Chapter 274: The Grand Feast

The sky sundering in two was witnessed with crystal clarity by every single individual standing atop the Red Line.

The Five Elders' expressions turned increasingly dark and ugly. The trajectory of this war was rapidly spiraling completely out of their calculated control—a sensation closely resembling the dire prelude to an absolute, apocalyptic disaster.

No one had simulated a scenario where two additional Yonko would step onto the field below. No matter how deep the World Government's historical foundations ran, they were mathematically incapable of fighting the Revolutionary Army and two sovereign Emperor crews simultaneously.

These pirates were notoriously difficult to reason with under normal parameters; launching an unrestricted war over a minor disagreement was practically their default operational state.

The situation was truly as catastrophic as it could possibly get!

Yet what lay completely beyond their awareness was that the absolute worst was still far from over...

BANG!

Two supreme Conqueror's domains violently parted as Shanks and Big Mom separated.

"What is the point of throwing down down here? Our authentic stage should be up above!" Shanks' lips curled into a subtle, confident smirk as he slowly raised a single arm to point toward the sky.

"Indeed!" Big Mom let out a booming laugh, cold, piercing rays of light flashing through her eyes.

BOOM!

Shanks kicked off the ground with explosive force, vaulting high into the sky currents as he rocketed straight toward the summit.

"Zeus!" Big Mom leaped upward in the same microsecond, and the thundercloud Zeus instantly materialized beneath her boots, carrying her straight into the clouds.

"Mama!!" Big Mom's children registered absolute shock seeing their mother charge straight up without offering a single word of preface.

By the time they yelled twice, Big Mom's massive silhouette had already vanished into the upper atmosphere.

The Charlotte siblings: "..."

Only Katakuri preserved an utterly calm countenance, looking as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

"An elite master who can glimpse the future with Advanced Observation Haki... I've genuinely been itching to test my sight against a target like that," Yasopp murmured, the corners of his lips curving upward as his gaze naturally drifted toward Katakuri's position within the Big Mom Pirates' alignment.

"Ahahaha... Yasopp, you really went and hooked the absolute biggest fish the second you cast your line! Doing that without clearance is going to make Beckman pretty unhappy," Lucky Roux mumbled around a massive mouthful of meat, his words slurred as he chewed.

"You bastards of the Red Hair Pirates, stop looking down on us! Brother Katakuri's absolute power will make every single one of you regret ever stepping onto this shore!" The members of the Big Mom Pirates shouted back in a furious, indignant uproar.

Despite their loud bravado, they dared not harbor a single fraction of carelessness—because the force standing opposite them was the crew widely renowned as having the highest average bounty and most balanced military strength among all the Yonko fleets!

BANG!

A solitary gunshot cut through the air. A seemingly ordinary bullet shot forward, tracing a trajectory straight through Katakuri's head.

"BROTHER KATAKURI!!" The Big Mom Pirates turned pale with shock in an instant.

Yet zero fresh blood erupted from the impact point. Katakuri had naturally foreseen the trajectory in advance, shifting his Mochi-Mochi body via elementalization to let the projectile pass harmlessly through the void.

"As expected of Observation Haki that can glimpse the future—an attack of this tier truly can't score a hit on you," Yasopp noted, blowing a soft breath over the faint trail of white smoke drifting from his pistol barrel, his face overflowing with sheer excitement.

A target possessing authentic counter-play capability was the exact classification of opponent a true sniper lusted after.

"Bastards! CHARGE!!" The Big Mom Pirates were utterly incapable of enduring such blatant provocation. Waiving any further verbal exchange, the entire crew surged forward in a wild, chaotic mob.

"Come on then!!"

The Red Hair Pirates welcomed the charge with roaring excitement, and a full-scale clash between two Yonko-level pirate crews officially erupted across the shoreline.

Yasopp was the absolute first to leap clear of the Red Hair Pirates' line. Multiple Big Mom Pirates attempting to close the distance into melee range found their biological functions collapsing before they could even breach his perimeter, tumbling to the ground one after another.

"Don't you two overdo it out there," Lucky Roux called out to Yasopp and Beckman, casually clearing out fodder soldiers as he spoke.

"Hahaha, you don't need to worry your head about us..."

While open warfare raged fiercely down below, Red-Haired Shanks and Big Mom broke through the upper cloud layer to land directly upon the central plaza of the Holy Land. The vast assembly of soldiers atop Mary Geoise stared blankly at the two titans in utter, speechbound awe.

