Chapter 110: The Warlord's Decree

The heavy silence on the cloud beach was broken by the quiet hum of the Titan’s Glory. Conis and Pagaya sat on the deck, shivering from the sheer weight of the information they had just delivered. A year-long war between a Golden Lion and a Lightning God, with the native people caught in the middle.

I looked around at the crew. The atmosphere had shifted from a training expedition to a rescue operation.

“We can’t just wander into the forest looking for them,” Law stated, crossing his arms. “If we trip Enel’s haki or run into Shiki’s border patrols, we bring a war right to the refugees’ doorstep, when we find them.”

“Then we don’t wander,” I said, a dangerous plan forming in my mind. “We bait and switch. We need both of those monsters looking exactly where we want them to look, completely ignoring the forest.”

Jasmine caught on immediately. “You want to make the ship a target.”

“I am going to make it the only target,” I corrected. “Ace, Robin, Gammamon, Laura, and I will stay on the Titan’s Glory. We sail right out of this fog bank and anchor dead center in the sky above No-Man’s Land. We make as much noise as possible. While every scout, priest, and mutant beast is staring at us, the rest of you split up, drop into the jungle, and find the people of this island.”

“A distraction,” Ace grinned, cracking his knuckles. “I like it.”

I turned to the rest of the crew, outlining the basic plan. “Jasmine, you are taking Koala, Jacob, Maria, and Peter. You four are the extraction team for Isa, Aisa, and the Shandian guerrillas. Move fast, and do not engage the anyone unless you are forced to.”

I then looked at the Surgeon of Death. “Law, you take Bepo, Shachi, Penguin, Gwen, Brook, Perona, and Palmon. Your team is on civilian extraction. Comb the outer edges of the ruined cities. Find any Skypiean or Shandian refugees who are hiding and evacuate them back to this exact beach. We keep them out of the main blast radius.”

“Understood, Captain,” Bepo saluted.

“Yohohoho, a rescue mission in the clouds,” Brook hummed, drawing his soul-solid blade an inch from its scabbard. “I shall play a swift tempo for our retreat.”

Ten minutes later, the Titan’s Glory breached the thick, milky sea-cloud cover, sailing majestically into the open, azure sky above Upper Yard. Below us, the scarred, desolate stretch of the neutral zone separated the golden shrines to the east from the floating industrial fortresses to the west.

I stepped up to the bow of the galleon, taking a deep breath of the thin air. I tapped into the absolute deepest reserves of my haki, feeling the heavy, oppressive weight of my willpower rise to the surface. It was a suffocating pressure, pooling in my chest like liquid iron.

I let it out.

A massive, invisible shockwave of Conqueror’s Haki erupted from the ship, rolling across the island like a physical, atmospheric storm. The ancient trees bent backward, the cloud sea rippled violently, and across the expanse of the island, hundreds of low-level grunts, priests, and mutant beasts simply collapsed, foaming at the mouth.

I picked up a broadcast Dial that Bepo had scavenged, ensuring the acoustic frequency was pushed to its absolute maximum limit.

“Listen closely,” my voice boomed across Upper Yard, echoing off the ancient ruins and the floating islands with the authority of a sovereign. “As a Warlord of the Sea, I am officially placing this island under the protection of the Verdant Abyss. Shiki. Enel. You have twenty-four hours to vacate this airspace, or you will be executed.”

The sheer, unadulterated disrespect of the declaration hung heavily in the air. Deep in their respective territories, the response was immediate. Frantic alarms began to shriek from Shiki’s western labs, and violent, jagged bolts of blue lightning began to aggressively strike the sky from the eastern shrines. The civil war had effectively paused; they were coming for the Warlord.

Far below the ship, the evacuation team was already moving like a well-oiled machine.

Law moved through the dilapidated ruins of Angel Island’s outer rim, his Room expanding in massive, translucent blue domes. Perona hovered high above the tree line, sending out dozens of her Hollows to act as a sweeping radar system.

“I’ve got a group!” Perona yelled down, pointing toward a collapsed temple. “Four adults, two children, hiding under the floorboards!”

