-red blood dripped from his hanging black hair into the puddles below.

The rock layer overhead let out its final cry.

A granite slab the size of a truck crashed toward the stone platform. Before it could hit the ground, the repulsive force radiating from Rektol forcibly bounced it away. It slammed into the wall to the side with a thunderous boom, sending stone dust flying.

"Hold on tight."

Rektol suddenly thrust both hands upward.

The invisible gravitational field instantly expanded, directly enveloping the enormous metal sphere above Cracker's head.

Cracker immediately felt the weight leave his hands. The sensation of exhaustion struck him at once, and he dropped onto his backside in the cold puddle, gasping heavily. Snot and tears smeared across his face.

The gravitational field did not stop. It continued expanding outward with brute force.

It pierced through the collapsed rock wall and followed the underground passage they had used to come in, stretching all the way to the reef area behind God Valley.

The steel warship hidden beneath the cliffs had originally been pitching violently with the waves.

Suddenly, gravity vanished.

The Wapometal hull, weighing several thousand tons, gave off a deep groan of twisting steel.

The seawater beneath the ship was forcibly pushed aside, forming a massive vacuum whirlpool. White foam churned wildly in every direction.

The warship broke free from the sea.

It rose straight into the air.

Rektol planted his feet. His military boot shattered half a bluestone slab in the puddle beneath him. Mud splashed everywhere.

Taking Katakuri, the exhausted Cracker, and the enormous metal sphere with him, he shot straight upward through the hundred-meter fissure that had split open overhead.

The cold seawater was blasted apart into a pillar.

Saint Garling lay submerged in the muddy water.

His only remaining right eye fixedly watched the figures disappearing above the fissure.

The pain from his severed arm left him without even the strength to curse. He could only watch helplessly as the Celestial Dragons' eight hundred years of accumulated wealth was completely hauled away by these thieves.

On the surface of God Valley.

The great canyon was madly swallowing everything around it. The roar of seawater pouring in had long since drowned out the explosions of cannon fire.

Rektol and the others burst from the ground.

The enormous metal sphere blocked out the remaining light in the sky.

The steel warship rose from behind the island and caught them steadily. The metal gangplank crashed onto the deck with a deafening clang.

Rektol landed atop the bridge.

His three-year-old body swayed. He reached out and grabbed the iron railing beside him, his knuckles turning white with force. The burden of the two Devil Fruits caused his vision to double for a second.

He bit the tip of his tongue and forced himself to stay conscious.

"Activate the thrusters. Maximum power." Rektol shook the mud from his short hair. His voice sounded exceptionally cold and hard in the sea wind.

Cracker rolled and scrambled into the control room.

His fat hand slapped down on the red activation button.

The four exhaust pipes at the rear of the warship let out a roar and spewed dazzling blue plasma flames. The high temperature instantly vaporized the surrounding rain, raising great clouds of white mist.

The warship dragged the enormous metal sphere behind it and began accelerating into the sky.

Below.

Roger had driven the Ace Greatsword upside down into the muddy ground.

He gasped heavily. The saber wound across his chest was deep enough to expose bone, and his red shirt had long since turned dark. When rainwater washed over the wound, the pain made him bare his teeth.

He tilted his head back as rain hammered his face.

Watching the steel monster fly into the sky in defiance of the laws of physics, Roger wiped the blood and water from his face. His two black mustaches trembled twice.

"That brat... played everyone for fools." A distorted dry laugh came from Roger's throat.

On the ruins not far away.

The sleeve of Garp's right arm had long since burned away. His entire arm was blackened.

He punched a broken stone pillar beside him. The half-meter-thick granite shattered with a thunderous crash.

Garp could only watch helplessly as the warship climbed higher and higher.

He couldn't fly. The height Geppo could keep him airborne was nowhere near enough to reach the ship. All he could do was stand in the mud and stare.

Sengoku dispelled his Buddha form.

He pushed up his cracked frog glasses. Mud covered his golden epaulettes, and several large holes had been torn in his white coat of justice.

The Marine fleet's cannons had stopped firing long ago.

Their range couldn't reach that altitude. Firing anyway would only cause the strange gravitational field to bounce the shells back and injure their own men.

Tens of thousands of pirates and Marines who had fought themselves into a frenzy now all stopped moving. The blades in their hands hung at their sides.

In the deathly silent battlefield, only the rumble of the sinking island remained.

Everyone craned their necks.

They watched as the black steel warship dragged the metal sphere symbolizing the pinnacle of the world's wealth and smashed headfirst through the leaden-gray clouds.

Right under the exhausted Marines' and Roger's eyes.

The warship became a tiny black speck before vanishing completely into the horizon.

They had cleaned everything out.

They had not left the World Government even a scrap of gold, or so much as a shred of an ancient blueprint.

Several days later.

The sea breeze in the New World still carried a faint salty tang.

News birds dove down from the clouds in overwhelming numbers. Their white feathers joined together beneath the sunlight, forming a cloud that blotted out the sky.

They crossed the Four Blues and passed over Reverse Mountain at the entrance to the Grand Line.

Newspapers still carrying the scent of ink scattered from the sky like snowflakes.

They fell into the noisy taverns of the Sabaody Archipelago, landed on the training grounds of Marine bases throughout the Four Blues, and dropped into the hands of every ambitious schemer.

Morgans's news agency operated at full capacity. Three of the reprinting machines burned out, while bare-chested workers rushed to repair them amid the thick smoke.

The newspaper's front-page headline contained no dense mass of text.

There was only a blurry photograph of the warship rising into the sky, along with a line of bold black text occupying half the page.

Those bold words caused the seas across the entire world to erupt in an instant.