The earth shuddered violently as the highest tier of the Whole Cake Chateau suddenly buckled and tilted. The majestic plaza hosting the Tea Party sat directly upon this summit, and the catastrophic structural collapse expanded outward at a terrifying velocity.
"W-What's happening? What exact shift did the parameters take!?" The morale of the Big Mom Pirates, already pushed to a dangerous breaking point by the ongoing abnormalities, fractured completely. This final variable nearly drove them into absolute panic.
"Not good! The entire sector is caving in!"
BOOM!
While the surrounding crowd was blind to the mechanics of the detonation, Vale D. Drake understood the exact data points. A sharp glint flared along the edge of Canhong as he drove a rapid, fluid slash straight toward Big Mom's coordinates.
Even if the attack vectors lacked the threshold to permanently delete her life signs, he was determined to inflict severe structural trauma. Looking ahead to their impending deployment in Wano Country, Drake had zero intention of letting her preserve the operational capability to disrupt their plans.
"VALE D. DRAKE!!" Big Mom roared, forcing her frame back up. Thick streams of blood leaked from her jaws, and her shredded imperial robes were thoroughly stained a deep crimson. The internal data was blatant: she had sustained critical damage.
BANG!
Following a localized distortion of the air, Drake condensed the spatial matrix, driving a heavy fist straight into her torso—striking precisely against the gaping laceration his blade had carved moments before!
BOOM!
"AAAAAGH!" Big Mom shrieked in primal agony, her red-rimmed eyes locking onto Drake. Moving purely on frantic survival instincts, she extracted a massive reserve of soul energy from her surroundings and swung a desperate, cataclysmic punch.
Drake processed the immense kinetic force shifting through her trajectory. Infusing a maximum density of Advanced Conqueror's Haki alongside a localized spatial vibration, he drove his fist forward to meet the blow.
RUMBLE... BOOM!!!
The sheer, monumental feedback of the collision violently blasted both combatants backward across the sector, Drake's frame rocketing completely past the perimeter walls of the collapsing chateau.
By now, the colossal fortress was entering a continuous downward descent. The personnel stranded on the summit lost all relative balance vectors, scrambling frantically as the environment disintegrated around them. They were suspended thousands of feet in the air; while the high-tier combatants possessed the attributes to survive the fall, getting crushed beneath the thousands of tons of falling masonry during the descent carried a casualty rating that was entirely unpredictable.
"Ugh..." Stabilizing his airborne trajectory, a thin line of blood spilled from Drake's lips.
The frantic counter-attack Big Mom had engineered at the threshold of her survival parameters possessed an exceptionally high tier of lethality. If he hadn't scaled his internal defense metrics to their absolute limits—synchronizing his Conqueror's Infusion with his spatial vibration—sustaining that hit would have resulted in severe internal trauma.
An Emperor of the Sea was undeniably a freak of nature; not a single one of them was an asset that could be easily managed. They were the absolute apex of monsters.
"Kenshin! We execute the extraction protocol now!" Drake bellowed across the communication channel. Teleporting to Kenshin's coordinates in a fraction of a millisecond, he grabbed the swordsman's shoulder and vanished from the sector entirely, wiping their signatures from the grid.
Down on the ground level, the daughters of the Charlotte family rushed toward the landing zone. Seeing Big Mom touch down smoothly on her feet, they let out a collective cry of joy.
"Mama!"
"See? I calculated correctly! There was zero mathematical probability that Mama would suffer a deficit in raw strength against a mere rookie!"
"Preposterous to think otherwise!"
But in the next microsecond, their expressions completely froze.
The Emperor, who had appeared to maintain absolute dominance by executing a stable landing, suddenly convulsed. A massive torrent of blood sprayed from her jaws, and the remaining color drained from her face, leaving her dangerously pale.
"Mama! What happened to your vital signs!? Did that bastard Drake deploy some underhanded spatial trick against your system?" Even at this juncture, they refused to accept the reality that Drake possessed a combat tier that could definitively overpower Big Mom.
Drake's raw power metrics were undeniably terrifying. But looking at his biographical data, he was merely a rookie who had recently emerged onto the sea.
"Issue an imperial directive to all sectors: cease the pursuit vectors immediately!" Big Mom commanded heavily, her voice laced with a dense strain. "The enemy's overall power metrics are far too high. Under these parameters... even I am outmatched!"
Her expression was exceptionally grave. Her seemingly stable landing had been nothing more than a desperate psychological facade; the maximum-output strike she had launched by absorbing the lifespans of her own garrison had merely managed to force Drake to reset his position.
If she hadn't put on a show of unyielding dominance, the Drake Pirates might have systematically liquidated the Big Mom Pirates right then and there. She had processed the pure, unadulterated lethality underlying Drake's actions throughout the encounter; the exact microsecond she allowed a structural opening to manifest in her defense, he would have delivered a finishing blow to permanently eliminate any future variables.
Based on her current diagnostic outputs, let alone her battered state, even if she re-calibrated back to peak operational capacity, she calculated her probability of defeating Drake to be below baseline thresholds.
Having her pride violently dragged through the dirt on her own sovereign territory was an agonizing pill to swallow, but under these parameters, she had no choice but to accept the strategic deficit.
"Mama... are we truly letting them exit the grid without a counter-offensive?" an officer muttered, his face turning dark as he processed the metrics of Drake's power.