“Room,” Law muttered. He flicked his fingers. Shambles.

The terrified Skypieans were instantly teleported from their cramped hiding spot directly into the open arms of Bepo and Shachi. The civilians panicked, looking at the talking polar bear and the massive brute, but Gwen swung down from the canopy on a line of black webbing, holding up her hands in a placating gesture.

“We are here to help you,” Gwen said softly, her Symbiote suit retracting slightly to show her human face. “We have a safe zone at the white beach. Follow the bear.”

“Move swiftly, everyone!” Palmon urged, her vines wrapping around heavy debris to clear a path through the rubble. “We don’t have much time before those big armies notice us!”

With Brook scouting ahead and clearing any straggling mutant beasts with lightning-fast sword strikes, Law’s team began establishing a highly efficient pipeline, shuttling dozens of terrified, bewildered sky-dwellers away from the epicenter of the impending war.

[Peter POV]

While Victor was busy declaring war on two living legends and Law’s team was saving the civilians, we were already deep in the ancient, overgrown jungle of Upper Yard.

Jasmine took the lead, her alchemical hammer resting lightly on her shoulder, while Jacob, Maria, and I flanked her. I kept the Ghost Touch vest primed, my senses fully extended. The forest was eerily quiet, the distant alarms and Victor’s booming voice from the ship masking our movements perfectly.

Suddenly, a rustle in the canopy above us broke the silence.

“Incoming!” Jacob shouted, his stance widening.

A figure dropped from the trees with terrifying speed, wielding a massive, custom-built bazooka. It was a tall, heavily tattooed man with tribal wings on his back and eyes full of pure, burning hatred.

“Lion’s mercenaries!” the man roared, aiming the heavy weapon directly at Jasmine’s chest. “Die!”

He pulled the trigger, firing a massive blast of compressed blue flame.

Maria didn’t even flinch. She stepped gracefully in front of Jasmine, tapping her silver BusoRenkin plate. “Garuda, Shield!”

The metallic bone-serpent materialized in a flash of brilliant gold, coiling tightly into a massive, interlocking barrier in front of Maria. The bazooka blast slammed into the floating construct, but the kinetic dissipation absorbed the impact entirely, dispersing the roaring flames harmlessly into the surrounding air.

The tribal warrior’s eyes widened in absolute shock. He dropped the smoking bazooka and lunged forward, sliding a strange, ribbed shell over his palm to strike Maria at close range.

He never made it.

Jacob stepped smoothly into the man’s guard. His footwork was flawless. He threw a remarkably light jab that merely tapped the warrior’s shoulder. The man sneered, winding up his counter-strike, until Jacob snapped his fingers.

Twin Impact.

A localized, concussive shockwave detonated directly inside the warrior’s shoulder joint. The tribal fighter gasped, his momentum entirely broken as the invisible force spun him around and dropped him violently to one knee.

Before he could recover, I pressed the activation stud on my chest. I phased straight through a thick tree trunk, turning completely intangible, and materialized right behind him. I solidified just long enough to grab his arms and pin him to the dirt in a heavy, inescapable hold, using the dense muscle mass of my dinosaur baseline to lock him down.

“Stand down,” Jasmine ordered, stepping over the subdued warrior, resting the head of her hammer on the ground. “We aren’t with Shiki or with God Enel. What’s your name?”

“Wyper of the Shandians,” he spat, struggling furiously against my grip. “I don’t care who you are, Blue Sea dwellers. You are trespassing on our ancestral land.”

“We aren’t here for your land, Wyper,” Jasmine said firmly. “We are looking for two people. Isa and Aisa. They are kind of related to us. We are here to get them out of this mess.”

Wyper stopped struggling, his fierce expression twisting into one of profound suspicion and disbelief. He looked Jasmine up and down, taking in her Blue Sea clothing, her lack of wings, and her entirely different physiology.

“Why?,” Wyper snarled. “I have known Isa and Aisa their entire lives. They are Shandians. Blood of the warriors. They have no ties to the Blue Sea. They have no ties to people like you.”

