Before them stood a gargantuan battleship, its colossal frame stretching over three hundred meters in length and measuring a massive fifty meters in width, rising proudly from the sand.
Its surface was far from smooth. In fact, it looked thoroughly worn and dilapidated, heavily encrusted with thick layers of ancient sediment and unknown debris. An ordinary observer could tell at a single glance that this vessel possessed a profoundly ancient history.
These were the indelible scars left behind by centuries of absolute isolation, preserved silently deep beneath the earth where no man could disturb it.
Tons of dry sand continued to cascade from the upper decks of Pluton. The swarming sea of white-robed operatives swifly scaled the hull, and in that exact microsecond, their spotters locked onto the silhouette of the Going Guard.
"Attention, everyone! Synchronize your movements with our previous tactical drills—prepare to initialize Pluton!"
"Understood!"
The white-robed operatives erupted into motion, moving across the metal scaffolding at high velocity. Within a fraction of a breath, they had securely dispersed across the vital nodes of Pluton.
"Let my vanguard test its mettle!" Drake's voice had barely cleared his lips before his physical vessel vanished from the Going Guard, materializing in the open airspace as the Canhong Sword crystallized seamlessly within his grip.
Luffy and the others called out in unison, "Be careful, Drake!"
This so-called Ancient Weapon that strikes pure terror into the hearts of all who hear its name—exactly what tier of power does it command? Let my blade run a firsthand diagnostic!
"Sovereign Cleaves the Firmament!!"
Sundering the mortal grid, Drake swept his blade with blinding speed. In a fraction of a millisecond, a monumental, reality-bending wave of flying energy saturated the high heavens. The incandescent, crimson slash resembled a blazing horizon line as it slammed squarely into the hull of Pluton.
KABOOM!!
An earth-shattering, apocalyptic detonation violently sundered the theater of war. The entire desert expanse was instantly painted a blinding, fiery red as countless tons of sand were blasted outward in a chaotic storm, the bedrock below fracturing into a massive crater.
Deep within the structural compartments of Pluton, the white-robed agents were tossed violently across the decks, their faces warped with sudden, primitive dread. A single, passing slash commanded this depth of world-shaking destruction—was this truly a force that a mortal vessel could possess?
Every single one of them was an elite superhuman among superhumans, their raw physical mass and tactical limits far outclassing ordinary men; otherwise, they would have mathematically failed to clear the selection matrix to enlist in the Cipher Pol shadow wings.
Yet the crushing presence Drake had unleashed with that solitary strike made them feel as though they were staring directly into the eyes of a Grim Reaper from the deepest pits of hell!
Had that absolute edge connected flush against their physical bodies, their survival metrics would have been permanently erased on the spot. There was absolute zero margin for debate.
"W-We survived? Our integrity is uncompromised?" Tumbled seven ways to Sunday by the violent kinetic feedback, the agents frantically initiated a self-sweep of their systems.
Discovering that their limbs remained entirely whole, a collective wave of intense relief washed through the cells, though the gazes they locked onto Drake remained thoroughly choked with unadulterated horror.
It was a cold dread that seized the absolute core of their souls.
To an ordinary citizen, these Cipher Pol operatives represented an untouchable, terrifyingly powerful vanguard of myth—yet facing Drake this afternoon, their knees were on the verge of buckling from pure, raw panic.
"Maintain your cognitive stability! This individual logs as the newly crowned Emperor, Vale D. Drake—one of the Legendary Four Brothers! For his vessel to project this caliber of performance is perfectly logical," a middle-aged agent in the vanguard roared, his booming voice stabilizing the morale of the cells.
"However, our vanguard is far from lacking a winning percentage. Lest your memory files format the data, consider exactly what foundation our boots are anchoring right now—we command the mythical Ancient Weapon, Pluton!"
The veteran's syllabic strike cleanly unsealed their minds.
Though their internal psychology harbored immense fear toward Drake, they remained seasoned black-budget assets; their mental focus and internal discipline comfortably outclassed standard human limits.
They rapidly re-aligned their calculations. They were actively standing upon the deck of the mythical engine of destruction, Pluton!
"All personnel deploy to your designated operational nodes! We initialize immediate command over this mythical Ancient Weapon!"
"An Emperor of the Sea... Hmph! This afternoon, our vanguard shall weaponize the very name of a Yonko at this coordinate, forcing this ancient engine that has slumbered for eight centuries to loudly broadcast its terrifying majesty back to the global matrix!" The middle-aged man stared out at Drake, his gaze freezing into a lethal, venomous focus as a dark smirk curled his lips.
"All batteries, prepare to discharge primary ordnance!"
"Yes, sir!"
To think it actually managed to cleanly parry my offensive output?! Drake's brow hitched sharply. He had entirely failed to simulate a reality where Pluton's baseline defensive structural density scaled to this mind-boggling tier.
Setting aside alternative modifiers, the raw kinetic mass behind his previous strike possessed more than enough destructive weight to cleanly sunder Kaido's mythical scales and plunge the dragon into a state of critical, bleeding trauma.
Yet standing opposite this Ancient Weapon, the impact appeared to register as nothing more than a superficial, irrelevant scratch.
This dataset struck a profound chord of genuine shock within Drake's mind. Exactly what specialized alloy or ancient metallurgy had been deployed to forge this hull, allowing its structural integrity to preserve such an impregnable defense?
"Drake... his offensive output was flatly blocked..." Luffy's jaw dropped, his face a mask of total, wide-eyed bewilderment.
