"Whaaaat!? So Sue already took down that Poison Guy!?"
"Ah, yeah. More or less. Well, I didn't technically finish him off, but..."
"Hoh..."
"If that's true, that's a Great Victory indeed. Things should be considerably easier from here on."
"Now that I think about it, no matter how much time passed while we were on our way here, there was absolutely no sign of Magellan coming... This really is..."
"You were that strong all along, Literary Girl!"
Everyone was surprised when I came from the direction of Level 2, where they'd been heading, but they were glad to see I was safe.
Then, when I told them I'd "taken down Magellan," they were even more surprised.
It wasn't just Luffy. Iva-san and Inazuma too. And while their surprise was more restrained, even Jinbe and Crocodile looked genuinely impressed.
Speaking of which, long time no see, Crocodile. Whether he even remembers me or not... well, doesn't really matter either way.
"Also, about the upper floors. Buggy the Clown and Mr. 3 are each leading separate riots and freeing prisoners left and right, so the cells up there are basically empty. You can sprint straight through, and those guys should've cleaned up most of the guards too."
"Huh!? Buggy and '3'!?"
"Oh my, so those two made it out alive! Honestly, back then they just cut and ran on us so quickly... I was wondering what I'd dooo if they'd gone and died! And Sue-chan, I'm glad you're safe too... I know I keep asking, but the poison really was okay?"
"Totally fine, totally fine!"
I hadn't taken any poison damage. Well, technically I did get hit, but I neutralized it. Through molting.
Any attacks that seemed like they couldn't be neutralized, I avoided with absolute thoroughness, so aside from fatigue, I was pretty much at zero damage right now.
The strategy had worked out perfectly, and more than anything, I'd had great compatibility with Magellan in terms of both fighting style and Powers.
And as for the one thing even I'd been worried about, "fatigue"... honestly, it was so much less than expected that I surprised myself.
There was no doubt it had been an intense battle. I'd run and flown all over the place, going absolutely wild.
I mean, I'd even used Awakening techniques, so I'd braced myself to be way more exhausted than this...
During my fight with Papa on Merveille, just a few minutes of using it had knocked me flat. I understood from firsthand experience just how much stamina it consumed.
And yet right now, I was... completely fine. No bravado, no bluffing. Just genuinely fine.
Okay, I was tired, and I felt a little hungry, but it was well within acceptable limits. I could still keep going. No bravado, no bluffing (second time).
Frankly, I was the most confused one here.
...Could this be that thing? The effects of the Energy-Saving Mode that seemed to have activated back when I was on Level 3?
I'd thought it deactivated when I came to Newkama Land, but maybe it hadn't fully deactivated... or rather, maybe part of my constitution itself had evolved to operate more energy-efficiently than before?
In other words... not poison resistance, but fatigue resistance?
If so, that would be an incredibly reassuring "evolution." I could keep using Awakening techniques freely.
In fact, there were going to be situations ahead where I'd need to use my power...
'Come to think of it, looking back on it all... the torture I went through in Impel Down ended up functioning like some kind of training arc or power-up segment. I got tougher against pain, became immune to poison, started recovering from injuries faster... and now fatigue resistance on top of all that. It almost feels like I leveled up faster than any proper training could have managed.'
Of course, given what the process actually involved, it's not exactly a power-up I can celebrate wholeheartedly...
But yes, obviously, I wasn't about to get cocky and start recklessly overusing it either. Getting tripped up by overconfidence would be the height of stupidity.
Being hard to tire didn't mean I never got tired at all. Fatigue would still accumulate little by little... I had to stay properly cautious about that.
As I'd briefly thought earlier, the real tough enemies were still ahead. Once we reached Marine Headquarters, there'd be an endless parade of Monsters waiting.
And even before that... well, it wasn't like I'd be fighting them, but there were some people you couldn't let your guard down around. Oh right, I'd forgotten to mention this.
"Hey, so this has nothing to do with Magellan, but pretty soon we're going to run into some weird people... um, just everyone ignore them and keep going. It'll be a massive waste of time otherwise."
"Uh, what's up ahead exactly...?"
Shortly after, we encountered those very "weird people": the Blackbeard Pirates and Shiryu's group.
Words were exchanged, Luffy and Blackbeard clashed briefly, but Jinbe stopped it with a sharp "Don't waste your strength or your time!" and just like that, we parted ways.
We kept running, reached the staircase to Level 2, and just as everyone was ready to charge up together...
KABOOOOM!!
The staircase to Level 2 was suddenly blown apart right in front of us. The path forward was gone.
"What!? The stairs are gone!?"
"Hmph. So they've physically destroyed the route. The people upstairs must have realized that with Magellan down and Shiryu's betrayal, their defeat is all but certain. Now they're getting desperate."