“They are family,” Jasmine insisted, her voice tight with emotion.

“They don’t have family down there!” Wyper yelled back. “You are just trying to use them as hostages!”

“Wyper, look at us,” Jacob said calmly, stepping forward and gesturing to the four of us. “If we wanted you dead, we would have just let my sister hit you with her hammer, or if we wanted hostages, we already have you. Why do we need a woman and a child as hostages when we already have a Shandian warrior in our possession. We took you down without breaking a single bone. We are here to help.”

Wyper gritted his teeth, looking at Maria’s floating robotic serpent and then at my glowing harness. He realized he was completely outmatched. He couldn’t protect his people if he was dead.

“Fine,” Wyper relented, though his eyes remained hostile. “Follow me. But if you make one wrong move in the camp, I will blow us all to hell.”

I let him go. Wyper led us through a camouflaged tunnel into a subterranean ruin hidden beneath the sprawling roots of a giant tree. The cavern was dimly lit, packed with battered, exhausted Shandian warriors and a few civilian refugees.

As we stepped into the cavern, Jasmine scanned the crowd. Her eyes locked onto a young woman clutching a small girl with a bag slung over her shoulder.

“Isa! Aisa!” Jasmine called out, her voice cracking slightly. She dropped her hammer and rushed forward. But the reaction was not what she expected.

Isa pulled Aisa behind her legs, stepping back with a look of pure confusion and fear. She grabbed a small spear leaning against the cave wall, pointing it defensively at Jasmine.

Jasmine stopped dead in her tracks, her hands hovering in the air. “Isa… I’m Jasmine. We’re… we’re your family. We came from the Blue Sea to find you.”

Isa stared at her, her brow furrowed. “I don’t know who you are. I have never seen you before in my life.”

“We don’t have any family outside Skypiea,” Aisa whimpered, peeking out from behind her mother, looking at Jacob’s long arms and Maria’s horns with wide, terrified eyes. “Wyper, who are they?!”

Jasmine’s face fell. The absolute disconnect was heartbreaking. She had crossed oceans, climbed a mountain into the sky, and fought Marines to find them, but to Isa and Aisa, Jasmine was a complete stranger. They had no idea about their lineage, no idea about the D. family, and certainly no idea that they had relatives outside of Skypiea.

“Isa, please, I can explain,” Jasmine pleaded, taking a slow step forward. “Your bloodline….”

“Stop right there,” Wyper warned, stepping between them, his hand resting on a burn-blade. “They already told you, they don’t know you.”

Koala put a gentle hand on Jasmine’s shoulder, pulling her back. “Jas… leave it. This isn’t the time. We can’t force this right now. They’re terrified.”

Jasmine took a shaky breath, wiping her eyes and nodding. She picked her hammer back up, her expression hardening into the pragmatic focus of a fighter. She looked at Isa and Aisa, then at Wyper.

“Fine. We are strangers,” Jasmine said, her voice steadying. “But we are strangers who have a ship that can get you all out of this slaughterhouse. Will you at least let us escort you to safety?”

Isa slowly lowered the spear, glancing at Wyper for confirmation. Before anyone could make a decision, Aisa suddenly stiffened.

The young girl let out a piercing scream, dropping to her knees and clutching her head. Her incredibly potent Mantra, the ability to hear the “voices” of the island, was flaring wildly out of control.

“Aisa! What is it?!” Isa cried out, dropping down to hold her daughter.

“The voices!” Aisa sobbed, her eyes wide with absolute, paralyzing terror. “They’re so loud! The golden man… the lightning… they aren’t waiting for the twenty-four hours!”

She looked up at us, tears streaming down her face. “They’re coming right now! Both of them! They’re bringing everything to the center of the island!”

The massive, three-way war is about to crash directly onto the Shandian camp. For Chapter 111, should we focus entirely on Jacob, Maria, and Peter organizing the terrified natives to hold the line against the first wave, or should we cut back to Victor on the ship as the main armies arrive?