The colossal shockwave of the blast burned the very air as it tore straight through Drake, ultimately detonating against the desert floor. The cataclysmic kinetic energy violently pulverized everything in the surrounding theater.
A massive wall of blinding white light filled the vision of the battlefield, rendering the environment completely invisible. Even the Going Guard sustained a heavy impact from the residual blast radius, sending its chassis flying backward across the sands at extreme knots.
This terrifying display was mapped by every single monitoring network and citizen across Arabasta. Even from quadrants located far from the desert tracking zones, a gargantuan mushroom cloud could be seen violently erupting into the high heavens.
The localized coordinate pointed precisely to the absolute center of the desert expanse.
The world-shaking update verifying Pluton's awakening had already saturated every corner of Arabasta. Witnessing this subsequent explosion, deciphering the underlying cause required very little processing power.
As the blinding solar bloom gradually dispersed and visual resolution normalized, the landscape that unrolled before the alliance completely sundered their cognitive models.
The center of the desert had suffered a total structural collapse. A monumental, yawning crater that swallowed up roughly one-third of the entire desert's landmass dominated the coordinates.
Yet Pluton had cleanly preserved its horizontal vector, hovering directly over the absolute center of the abyssal void, suspended in midair.
"Drake!"
A short distance away aboard the deck of the Going Guard, Luffy let out a panicked shout, preparing to launch his frame down into the crater.
He assumed that Drake's biological structure had been entirely vaporized into ash by the raw thermodynamic metrics of that primary cannon blast.
Right then, a brilliant flash of crimson light detonated across the void. Inside the command bridge of Pluton, the CP0 operatives—who had just successfully stabilized their composure and initialized a chorus of frantic, victorious laughter—suddenly froze, their expressions locking into masks of pure horror.
Because Drake's physical vessel had materialized directly before the armored bow of Pluton out of thin air, the Canhong Sword clutched in his grip erupting with a radiant, blinding brilliance.
"Drake...!" Luffy gasped in pure astonishment, his face instantly resetting into a proud, sweeping grin.
"To think your systems are completely whole—that's magnificent, Drake!"
"This defies all physical algorithms!" the lead white-robed operative shrieked, his eyes wide with primitive terror as his gaze locked onto Drake. He could not compute exactly what classification of defensive modifier Drake had deployed to survive a direct impact from the Void-Sunder battery.
Furthermore, analyzing Drake's physical parameters, he appeared completely untouched by structural trauma.
Granted, while the cannon blast commanded a terrifying tier of destructive output, Drake's processing speed had comfortably bridged the hazard window.
"Conqueror's Domain!!"
A lethal, intense crimson light flooded Drake's pupils, his physical frame radiating a dense, highly compressed volume of sovereign pressure.
At this exact fraction of a microsecond, Drake registered an anomaly within his internal power grids: a limitless, boundless reservoir of raw force was surging through his pathways. This crushing energy wasn't restricted merely to his muscular scaffolding; even the external air currents surrounding his chassis were vibrating with dense ripples of Haki.
Every single micro-movement he executed seamlessly directed this world-shaking power. Feeling the raw, volatile nature of the force, Drake swept his blade forward in a brutal arc.
Conqueror's Domain... let my steel run a firsthand diagnostic on your authentic operational capacity!
The absolute peak of military power anchoring the power system of the Grand Line!
The exact millisecond the sword slash cleared the edge, deep, jagged spatial fissures violently ripped across the open air. The sheer kinetic tearing force was so extreme that even Drake's optimized sensory arrays registered the intense friction.
Unleashing this strike, a distinct intuition surfaced within Drake's thoughts: the structural fabric of this entire planet lacked the capacity to sustain the absolute max ceiling of his offensive output. He wasn't entirely certain if the assessment was a temporary psychological byproduct of his sudden, massive jump in capabilities.
The monumental wave of flying energy sundered the distance, connecting flush against the hull of Pluton with zero physical resistance. A spectacular cascade of massive sparks detonated across the metal, yet instead of dissipating like his previous attacks, the crimson edge maintained a continuous, high-velocity sawing motion, aggressively grinding into the gargantuan chassis of the battleship.
The technical performance thoroughly sundered the internal stability of the white-robed crew piloting Pluton. How can a single mortal vessel project this caliber of terror?!
This is the legendary Ancient Weapon, for god's sake!
Before an extended timeline could elapse, a massive, jagged structural fracture materialized across the primary plating of Pluton's hull. The dataset caused the CP0 agents to nearly lose their sanity from pure panic.
The entire battleship initialized a violent, low-frequency vibration. Every single operative aboard frantically clamped their hands around the nearby emergency handles, their internal psychology deeply shaken as they tracked Drake's continuous offensive pacing.
"He... he is mathematically forbidden from being classified as a human..."
"Silence your vocal channels! Immediately recalibrate the primary drive matrix to alter Pluton's vector—weave out of the path of his trajectory!" the lead operative roared, his voice sharp with desperation.
"Understood!"
Within a breath, the colossal framework of Pluton dropped vertically, impacting the desert sand as the rear high-velocity rocket thrusters ignited a massive column of blinding propulsion fire. The gargantuan battleship began executing a rapid sliding locomotion across the terrain.
BOOM!
Drake's monumental sword slash cleared the target coordinate, grinding harmlessly into the distant desert floor.
KABOOM!
The atmospheric currents screeched as a colossal wall of sand rocketed straight into the upper airspace, triggering an absolute, multi-directional sandstorm that choked the entire sector.
"Frantic knots... route a direct navigation vector toward the open sea!" the chief operative barked.
Maintaining a stable tactical locomotion across the loose sand dunes was proving exceptionally grueling. Although they could leverage Pluton's specialized drive matrix to slide across the desert floor, precision directional steering remained highly unstable.
