The stone stair bridge over the dark service shaft shuddered under the force of intersecting blade-strokes. Sparks showered down into the abyss as Shanks's Gryphon met Shiryu's heavy nodachi in a continuous, grinding shriek of hardened steel.
Shiryu grinned, his eyes gleaming behind his dark jailer's cap. With a sudden, vicious twist of his wrists, he broke the lock and swept his blade in a low arc toward the legs of the trembling work-detail prisoners cowering behind Shanks's.
"Watch your footing, Red-Hair," Shiryu mocked, his voice dripping with casual sadism. "Your charity is going to cost them their ankles."
Shanks didn't blink. Pivoting effortlessly on his left heel, he shifted his weight and brought Gryphon down in a heavy, vertical parry that deflected the nodachi away from the captives. But Shiryu had anticipated the motion; he slammed his elbow backward into a rusted structural support beam, cracking the stone railing and sending a cascade of jagged debris hurtling toward the open drop where the prisoners stood paralyzed.
"Gio!" Shanks shouted, recognizing the tactical bind.
Standing firm at the landing with his bound right arm pinned to his chest, Giovanni reached out with his left hand. Grabbing a heavy iron stanchion, he swept it outward like a baseball bat, shattering the falling masonry into harmless gravel before it could strike the workers.
The last chunks of stone burst apart around Giovanni's stanchion. Behind him, Robin's sprouted arms dragged the three workers across the landing while Limejuice pulled the nearest man behind the iron bulkhead. Hongo shoved the final prisoner into absolute cover.
"They're clear!" Giovanni shouted.
With the workers finally behind cover, the last restraint on Shanks's offense disappeared. Armament darkened Gryphon while Conqueror's Haki rolled off Shanks in a suffocating wave that distorted the surrounding air.
Shiryu's smile faltered. The heavy, oppressive weight of his opponent's aura made his breath hitch.
Shanks didn't give him room to adjust. Moving with terrifying, blinding speed, Shanks bypassed the jailer's guard with a rapid, fluid series of strikes that dismantled Shiryu's rhythm entirely. Gryphon blurred into a silver crescent, deflecting the nodachi outward and leaving the jailer's right flank entirely exposed.
With a swift, uncompromising slash, Shanks drove Gryphon forward. The blade swept through the air with lethal precision, cleanly severing Shiryu's right arm at the shoulder in a sudden spray of crimson.
The heavy nodachi slipped from the falling hand and clattered uselessly against the stone bridge, spinning over the edge into the dark shaft below.
Shiryu gasped, stumbling back against the cliff wall as shock and agony flooded his features. Before he could recover or reach for a secondary weapon with his left hand, Shanks's boot connected with his chest, driving the bleeding jailer hard against the stone.
Hongo vaulted forward instantly, snapping heavy prison restraints securely around Shiryu's remaining wrist, waist, and ankles, chaining him firmly to an iron wall bracket.
"He's secured," Hongo said, "He won't be moving for a long time."
Far above, in the shattered intake hall of Impel Down, the tide of the upper battle finally turned.
Fleet Admiral Sengoku stood amid the ruins of the eastern gallery, his golden Daibutsu form radiating a blinding, oppressive light. With a final, earth-shaking palm strike, he unleashed a massive shockwave that pulverized the damaged supports beneath Beckman and Roux's firing gallery.
The gallery collapsed in a thunderous roar of dust and masonry. Beckman and Roux vaulted backward into the upper intake corridor, dodging the falling debris with practiced ease. Blood ran down Beckman's torn left shoulder as he settled the flintlock against his right, while Roux landed beside him with a hitch, one hand clamped briefly against his ribs. The first burst of speed was still there, but his second step came noticeably late.
"We're clear of the lower team's window," Beckman said, spitting a drop of dust from his mouth. "Blow it."
Roux tossed a heavy, corded explosive charge toward the main stone staircase anchoring the intake hall to the lower service levels, pulling the ignition pin with his teeth.
"Catch, Buddha," Roux muttered.
BOOM!
The controlled demolition tore through the structural arches of the grand staircase, sending tons of ancient stone crashing down into the primary descent shaft. The easiest, most direct passage to the lower levels vanished in a cloud of blinding dust and rubble.
Beckman and Roux didn't wait to admire the collapse. They turned up the surviving corridor and withdrew toward the upper extraction junction.
Sengoku emerged from the settling smoke, dropping out of his Daibutsu form as his human body hit the stone. He caught a falling chunk of masonry that threatened to crush a pair of terrified Marine sub-officers, shoving it safely aside with a grunt of irritation.
"Secure the perimeter!" Sengoku barked, his voice carrying the absolute authority of the Fleet Admiral. "Evacuate the surviving staff to the upper courtyard and lock the perimeter blast doors. The main stairwell is destroyed, bring up the heavy transport lifts from the secondary garrison. I'm taking the western service route down."
His commands were immediate, precise, and practical. The demolition had bought the Red-Haired Pirates what they needed: time. With the direct stair buried under tons of stone, Sengoku turned toward the longer reinforced command corridor on the western flank.
Deep below, the rescue team breached the iron-reinforced threshold of Level 4—Blazing Hell.
The air here was suffocatingly hot, thick with the metallic stink of boiling blood and furnace smoke. Limejuice pushed open the heavy steel door of a disused medical sub-station, sweeping his lantern across pristine shelves lined with emergency trauma kits and preserved chemical supplies.
"Got it," Limejuice called out, grabbing a heavy metal crate labeled EMERGENCY MEDICAL STOCK — ANTITOXIN / BURN TREATMENT. He hoisted it over his shoulder and carried it directly to Hongo, who was inspecting a row of decontamination lockers.
"Good timing," Hongo said, checking the labels as he organized the antitoxin vials across a stainless-steel tray. "These won't make us immune to Magellan, but they might buy us time against some of his poisons."
As Hongo secured the medical supplies into his pack, a low, ominous gurgling sound echoed from the sealed industrial furnace doors at the far end of the corridor. It sounded like thick, boiling liquid shifting through massive iron pipes.
"Something's coming through the drainage valves," Robin murmured, stepping back from the wall as a thick, purple, viscous sludge began to bubble up from the floor grates, hissing violently as it made contact with the hot stone.
From the shadows of the central archway stepped a towering man in dark prison uniform. Horn-like ornaments curved from his head above a heavy beard, while black bat-like wings framed his enormous body. Purple venom slid from his hands and hissed against the stone.
Magellan.
"You've carved quite a path through my prison," Magellan's voice boomed, deep and venomous, as he raised his hands.
Magellan swept one hand forward. Purple poison flooded across the broad passage ahead, climbing the floor and walls until the route toward the lower prison vanished behind a bubbling curtain of venom.
"You won't go any farther," Magellan said, his gaze fixed on Shanks and Giovanni. "And reaching the bottom of this fortress doesn't mean you'll ever leave it alive."
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