Chapter 119: Blood on the Roots

The invisible hexagonal grid of the Reflect barrier flickered, hummed, and finally shattered like a pane of fragile glass, the cards the source of its origin turning into dust.

The Skypiean and Shandian refugees had held the line against the initial bombardment, but the sheer physical mass of thousands of charging bodies was too much for the willpower-fueled shields to sustain. With a deafening, unified roar, the combined horde of Enel’s White Berets, Shiki’s pirate mercenaries, and massive, chemically enhanced mutant beasts crashed directly into the wooden barricades at the base of the Giant Jack.

The battle devolved instantly into a brutal, claustrophobic melee.

“Fix blades! Use the stocks! Do not let them breach the roots!” Wyper’s voice roared over the din of clashing steel and screaming men.

The Shandian warrior didn’t hide behind the front line. He threw himself directly into the thickest concentration of pirate mercenaries. When his duplicated Flame Gun overheated, glowing cherry-red from continuous fire, Wyper didn’t drop it. He gripped the searing metal barrel and swung the heavy wooden stock like a massive war hammer, caving in the chest plate of a charging pirate before seamlessly drawing his burn-blade to parry a White Beret’s spear.

Beside him, Kamakiri and a dozen Skypiean guards fought back-to-back. The generational hatred that had defined their peoples for four hundred years was completely forgotten, replaced by the desperate, unifying instinct to protect their home. They moved in sync, using the massive, ancient roots of the beanstalk as natural chokepoints to funnel the overwhelming numbers into manageable skirmishes.

But grit and unity could only hold out for so long against monsters.

A massive, neon-veined mutant tiger leaped over the barricade, its jaws snapping toward a terrified Skypiean militiaman.

Before the beast could land, a translucent blue dome snapped into existence, enveloping the entire left flank of the battlefield.

“Room,” Law stated, his voice calm, chilling, and utterly detached from the chaos around him.

He stood atop a high root, Kikoku resting loosely in his grip. The mutant tiger froze in mid-air. Law flicked his wrist.

“Amputate.”

An invisible surgical cutting force swept through the dome. The massive tiger didn’t bleed, but it violently fell into six perfectly segmented pieces, tumbling harmlessly into the dirt.

The pirate mercenaries rushing the left flank stopped in their tracks, staring in absolute horror at the Surgeon of Death.

“You’re in my operating theater,” Law warned softly.

He didn’t kill them; he simply dismantled them. Law moved his fingers like a maestro conducting a symphony of terror. With rapid casts of Shambles and Amputate, heavily armed mercenaries suddenly found their sword arms swapped with wooden debris, while mutant beasts were reduced to helpless, writhing piles of detached limbs. The psychological horror of fighting a man who could bend anatomy to his will caused the entire left flank of the pirate vanguard to break and retreat in sheer panic.

“Don’t fall back, you cowards!” Dr. Indigo shrieked from the tree line.

The mad scientist gritted his teeth, pulling a bandolier of glass spherical flasks from beneath his colorful coat. Each flask glowed with a volatile, bubbling purple liquid.

“If they want to hide in the roots, we’ll flush them out!” Indigo cackled, hurling three of the chemical bombs high into the air, aiming directly for the densest cluster of refugees behind the barricades.

The glass shattered in mid-air. A thick, corrosive purple gas rapidly expanded, hissing as it began to eat through the wood of the Giant Jack.

Koala stepped out from the shadow of the barricades, her eyes locked on the descending toxic cloud. She took a deep, centering breath, ignoring the chaos around her. She sank into a low, rooted stance, her hands flowing in a circular motion, feeling the heavy, suffocating humidity of the jungle air.

“Fish-Man Karate…”

Koala pulled her right fist back, condensing the ambient moisture in the air around her knuckles into a swirling sphere of highly pressurized water.

“…Water Stream!”

