"Let's move!" Sanji said abruptly.
"Eh?" Chopper gasped in surprise, immediately interjecting, "But what about Luffy...?"
"Have faith in them! Luffy is the man who will become the King of the Pirates. If he... No, he will not be defeated!" Sanji declared with unyielding conviction.
"Right!" Hearing those words, the others hesitated no longer, and their operational consensus was instantly aligned.
However, standing to the side, Bege felt thoroughly displeased. Listening to Sanji and the others continually insist that Luffy could defeat Katakuri, he naturally felt quite dismissive. While he acknowledged that the Straw Hat kid possessed respectable raw power, when it came to systematically dismantling Katakuri, he still calculated it to be a statistical impossibility.
If they were talking about Drake, Bege would readily believe that Drake would secure a definitive victory.
But as for Luffy... he simply didn't buy it.
Still, he wasn't foolish enough to voice his doubts at a critical juncture like this. If his words caused Sanji and the others to lose their resolve to flee, wouldn't he incur a massive strategic deficit? With someone finally drawing Big Mom's aggro to anchor the grid, they had to execute their tactical retreat immediately!
"Caesar, in a few moments, I will deactivate this massive fortress configuration and shrink back to my baseline human mass. Your operational objective is to carry me out of here."
"Even when this fortress reverts to my original dimensions, your presence inside the interior chambers will remain entirely unaffected by the scale shift."
"Therefore, the blueprint is for Caesar to lift my physical body and sprint across the sector. The moment we breach the outer perimeter wall, the joint alliance will officially disband."
"From that coordinate onward, our survival parameters depend entirely on our independent evasion paths."
"I see!" Sanji and the others finally processed the specialized dimensional mechanics of Bege's Castle-Castle Fruit capability.
"Under those parameters, this strategy is highly optimized. We'll leave the rearguard transit to you." As Sanji spoke, the collective gaze of the group settled heavily onto Caesar, who was standing adjacent to the perimeter.
"Hey, hey, hey... Why is it always me parsing the manual labor!? You bastards constantly command me to handle every hazardous variable. I'm resigning from this deployment!" Caesar barked, trying to put on a show of unyielding defiance.
But in the next microsecond, his features contorted violently, and a desperate scream of pure agony tore from his throat.
"AAAAARGH!! Stop! Cease your adjustments immediately!"
Bege had smoothly retrieved a translucent, pulsing heart from his coat infrastructure, casually squeezing and kneading the mass with a cruel, satisfied grin plastered across his face.
"I'll execute the trajectory! I'll move right now!" Caught beneath the crushing weight of structural leverage, Caesar surrendered his defiance instantly, nodding frantically to secure his survival.
"I failed to calculate that a piece of garbage like you could possess a shred of baseline utility..." Nami shot a highly critical glance toward Caesar, snorting coldly. "Though you remain an absolute stain on humanity!"
"Gah!" Caesar's jaw twitched. The data input cut straight through his pride. Yet, that was merely the opening salvo of the critique.
Sanji: "Accelerate your transition, you absolute societal waste!"
Chopper: "Scumbag!"
"Gah!!"
Despite sustaining continuous psychological trauma from the commentary, he understood that executing his operational task was an absolute mathematical necessity.
"Keep your variables in mind—this deployment is simultaneously saving your own miserable life!" Bege delivered a final, cold reminder right as Caesar prepared to step through the egress threshold.
"I grasp the parameters!" Caesar snapped back irritably.
With a crisp metallic click, the fortress gates swung open, and Caesar launched his frame out onto the physical plaza. In that exact fraction of a millisecond, Bege's massive stone infrastructure collapsed inward, re-stabilizing back into his standard human dimensions.
Caesar scooped Bege up, hoisting him securely onto his shoulder as his legs turned into a frantic blur, flying straight toward the outer perimeter wall.
"Pursue them immediately!" The surrounding officers of the Big Mom Pirates processed the extraction vector, and the local garrison swarmed forward to seal the path.
Combatants possessing flight capabilities launched themselves into the air one after another, tracing a lethal intercept vector toward Caesar's coordinates. It was the mathematical equivalent of an isolated vessel navigating a catastrophic, raging sea; structural failure appeared imminent at any microsecond.
"Germa 66! Shield their extraction vector!" Judge roared, launching his frame into the sky ahead of the rest.
Five brilliant, multi-colored streaks of light cut through the upper atmosphere, leaving a magnificent trail of long-lasting energy arches in their wake.
At this exact juncture, Smoothie found her advance completely blocked by Kenshin's drawn steel.
Big Mom's primary combat vectors were anchored by Drake, while Katakuri had been shifted into the independent mirror dimension.
Among the remaining enemy forces occupying the plaza, the only individual whose power metrics could still place him within the tier of elite combatants was Perospero.
And he had already had a core limb cleanly severed by Drake's previous spatial strike.
Backed by the high-velocity, synchronized support of the Germa siblings, the extraction unit encountered zero insurmountable bottlenecks along their path. Within a limited timeframe, they had successfully cleared the structural threshold of the outer perimeter wall.
"You calculate escaping my domain is that simple? Delusional!" Perospero gritted his teeth, standing at the precipice of the wall as he violently swung his candy cane staff. A colossal barrier of solid candy shot into the sky, expanding at a rapid velocity to permanently wall off Caesar's flight trajectory.
