Chapter 284: Searching

"Good, that's it—uploaded." Drake locked his focus on the optic scouter over his left eye.

The system had transmitted Aokiji's precise coordinate coordinates directly to his scouter lens. Once the interface sync completed, Drake immediately triggered his spatial warps to surge toward the target location at breakneck speed.

As for the battle raging outside, he trusted Sabo and his comrades to hold the line—especially since he had equipped them with the Dragon Flag Pirates' absolute latest gear before stepping off.

Those assets had cost him a monumental sum of system points to acquire, but every piece was top-tier quality!

Scraping together every last drop of his accumulated resources to exchange for wartime items had initially filled Drake's heart with endless reluctance.

It hurt even worse than carving out his own flesh—this was his first time experiencing what true financial agony felt like!

Yet considering the potential windfall of this campaign, every sacrifice suddenly felt thoroughly worth it.

Precisely!

Raiding the vaults to strike it rich—that was Drake's authentic master plan!

Pfft!

Rather, robbing the rich to aid the poor.

After eight hundred years of unhindered rule, the World Government's accumulated heritage and secret coffers had to be vast beyond imagination.

Otherwise, how could the Navy routinely issue massive bounties running into hundreds of millions or billions of Berries? Where did all that money come from?

A single Yonko commanded a bounty of two to three billion at minimum, while the old-guard Emperors sat atop bounties exceeding four billion. Across the infinite sea, millions of pirates roamed, with countless individuals breaking the hundred-million mark—in the New World, anyone under a hundred million was considered a mere subordinate.

They weren't even on the same tier as authentic high-seas pirates.

Analyzing it through that lens, just how staggeringly wealthy was the World Government? Drake didn't dare calculate the precise sum, but he was certain they could easily produce several hundred billion Berries without breaking a sweat.

With the prospect of such a massive fortune on the line, even a mysterious entity like Im didn't seem so terrifying anymore... Just march in and claim it!

Navigating through the grand corridors, Drake mentally mapped the active layout. The war had clearly barely begun, yet the volume of top-tier combat power gathered at this single coordinate was dangerously high.

Three Yonko, Supreme Commander Dragon—who had rarely shown his full force in public—along with the three Admirals and the Five Elders.

Every single one of these figures was capable of sending shockwaves across the globe, yet today they were all massed in one central arena.

Though he still hadn't decoded why Kaido and Big Mom had aligned with the World Government, he would leave that puzzle to Sabo and the others. He had his own priority mission to execute.

"Twenty minutes left on the clock—I need to pick up the pace." Drake cast a quick glance at the timer, his brow twitching slightly as he warped onto the crest of a grand palace roof within the Holy Land.

Anchoring his position near a pointed castle spire, Drake adopted a thoughtful expression. He should be somewhere in this sector, but why can't I register a single trace of his presence? Even the scouter is showing zero response...

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

At that exact microsecond, a sharp red ping began flashing rapidly on his scouter lens.

"Huh...?" Drake muttered in surprise, vanishing from the spire in a blur. "Let's check it out below!"

"A life signature this faint... surely that can't be Kuzan..." Reaching ground level, Drake followed the navigational vector indicated on his scouter.

The energy reading displayed on the interface was exceptionally feeble—almost hovering at absolute zero. The anomaly forced a seed of doubt to sprout in Drake's mind.

Even if Aokiji were bound in Sea-Prism Stone, his baseline vitality should never drop to such a pathetic trace.

Before long, Drake cleared a series of structural obstacles and arrived before a massive, ornate manor. Concealing his frame near the corner of the outer wall, a wave of panicked, hysterical crying drifted straight into his ears.

Drake slowly peered around the edge of the masonry.

Inside the subterranean chamber, Aokiji watched the scene with absolute clarity. Across the translucent projection screen before him, a small, separate picture-in-picture window had materialized at an unmapped microsecond.

The display featured Drake's every movement in real time.

Every action Drake executed was under Im's direct surveillance!

"It's you..." Aokiji's eyes snapped wide as he reflexively opened his mouth to shout a warning, only to fall quiet a microsecond later.

