In Wano Country, the victory feast was not something that would end in a day or two.
Meanwhile, in Udon, behind Tokage Port, lay the former prisoner quarry.
Once filled with the cries of forced laborers and the crack of overseers' whips, it now lay under a pall of deathly silence and despair.
Rough stones, abandoned mine carts, and rusted shackles lay scattered everywhere.
Nearly all the remnants of the Beasts Pirates huddled behind crumbling walls.
Most were wounded, their eyes vacant. The savage air they had once carried while burning, killing, and pillaging was gone, leaving only the numbness of survival and uncertainty about the future.
The news that Kaido had been defeated and fallen into magma had snuffed out the last spark of resistance in their hearts.
At the very center of the quarry,
King and Queen of the All-Stars, the two senior officers whose names had once shaken the New World and struck terror into countless hearts, sat leaning against each other by a cold stone wall.
Both were covered in crude, bloodstained bandages. They had clearly been patched up in haste without receiving effective treatment.
King's remaining half of a black wing hung limply, its feathers disheveled.
Queen's enormous body was charred in several places, his mechanical arm flickered with erratic sparks, and one lens of his signature sunglasses was shattered.
Despair, despondency, resentment, anger...
All manner of bitter emotions festered there.
"King." Queen's hoarse voice broke the suffocating silence as the fingertips of his mechanical arm absently scraped at the rocky ground.
"The captain... Kaido... has he really..."
He did not finish, but his meaning could not have been clearer.
Deep beneath the magma, there had been no word of him. Even his fiercely blazing haki could no longer be sensed.
"Shut up, Queen!!!"
King