Chapter 1051: Becoming a Yonko Completely Ruined My Plans

Chapter 1051: Chapter 1051: Becoming a Yonko Completely Ruined My Plans

"It can’t be!"

Br?lée staggered back in terror, landing hard on the ground. She didn’t even feel the sharp, biting gravel piercing her skin.

Ten seconds passed. Br?lée began to notice something wrong: the man lying there had no external wounds, but he kept his eyes shut, showing no signs of life, as if he were simply sleeping.

Summoning her courage, she scooted forward on her hands and knees until she was right in front of Aeridar, peering at him intently. His chest rose and fell in a rhythmic, shallow breath, and aside from that, there was nothing unusual.

He’s unconscious! she realized.

She waved a hand in front of his face. No reaction. Her suspicion seemed confirmed.

"This is heaven handing me his head on a silver platter!"

Her eyes lit up with predatory greed. She let out a silent, gleeful laugh and pulled a half-meter-long steel dagger from her dress.

"Die!"

With a hiss of pure hatred, she brought the blade down, aiming straight for Aeridar’s heart.

Clang—!

A crisp, metallic ring echoed through the void. The dagger struck skin that had suddenly turned pitch-black. It was like stabbing a slab of tempered steel, the impact not only sent a numbing vibration up Br?lée’s arm but shattered the steel blade entirely. The broken tip spun into the air before clattering to the ground a meter away.

Br?lée stared, dumbfounded, at the metallic, jet-black sheen on Aeridar’s chest. "Ar... Armament Haki..."

"Tell me," Aeridar said, slowly opening his eyes. He looked at the petrified Br?lée with an expression of deep weariness. "What gave you the courage to try and kill me? Was it sheer audacity?"

"Waaaaah!"

Terrified, Br?lée scrambled to stand, lost her footing, and tumbled back onto her backside. She began to backpedal frantically on all fours, her skirt nearly shredding against the stone.

"Is that really necessary?"

Aeridar sat up and shook his head, looking more annoyed than angry. "I didn’t want to kill you. If I wanted to, you’d be dead already. Why go through the trouble of trying to stab me?"

He had been fully recovered for a while; he had only been lying there to shake off the severe neurological trauma and dizziness caused by Charlotte Linlin’s final sword strike, which had sliced half his face off.

"Ah..." Br?lée froze, her screaming cut short, staring at him with wide, terrified eyes.

"To be honest, our partnership was going just fine, but then..." Aeridar sighed, scratching his head. He looked genuinely frustrated. "I mean, your mother... couldn’t you two have just talked things through? Why did it have to escalate into this grand, life-or-death spectacle? Look what happened. She went and got herself killed over nothing!"

Br?lée’s lips trembled. "Who told you not to agree to Mama’s terms? Besides, Mama invested a fortune in Caesar’s research! We were entitled to the results!"

"I put money into Caesar’s research, too! He was working on ’human gigantification.’ My Dr. Dalt was researching the same thing. Caesar’s data just helped us avoid a few pitfalls and saved some time. The real work was done by the scientists under my Chris Pirates!" Aeridar stood up, dusting off his clothes, and asked in a low voice, "Tell me, did Big Mom really expect to just walk away with it for free without paying a price?"

Br?lée was momentarily silenced, but she stammered defensively, "I... well... anyway, the Big Mom Pirates put in a lot of effort!"

"And now look at the result. Because I took out the Big Mom Pirates, I’ve been pushed to the very crest of this new age." Aeridar ignored her protest, sounding deeply bothered. "You have to understand, if I had wanted to become a Yonko, I wouldn’t have had to deal with Blackbeard. Now I’m effectively forced into it. It’s completely ruined my plans to stay under the radar!"

Ugh...

Even though he made it sound reasonable, Br?lée couldn’t help but twitch. Everyone else on the sea was desperate to become a Yonko, yet here he was, acting as if it were an inconvenient chore. The way he downplayed it was so arrogant it made her want to punch him.

"Well, what’s done is done. And since you’ve delivered yourself to me, I don’t have to hunt you down. Get ready to take me out of the Mirror World."

Aeridar cracked his neck, the bones popping audibly, and began to walk toward her.

"No!" Br?lée glared at him, defiant. "The mirrors are all shattered! I’m not taking you anywhere! You killed Mama, just rot in here and die!"

Aeridar flashed a savage, toothy grin. Br?lée felt a sudden, primal dread, a sensation of impending doom that made her skin crawl.

"Are you sure about that?"

"Y-y-you! What are you trying to do?!"

As Aeridar closed the distance, her voice broke into a terrified stutter.

...

Unzan Port.

"Kaido! Don’t you dare run wild in the territory of the Chris Pirates!"

"Keep your hands off their duel!"

"Get out of here!"

"...!"

The roars of battle echoed endlessly. The war within the city was still raging.

The tremors and the hurricane-force shockwaves, acting like a brutal duet, never stopped. They tore through the already ruined city and the land beneath it. This coastal ground, subjected to such relentless force, had developed countless fissures through which seawater was pouring in. If this continued, the entire area, a radius of a hundred miles, would eventually shatter into fragments and sink into the sea.

The massive Golden Giant lay in ruins, its limbs scattered across the city center like monolithic blocks of gold.

Near the site of a fallen golden arm, Kaido swung his kanabo, locked in a fierce struggle against Zephyr and Oliver. The air roared with the sound of their clash, dust and debris flying in every direction.

"Thunder Bagua!!!"

"Black Fist: Close Strike!!!"

Kaido bellowed, swinging his gargantuan club, while Zephyr roared back, thrusting his metallic, jet-black fist. They collided like two planets crashing together.

Boom—!

The earth within a hundred-meter radius of the two sank instantly, splitting into a dense, spiderweb-like array of cracks. A terrifying shockwave, howling like a typhoon, swept across the sky and land, kicking up a sky-darkening cloud of dust.

A moment later, Zephyr was sent flying like a cannonball. He vanished from sight instantly, leaving a deep trench over a meter into the earth behind him.

"Two-Sword Style: Soaring Slash!!!"

Oliver didn’t blink. He charged through the hurricane, his twin blades sweeping from right to left with devastating force.

Slash—!

As a Great Swordsman, his strike bypassed Kaido’s physical defense and Armament Haki, leaving two blood-soaked, deep gashes across the Yonko’s chest.

"Satisfying! Again!"

Kaido roared with wild, manic laughter. He swung his kanabo at Oliver. Most terrifying of all, the two wounds on his chest were already beginning to knit together before he had even finished his swing.

Oliver dodged the wind-buffeted club, allowing it to smash into the ground instead.

CRACK—!

With a thunderous roar, the impact shattered the earth, causing plates of ground ten to twenty meters high to heave upward. The resulting shockwave nearly knocked Oliver off his feet as he tried to stabilize himself.

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