Chapter 57: The Jackpot

The Colosseum was no longer a dazzling arena of entertainment, it was a sealed, suffocating tomb of solid gold.

Gild Tesoro had manipulated the architecture of his city-ship to form a massive, impenetrable dome over the battlefield, trapping the screaming billionaires, the invading Beast Pirates, and myself inside.

Amidst the ruined golden sands, Jack the Drought pushed himself up from the rubble.

His massive chest heaved violently as he recovered from the internal shockwave I had planted in his ribs.

The terrifying, accelerated healing factor of an Awakened Ancient Zoan was on full display as his internal wounds visibly steamed and forced themselves closed.

He gripped his twin shotel blades, his bloodshot eyes locking onto me with the promise of absolute, mindless slaughter.

“You think a little parlor trick is enough to kill a Lead Performer?” Jack roared, his voice vibrating like grinding tectonic plates, shaking the golden dust in the air.

“No,” I replied, my voice echoing coldly in the enclosed space.

“I think it’s time I stopped playing with my food.”

I reached to my lower back and unclasped my primary weapon.

I didn’t wield an ordinary sword.

I drew The Jade Wings, a pair of lethal, perfectly balanced twin blades connected by a pitch-black, telekinetically responsive chain.

They were forged from a mysterious, blood-absorbing material, humming with latent power in my hands.

Jack charged, his massive boots crushing the golden floor.

He swung both of his Haki-coated blades in a devastating cross-slash meant to sever me at the waist.

I didn’t block.

I tapped into the vast reserves of my Fa-Jin.

Through the repeated, high-intensity movements of the prolonged battle, I had been continuously accumulating and storing raw kinetic energy deep within my cells.

I opened the floodgates, channeling that universal fuel directly into my metabolic processes.

My muscles surged, my speed and strength multiplying exponentially in a fraction of a second.

Using hyper-acceleration, I vanished from Jack’s sight before his blades even completed their arc.

I reappeared instantly in the air above him.

As I descended, I fed my stored Fa-Jin directly into the handles of The Jade Wings.

The weapon interfaced perfectly with my kinetic energy.

With a flick of my wrists, I swung the twin blades, discharging the absorbed kinetic energy as two massive, concentrated slashes of blinding green light.

The kinetic slashes tore through the air, slamming into Jack’s broad back.

Even with his immense Ancient Zoan durability, the sheer kinetic density of the green light sheared through his thick hide, drawing massive arcs of blood.

Jack bellowed in pain, spinning around to swat me out of the sky.

I landed lightly on the golden floor and engaged the weapon’s Infinite Chain.

With a thought, the black chain connecting my twin blades extended with terrifying speed, shooting out like a striking viper.

It stretched from a single meter to fifty, wrapping telekinetically around Jack’s wrists and ankles in a complex, binding web.

Jack snarled, flexing his massive muscles to snap the chain, but it held firm.

“Let’s see how you handle this,” I whispered.

I engaged the shapeshifting property of The Jade Wings.

The twin blades in my hands instantly morphed, expanding and altering their form until I was holding two massive, towering great swords.

Despite their colossal size, they maintained the exact same weight and balance as the original daggers, allowing me to wield them with blinding, terrifying speed.

I pulled taut on the telekinetic chain, yanking Jack off-balance.

I surged forward, layering my blades in dense, black Armament Haki.

I didn’t just strike his surface; I utilized advanced internal destruction (Ryuo).

I drove the massive great swords directly into Jack’s chest.

The physical impact was deafening, but the true damage was invisible.

The kinetic force and Haki bypassed his tough exterior, detonating violently inside his internal organs.

Jack’s eyes instantly rolled back into his head.

The massive, one-billion-berry Yonko Commander dropped his shotel blades.

His towering frame swayed for a fraction of a second before collapsing backward, hitting the golden floor with a thud that shook the entire Colosseum.

He was completely out cold.

A heavy, terrified silence fell over the remaining Beast Pirates.