"What a pain, after we've come so far... Are there any other routes upward?"
"There are a few, but they've undoubtedly been blocked as well. Whether they've been destroyed like this one or are narrow passages being guarded by wardens, I can't say..."
"Either way, if a large group can't pass through, it's inefficient-kyaburu. Is there some other method... hm?"
At that moment, Iva-san noticed something.
At the same time, so did Alice and I.
From where the staircase had been, guards came tumbling down with screams of "Gyaaah!"
From the way they fell, it looked like someone was shoving them off. Were they fighting someone up there?
But the Blackbeard Pirates had already passed through, and the Level 2 prisoners wouldn't have come back this way, so they shouldn't have been in that position either...
Wondering who it could be, I extended my Observation Haki to sense their presence...
"...Huh!?"
I jolted.
At that presence, and simultaneously, at the reaction from the Vivre Cards inside my body, which I'd been unconsciously monitoring.
Wait, why are those two here!?
The next instant, two figures leaped down from the hole, dropping onto Level 3's floor.
They came plunging straight toward me, and then...
"Mother!!"
"Mama!! We finally found you!!"
"Suzu!? Leona!? Why are you here!?"
My two daughters slammed into me with the full momentum of their fall.
Wait, hold on... seriously, why are you here!? How did you even get to a place like this!?
But both of them were completely overcome with emotion, burying their faces in my chest and stomach, bawling their eyes out, and no answers were forthcoming.
Yeah, this was going to take a while before they calmed down.
"Huh!? Those two just said 'Mama' and 'Mother'... the Pirate Literary Master has kids!?"
"I've never heard anything about that! And who the hell's the father!?"
"No, well, uh... see the other one standing next to them? That Alice girl is apparently a daughter too... though not by blood, it seems."
"Huh? Come to think of it, those two don't look like the Pirate Literary Master either... Oh, so that's how it is."
Right about as those conversations drifted in from behind, the two of them finally started calming down.
There, there. Good girls. Feeling better now? Can you talk?
"Sue, ya had other daughters besides Leona?"
"Yeah, more or less. We're short on time, so can introductions wait? ...Actually, the whole problem is the stairs are gone and we can't get up, right? So what do we do?"
"...? Mother, thou wishest to go to the upper floor? But couldst thou not simply fly up?"
"Sure, I could, but all these prisoners here... they obviously can't."
"Suzu, we're in the middle of a mass jailbreak right now. Everyone needs to get up there, so we need something like a staircase... that's where things stood."
"I see... But wait, Alice, thou! How dare thou leave us behind and go off on thine own! Sneaking ahead to rescue Mother all by thyself... and what on earth art thou wearing this time!? What manner of shameless attire is that for a jailbreak... Thou really ought to show more modesburgle..."
"Okay okay okay okay okay okay! Sorry Suzu, we really don't have time right now! Just escaping might actually be pretty easy at this point, but there's a lot happening after that. I'm sorry, but save the lecture for later... You can handle this situation, right, Suzu? Can you help us out?"
Alice (wearing a risque leotard) clamped her hand over Suzu's mouth for a forced cancellation of the lecture, then rolled right into her request.
Meanwhile, Leona, watching from the side and looking at Alice's outfit, seemed from her expression to be thinking something along the lines of 'Her tummy and back must be cold.' Pure innocence.
As for what the two of them were wearing: Suzu had on a Japanese-style outfit with sleeves tied back with a cord, like something a magistrate in a period drama would wear. The kind of look for a Raid.
Leona's outfit was something like a modified Shandia battle garb, also clearly designed for ease of movement.
Given what they were wearing, both of them had clearly come here fully prepared to fight...
"Pbah... Good grief, how convenient of thou... But I suppose it cannot be helped. So what is needed is a staircase or something of the sort that can move this many people at once, aye? My apologies, everyone, please clear some space."
After getting the surrounding prisoners to move aside and enduring the 'What's going on?' stares, Suzu transformed both hands into mud and activated her Powers.
Massive amounts of mud overflowed from both hands, taking shape as it stretched upward, up, and up...
"Earth Style: Landslide Stairs Technique!"
A giant mud escalator leading straight to the Level 2 entrance materialized before everyone's eyes.
"Whoaaa! That's amazing, little lady!"
"Now we can all get to Level 2!"
With Luffy and the others at the lead, prisoners scrambled onto the escalator.
Naturally, the guards on the upper floor tried everything to stop it, attempting to destroy the escalator and picking off the prisoners, but neither worked.
What Suzu created from mud was, appearances aside, extremely sturdy. Minor impacts were simply dispersed and absorbed, and even if parts broke, the whole thing was mud to begin with, so it repaired instantly.