He understood with bitter clarity that any attempt to call out was utterly futile—neither his voice nor his signal could breach the localized isolation barrier of this room.

Completely oblivious to the surveillance monitoring his movements, Drake peeked past the wall to find a young girl—roughly fourteen or fifteen years old—sobbing uncontrollably on the stone paving.

Standing directly before the girl was a hideous, morbidly obese man with a vile, sadistic sneer stretched across his face. In his grip was a specialized whip studded with sharp, metallic thorns, which he was using to brutally lash the girl's trembling body.

"A Celestial Dragon..." Drake recognized the distinctive, ridiculous silk robes in an instant.

CRACK!

A heavy lash struck home, leaving a deep, bloody laceration across the girl's back.

"AAAH!" The girl let out a muffled, agonizing shriek, weeping helplessly.

"AH-HAHAHAHA! Yes! That's it! Scream louder for me!" Hearing her painful cries, the Celestial Dragon grew exponentially more ecstatic. The frequency of his arm swings accelerated into a relentless, blinding frenzy.

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

The rhythmic snaps of the studded whip echoed continuously through the alley, punctuated by the Celestial Dragon's manic, unhinged laughter.

Drake—who had originally intended to turn and resume his search—abruptly checked his movement.

"Aaaaagh..."

The agonizing screams echoing in his ears caused Drake's expression to turn hideously dark. Unconsciously, both of his fists clenched tightly at his sides.

The knuckles turned deathly white, his face hardening into a cold, lethal mask.

"You worthless slave, how dare you try to run away?! Being chosen as my thirty-sixth concubine is a blessing you couldn't earn in eight lifetimes! You wretched bitch—DIE!" The Celestial Dragon raised the thorny whip with an expression of cold indifference, aiming a heavy, high-velocity strike straight at the girl's face.

That whip was densely studded with sharp metallic barbs; receiving a direct blow to the face would guarantee horrific disfigurement, if not instant death.

To inflict such cruelty on a helpless young girl was sickening beyond measure...

The girl curled tightly into a fetal position, wrapping her blood-soaked hands around her head as her entire frame trembled uncontrollably.

WHIP!

The heavy lash cut through the air. A cruel, satisfied smirk was already spreading across the Celestial Dragon's face when a silhouette suddenly materialized directly before him, extending a single hand to catch the thorn-studded whip clean mid-air.

Drake slowly raised his eyes, his gaze radiating a bone-chilling, absolute frost: "Hey... you fat pig. Didn't your mother ever teach you how to act like a human being?"

"WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?!" The Celestial Dragon's eyes snapped wide as he stared in absolute, shock-stricken disbelief at the hand gripping his whip.

There was zero blood leaking from the palm, defying all logical expectations.

"You don't need to know who I am. All you need to know is that... you die today! Of course, you won't be lonely on the other side—I'll make sure every single Celestial Dragon in this wretched place joins you shortly!"

With those words, spatial energy condensed around Drake's palm as he reached out, clamping his fingers around the Celestial Dragon's non-existent neck and lifting his massive, flabby body clean off the ground with a single arm.

"Y-You... who are you really?!" Real terror finally gripped the Celestial Dragon's mind, his voice trembling hysterically: "Are you one of those subversives from the outside?! N-No! Impossible! The outsiders could never breach the inner perimeter—no one would ever open the gates for you!"

"Oh? You're that confident?" Drake's brow twitched subtly. The pig was actually stating facts—breaching the residential quadrant of the World Nobles normally required passing through three colossal, heavily fortified gates.

To ordinary intruders, those were three impenetrable checkpoints.

Yet to an individual commanding short-range spatial warps, stepping into this domain was as effortless as drawing a breath.

Those massive steel gates were absolute non-factors to him. Drake subtly tightened his grip, spatial forces compressing around his fingers to crush the flabby, obese neck into a contorted shape.

"Gagh..." The Celestial Dragon's eyes bulged wildly out of their sockets as he tried to choke out a desperate plea, but Drake granted him zero margin. He drove his spatial power inward with a sharp, decisive flex.

CRUNCH!

Blood sprayed violently across the cobblestones.