Chapter 117: The Lion's Den and the Dragon's Feast

[Jacob POV]

Two hundred terrified refugees stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the base of the Giant Jack, their hands thrust forward, pouring every ounce of their willpower into the copied Reflect cards. The massive, interlocking hexagonal dome flared with blinding light just as the combined might of Shiki’s and Enel’s armies slammed into it.

Cannonballs, pressurized explosive spheres, and concentrated beams of lightning hit the invisible wall. For a split second, the sheer pressure threatened to buckle the barricades.

And then, physics violently reversed course.

The deafening roar of the enemy’s assault was instanly bounced back. A tidal wave of fire, shrapnel, and lightning tore through the dense jungle, crashing headfirst into the charging ranks of the White Berets and pirate mercenaries.

The front line was absolutely decimated. Mutated gorillas were thrown backward into the trees, and Enel’s divine guards were electrocuted by their own redirected lightning.

Behind the glowing barrier, the Skypiean and Shandian militia erupted into deafening cheers. Wyper raised his Flame Gun, his eyes burning with fierce, renewed pride. They were holding the line.

“Ranged attacks are useless!” Dr. Indigo shrieked from the tree line, coughing through the thick smoke of the rebounded cannons. He pointed his chemical daggers directly at the barricades. “Tear them apart with your bare hands! Overwhelm the shields! Charge!”

Priest Ohm, his iron whip-sword expanding, nodded grimly. Beside them, the one-armed mutant gorilla, Scarlet, let out a furious, ground-shaking bellow. The surviving horde abandoned their artillery, drawing swords, spears, and claws as they rushed the perimeter in a blind, brutal melee charge.

“The shields won’t hold if a thousand bodies press against them at once,” Law stated calmly, stepping forward. He rested his nodachi, Kikoku, on his shoulder. “Time to go to work.”

“Agreed,” Koala said, cracking her knuckles. She took a deep breath, dropping into the fluid, rooted stance of Fish-Man Karate. “Let’s keep them off the barricades.”

Law, Koala, Peter, Maria, Gwen, and I stepped past the glowing Reflect barrier, planting ourselves directly in the path of the approaching army.

“Room,” Law muttered. A massive, translucent blue dome expanded outward, covering the entire front line of the battlefield. “Divide them, take the commanders.”

“I’ve got the monkey!” Peter yelled. He slammed the stud on his chest, shifting into his massive Spinosaurus hybrid form. He charged headlong into Scarlet, the two absolute behemoths colliding with a shockwave that cracked the earth.

“I’ll handle the Priest!” Gwen called out, shooting a line of black webbing into the canopy and swinging forward. Maria flanked her, her silver Garuda shield shifting into a heavy, kinetic-charged club as they tag-teamed Ohm and his team.

I dropped my center of gravity, feeling the explosive tension building in my calves. Hundreds of screeching pirates and White Berets were charging straight at me.

Koala stepped up beside me. She pulled her fist back, gathering the ambient moisture in the humid jungle air. “Fish-Man Karate: Brick Fist!”

She punched the empty air. A devastating, invisible shockwave of pressurized water ripped through the front lines, sending three dozen mercenaries flying backward into the brush.

I grinned, my body blurring into motion. “Let’s clear the yard.”

[POV: Ace]

The Western Sky.

I love a good entrance.

With Gammamon tucked securely under my left arm and Laura holding tightly to the back of my vest, I pushed my Devil Fruit to its limit. My lower body roared with superheated plasma, propelling us through the high-altitude air like a living meteor.

Ahead of us, Shiki’s main floating fortress loomed, a massive, gravity-defying chunk of earth chained to several smaller islands, bristling with cannons and stone castles.

“Hold on!” I yelled over the rushing wind.

My aim was dead center for the main courtyard.

We crashed into the stone plaza with the force of a bomb. A colossal explosion of orange flames and cracked earth sent dozens of pirate guards screaming as they were blown off their feet. The smoke cleared, and I stood up, adjusting my hat as the flames licked harmlessly off my shoulders.

Alarms instantly began to shriek across the floating island. Doors burst open, and within seconds, we were surrounded by a sea of heavily armed pirate mercenaries and massive, neon-veined mutant beasts. There had to be over five hundred of them just in this courtyard alone.

“Intruders!” a pirate captain yelled, drawing a pair of flintlocks. “Kill them!”

“There’s too many grunts,” Laura muttered, her adamantium claws sliding out with a sharp snikt. “We’ll waste all our stamina just clearing the yard.”

“Who said we were clearing it?” I grinned, reaching into my pocket.

I pulled out the duplicated blue Meeseeks box Victor had handed me before we left. I held it down and rapidly mashed the button with my thumb like it was a game controller.

Poof. Poof. Poof. Poof. Poof.

A massive cloud of blue smoke instantly flooded the courtyard. When it cleared, over fifty bright blue, deeply unsettling creatures stood in a tight circle around us, all wearing wide, unblinking smiles.

“I’m Mr. Meeseeks, look at me!” “Ooh, yeah, I’m Mr. Meeseeks!”

The pirate horde stopped dead in their tracks, completely baffled by the bizarre sight.

“Listen up, blue guys,” I said loudly, pointing at the surrounding army. “Take out the trash. Every single one of them.”

“Can do!” the swarm chirped in horrifying unison.

