"Open fire! Blow that wreck of a ship to pieces!"
With "Golden Finger" Gildo's roar, distorted by extreme fury, all of Midas Island seemed to come alive!
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Along the island's coastline, among the mountain cliffs, and even from every window of the golden castle, hundreds of enormous cannons forged from pure gold spat destructive flames at once!
In an instant, hundreds upon thousands of incredibly heavy, solid gold cannonballs glittered with golden light, streaking across the blue sky like a dense meteor shower. With shrill whistles that tore through the air, they rained down on the Leviathan at sea!
The sight was like the end of the world!
"All hands! Maximum impact defense!"
Inside the bridge, Brannew's face turned as white as paper in an instant, and he screamed into the Communication Den Den Mushi with every ounce of strength he had.
He knew the Leviathan's armor was sturdy, but facing such dense, terrifying saturation fire, he had no confidence whatsoever!
This was not a battle at all. This was slaughter!
Below deck, the Marines whose blood had just been fired up by Yas's words turned deathly pale, their hands and feet going cold as they felt that terrifying pressure, as though the heavens and earth were collapsing.
"It's over... we're going to be blasted full of holes..."
"Is... is this the firepower of New World pirates? It's terrifying!"
Fear gripped their throats once more like an invisible giant hand.
Yet amid that despair and panic, Yas, the focus of it all, still stood quietly before the bridge's floor-to-ceiling windows.
He did not even look at the golden barrage filling the sky.
His ice-blue eyes merely gazed calmly at the vast, boundless, rolling sea beneath his feet.
As though that were his true weapon.
"Captain Yas!" Seeing the shells already almost upon them, Brannew cried out in despair, "Order evasive action, now!"
Yas ignored him.
He merely raised his hands slowly.
"What... noisy fireworks."
He murmured the words in utter boredom.
The next second, before everyone's disbelieving eyes.
Yas chose neither to defend nor to evade.
He simply pressed both hands gently against the sturdy floor-to-ceiling window before him.
Hum!
A surge of chakra greater and vaster than any before erupted from his body like a flood bursting through a dam!
That chakra was so pure and immense that the seawater around the Leviathan began visibly boiling and roaring!
"What... what is he doing?!"
On Midas Island, a trace of confusion flashed through Gildo's eyes as he watched the Marine warship remain motionless despite being moments away from being engulfed by cannonballs.
But he quickly cast that confusion aside, a cruel smile spreading across his face.
"Who cares what he's doing! Against absolute firepower, everything is futile! Sink to the bottom of the sea, Marine scum!"
Yet the scene he had imagined, of the warship being blown to pieces, did not happen.
One second before the first golden cannonball struck the Leviathan.
Something suddenly changed!
Roar!
An inhuman roar of fury, as though from an ancient sea god, thundered out of the boiling waters surrounding the Leviathan!
Then, as Gildo's expression instantly froze as though he had seen a ghost.
Centered on the Leviathan, the seawater for thousands of meters around began spinning and rising wildly, as though stirred by an invisible giant hand, in complete defiance of the laws of physics!
A terrifying, bottomless vortex large enough to swallow an island thundered into existence on the sea!
The instant the incoming golden cannonballs met the immense gravitational field generated by that terrifying vortex, their trajectories veered sharply. Like iron filings drawn to a magnet, they were helplessly swept into that spinning sea of death, vanishing without a trace before they could raise even a splash!
"What... what is that?! A Devil Fruit power?!"
Watching that inconceivable sight, Gildo let out a scream of utter horror.
"No! That's not it! We haven't detected any new Devil Fruit power fluctuations aboard the ship!" the subordinate beside him responsible for observation reported in a trembling voice. "It... it looks like... he alone... used some power beyond our understanding to stir the sea!"
One man... had stirred the sea?!
Gildo's brain shut down completely at that moment.
Inside the bridge, Brannew and all the crew were likewise staring dumbstruck at the miraculous scene outside the windows.
