At this very moment, on the Dressrosa side of the battlefield—
The pink dragon Nojiko had transformed into streaked across the sky and arrived at another gathering place for the enemy officers.
Not the toy factory. Vivi, Baccarat, and the others would handle that.
What she had to do now was simple:
Wipe out the Donquixote Family officers completely!
Roar—!!
A dragon's roar like rolling thunder echoed through the heavens.
Hearing the commotion, Gladius looked up, his face twisted as he watched the pink dragon rushing straight toward them—
And the scorching light building inside its open maw!
"How did this happen!?"
Where was Young Master?
Where was Tesoro?
Where were the top officers?
Somebody save him!
Boom—!!
The Blast Breath beam shot forward in a straight line, and the searing energy erupted the instant it struck!
A torrent of blazing fire swallowed the entire street. Flames and explosions surged into the sky, and even the earth seemed to tremble with it!
A terrifying shockwave burst forth the next instant, cleanly flattening an uninhabited cluster of buildings within a range of several hundred meters.
The hurricane it stirred up bent buildings even farther away.
If Nojiko had not restrained the flames, that very hurricane might have become a ring of fire spreading over a thousand meters, burning and killing everything in its range!
Although this Blast Breath had not yet reached the level of the Crimson Flame King—eight thousand degrees Celsius—it was clearly even more powerful than the last one.
It had already reached the level of a natural disaster!
However—
Blast Breath was, by nature, a penetrating energy attack. Unless one deliberately overpoured firepower into it, it should not have created such violent aftershocks.
"Hm?"
Nojiko let out a surprised sound. "Using your companions' corpses with your Devil Fruit to create explosions and offset the beam's power?
Not a bad idea. Clinging to life through the sacrifice of your comrades is one way to survive, I suppose."
Below them—
Inside a charred crater over a hundred meters wide and long, Gladius staggered to his feet.
Machvise was already gone. Even Haki could not block such a horrifying attack.
Or rather, once Machvise had stepped forward with a Haki-coated body and Gladius had used the Pop-Pop Fruit's power on his comrade's corpse—
There had never been any possibility of a corpse remaining at all.
"I'll kill you!"
Gladius slammed a hand onto the ground, instantly applying his Devil Fruit power known as Exploding Rock: Super Grand Performance to the earth beneath them.
At once, unnatural bulges rose across the ground, like little hills swelling upward.
But behind that bizarre phenomenon lurked a terrifying explosive technique.
Once the swelling reached its limit, the ground would burst apart like a balloon, unleashing enough explosive force and shockwaves to flatten everything within several hundred meters.
Of course, his enemy could fly, so Gladius used directional explosions instead, intending to turn the spraying debris into lethal shrapnel.
He had no idea whether it would work, but it was already the last of his strength.
Unexpectedly, his opponent did not use Blast Breath again. Instead, she merely absorbed the sea of flames and descended in her human-beast form.
"Fine. I'll give you that chance."
Nojiko landed on the ground. Endless flames gathered around her body, forming a suit of blazing armor.
Flame Dragon Torch: Residual Sun Garment!
"You actually came down on your own... Don't look down on me!"
Gladius's entire body began to swell like an irritated pufferfish.
"One strike—"
Nojiko extended a clawed hand covered in scales, bending her knees slightly and lowering her posture.
"—and you're done!"
Boom—!!
Firelight erupted. With a violent stomp, Nojiko turned into a stream of blazing flame and flashed past Gladius!
"Idiot! You walked right into it!"
Joy twisted Gladius's face as he prepared to trigger the explosion and kill this terrifying enemy.
But then... flames suddenly ignited across his body, the source being a three-clawed wound across his chest!
Crimson Flame: Ashen End!
Nojiko slowly turned around. The surrounding area, which had been on the verge of exploding, abruptly stilled.
And Gladius himself turned to ash in barely a second.
She was not surprised in the slightest. This was the result of their intensive training.
To serve the team's interests, she had focused more of her effort on developing the fusion of Blast Breath and the Evil God Lighter.
Her development in other directions—like destructive wind and thunder—had been relatively lacking.
Even so, not just anyone was qualified to be her opponent.
Ren's evaluation of her had clearly placed her at B-rank!
Still, compared to her younger sister, she felt she had plenty of room to improve.
Boom—!!
A golden halberd over a hundred meters long pierced through rock and embedded itself into the towering cliff wall at the edge of Dressrosa.
Doflamingo, who had just barely broken free, landed atop the middle section of the halberd, finding his footing on a stretch roughly a dozen meters wide.
As his Observation Haki swept the surroundings,
He raised one hand and wove a dense Spider Web with the String-String Fruit.
The next instant—
Crackling lightning tore through the air, shredding the Spider Web as if it were nothing more than a greeting.
Broken stone flew everywhere, and the scattered arcs of electricity nearly melted the shaft of the golden halberd.
"How pathetic, Doflamingo."
Ren arrived with the lightning, appearing in his Six-Winged Angel form.
He looked disdainfully at the man before him, draped in that pink feather coat like some flashy street punk.
"Fuffuffuffu... so it's you, Demon Ren!"