The Meeseeks descended on the pirate army like a pack of rabid, indestructible dogs. It was absolutely hilarious chaos. One Meeseeks cheerfully ripped a heavy cannon out of a mercenary’s hands and beat him over the head with it. Another tackled a giant mutant bird, laughing maniacally as it plucked the beast’s feathers. They were relentless, feeling no pain and driven by a singular, psychotic desire to complete their task.

“That is… incredibly disturbing,” Laura noted, watching a Meeseeks suplex a pirate twice its size.

“But effective,” I laughed. “Go! Find the artillery bays and destroy Indigo’s chemical weapons. Rescue any slaves you find along the way. I’ll handle the boss.”

“Let’s go, Gamma!” Laura called out. She and the little triceratops-Digimon sprinted into the chaos, easily slipping past the distracted guards and plunging deep into the fortress corridors.

I cracked my neck and stepped forward, letting the flames wrap around my fists. I looked up toward the highest point of the castle.

“Hey! Golden Lion!” I roared, my voice carrying over the sounds of the brawl. “Come down here and face the fire!”

[Victor POV]

The Eastern Sky.

The Titan’s Glory sailed smoothly through the sky, the galleon’s massive hull cutting through the scattered clouds. I stood on the bow, the wind whipping my coat, my eyes locked on the colossal structure ascending ahead of us.

The Ark Maxim was a monument to absolute hubris. A flying ship made entirely of solid gold, powered by the terrifying electrical output of its creator. Above its massive rotors, the sky was violently churning into a pitch-black, crackling abyss. The Raigo was growing in size.

Robin stood calmly to my right, her hands resting on the wooden railing.

“Jasmine’s running late,” Robin observed softly, glancing back at the empty deck.

“She’s on her way,” I replied, keeping my focus on the Ark. “She’ll join us when she can. In the meantime, we clear the deck.”

As the Titan’s Glory drew closer to the golden ship, a figure appeared at the edge of the Ark’s bow.

“God” Enel looked down at us. Even from a distance, I could feel the sheer arrogance radiating off him. He was furious that mortals had dared to bring a wooden ship into his divine airspace.

“You bring kindling into the realm of God?” Enel’s voice echoed across the sky, amplified by his electrical currents. “Fools. Return to the ashes.”

He raised his golden staff, pointing it directly at the Titan’s Glory.

The sky above him flashed blindingly white. “El Thor!”

A colossal, compressed pillar of pure blue lightning, easily twenty feet wide, erupted from the clouds above, crashing down toward the galleon with enough raw voltage to instantly vaporize the ship and everything on it.

I tapped directly into the deepest, heaviest reserves of my core. The air around me warped with heavy, green energy.

“Summon: Jade Emperor.”

A massive, translucent green dragon exploded from the deck of the galleon. The three-headed jade dragon coiled rapidly around the mainmast, its massive, shimmering scales glowing with ancient power. As the pillar of divine lightning crashed down, the dragon didn’t try to block it.

It simply threw its three massive heads back, opened its jaws, and caught the El Thor directly in its mouths.

Enel’s eyes widened in absolute shock.

The lightning didn’t shatter the construct like he hoped it would. The dragon’s unique properties flared to life. It acted as a massive, magical lightning rod, absorbing the millions of volts of pure electrical energy. The dragon’s green body flashed violently blue, containing the attack.

And then, it funneled that raw, crackling power directly down its ethereal tether, straight into my body.

A devastating rush of supercharged energy slammed into my veins. My eyes burned with blue-green light, and the air around me crackled with stolen lightning. The sheer output of Enel’s strongest attack had just been converted into pure fuel for my magic.

“Thanks for the spark,” I muttered, my voice vibrating with power.

I bent my knees, the wooden deck groned under my boots, and launched myself into the air. Propelled by my supercharged energy, I crossed the distance between the two ships in a fraction of a second.

I landed on the solid gold deck of the Ark Maxim with a heavy, echoing thud, the metal denting beneath my boots.

[General POV]

On the golden deck of the Ark Maxim, Enel stared at the Blue Sea captain who had just eaten his divine punishment and stepped onto his sacred ship. The Warlord crackled with stolen electricity, looking entirely unimpressed by the “God” of Skypiea.

Enel’s arrogant smirk vanished. The boredom that had plagued him for years was replaced by a cold, lethal fury.

“You dare steal the power of a God?” Enel whispered, the golden drums on his back spinning rapidly. The air around him began to warp as the raw voltage output skyrocketed. His body began to expand, pure lightning overtaking his physical form as he prepared to unleash his 200,000,000 Volt Amaru state. “I will erase you.”

Miles away, on the western front, Ace stood in the center of the chaotic courtyard. The Meeseeks were tearing the pirate crew apart, completely neutralizing the numbers advantage.

From the highest balcony of the stone castle, Golden Lion Shiki floated down. The legendary pirate had seen the Warlord’s ship sail eastward, meaning the fiery brat standing in his courtyard was without any backup.

“You have some nerve, Firefist,” Shiki growled, his voice carrying the heavy, oppressive weight of a man who had fought the Pirate King.

Shiki landed softly on the stone plaza. He didn’t smile. He reached down and drew the legendary twin swords, Oto and Kogarashi. As the blades cleared their scabbards, the entire floating island shuddered.

“Let me teach you what it actually means to rule the sky,” Shiki said softly.

Instantly, the gravity across the entire courtyard violently shifted. Chunks of the stone plaza tore themselves free, floating upward into the air alongside terrified pirates and cheering Meeseeks. Ace felt the crushing weight of the world press down on his shoulders, trying to pin him to the earth.

The legends had stopped playing games. The real war had just begun.