"Agh! The flight path is completely locked down!" Caesar ground his momentum to a screeching halt, a thick stream of comedic anxiety-snot leaking from his nose. "We need to recalculate our vector and orbit around the structure!"
"Unnecessary! Maintain a straight trajectory!" The three Germa princes synchronized their output metrics, unleashing a combined, multi-colored energy blast that systematically pulverized the solid candy wall into fine dust.
BOOM!
"Ah, magnificent! The path is clear!" Caesar didn't allow his acceleration parameters to drop for a single millisecond, shooting straight through the breach.
"Damn it!" Perospero's teeth ground together in fury. Watching Caesar's silhouette fade into the distance, he gathered torque in his legs to initiate a pursuit vector.
Suddenly, a blinding beam of pure technological energy cratered into his position.
BOOM!
Caught entirely off-balance by the sudden kinetic feedback, he was blasted backward across the stone floor. By the time he re-stabilized his footing and snapped his gaze forward, the five core members of the Vinsmoke bloodline had formed a pristine, defensive wall right in front of his coordinates.
"Germa 66!" Perospero growled, his glare locking onto the five silhouettes with absolute, murderous intensity.
After a brief pause, a sharp, sinister smirk spread across his face. "Once the sun sets on this date, the Germa lineage will be permanently deleted from the world's ledger!"
"Are you suffering from a cognitive deficit? Our structural integrity is completely uncompromised, as you can see," Yonji countered, his expression a mask of absolute disdain.
"Peroli... Peroli... Indeed, you currently stand intact upon this plaza..." Perospero offered a thoroughly "benevolent" smile, his tone laced with dark implication.
Studying Perospero's unreadable facade, Judge's brow furrowed deeply as a sharp flash of realization suddenly processed in his mind.
Not good!
"All units, map coordinates back to the sovereign sector immediately!" On Judge's authoritative command, the five Germa combatants accelerated into the sky at maximum velocity, shifting their flight vectors toward their homeland—the Kingdom of Germa!
Staring at the silhouettes that vanished from his peripheral vision within a heartbeat, Perospero let out a cold, dismissive snort. "Even if you maximize your transit speeds to reach the sector, it carries zero utility now. Your calculations are far too late..."
RUMBLE...
Right at that microsecond, the entire chateau infrastructure began to vibrate to a violent, catastrophic frequency.
The sheer barometric pressure generated by the displaced air forced Perospero to narrow his eyes against the howling gale. When his vision finally cleared, his eyes locked onto the epicenter of the destruction: Drake and Big Mom were engaged in a high-intensity, close-quarters clash.
Every single point of impact unleashed a rapid, concussive wave that tore through the local environment. Ordinary infantry stood absolutely zero mathematical probability of even approaching their coordinates without suffering immediate structural failure.
"What terrifying raw power...!" Perospero muttered, his eyes narrowing as he evaluated Drake matching Big Mom blow for blow on equal terms.
His left hand subconsciously drifted to massage the artificial right arm he had hastily molded from solid candy, a sharp wave of unadulterated venom flashing through his eyes. His biological arm had been cleanly separated from his frame by a casual, effortless strike from Drake; to claim he harbored no internal hatred toward the man would be a complete statistical lie.
On the adjacent sector of the plaza, the duel between Kenshin and Smoothie had devolved into an exceptionally fierce, lethal exchange of sword techniques.
Although Kenshin's manipulation of his thunder properties had evolved to an exceptionally high tier of destructive output, it wasn't a payload capable of easily shattering Smoothie's defensive parameters. As one of the highest-tier executives anchoring a Yonko's crew, Smoothie's raw combat metrics could not be measured by conventional metrics. Their clash had steadily re-stabilized into a pure battle of blade proficiency.
I have an opening! Perospero calculated, seizing a microscopic window of opportunity while Drake was actively engaged against Big Mom's mass. He drew his staff back, unleashing a colossal candy structure that hurtled toward Drake's exposed back.
The candy infrastructure was molded into the shape of a gargantuan, abyssal jaw lined with rows of razor-sharp fangs, its offensive metrics looking exceptionally lethal.
Staring at Drake's silhouette—which appeared to lack the necessary clearance timeframe to mount an evasion maneuver—Perospero lowered his gaze, his lips curling into a sharp, triumphant smirk.
But in the next split second, his brain completely stalled.
The space occupying Drake's coordinates suddenly rippled, and the captain vanished from the sector entirely.
The colossal, fanged candy jaw, having already gathered irreversible kinetic momentum along its original trajectory, zipped straight through empty air to crash heavily into the face of Big Mom, who had been standing directly opposite Drake's previous position.
"What!?" Big Mom let out a startled bark, but under these immediate parameters, she lacked the reaction clearance to dodge the strike.
BOOM!
With impeccable, comedic precision, the payload delivered a direct hit square to her face.
Simultaneously, materializing high in the upper atmosphere, a sharp glint flared within Vale D. Drake's eyes. He raised a single hand, his fingers curling into a tight, crushing clench.
Though the movement appeared casual and effortless on the surface, thick beads of sweat visibly trickled down Drake's forehead, indicating the extreme tier of mental strain involved in the calculation.
"Spatial... Detonation!"
The exact microsecond the words left his lips, Drake's tightly clenched right hand snapped open.