Doflamingo stared fixedly at the enemy who had killed his "family," the culprit behind the entire situation spiraling to this point.
"With things having turned out like this, can I take it that you'd already begun moving against me long ago?
Why?
Why target me and my family?"
"What a strange question. As warped as ever, Doflamingo.
I'd say that even though this is our first meeting, we should already know each other quite well."
Ren raised a hand mockingly, a cluster of lightning bursting from his fingertips.
"Just as you wanted to kill me, I want to kill you.
The moment you planned to trade my head to the World Government for profit, we became enemies, didn't we?
Or what? You're allowed to kill others, but others aren't allowed to kill you?
Surely the self-proclaimed king of the underworld isn't really that naive?"
"Fuffuffuffu... so you saw through it? Was it Monet?"
Doflamingo's expression darkened, and his gaze involuntarily drifted behind Ren.
"No. She was loyal to you. Loyal enough to die for you.
You don't need to wonder who betrayed you or your family and led to this situation.
You can think of it this way—
This is the fate of those who make an enemy of me."
Ren bared his teeth in a grin.
"Oh, and one more thing. No need to look behind me. Tesoro's already out of the game.
He was pretty strong, but in a deliberately arranged one-on-one situation, there was no way he could beat me."
"...Deliberately? That pink dragon—was that your doing?"
"Yes. You're terrified of Kaido, aren't you?"
"..."
Doflamingo clenched his fists.
How could he not be afraid?
If Kaido found out that he had lost the source of SAD's raw materials and could no longer continue supplying artificial Devil Fruits—
Then Kaido would lose the foundation for building his army of Zoan ability users, and he would surely fly into a rage.
And that bastard was a drunk.
When Kaido got furious, he drank.
And once drunk, almost no one could talk him down.
At that point, what would he do?
Doflamingo could practically see the scene already: a drunken Kaido descending on Dressrosa in a frenzy.
Maybe not even a frenzy.
Maybe just one Blast Breath from south to north, then another from east to west.
In a matter of minutes, the entire kingdom—and all the effort he had poured into it over the years—would be sent straight to hell.
Even if he and the Donquixote Family officers survived by sheer luck, there would be no place left for them in the New World.
By then, even if the World Government sent the Marines to settle accounts with Kaido over the destruction of an allied nation—
The Marines would inevitably be facing a Yonko coalition.
In the end, Kaido might pay some price at most, and Kaido himself would probably even enjoy getting several good fights out of it.
And by the end of it all, Doflamingo might well be forced to bear the blame.
That was obviously the last thing he wanted to see.
But what could he do?
He had tried using the Den Den Mushi to make contact, but every line leading to Caesar's Den Den Mushi had gone dead!
Go investigate the site personally?
Punk Hazard itself was gone. The entire island had vanished, leaving behind only a gigantic underwater abyss.
Who did it, when it happened, where the island had gone—he knew none of it!
Under such circumstances, he did not even have a way to salvage the situation!
That was exactly why—
When he saw that pink dragon that looked almost like a replica of Kaido, Doflamingo had been so shaken and thrown off balance!
Thinking this far, Doflamingo said in a low voice, "As I thought. You got information from Monet.
I trust my subordinates' loyalty, but in this world, there are all kinds of bizarre Devil Fruit abilities.
Stop hiding it. I've already seen through your tricks! Including the fact that there's corresponding action on the other side, isn't there?"
His tone was extremely certain, as though he had truly seen through everything.
"Not a bad guess. And with a little rhetoric mixed in too. Trying to test whether I know your secrets?"
Ren saw right through Doflamingo's verbal bait and spread his hands mockingly.
"Admittedly, it's a reasonable assumption.
To place the source of everything beyond your imagination on Monet—the intelligence source who got captured.
But—why not make a bolder guess?"
"...What do you mean?"
"The SAD factory, Caesar, and even the entirety of Punk Hazard—
I'm the one who moved them all."
"!"
Doflamingo's pupils contracted sharply.
"And besides, I've been waiting for your big move—"
At almost that exact moment, a blinding radiance from the high heavens was reflected in Ren's eyes.
"—what are you waiting for? Death?"
Sumeru: Divine Thunder!
One of the Sumeru Gourds floating within the thundercloud layer released its own power!
Endless lightning surged inside the gourd's internal space, and through constant refinement, it formed a condensed bolt of pure thunder!
A twisting thunder-shaped beam erupted forth, carrying the tyrannical majesty of lightning itself!
Bzzzt—!
The light arrived before the sound.
The descending divine punishment was so dazzling that it illuminated all of Dressrosa's gloomy sky.
It was as brilliant as a second sun!
The violent energy exploded the instant it struck the target. The golden halberd was melted into brilliant liquid in an instant, merging together with the equally liquefied stone.
Then, under the rapidly rising temperature, it vaporized!
What followed was the trembling of the earth. Amid a rumbling like a dragon turning in its sleep, the polygonal-disc-shaped island of Dressrosa was forcibly shorn of one of its corners!
Hundreds of thousands of tons of rock mixed with tens of thousands of tons of magma poured into the sea, raising a small tsunami!
(End of Chapter)