Their invincible commander had just been dismantled with effortless precision.

“What…

what are you?!” Gild Tesoro shrieked from his hovering pillar of gold across the arena.

I retracted the chain, letting my blades seamlessly shift back into their compact dagger forms before holstering them.

I turned my attention to the Golden Emperor.

Tesoro’s eyes widened in panic.

He thrust his hands forward, attempting to summon a barrage of high-density gold spikes from the arena floor to impale me.

I triggered another burst of Fa-Jin hyper-acceleration.

The world blurred.

Before the gold spikes could even form, I crossed the distance and appeared directly on his hovering pillar.

I grabbed Tesoro by the lapels of his pristine, pink suit and violently slammed him down onto the solid gold surface.

The impact cracked the pillar beneath him.

Before he could attempt to use his Awakening to absorb me into the metal, I pinned his wrists, completely coating my own hands in dense Armament Haki to entirely negate his Devil Fruit influence on my skin.

Tesoro struggled, his face flushed with rage and terror, but my Fa-Jin enhanced grip was like a hydraulic press.

“Get your hands off me!” Tesoro spat, his rings digging into the gold beneath him.

“I am a god in this city!

I control twenty percent of the world’s wealth!”

“And I don’t care about a single Berry of it,” I smiled, leaning in close.

“You know, with all the chaos, the explosions, and the screaming, we haven’t actually had the chance to be properly introduced face-to-face.”

With one hand holding him down, I used my other to retrieve the heavy, golden World Government insignia from my coat pocket.

I casually tapped the Warlord crest against his forehead.

“Victor D.

Costa.

Warlord of the Sea,” I introduced myself cheerfully.

“I’d love to stay and chat, but my ride is waiting.

I sincerely apologize for the mess my new friend Jack made of your lovely arena.

And I’m really sorry that I can’t stick around to help with the cleanup.

You know how it is, busy schedule.”

Tesoro glared at me, his teeth grinding so hard I thought they might shatter in his mouth.

“You arrogant…

I’ll have the Celestial Dragons strip you of your title for this!

I’ll buy your execution!”

“Good luck with that,” I chuckled, releasing his wrists and stepping back.

“First, you have to find a way out of this dome.”

I leaped down from his pillar, landing gracefully on the arena floor.

I looked up at the massive, thick shell of solid gold Tesoro had sealed us inside.

Breaking it with raw blunt force would take too much time and could risk collapsing the upper levels of the city-ship.

I needed a cleaner, scientific solution.

It was time to use the Collector aspect of my weapon.

Having absorbed the blood of countless formidable beasts, I had access to my Jade Clones.

I held out my hand.

A glowing, arcane summoning circle materialized in the air beside me.

“Mage.

Break the roof,” I commanded.

From the shimmering light, a magnificent, ethereal construct emerged.

It was The Mage, the Glacial-Inferno Unicorn.

Carved from immaculate jade, the beast tossed its head, its mane roaring with a mystical, blue-tinted fire.

Its eyes glowed with raw, primal telekinesis and elemental power.

The Unicorn reared back on its hind legs, locking its high-tier Observation Haki onto the exact structural apex of the golden dome.

Utilizing its Thermal Duality, the Unicorn’s horn pulsed with a blinding, icy aura.

It unleashed a massive, sustained beam of Absolute Zero energy, striking the highest point of the ceiling.

Gold is an exceptional conductor of temperature.

Within seconds, the freezing magic spread rapidly across the entire upper hemisphere of the dome, dropping the temperature of the metal to unnatural, sub-zero levels.

The thick gold frosted over, groaning and shrieking as the molecular structure tightened and turned incredibly brittle.

Immediately, the Unicorn shifted its elemental stance.

The icy blue light in its horn violently shifted to a blindingly bright, searing crimson.

It fired a second beam, this one composed of super-heated, Sun-level plasma.

The intense, concentrated heat struck the exact center of the frozen, brittle gold.

