Slaying Oden, Wano Changes Hands

Rektol drew his samurai sword.

Blue lightning instantly coiled around the blade.

Rust flaked off. Black fragments pattered to the ground.

Two hundred million volts of violent current was forcibly poured into the cheap mass-produced weapon. The blade glowed red-hot, then even began to shine with a half-molten white light.

The moisture in the air instantly evaporated, producing a sharp hiss.

In midair.

Oden's twin blades drew two black-and-red lines of death.

"Togen Totsuka!"

A tearing roar burst from his throat. The veins on his neck bulged like tree roots. His muscles split from being pushed beyond their limits, and beads of blood seeped from his pores, trailing a red mist through the air.

This was his desperate strike, fueled by the burning of his life.

Rektol did not retreat.

He held the scorching samurai sword in one hand.

His black military boot pressed firmly against the warship's railing. Facing the cross-shaped sword aura that seemed capable of splitting an island, he casually swung his blade.

The two forces collided.

There was no earth-shaking stalemate. No surging waves of power grinding against each other.

There was only one-sided destruction.

The blue-white sword aura of lightning was like a red-hot boning knife slicing into frozen butter.

Oden's prideful Ryuo Haki was as fragile as a sheet of paper before this slash, which combined high-voltage electricity with pure brute force.

It lasted less than a tenth of a second.

"Crack!"

The black-and-red cross-shaped sword aura shattered outright, breaking apart like glass into a sky full of dim sparks.

The lightning passed straight through him, moving faster than the limits of the retina's ability to perceive.

Kozuki Oden's body suddenly stiffened in midair.

The momentum carrying him forward vanished.

The fury on his face froze in place from the previous second. His mouth hung wide open, his roar cut off abruptly.

A hair-thin red line appeared across his thick neck.

The red line rapidly widened.

Blood pressure burst through the carotid artery.

"Splurt!"

Oden's head left his neck and spun into the air.

A blood fountain more than a meter high erupted from the severed neck. The lightning's heat seared the blood as it hung in the air, filling it with a pungent, scorched smell.

The headless corpse lost all support.

Like a broken log that had been chopped in half, it crashed stiffly toward the ground.

"Thud!"

The corpse slammed into the muddy ground of Kuri Beach, leaving a shallow pit. Blood instantly stained the black mud beneath it red and seeped down through the gaps in the sand.

"Clang."

The purple Enma and white Ame no Habakiri slipped from the powerless hands.

They fell beside the corpse. Their blades struck bloodstained gravel, and their light faded completely.

The head rolled twice before stopping at the edge of the beach.

Its eyes were still wide open, refusing to close even in death.

The beach fell deathly silent.

Only the splashing of waves against the steel warship's armor could be heard. The wind swept past, carrying a chill tinged with the smell of blood.

Kin'emon of the Nine Red Scabbards lay in a sand pit more than ten meters away.

His mouth hung wide open, and a leaking "huff, huff" escaped his throat.

He stared blankly at the head that had rolled into the muddy water. His mind was utterly empty.

"Oden... my lord..."

Kin'emon dug his fingers hard into the sand, his nails curling back and bleeding.

He wanted to rise and fight to the death. But his legs shook like sieves, and a despairing chill seeped through his bones. He could not stand upright at all.

The backbone of their cause had shattered.

Behind them, Kurozumi Orochi's forces were also dumbstruck.

Orochi wore a golden crown. He huddled inside a luxurious palanquin, and the lacquered wine bowl in his hand fell onto the wooden floorboards.

Wine spilled across his lap, but he did not notice.

Orochi's teeth chattered violently, clicking together.

That was Kozuki Oden—the monster who had once wounded Kaido.

He had been beheaded with a single slash.

Orochi shoved aside the palanquin curtain and tumbled out on all fours.

His fat body crashed to the ground, leaving him battered and bruised. He did not even dare cry out in pain as he crawled toward the very front of the formation using both hands and feet.

He dropped heavily to his knees in the mud and smashed his forehead against the gravel.

"Surrender! Wano surrenders!"

Orochi shrieked in his harsh, grating voice. He was terrified that if he shouted even a second too late, the blue lightning in the sky would fall on his head.

With their lord on his knees, the samurai's entire defensive line collapsed.

Their faith and fighting spirit were shattered by that beheading bolt of lightning.

Tens of thousands of Wano's samurai trembled, their hands shaking.

"Clatter."

No one knew who was the first to let go. A matchlock rifle fell to the ground.

The sound of weapons dropping followed in a single wave. Long swords, spears, bows, and arrows were all thrown onto the beach.