She thrust her palm upward. A devastating, localized typhoon of pressurized water erupted from her hands. The torrent spiraled into the sky like a geyser, crashing directly into the expanding purple gas. The sheer force of the water current captured the chemical cloud entirely, washing the toxic gas away and harmlessly diluting it into the upper canopy of the jungle before a single refugee could inhale it.

Dr. Indigo’s jaw dropped. His chemical warfare had been completely neutralized by a single punch.

While Law and Koala controlled the crowds, the heavy hitters clashed in the center of the clearing, the sheer force of their blows forcing both friend and foe to give them a wide berth.

Peter, fully transformed into his colossal Spinosaurus hybrid form, was locked in a brutal contest of pure strength with Scarlet. The one-armed mutant gorilla was absolutely enraged, his muscles bulging with chemical enhancements as he compensated for the loss of his right arm.

Scarlet roared, launching his massive left fist in a devastating uppercut that caught Peter squarely under the jaw. The impact sent a shockwave through the clearing, lifting the dinosaur off his feet. Peter crashed into the dirt, his heavy tail whipping around and shattering a stone pillar.

“You hit hard for a monkey,” Peter grunted, his reptilian eyes narrowing as he pushed himself up.

Scarlet beat his chest with his remaining hand and charged again, completely abandoning all defense in a frenzied, all-out sprint. He leaped into the air, bringing his massive fist down like a meteor aimed directly at Peter’s skull.

Peter He waited until the giant fist was inches from his face, perfectly timing his ability. He slammed his hand against his chest.

Ghost Touch.

Peter’s massive, scaly body shifted into a freezing, translucent blue hue.

Scarlet’s world-shattering punch passed completely through Peter’s skull and torso, hitting nothing but empty air. The sheer momentum of the missed strike threw the giant gorilla completely off balance, sending him stumbling awkwardly forward.

Peter instantly deactivated the vest, his body solidifying with the heavy density of a prehistoric apex predator. Using the gorilla’s forward momentum against him, Peter spun on his heel. His massive, spiked tail whipped around like a steel battering ram, slamming directly into Scarlet’s legs.

The gorilla was swept off his feet, suspended in the air for a fraction of a second.

Peter lunged forward, opening his massive, razor-filled jaws. He clamped down brutally onto Scarlet’s shoulder. The force of the bite drove the giant mutant straight down, pinning him violently against the bedrock. Scarlet thrashed wildly for a few seconds, letting out a gurgling roar, before the overwhelming pressure and blood loss finally sent the executive commander spiraling into unconsciousness.

Peter spat the unconscious gorilla onto the dirt, wiping a smear of blood from his snout.

On the right flank, the final commander of Enel’s forces was making his last stand.

Priest Ohm stood amidst a pile of defeated militiamen, his giant pale dog, Holy, growling at his side. Ohm’s face was bruised, but his eyes were cold and focused. He swung his cloud-iron whip-sword, the blade expanding and retracting like a living silver serpent.

“Iron Ordeal: Cage of the Heretic!”

The blade elongated to impossible lengths, moving with terrifying speed to form a swirling, unpredictable dome of razor-sharp iron around his two opponents.

Gwen flipped backward, her Symbiote suit rippling as she narrowly avoided decapitation. The blade sliced through the air where her neck had been a millisecond prior.

“It’s too fast!” Maria yelled, holding up her Garuda shield to deflect a glancing blow. The iron whipped around the shield, slicing a shallow cut into her shoulder. “We can’t get close enough to strike without getting diced!”

“We don’t need to hit him,” Gwen realized, her white eyes narrowing behind the black mask. “We just need to stop the blade!”

Gwen didn’t try to dodge the next strike. As the iron whip came slicing downward in a heavy arc, Gwen fired a thick, concentrated blast of black webbing from both wrists. She didn’t aim at Ohm. She aimed directly at the middle of the shifting iron blade.

The incredibly dense, sticky webbing wrapped tightly around the metal. Using her superhuman strength, Gwen yanked the webline violently to the side, altering the blade’s trajectory, and slammed the webbing directly against the massive, immovable wooden root of the Giant Jack.