The physics of extreme thermal shock were instantaneous and catastrophic.

The rapid expansion of the super-heated metal clashing against the artificially frozen structure caused the gold to violently buckle.

With a deafening, sky-shattering CRACK, the entire ceiling of the Colosseum blew outward.

Massive chunks of frozen gold rained down harmlessly around the perimeter, opening the arena to the dark, bruised purple sky of the New World.

I dismissed the Mage back into the blades.

I looked up through the newly formed skylight.

Hovering silently above the ruined casino, completely untouched by the chaos below, was the massive Adam Wood hull of the Titan’s Glory.

I surveyed the rest of the arena floor.

While I had been dealing with Jack and Tesoro, the Colosseum had gone completely quiet.

The remaining Beast Pirates, the Gifters, and the heavily armed casino goons were all lying unconscious in massive, groaning heaps across the sand.

Sitting atop the largest pile of defeated pirates was Gammamon.

The little white triceratops had reverted to his base form and was happily munching on a piece of chocolate he had found in the rubble, swinging his legs without a care in the world.

“Show-off,” I grinned.

I needed to secure the bounties and get out of here before Marine reinforcements or more Yonko fleets caught wind of the disaster.

Carrying hundreds of pirates by hand up to a flying ship wasn’t practical.

I tapped my boot against the floor.

A second summoning circle expanded beneath me.

“Trapper, I need a net,” I called out.

The massive, terrifying form of the Silken Widow-Maker pulled itself out of the summoning circle.

The jade spider’s eight glowing eyes swept the arena, its Advanced Observation Haki instantly processing the locations of every unconscious body.

Moving with horrifying, mechanical efficiency, the Trapper scuttled across the arena.

It manipulated its invisible, Haki-coated razor-wire and heavy-duty silk.

In a matter of seconds, the spider had securely cocooned dozens of unconscious Beast Pirates.

It wrapped Who’s-Who’s solid gold statue in a thick, protective layer of webbing, and finally, it spun a massive, heavy-duty cocoon around the towering body of Jack the Drought.

The spider connected all the cocoons to a single, massive dragline of silk, aiming its abdomen up at the sky.

It fired a heavy silk harpoon directly into the reinforced lower hull of the hovering Titan’s Glory, anchoring the massive haul of bounties to the ship.

“Good work,” I praised the construct, dismissing it.

“Victor!” Gammamon called out, running over and jumping onto my shoulder.

“Robin said the ship is ready to go!”

“Let’s bug out, Vanguard,” I said.

I triggered my final summon.

A burst of brilliant, fiery light erupted from the blades, manifesting my crown jewel: HoHo, the Phoenix-Peacock.

The stunning, fiery bird let out a melodic trill, its intermediate Armament Haki radiating a warm pressure.

I grabbed its talons, holding Gammamon securely against my chest, and the Phoenix-Peacock took flight, carrying us effortlessly up through the broken dome and soaring toward the deck of my ship.

Down below, the ruins of the Colosseum were dead silent.

Gild Tesoro knelt on his cracked golden pillar, his pristine suit covered in dust and frost.

He stared up at the departing ship, utterly stunned, his mind failing to process the devastation.

He was the master of the Underworld, a man who believed his money made him invincible.

Yet, in less than an hour, a Warlord had waltzed into his city, dismantled a Yonko Commander, shattered his indestructible cage, and humiliated him in his own house.

“Lord Tesoro!

Lord Tesoro!”

Tesoro slowly turned his head.

Baccarat and Dice were sprinting across the ruined arena floor, completely ignoring the unconscious billionaires and scattered gold.

They looked absolutely panicked, stripped entirely of their usual elegant composure.

“What is it?” Tesoro demanded, his voice dangerously hollow.

“The vault!” Baccarat gasped, dropping to her knees, her breath catching in her throat.

“The subterranean sector was breached during the fight!

The security feed was entirely blacked out by shadows!”

