Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
A succession of violent explosions suddenly ripped through the surrounding area, forcefully carving a massive breach through the airtight dragnet.
Sanji rapidly shifted his gaze toward the clearing, only to find five distinct figures walking calmly through the smoke.
Germa 66!
The moment his eyes processed their signatures, Sanji's expression flattened completely. "What the hell are you guys doing here?"
"Sanji! Why did you save us!?" Judge demanded, standing at the vanguard of the group.
Staring at the son he had once utterly loathed—the boy he had branded as the solitary, eternal disgrace of his life—a chaotic storm of conflicting emotions swirled within Judge's chest. He had never calculated a scenario where his life would be secured by Sanji. No, to be mathematically precise, Sanji's actions had just preserved the structural survival of the entire Vinsmoke lineage!
"Don't flatter yourself. I only intervened because I didn't want the old man back in the East Blue to experience a shred of sorrow."
"If he discovered that I allowed my former bloodline to be slaughtered out of some lingering childhood animosity, he would never give me a pass."
Having delivered the data, Sanji's voice dropped to a freezing, rigid edge. "Make no mistake: I harbor nothing but raw hatred for this family. Do not read any other variables into my actions."
Judge stared at Sanji, his mind a turbulent mess of complex thoughts, choosing to remain silent.
"Remember this, Judge! I am not your son! I never was!" Sanji violently snatched Judge by his collar, his voice a roaring snarl.
This intensely personal dramatic friction was playing out right in the middle of a high-density battlefield, with an entire Emperor's army surrounding their coordinates.
"To think that even under these parameters, you still possess the cognitive clearance to engage in family bickering." Oven growled, his forearms flushing a violent, incandescent red as he scaled his thermal output to its absolute maximum threshold.
"Today, every single one of you assets will be permanently deleted from the grid!" With a heavy roar, he launched his frame straight toward Sanji.
Sanji's gaze flicked to the side. He gritted his teeth, gathering torque in his leg to parry the strike, when a solid silhouette smoothly intercepted the trajectory ahead of him.
"I've got an operational directive to fulfill here!" The speaker was none other than his biological younger brother, Yonji!
"The matters concerning those two aren't something low-tier trash like you can casually disrupt," Reiju noted, executing a flawless, graceful flip through the upper atmosphere to drive a heavy heel kick straight into the gathering crowd.
"Agh! What the hell is this fluid!?" "Not good, it's highly toxic!"
"Hehehe..." Reiju offered a beautiful, knowing smile. By now, the Germa siblings had systematically consolidated their positions, forming a protective perimeter around the core Straw Hat members.
"What exact game are you playing at...?" Sanji muttered, his glare locking back onto Judge.
"I fundamentally refuse to carry a debt to anyone—especially a debt to a failure like you!" Judge violently slapped Sanji's hand away from his collar, turning his back to the cook.
"We shall proceed precisely as you articulated. Once the sun sets on this date, our connection is permanently severed!" Having delivered the line, Judge strode toward the rest of the Germa forces.
"Furthermore, your benefactor in the East Blue will remain entirely secure from our end."
"Germa 66, primary objective: secure an extraction vector for the Straw Hat Pirates!"
"Understood!"
On Judge's command, four brilliant streaks of light shot into the sky at maximum velocity. Moving with the unstoppable force of a breaking wave, they systematically pulverized the enemy front line, forcefully opening a pristine path for Sanji's group.
"Move out!" Sanji gripped Nami's hand, leading Chopper, Carrot, and Brook to sprint immediately behind the vanguard. Their transit was completely unobstructed, and within a limited timeframe, they had successfully crossed the plaza to reach Bege's coordinates.
"Damn it! Quick, seal their perimeter!" the Charlotte siblings screamed frantically, their teeth grinding in sheer frustration.
Yet, they simply couldn't free up the necessary combat units to intercept them. The defensive output displayed by the Germa siblings was far too dynamic and versatile. Every prince possessed an exceptional tier of raw power, forcing the local garrison into a grueling stalemate.
"Splendid!" The moment Bege processed Sanji's arrival, his physical infrastructure shifted rapidly, transforming his frame into a colossal, multi-story stone fortress. "Big Father!"
"Get inside the fortress immediately!"
"Ahahaha! That is remarkably cool!" Chopper's eyes instantly transformed into massive stars upon seeing the fortress structure.
"This is..." The rest of the non-combatants were thoroughly startled by the display, but the current timeline offered zero clearance for emotional reflections. They scrambled through the heavy gates, entering the interior of the castle.
"Luffy! Get over here, quick!" Chopper yelled, looking back out through the portcullis. Seeing Luffy and a few others still isolated on the physical plaza, a heavy layer of anxiety gripped his chest.
BOOM!