Ranged attacks were blocked by Luffy, Crocodile, Iva-san, and Alice. And me too.
The guards tried boarding the escalator themselves to interfere directly, but...
"Damn it, in that case we'll just go up there our... AAAAHHH!?"
"What is this, I'm sinking, slipping through, fall... WAAHH!"
"H-help meee!"
Whenever anyone other than the prisoners stepped on, Suzu manipulated the mud to stop supporting their weight at that spot, letting them sink through and plummet. They literally could not stand on the same stage.
Even when they grabbed for purchase, their outstretched hands phased right through, and they tumbled away with a pathetically sad splash. They fell from a considerable height... still alive, maybe?
Still, they stubbornly kept up the ranged attacks, targeting everyone on the escalator, so...
"Sandstorm (Sables)!!"
"Razor Blizzard!!"
"""GYAAAHH!!"""
Crocodile and I, thoroughly fed up, wiped them out.
Come on, let's go, let's go.
...Oh, but before that, I needed to ask what I hadn't gotten the chance to ask earlier.
Why were these two here... and did they come alone? Surely not, right?
"Ah, yeah. Gramps is the one who sent us here. He was in the area with Merveille for a separate matter... well, related to the war between Whitebeard and the Marines, and during that he intercepted Marine communications and found out Impel Down was in total chaos. He figured we could use the opportunity to rescue you, Mama, or that you might be trying to break out on your own, so he told us to come pick you up."
"The ones who came here are the two of us, the full Maid Squad Pleiades, the three Fish-Man girls from Gran Tesoro, and Marianne's group that Mother brought before. When they learned the destination was Impel Down, every last one of them insisted on coming. Marianne and her people are on the upper floors, and the Maid Squad and the three girls should be outside, seizing or destroying the warships docked there one after another to secure our escape vessels."
That was a way bigger operation than I'd expected!
Papa, you really went all out... And Marianne's group came too.
...If they came, then the person they were hoping to find... the one they wanted to save...
I glanced over.
"...? Oh my, what's the matter, Sue-chan?"
***
[Third-person perspective]
Meanwhile, on Level 1.
"Captain Buggy, we've got trouble! All four Jailer Beasts showed up together!"
"Wha-WHAAAAT!? D-dammit, after coming this far... we can't handle that! Run, retreat!"
"N-no, actually... it's fine! For some reason, they're not attacking the prisoners..."
"WAAAHH! H-hey, why are you going after us..."
"No! It's the other way! The prisoners... GYAAAH!!"
"Why are they attacking US and ignoring the prisoners!?"
"For some reason... they're only going after the guards and jailers, and completely ignoring us."
"What!? ...He's right, what the hell is going on here..."
Buggy and his group stared with bewildered eyes at the four Jailer Beasts trampling the guards and jailers.
Among them, Mr. 3, who had been watching the same scene, happened to glance at the backs and napes of the Jailer Beasts' necks and noticed...
"...What!? That's... could it be..."
"Colors Trap... Betrayal Black!"
A mark combining the letters "C" and "T," one he recognized well, drawn in black. The sight left him stunned.
And following right behind them...
"Stinger Hedgehog!!"
"Mobile Mole Hill Block 4! Batting practice, let's go, Mr. 4!"
"Fo~~~~!!"
"Baw! Baw! Baw!"
A beautiful woman transforming her entire body into a spike-covered sphere and rolling through jailers, flattening them. A giant man and a dog knocking baseball-shaped bombs with the weight of cannonballs, blasting guards away. A small old woman digging holes in the paths of fleeing guards, dropping them in to cut off their escape.
"Out of the way... 10,000 Kilo Medulla Lop!!"
"Don't you dare get in the way of saving that guy...! Nose Fancy Cannon!!"
A slender beauty whose kicks carried impossible weight, pulverizing jailers. A man kneading and launching something you'd rather not describe, sending guards flying.
And then, precisely because she had no combat ability herself, walking at the center of their protection: a small girl.
The tiny figure holding an artist's palette and paintbrush in her hands... Mr. 3 remembered her well.
At the sight, tears welled up unbidden even in the eyes of Mr. 3, a man who prided himself on being a cold-blooded villain.
"Y-you people... you care about me that much... to come all the way to a place like this to save me..."
And right at that moment, his eyes met those of the girl who had once been his partner, despite the distance still separating them.
The girl, who had been looking around frantically as if searching for someone, froze in that instant, tears welling in her eyes as she broke into a run.
Those around her, noticing, did the same...
Before he knew it, Mr. 3 had spread his arms wide and started running too.
Reuniting with his partner for the first time in months, his vision blurring with tears yet his gaze fixed firmly on her.