The iron whip was instantly pinned to the wood. Ohm yanked hard on the hilt, but the Symbiote webbing held the metal with absolute, unyielding grip. His weapon was completely immobilized.

Ohm’s eyes widened in sudden realization. He was wide open.

“My turn!” Maria shouted.

She charged forward, her silver horns catching the light. She pressed the mechanism on her arm, and the Garuda shield violently folded inward, shifting into its heavy, kinetic-charged club form.

Ohm dropped the hilt of his sword, raising his arms covered in Armament Haki to block.

It wasn’t enough. Maria leaped into the air, channeling all of her forward momentum and raw Zoan strength into the heavy club. She slammed the weapon directly into Ohm’s crossed arms. The kinetic chargers in the club detonated on impact, releasing a devastating shockwave that shattered Ohm’s Haki defense and cracked his forearms.

The heavy club crashed completely through his guard, striking the Priest squarely in the center of his chest.

Ohm was launched backward, skipping across the dirt like a skipped stone until he slammed into the barricades. He slumped forward, completely out cold. Holy, his giant dog, let out a pathetic whimper, immediately sitting down and raising both paws in unconditional surrender.

The battlefield suddenly felt very quiet.

With Priest Ohm defeated, Scarlet unconscious, and the vanguard lines utterly dismantled by Law and Koala, the morale of the invading army entirely collapsed. The unified militia of Skypiea and Shandora let out a deafening, unified battle cry.

They were pushing the line forward. The refugees poured over their own barricades, driving the surviving, terrified pirates and White Berets back into the dense jungle.

The ground war was won.

Near the tree line, Dr. Indigo stumbled backward, clutching a deep slash on his shoulder. He was completely out of chemical bombs, his mercenaries were fleeing, and his beasts were dead.

He bumped into a solid object and spun around.

Jacob stood behind him, his legs radiating a faint, heated steam. Koala stepped up to Jacob’s side, wiping sweat from her brow, blocking Indigo’s only path of retreat.

“It’s over, Doctor,” Koala said firmly, raising her fists. “Tell your men to stand down.”

Indigo looked at the two of them. He looked out at the battlefield, watching his life’s work being dismantled by a group of Blue Sea rookies and native refugees. His eccentric, manic grin slowly returned, stretching wildly across his soot-stained face.

“Over?” Indigo giggled, a high-pitched, hysterical sound that sent a chill down Jacob’s spine. “Oh, no, no, no. The Golden Lion’s armada does not lose to vermin. If we cannot have this island…”

Indigo reached into his coat. He didn’t pull out a bomb. He pulled out a single, heavily armored vial. Inside, the pure, unrefined IQ pathogen swirled with a sickly, neon-green luminescence.

“…Then no one will!”

“Stop him!” Jacob yelled, blurring into motion.

But he was a fraction of a second too late. Indigo didn’t throw the vial at them. He slammed it directly into the bedrock at his own feet.

The armored glass shattered.

The pressurized, highly unstable chemical erupted outward in a localized, concentrated cloud of neon-green gas. It instantly enveloped Dr. Indigo and the two dozen pirate mercenaries cowering behind him in the tree line.

Jacob skidded to a halt, grabbing Koala and dragging her back as the gas rapidly expanded.

From within the thick, glowing fog, the terrified screams of the pirate mercenaries began. But they weren’t screams of fear; they were screams of sheer, agonizing biological torment.

Crack. Snap. Squelch.

The horrifying sounds of bones breaking, rapidly expanding, and flesh violently tearing itself apart echoed from the fog.

Dr. Indigo’s squeaky, hysterical laughter morphed into a deep, guttural, and entirely inhuman roar that shook the very leaves of the Giant Jack.

The green fog slowly began to part, and three colossal, grotesque silhouettes eclipsed the tree line. The Kaijus had been born, and they were looking directly at the refugee camp.