RUMBLE...
At that exact moment, the ground beneath their feet tilted to a radical forty-five-degree angle as the foundations of the chateau gave way entirely, causing the remaining structures to slide down the incline.
"Agh... what the hell generated a detonation of this scale...?"
"Waaaaah!" Her footing compromised by the shifting mass, Big Mom's massive frame tumbled backward, rolling down the debris pile.
"Mama!!"
On the adjacent quadrant of Whole Cake Island, the Straw Hat Pirates and the Fire Tank Pirates had already partitioned their forces, executing independent evasion paths to escape the dragnet.
Navigating through the coastal grid, Nami and her companions successfully boarded the Thousand Sunny. However, they chose to hold their position rather than immediately unmooring the vessel.
"I need some manual leverage over here! Let's get the Shark Submerge secured inside the channel immediately!" Brook shouted, pulling tightly against the retrieval lines as he scanned the deck for backup.
Chopper and Jinbe rapidly altered their coordinates to reinforce his position. Nami kept her eyes locked on the distant silhouette of the chateau, a dense layer of anxiety clouding her expression.
"Nami-san! Since Captain Drake explicitly confirmed the extraction parameters were secure, we hold zero reasons to doubt the data. Let's finalize the navigation chart immediately," Sanji noted, stepping beside her as his gaze softened. "The exact microsecond they map back to our coordinates, we initiate a maximum-velocity departure!"
"Mmm! Understood," Nami nodded, forcing herself to focus. "Carrot, I'll require your assistance with the lines!"
"Consider it handled!" Carrot chirped.
Pedro leaped to the highest point of the rigging, utilizing his binoculars to run a diagnostic sweep of the horizon. Within moments, his lenses locked onto a massive fleet of pirate warships closing in on their perimeter—vessels belonging to the independent fleets commanded by Big Mom's numerous children.
Within the architecture of the Big Mom Pirates, their military leverage went far beyond a single sovereign crew. The sub-fleets operated by her sons and daughters were statistically staggering, and the sheer volume of incoming hulls reached a terrifying number. Any random officer plucked from her bloodline possessed the authority to mobilize a dozen warships. This was the true, overwhelming scale of an Emperor of the Sea who had reigned over the New World for decades!
"Prepare the Coup de Burst!" Nami commanded decisively. "The exact microsecond Luffy and Drake-san re-enter our sector, we take to the sky!"
"Roger that!"
The crew coordinated their tasks seamlessly. Meanwhile, Drake's spatial displacement velocity completely bypassed the standard constraints of time and distance. In a span of mere seconds, he traversed the miles separating the chateau from the coast, materializing cleanly onto the deck of the Thousand Sunny alongside Kenshin.
"Kyaah!!" Staring at the sudden, instantaneous manifestation of the two combatants, Chopper and Nami nearly let their souls leap straight out of their bodies in surprise.
"It appears our core personnel have successfully consolidated. Let's unmoor the ship and exit the grid," Drake said, running a casual headcount of the deck before nodding.
"Where is Luffy?" Nami asked, blinking.
"Exactly! Luffy hasn't returned to the sector yet," the others added, staring at Drake with thoroughly puzzled expressions. Aren't you his older brother? Did you literally leave him behind in the enemy grid?
"I assume this vessel is equipped with a standard array of mirrors, correct?" Drake countered, choosing to omit a direct answer for the moment.
"If you require reflective surfaces, there is a large mirror installed inside our living quarters," Nami noted. Suddenly, a brilliant flash of realization processed in her mind. She vividly recalled that Drake possessed the capability to freely traverse the boundaries of the Mirro-World at will. And since Luffy and Katakuri had vanished simultaneously from the chateau plaza, they had undoubtedly been shifted into that independent dimension.
Mapping the data variables together, the strategy became crystal clear.
"I grasp the blueprint now. Splendid! All stations, prepare for departure!"
BOOM!
Right on cue, the vanguard of the enemy fleet adjusted their firing solutions, locking onto the Thousand Sunny as they unleashed a massive, synchronized salvo of artillery.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
"Maintain continuous fire! Sink them!"
A high-density torrent of cannonballs descended upon their position like a localized rainstorm, charting a lethal trajectory aimed straight at their hull.
"We'll anchor the rearguard and intercept the incoming ordnance! Nami, prioritize charging the cola reservoirs immediately!" Chopper bellowed, sprinting to the main deck as his hooves blurred to swat two incoming cannonballs out of the air.
"Understood! Jinbe, I'm leaving the helm under your jurisdiction!" Nami shouted, sliding out of the cockpit to hand the controls over to the fish-man. "Franky's operational manual for the ship's systems is logged right inside this Tone Dial!"
"Me?" Jinbe muttered in brief bewilderment, catching the shell-like device and instinctively pressing the activation switch.
"Commencing system overview..." Franky's distinct, mechanical voice began to blare from the dial.
"Yo-ho-ho-ho...!" Brook smoothly cleared his cane sword, executing a rapid succession of precise slashes to detonate several incoming shells mid-air.
"I'll reinforce the line as well, hyah...!" Carrot added, her gauntlets crackling with Electro as she swatted away the ordnance.
However, the incoming barrage suddenly scaled up exponentially, the sky becoming entirely blanketed by a colossal wall of black iron as the enemy warships continuously cycled their batteries.
"This is bad... the density is too high..."