As for unsealing a flight configuration...
Pluton lacked the structural capacity for independent atmospheric flight. The temporary levitation they had displayed a few moments ago was merely a product of their engineers overloading the lower vertical propulsion jets, barely sustaining a localized spatial equilibrium for a condensed duration.
It was structurally incapable of true flight.
"You expect my vanguard to permit an unhindered exit?!" The corners of Drake's lips curled into a precise smirk. The raw destructive mass commanded by Pluton was undeniably world-shaking, but it had far from reached a tier that lay completely outside his capacity to neutralize.
SHING! SHING! SHING!...
Materializing across the air currents via a succession of rapid, continuous spatial warps, Drake unleashed a devastating cascade of high-velocity sword slashes to pursue their line.
Yet this sequence vividly demonstrated why the world-shaking legacy of the Ancient Weapon was so deeply revered: the automated defensive plating engineered across the hull provided a flawless, 360-degree shielding matrix that perfectly insulated every single biological asset aboard the ship.
There existed absolute zero structural gaps.
It precisely mirrored the functional design of a deep-sea submersible.
More accurately, it was an untouchable, mobile fortress. The exterior hull was completely impregnable to standard kinetic metrics, while its primary offensive array could discharge a level of destruction capable of systematically erasing the world itself.
A deep-sea submersible?
Drake's analytical processes suddenly froze, before a highly specialized data entry unsealed within his memory, a flash of intense, burning excitement illuminating his features.
Exactly! The active combat mass and structural shielding metrics commanded by the Going Guard are far from trailing beneath any standard baseline. A flagship engineered explicitly by the system's supreme blueprints—would it realistically suffer a structural failure opposite a native Ancient Weapon of this world?
The probability resolves to an absolute zero!
The exact millisecond that strategic premise stabilized within his mind, Drake redirected his physical velocity, executing a maximum-acceleration flight straight back toward the coordinates of the Going Guard.
"Huh? The... the Emperor is abandoning his vector?" The lead CP0 operative stared at the tracking telemetry showing Drake retreating toward his rear lines, his facial parameters locking into a state of sheer bewilderment.
In the next microsecond, a wave of profound, arrogant bravado flushed his features.
"Bwahahaha! The world-shaking reputation carved by the Legendary Four Brothers and the newly crowned Yonko amounts to very little on the field!"
"Setting aside his raw physical metrics, his baseline psychological courage is thoroughly pathetic. Bwahahaha..."
Human psychology consistently operates along these parameters; a weak entity will perpetually refuse to rationalize its own primitive cowardice, and the exact fraction of a second they locate a superficial variable to downplay their adversary, they will exhaust 100% of their vocal resources to broadcast their mockery.
All explicitly to insulate their internal dread and structural insecurity from fracturing their sanity.
It was a truly wretched display.
"Logistics division, apply maximum knots to our cruise! The exact microsecond our hull clears the coastline to enter the deep ocean channels, our primary batteries shall systematically reduce that rear island to a pulverized wasteland of absolute rubble!" The lead operative unsealed a highly confident, lethal smirk.
Meanwhile, Drake's physical vessel materialized directly before the main deck house of the Going Guard, throwing a brief jolt of surprise through the assembly.
"Drake, what variables forced your vanguard to reset its vector?" Luffy asked, having just cleared the automated airlock threshold to reinforce Drake's line outside.
"Precisely, Drake! Our weapons systems are fully primed and our internal stamina is locked at maximum output; we were preparing to launch an unrestricted assault!" Kenshin and the others stood fully optimized for deployment, their personal blades silently crackling with dense pools of kinetic energy.
"Bwahahaha! Calm your pacing, everyone. Let my vanguard pitch a specialized inquiry to your analytical units: exactly what classification of evaluation do your minds allocate to the structural limits of the Going Guard?" Drake waved his palm dismissively, stepping back inside the primary bridge structure.
"This..." The surrounding companions traded a swift, puzzled look, falling into alignment behind his boots as they crossed the threshold.
"I assume your networks have already processed a comprehensive log tracking the reality-bending miracles engineered by this flagship. Under those parameters—if my vanguard asserts that this vessel possesses more than enough structural mass to directly challenge the legendary engine of myth on an equal playing field... do your calculations project that the Going Guard can enforce that limit, Luffy?"
"WHAT THE HELL?!" The collective vanguard erupted in absolute, wide-eyed astonishment. "Your phrasing implies..."
"Exactly. I intend to run a comprehensive, live diagnostic on the absolute capacity limits of the Going Guard. Let us verify if it commands the necessary metrics to wage an unrestricted war opposite a mythical Ancient Weapon."
"Or more accurately... completely pulverize it!"
"This..." The companions stared at one another in dumbfounded silence, their processing units entirely running out of standard logic to decode the statement.
Under conventional oceanic paradigms, an equation of this nature was mathematically forbidden from succeeding. After all, the entity anchoring the opposing coordinate was the sovereign specter that struck absolute terror into the hearts of the entire planet—the Ancient Weapon.
Yet meticulously cross-referencing the long chronicle of reality-bending miracles engineered by the Going Guard, a highly unstable probability rapidly consolidated within their thoughts: this layout actually commands an exceptionally high probability of success!
"Bwahahaha... unleash your systems, Going Guard! This afternoon, unseal your true sovereign metrics before my eyes!" Drake let out a proud, boisterous laugh, pointing his finger toward the distant silhouette of Pluton rapidly tearing across the horizon. "Going Guard, lock tracking vectors and close the distance at maximum absolute knots!"
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Flagship AI processing... Command inputs acknowledged. Hyper-drive matrix optimized. Locking tracking telemetry on target asset: Ancient Weapon Pluton. Tracking initiated!]