"It's really Red-Haired Shanks and BIG MOM!!" Both Marines and Revolutionary Army subversives gasped in absolute shock.

At this point, setting aside Whitebeard—whose whereabouts had been completely unmapped for a long time—every single old-guard Yonko had officially gathered at this solitary coordinate! Just what tier of world-ending cataclysm was this war evolving into?!

Amidst the roaring tumult shaking the ranks, the high command of both the Navy and the Revolutionary Army froze in deep astonishment. The individuals stepping onto the field were legends whose names commanded absolute authority over the seas.

A powerhouse holding the title of Yonko—even if operating entirely alone—possessed enough absolute force to single-handedly shatter the strategic balance of the battlefield.

"Red-Hair!" The Four Elders' expressions transformed instantly upon spotting Shanks.

KABOOM!!

Following a thunderous impact, a booming voice saturated every corner of the plaza.

"Mamama... MAMAMA!! This is truly the most magnificent grand feast in all of recorded history!!" The wild, manic grin across Big Mom's face stretched wider and wider. The sheer impact of her heavy landing forced massive stone slabs to shatter and fly into the air around her boots.

A gentle gale swept across the high battlements as Shanks glided smoothly onto an elevated Marine cannon platform—an emplacement that had already been reduced to broken rubble by Dragon's earlier tempest.

"I genuinely didn't simulate a reality where this many big names would gather at a single coordinate today," Shanks noted with a deep, reflective sigh. His sharp gaze drifted upward, locking onto Kaido, who was currently hovering in the high sky transformed into a gargantuan dragon.

During his earlier clash against Dragon, Kaido—lacking independent atmospheric flight parameters in his human form—had assumed his azure dragon form to face the Revolutionary Army Commander on equal visual ground.

At this current milestone, full-scale warfare had erupted across every vector of the Holy Land. The Revolutionary Army's frontline mass atop the plateau had stabilized at a solid one hundred and twenty thousand, while the World Government held an even one hundred thousand!

Analyzing the macro figures, the numerical gap on the plateau was relatively narrow, yet every strategist on the field understood that an additional, terrifying force of nearly two hundred thousand subversives was actively surging up from below—a massive volume of troops that could never be ignored.

"Hm?" Big Mom's eyes suddenly snapped toward the azure dragon hovering in the heavens, her tone dripping with suspicion and disbelief. "Kaido?! What in the hell are you doing up here?"

"Linlin, what brings your carcass to this coordinate?!" Kaido raised his massive dragon head, his booming voice echoing like thunder across the sky.

"That's my line, you idiot! What is wrong with your brain? Since when did you start acting as a lapdog for those World Government bastards? How could a man like you commit to something so thoroughly embarrassing? AH?!"

"Are you an absolute dumbass?!"

Anyone possessing a functional mind could decipher the active layout on the field: Kaido was explicitly deploying his strength to back the World Government's line.

"GRRR!! Since when did my personal affairs become any of your damn business?!" Kaido roared in pure, unadulterated fury.

In truth, a endless herd of frantic curses was stampeding through Kaido's mind. What kind of sick joke is this?! Do you think I actually WANT to fight for the World Government? AH?!

If not for the fact that those bastards...

"Hmph!" Big Mom turned her head away in absolute disdain, rotating her cold focus to lock onto the Four Elders and Fleet Admiral Akainu standing atop the high platform.

"Kaido, I originally assumed this campaign represented a golden opportunity for the two of us to rise back to absolute dominance together. But looking at you now, it seems your operational capacity is completely finished. What a waste—I even went out of my way to break your lead All-Star, King, out of captivity."

"My efforts were thrown away for nothing," Big Mom gritted out, her massive fists tightening as a bloodthirsty glint flared within her pupils.

"Still, even if my Big Mom Pirates have to stand alone, I will fight for that empty throne regardless! You lot... must be feeling exceptionally troubled right about now... World Government!"

"HA-HA-HA-HA... MAMAMA... MAMAMA!!"

What Big Mom failed to notice in her manic boasting was that the moment the name "King" cleared her lips, the expressions of both the Four Elders and Kaido violently transformed simultaneously.

The Four Elders' faces turned dark to an absolute, hideous extreme—a subtle detail that Akainu instantly caught in his peripheral vision.

As for Kaido, his already colossal dragon eyes snapped wide to absolute, trembling circles as he demanded in pure, wide-eyed disbelief: "Linlin... did you genuinely... rescue King?!"