The girl kicked off the ground with a powerful leap just before reaching him, launching herself toward Mr. 3's chest with all her momentum...
"Miss Gol..."
"""BON-CHAAAAN!!"""
"...den... Wee... k..."
...She didn't fly into his arms. She sailed cleanly past him and dove into the chest of the Okama who had apparently appeared behind him at some point.
"..."
Mr. 3 stood frozen.
Buggy, standing beside him, looking supremely uncomfortable, reached over and gave his shoulder a pat.
"Uh... hey, look... chin up, Mr. 3. Yeah?"
Perhaps hearing those words, the girl who had been wailing into the Okama's chest looked back over her shoulder. Not just her, but the other companions, the Okama himself surrounded by his friends, the surrounding prisoners and weirdos were all crying along. She turned back and took another look at the man with the distinctive silhouette, the number "3" perched atop his head.
"Sniff...? Oh, Mr. 3... you were here?"
"Isn't that a bit TOO harsh!?"
***
We witnessed some kind of scene along the way that was simultaneously a tearful reunion and a classic comedy bit rolled into one, but regardless, we made it outside the prison.
Ahhh... it'd been so long since I'd seen the sky... so beautiful...! The air tasted so good...! Freedom really was the best...!
Around us, multiple warships were ablaze and destroyed, Marines lay beaten and collapsed everywhere, and the whole area was splattered with blood creating a rather gruesome landscape, but the sky was beautiful and the air... had a slight tinge of iron and gunpowder mixed in, but... yeah, barely still delicious.
And then,
"""Welcome home, Lady Sue!"""
"""Well done on your long confinement!"""
Six maids said this as they greeted me with perfectly synchronized, flawless movements. If what Suzu told me was true, these were the very people responsible for the carnage around us.
The prisoners stared and shot bewildered looks my way, but compared to the joy of being free from that prison, everything else was a trivial matter.
Oh, out there on the water, I could see the three Fish-Man girls too. ...This is the Calm Belt, you know. Are you going to be okay?
Also, minor point, but I didn't exactly "serve my time." I broke out.
Well, anyway. The sight that greeted us the moment we stepped outside was jaw-dropping, but looking at the results alone, there were no problems whatsoever.
If anything, this worked in our favor. Without having to fight for them, we had escape warships ready to go. In fact, they'd already been secured.
Only one thing left to do.
According to Yuri, quite a few warships had been badly damaged during the fighting, so only about four remained seaworthy.
One of those had most of its armaments destroyed, but it could still sail without issue.
We split up and boarded them as we saw fit.
Then, with no jailers or Marines in pursuit, we set sail at our leisure.
As for the Gates of Justice, which in the Original Work Bon-chan had stayed behind alone to open, I'd already visited the Power Room earlier and used Heaven's Door on the staff there, so that was taken care of.
On a blank space on one of their Books' pages, I'd written: "When warships are confirmed at the Gates of Justice, let them all through." So without any issues... look, they're opening.
Bon-chan's separation: prevented.
All four warships passed through, and behind us, with a massive clang, the Gates of Justice closed shut. Once Impel Down had completely vanished from sight...
"You did it Flashily, you bastards! Jailbreak... SUCCESS!!"
"""YEAAAAHHH!! WE'RE FREE!!"""
Riding the momentum and energy of the moment, Buggy's rallying cry set off an explosion of joy from everyone.
***
At this time, the number of prisoners who successfully escaped from Impel Down, the world's greatest Undersea Prison: a grand total of 1,406.
With Chief Warden Magellan, Vice Warden Hannyabal, and numerous other forces either dead or incapacitated, the total deployable personnel had plummeted to less than ten percent.
Impel Down had completely lost all functionality, suffering an utter and absolute "defeat."
Needless to say, this was the worst disaster in Impel Down's entire history.
And yet, outrageously, even this was not the end of the "incident."
A malice that piled on like a final blow had been stirring in the depths of Level 6.
The public execution of Portgas D. Ace.
Estimated time remaining... four hours.
To be continued...
---
Power Stones, Library adds, Comments, and Reviews all increase your Fan Value, helping you climb the rankings and unlock better rewards.
If you'd like to know more, you can check the auxiliary chapter. Thank you for being part of this journey!
---
Current Fan Value: Top Supporters
1. Ka2z: 105 Fan Value
2. Daoist383621: 67 Fan Value
3. I_am_The_Best_Cook: 49 Fan Value
4. dreamora: 40 Fan Value
5. Daoist91wth0: 23 Fan Value
6. firototo: 17 Fan Value
7. Lyft_DK: 15 Fan Value
8. Skulkingwolf: 12 Fan Value
9. QiWolf: 12 Fan Value
10. LuanLu: 9 Fan Value