The sheer, world-shaking potency of Drake's sword strike was a variable they had tracked with absolute clarity; it was a force so absolute it bordered on unredeemable devastation.
Yet faced with that exact cataclysm, the gargantuan, warship-like monument had absorbed 100% of the impact without sustaining a single shred of visible damage.
This data forced their strategic monitoring to become exceptionally cautious. This Pluton... was far from a simple engineering problem.
"The Ancient Weapons... are sovereign engines recorded across the annals of history as forces possessing sufficient mass to systematically destroy the entire civilized world. Had their threat level been mediocre, the old vanguard would have never gone to such extreme lengths to bury them beneath the earth for centuries," Robin noted, her eyes unblinking as she systematically analyzed the shifting parameters of the awakening vessel.
"Precisely. Otherwise, the supreme architects of the World Government would have never exhausted such immense logistical and military resources explicitly to drag it into their inventory," Franky added, his expression turning remarkably grim.
In the final analysis, their vanguard had still trailed the enemy's timeline by a single fraction. Meticulously evaluating their cruise parameters since their deployment from Elbaf, their transit velocity had essentially mirrored a high-speed rocket tearing across the oceans.
The warp speeds achieved by the Going Guard had pushed their processing units to the point where their jaws nearly unsealed in sheer disbelief.
Yet their arrival still lagged behind the enemy's operational clock.
This dataset vividly demonstrated exactly how terrifyingly swift the World Government's black-budget mobilization could be.
The Ancient Weapon, Pluton!
The monumental tremors initialized by Pluton's awakening were parameters that mathematically failed to remain restricted to the desert; before long, the cataclysmic energy signatures rippling across Arabasta were intercepted by global monitoring networks, broadcasting the reality to the entire planet. The engine of myth had officially re-entered the global grid.
Exactly what manner of paradigm shift this would enforce upon the global matrix—whether it would unseal a blessing or a terminal curse for humanity—remained an unresolved equation.
The sovereign faction that had successfully secured the weapon was none other than the World Government.
The exact microsecond that specific log saturated the global communications grid, the chief executives of every major press syndicate across the four seas lost their baseline stability. The global news tycoon, Big News Morgans, felt his eyes explode with pure, bloodshot euphoria. Clamping his wings around his transponder snail, his roaring voice sundered the air currents of his office, scaling so violently it nearly breached the roof. "Verify the incoming telemetry immediately! Are your networks asserting that the mythical Ancient Weapon Pluton has genuinely broken its burial shackles?!"
"Yes, sir! The data is absolute and fully cross-referenced! The manifest has initialized directly within the Arabasta Kingdom! Our field scouts have already transmitted the authentic photographic logs!" the voice on the reverse side of the line squealed with unbridled, manic excitement.
"Furthermore, Boss, we have an even more explosive, high-value data node to report! Actively anchoring the space directly opposite the Ancient Weapon's perimeter is the newly crowned Emperor—the God of War, Vale D. Drake!"
"WHAT THE HELL?!" Morgans' eyes snapped wide. His internal calculations ran the variables for a fraction of a heartbeat before he erupted into a thunderous, sky-shaking roar of pure laughter.
"Bwahahaha! This New Era... is proving to be thoroughly magnificent! A big news dispatch! A monumental headline possessing more than enough mass to violently shake the foundations of the entire planet!!"
"On one flank anchors the World Government, successfully integrating an Ancient Weapon into its frontline arsenal; on the opposing flank stands the ultimate vanguard defining the New Era—the Legendary Four Brothers... exactly what direction will the future trajectory of this world adopt? My soul burns with absolute anticipation... Bwahahaha..."
Throughout the central newsroom, the assembled journalists and data analysts stared at their chief executive, who looked as though he had gone completely insane with pure joy, their minds filled with deep curiosity.
Their Boss had historically never permitted his professional decorum to fracture to this unrefined degree. Exactly what manner of reality-bending headline had his ears processed to trigger this level of manic euphoria?
Even when the intelligence logs had unsealed the data confirming the Revolutionary Army had launched a total, unrestricted war against the World Government, their chief had failed to project this caliber of excitement.
"Move out, my minions! Broadcast the data to every single quadrant of the planet—the mythical Ancient Weapon... has officially awakened upon this world!!" Morgans roared, his massive feather-drape wings sweeping in a grand, sweeping arc.
"What..."
"Pluton... allow my vessel to run a firsthand diagnostic on the combined mechanical intellect of the ancient vanguard from centuries ago!"
Drake brandished his razor-sharp steel, his physical body executing a rapid cadence of high-speed spatial displacements through the mid-air currents as he launched a direct, forward cruise straight toward the armored core of Pluton.
"Frantic... discharge the main battery immediately!" the lead white-robed operative inside the command bridge shrieked at the top of his lungs, his vocal cords straining under the intense pressure.
Deep within a highly specialized, isolated chamber anchoring the lower decks of Pluton, complex networks of dark crimson energy circuits suddenly illuminated across the metallic bulkheads in a rapid, sequential matrix shift. A perfectly vacant, sterile glass vial rolled lazily across the steel floorboards.
"Power grids from the primary drive matrix optimized—fully prime the Void-Sunder Battery!"
A static, pitch-black structure resting along the forward chassis of Pluton suddenly underwent a series of intricate, high-velocity configuration shifts, expanding outward as a gargantuan, reality-bending cannon barrel extended across the bow.
Massive volumes of raw plasma energy began condensing within the core.
KABOOM!
A solitary discharge sundered the atmosphere, launching an apocalyptic torrent of destruction that threatened to permanently level the world itself.