“And?!” Tesoro roared, grabbing her by the shoulders.

“The rare Devil Fruit is gone!” she cried.

“The glass on the podium was smashed, but the fruit vanished!

And that’s not all…

the main vault…” Baccarat swallowed hard, tears welling in her eyes.

“Ten billion Berries…

entire mountains of our liquid cash, just…

disappeared!

They literally sank into the shadows on the floor!

There’s no trace of how they moved it!”

Dice stepped forward, rubbing the back of his neck, looking unusually pale.

“Uh, boss.

The slaves in sector four are missing, too.

That Revolutionary commander you bought last week?

Gone.

And the little girl with him.”

Tesoro’s mind snapped.

The sheer, unfathomable scale of the heist finally crashed down on him.

The Beastmaster hadn’t just come to fight; he had orchestrated the greatest robbery in the history of the Grand Line right under his nose, using a Yonko Commander’s invasion as a smokescreen.

Tesoro fell to his knees in the golden dust.

He looked up at the sky, watching the Titan’s Glory slowly turn its massive prow and begin to ascend.

Dangling from the back of the flying fortress, suspended by indestructible spider-silk, was a massive bundle of cocooned Beast Pirates, including Jack the Drought and the golden statue of Who’s-Who.

“My money…” Tesoro whispered, his hands trembling violently.

“My fruit…

my city…”

His whisper escalated into a guttural, agonizing scream that echoed across the New World waters, filled with pure, unadulterated misfortune.

“CURSE YOU, BEASTMASTER!

CURSE YOU!”

High above the clouds, safely out of range of Gran Tesoro’s anti-aircraft cannons, the quarterdeck of the Titan’s Glory was filled with the sound of absolute, unhinged laughter.

I leaned against the wooden railing, clutching my stomach as I laughed so hard my Fa-Jin-enhanced ribs ached.

Gammamon was rolling on the deck next to me, kicking his little feet in the air and giggling maniacally.

“Did you see his face?!” I wheezed, wiping a tear from my eye.

“He looked like someone stole his favorite toy!”

“We took all the shiny things!” Gammamon cheered, pumping his fists.

Robin walked out of the galley, carrying a tray of hot tea.

A soft, genuine smile graced her lips.

Beside her walked the Revolutionary asset, bandaged but breathing steadily, holding the hand of the small, wide-eyed girl we had rescued from the vaults.

The Night-Terror Ferret slipped out from beneath Robin’s shadow, darting across the deck to reconnect with my own.

It had spent the last hour using its Shadow-Skip ability to ferry the passengers, the Devil Fruit, and literal mountains of gold directly from Tesoro’s basement into our ship’s secure vault.

“The passengers are safe, Captain,” Robin reported.

“And Perona is currently down in the lower hold, swimming in a mountain of Berries.

I don’t think we’ll see her for a week.”

“Let her have her fun,” I smiled, accepting a cup of tea.

“She earned it.”

I walked over to the ship’s communication console.

We had executed the perfect heist.

We had completed Koala’s mission, secured a rare Devil Fruit, and robbed the Underworld blind.

But the most important part of the mission was hanging from the back of our ship.

I picked up the golden Den Den Mushi and dialed a highly restricted, heavily encrypted Marine Headquarters frequency.

The snail rang twice before it connected.

Click.

“Garp,” the gruff, unmistakable voice of the Marine Hero answered.

He sounded tired, likely still dealing with the fallout of his clash with Shiki.

I took a sip of my tea, looking out over the endless expanse of the New World clouds.

“Vice Admiral,” I said smoothly, my voice carrying the supreme confidence of a man who held all the cards.

“I’m calling to collect on our deal.”

Silence on the line.

“I have a former CP9 captain and a one-billion-berry Yonko Commander currently wrapped up in spider silk, ready for delivery,” I continued.

“I’ve got your pirates, Garp.

Now…

where is my cousin?”

Word Count: 2717

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