The mass of people, dark as a storm cloud, fell like wheat flattened by a gale. Rows upon rows of them knelt before the steel warship.

Their heads pressed into the mud and sand. Not one dared look up.

Rektol stood at the bow.

The ordinary samurai sword in his hand finally failed to withstand the heat of the lightning. The blade softened, turning into a pool of red-hot molten iron that dripped into the sea, sending up wisps of white smoke.

He threw away the remaining hilt.

He took a piece of white cloth from his pocket and leisurely wiped the rust from his palm.

"From this day forward, Wano will bear the name Charlotte."

Rektol's voice was flat. He showed no excitement at all about conquering a country, as if he had merely stepped on an annoying insect.

He casually tossed the dirty cloth onto the deck.

Lowering his gaze, he looked at Kurozumi Orochi, who was kneeling in the mud and kowtowing.

"You. Tie up every one of those sword-wielding wastes."

Rektol pointed at the tens of thousands of samurai on the beach.

"Drive them all into the quarry. Whether they're old, weak, sick, or disabled, make them mine Seastone for me day and night without pause."

Orochi kowtowed in the mud like a pounding pestle.

His forehead split open, and blood mixed with mud across his face.

"Yes! Yes! I'll handle it right away! I absolutely won't trouble Young Master!"

Katakuri stepped forward.

The blue scales on his body had completely faded. The wounds on his back had split open again, oozing a trace of blood.

"Big Brother, what should we do if these people resist?" Katakuri looked at the samurai below, who gritted their teeth with hatred hidden in their eyes.

"Resist?"

Rektol patted the railing.

"Halve their daily rations. If they fail to meet the Seastone quota, randomly kill ten people."

He glanced at Katakuri, his voice devoid of warmth.

"No matter how tough their bones are, after ten days of hunger, they'll wag their tails like dogs. Keep killing until they can't lift a pickaxe."

Half a month later. Wano, Udon Quarry.

The air was thick with pungent dust and the stifling sourness of sweat.

The blistering sunlight baked the cracked yellow earth.

The samurai who had once stood high above others were now all gaunt, their eye sockets sunken.

Heavy Seastone shackles hung from their wrists, while iron balls dragged behind their ankles. Like livestock, they pushed iron carts loaded with ore.

The soles of their feet were covered in blood blisters. They stepped across the scorching gravel, leaving strings of bloody footprints behind.

"Crack!"

The crisp snap of a whip against someone's back mingled with the overseer's curses and echoed through the enormous quarry.

An old samurai could no longer bear the weight and collapsed beside a mining cart. The overseer immediately walked over, and the whip rained down like falling drops.

At the center of the quarry.

The mined High-Purity Seastone ore had already piled into a small mountain dozens of meters high.

The gray-black ore gave off a dim sheen beneath the sunlight. Every piece was as hard as iron.

Cracker sat in a grand chair covered with luxurious animal hide.

The grand chair stood in the shade beneath the ore mountain.

He gripped a roasted chicken leg and ate until grease covered his mouth. Sauce hung from the corner of his lips.

Several Wano geishas knelt beside him in trembling fear, waving large fans to cool him. Their arms ached, but they did not dare stop.

"Move faster! Have you not eaten?"

Cracker spat out a chicken bone that accurately struck the head of a fallen samurai.

Suddenly.

"Boom!"

A deafening explosion erupted from the outskirts of the quarry.

The ground shook violently.

Several enormous raw stones at the edge of the Seastone mountain rolled down, crushing a mining cart below.

The samurai pushing the cart fled in panic, clutching their heads.

The chicken leg fell from Cracker's hand.

He abruptly stood up. The fat on his chubby face jiggled twice as he shoved away the geisha beside him.

The three-meter-thick granite wall surrounding the quarry.

It had been smashed apart from the outside by sheer brute force.

Large chunks of rubble flew into the quarry like cannonballs, crushing more than a dozen overseers and slaves who failed to dodge in time. Smoke and dust surged into the sky.

Through the smoke.

A brand-new Fine Steel kanabo dragged along the ground.

The spikes on its body scraped across the stone slabs, producing shrill sparks and a grating screech.

A tall figure strode in.

His entire body was covered in crisscrossing, hideous scars. Old wounds overlapped new ones, while the enormous cross-shaped scar on his chest had only just formed a dark-red scab.

Two thick ox horns pointed straight toward the sky.

His bloodshot eyes held a madness-like savagery.

They fixed unwaveringly on the depths of the quarry.