"Gah...!" Luffy was violently blasted backward by a massive kinetic strike.
Katakuri strode calmly through the dust, resetting his stance right beside Luffy's coordinates.
"Luffy...!" Seeing this data display, the eyes of every single Straw Hat member shrank to pinpricks.
"To hell with it!" Jinbe made a sub-second calculation, preparing to charge right back out of the fortress gates.
"STAY BACK!"
A desperate, gut-wrenching scream tore from Luffy's throat, vibrating across the distance. He dropped to one knee, breathing in heavy, ragged gasps. He understood with absolute mathematical certainty that Jinbe reinforcing his position carried zero baseline utility under these parameters. The monster standing before him could literally process the future! Standard combat methodologies possessed zero strategic value against his predictive Haki.
"Aaaagh! If I get captured here, my life signs will be permanently terminated!" Caesar Clown, who had failed to enter the fortress in sync with the main unit, panicked upon seeing Katakuri closing in on the sector. Turning his legs into a rapid blur of afterimages, he bolted toward the gates. "Don't you dare close that door on me!"
He reached the threshold within seconds, a massive grin of relief beginning to spread across his face as the sensation of cheating death washed over his system.
But in that exact microsecond, his momentum ground to a total halt. He couldn't advance a single inch. Turning his head back, his eyes nearly popped out of his skull: Katakuri had extended his mochi arm across the plaza, clamping a vice-like grip onto Caesar's flight pack.
"Aaaah!" Caesar gritted his teeth, his legs kicking frantically against the air as he tried to force his way forward. If I don't give it everything I have right now, I'm a goner!
SNAP! The thick leather straps of his flight pack fractured under the opposing tensions.
With a massive yelp of pure, survival-fueled adrenaline, Caesar shot forward like a cannonball, tumbling safely into the interior of the fortress.
"Niisan..." Brûlée whimpered, staring up at Katakuri, who had successfully extracted her from the alliance's custody.
BOOM!
A catastrophic shockwave of pure spatial energy rippled across the summit once more, the localized barometric pressure forcing both Luffy and Katakuri to narrow their eyes against the howling gale.
"Mama... Mamamama! Again!" Big Mom roared with unadulterated frenzy, swinging her colossal broadsword as she rode Zeus to launch another high-velocity blitz.
"Spatial... Compression!"
Vale D. Drake channeled his spatial energy, focusing the pure fabric of the dimension onto the edge of Canhong, layering the compression parameters over and over again.
This specialized technique demanded an exceptionally high tier of mental focus and spatial mastery. Despite Drake dedicating every single microsecond of his two years of secluded training to refining his metrics without a moment of rest, he had only managed to achieve a maximum threshold of six layers.
Compressing the fabric of reality six times represented his absolute current limit. The true destructive capacity of this output was a variable he hadn't fully measured against a live target.
But within his personal calculations, he felt entirely invincible—there was nothing in creation his blade couldn't cleave!
He delivered a clean, sweeping arc.
CLANG!!
"Aaaagh!" The exact microsecond steel met steel, a sharp, agonizing shriek of pure trauma tore from Napoleon's form.
"Napoleon...?" Big Mom stared down at her transforming broadsword in absolute, paralyzed disbelief. Napoleon's face was a mask of pure, unadulterated agony.
In her entire recorded history, this was the first time her living weapon had ever displayed a structural deficit of this magnitude. To hear the near-indestructible Napoleon scream in pain caused the pupils of the surrounding Charlotte siblings to shrink to pinpricks. This was a visual scenario entirely absent from their historical data.
Staring at Drake—who was effortlessly matching the Emperor blow for blow without displaying a single indicator of physical strain—Katakuri's expression turned dangerously grave.
Drake's overall power metrics had officially graduated into a terrifyingly anomalous tier. Mama... might actually suffer a tactical defeat here. Once that calculation took root in his mind, it expanded rapidly, impossible to suppress.
"Luffy, Katakuri is your assignment. Keep my parameters in mind," Drake spoke smoothly, casting a brief glance back at his younger brother.
In the next microsecond, the spatial matrix around them vibrated violently!
"What is this!?" Katakuri's pupils dilated. He suddenly found his physical frame entirely locked down, his movement vectors reduced to zero.
A sudden wave of severe spatial vertigo washed over his cognitive centers. When his vision finally re-stabilized and his eyes snapped open, the physical plaza of the chateau had completely evaporated. They were standing within an entirely different world.
"This is... the Mirro-World!" Scanning the infinite expanse of reflective glass and checkerboard terrain, Katakuri instantly identified their coordinates.
He was intimately familiar with this sector; this was the independent dimension generated by his sister Brûlée's Devil Fruit capability.
Except, looking around the quadrant... Brûlée hadn't been brought into the space with them.