They saw two entirely different glows of energy radiating from Yas's hands as he pressed them against the window.
One hand shone with the blue-green of raging winds.
The other shone with the blue of thunder!
He perfectly fused and drove those two violent natural energies in a way beyond imagination, then poured them into the boundless sea beneath his feet!
"Wind Release... Lightning Release..."
Yas's cold, commanding voice sounded in the depths of everyone's soul like the whisper of a god.
"Secret Technique: Super Large Vortex Water Prison Technique!"
The instant his words fell!
The enormous vortex abruptly paused, then thunderously reversed in an even more violent, terrifying fashion!
Rumble, rumble, rumble!
The hundreds of millions of tons of seawater swept into the sky by the vortex seemed to become raging waves through which a sea god vented his fury, forming a terrifying tsunami hundreds of meters high that blotted out the sky and sun!
But this was no ordinary tsunami!
Within those churning waves, countless thick blue electrical arcs, powerful enough to melt even steel in an instant, darted and flashed wildly, giving off scalp-prickling crackles!
A calamity imbued with the power of thunder, enough to scour an island clean!
"No... no! Hurry! Raise the golden barrier!"
Gildo finally recovered from his overwhelming shock. Watching that lightning-laced tsunami bear down upon him like the falling sky, he let out a frantic, heart-rending roar.
He drove his Devil Fruit power to its limit. The entire golden castle began melting and changing shape, becoming an incredibly sturdy golden wall dozens of meters thick in an attempt to block that world-destroying divine punishment!
Yet before an absolute calamity that embodied the mighty power of nature.
Every human effort seemed so insignificant, so laughable.
Boom!
With unstoppable, crushing force, the lightning-laced tsunami slammed into the enormous golden wall!
There was none of the stalemate one might have imagined.
The golden barrier Gildo had believed indestructible instantly filled with spiderweb cracks upon contact with the tsunami, like a biscuit struck by a hammer!
Then, with a groan as it could bear no more, it shattered!
The violent waves, laden with hundreds of millions of volts of lightning, surged wildly onto Midas Island like a world-destroying beast freed from its cage, scouring away everything!
Golden mountains collapsed beneath the surge, and golden rivers were driven backward. The golden castle that symbolized endless wealth did not last even a second before the lightning-laced tsunami, completely engulfed, torn apart, and pulverized!
The instant the lightning-laced tsunami touched the island's five thousand elite pirates, they were reduced to charred corpses beneath the violent current and immense water pressure before they could even scream, swept into the murky waves and lost from sight.
A few minutes later.
As the sea gradually grew calm.
Midas Island, once resplendent in gold and impregnable, had vanished completely from the nautical charts.
Only a few of its highest peaks still showed faintly above the sea.
By his strength alone, Yas had actually... sunk the entire island!
The seawater had turned a murky gold, and countless treasures and golden objects were slowly sinking toward the seabed.
On a reef at the island's highest point, a few survivors lay sprawled, drenched and bedraggled, gasping for breath, their eyes filled with the fear of those who had narrowly escaped death.
At their head was "Golden Finger" Gildo, his armor shattered and his whole body charred black.
He stared blankly at his kingdom, now a stretch of open sea, then looked at the unscathed black warship resting quietly on the water in the distance. He felt as though he had suffered the most absurd, most terrifying nightmare.
Just then, Yas's cold voice reached his ears clearly through the Den Den Mushi.
"Now, the game is over."
"Brannew." Yas turned and gave an order to his long-petrified adjutant.
"Send men down to salvage my treasure."
"And bring that piece of trash who's still alive up here."
Yas's icy gaze pierced the distance of thousands of meters, locking firmly onto that trembling figure on the reef as the corner of his mouth curled into a cruel arc.
"I need him to tell me where 'Captain' John's next treasure cache is."
"Or rather, who he plans to make... his next deal with."
Before you continue