The calm waters of the Sambas region fell into an unnatural, petrifying stillness.
Not a single ripple disturbed the mirror-like surface of the ocean.
The gulls that usually circled the high masts of the ocean-going restaurant had vanished into the haze hours ago, driven away by an instinctual, primal dread that warned every beast of the sea that the domain of mortals had ceased to exist.
Aboard the floating deck of the Baratie, time seemed to have ground to an absolute halt.
Cooks armed with heavy cleavers, iron ladles, and frying pans stood frozen in place like stone statues.
Cold sweat soaked through their stained aprons, dripping from their chins and clattering audibly against the wooden planks.
In the foreground, Sanji stood beside the shattered banister, his unlit cigarette slipping from between his lips and tumbling to the deck.
The young blond cook didn’t even notice.
His sharp blue eyes were dilated to their absolute limit, his jaw clenched so hard the muscles in his cheek twitched erratically.
For all his pride as a martial artist of the Black Leg style, his body felt rooted to the floor by an invisible, suffocating gravity.
Behind him, Chef Zeff planted his wooden peg leg firmly into the salt-stained pine.
The retired pirate captain—a man who had survived a full year in the slaughterhouse of the Grand Line—was trembling.
His single eye stared across the calm water, his weathered knuckles turning white against his crossed arms.
“Old man…” Sanji’s voice was barely a ragged rasp, lacking all of its usual sarcastic swagger.
“What…
what is that?
That pressure…
it feels like the air itself is turning into lead.”
Zeff did not look at his apprentice.
His gaze remained locked on the splintered wreckage fifty yards away, his chest heaving under his chef’s coat.
“You have lived a sheltered life in the East Blue, eggplant,” Zeff whispered, his voice shaking with a gravelly solemnity that chilled every cook within earshot.
“You believe pirates are men who raid merchant ships and brawl in taverns.
But out there…
on the Grand Line…
there exists a handful of anomalies.
Men who do not merely sail the sea, but rule it.
What you are feeling right now is the presence of monsters who stand at the summit of the world.”
Leaning against the mast of the Baratie, clutching his bandaged, blood-soaked chest, was Roronoa Zoro.
The green-haired swordsman was pale as death.
Every ragged breath tore at the diagonal wound Dracule Mihawk had carved across his torso, yet Zoro refused to close his eyes.
He refused to blink.
His single conscious eye burned with an agonized, electrified fire.
Just minutes ago, he had believed himself a master of the three-sword style, only to have his life’s dream casually dismantled by a three-inch toy knife.
He had thought Mihawk was the absolute, unscalable mountain.
Yet now, looking at the man in the black coat who had descended from the heavens on crimson dragon wings, Zoro felt the hair on his arms stand straight up.
Beside him, Monkey D.
Luffy gripped the wooden railing with both hands.
The straw-hatted youth was not trembling in fear.
His dark eyes were wide, sparkling with a pure, unadulterated awe, a massive grin slowly stretching across his face as he leaned forward until his nose nearly touched the water.
“Shishishi…” Luffy chuckled under his breath, his straw hat fluttering in the rising breeze.
“I knew it.
Arthur was holding back like crazy back in Foosha Village!
Hey, Zoro!
Look at him!
That’s the guy who beat me up every morning!
He’s really gonna fight Hawkeye!”
“Shut up, Luffy…” Zoro growled through gritted teeth, blood bubbling at the corner of his lips as he tightened his grip on Wado Ichimonji.
“Just…
watch.
Don’t take your eyes off them for a single second.”
Out on the splintered prow of Don Krieg’s sinking dreadnought, the two men paid no heed to the mortal world.
Arthur Pendragon stood with an effortless, aristocratic posture.
His polished black riding boots rested lightly upon a cracked beam of ironwood, unbothered by the slow, creaking groan of the galleon beneath him.
His crimson-lined black greatcoat billowed gently against the rising thermal draft, the gold bullion embroidery along his collar catching the brilliant glare of the afternoon sun.
His left hand rested casually upon the twin shark-skin hilts of Oto and Kogarashi, while his golden pupils remained locked onto the yellow raptor eyes of the World’s Strongest Swordsman.
Dracule Mihawk did not shift his stance.
He stood tall and straight amidst the floating debris, the black plume of his hat casting a sharp, triangular shadow across his aristocratic visage.
The Black Blade Yoru rested loosely in his right hand, its massive obsidian tip pointed toward the sea.
The dark, iridescent steel seemed to absorb the light around it, radiating a faint, violet hum that caused the seawater beneath the blade to part in a smooth, continuous groove without a single drop splashing against the metal.
“You speak of Shiki as your master,” Mihawk’s voice cut through the stillness like a diamond stylus across glass.
“You carry his twin Meito, and you descend from the clouds with the bloodline of a mythical beast.
But the Golden Lion was a man of boundless ambition and ferocious, untamed violence.
He cleaved through Marine armadas not with elegance, but with the brutal certainty of an avalanche.”
Mihawk took a slow, measured step forward across the floating deck, his eyes boring into Arthur’s soul.
“Are you merely an heir to his iron, Arthur Pendragon?
Or did you inherit his edge?”
Arthur’s lips curved into a faint, sovereign smile.
“A master imparts the foundation, Hawkeye.
A disciple must forge his own heaven.
Let the steel speak.”
Clang—!
The sound of Arthur’s draw was not a sharp metallic rasp, but a resonant, bell-like chord that vibrated through the marrow of everyone aboard the Baratie.
In a fraction of a millisecond, Oto and Kogarashi cleared their scabbards.
The twin Meito sang in terrifying harmony.
The edge of Oto shone with the blinding brilliance of polished silver, reflecting the sunlight like a mirror, while Kogarashi carried the faint, frost-like temper line of a master blade forged for cold, unsparing execution.
Arthur held them in a classic dual-wield stance—Oto angled upward to guard his throat, Kogarashi held low near his hip, their tips tracing subtle, continuous circles in the air that hummed with the breath of all things.
He did not call upon his dragon bloodline.
He did not activate the gravitational tyranny of the Float-Float Fruit.
In this opening movement, Arthur met the greatest swordsman of the era on the purest, most sacred ground known to martial men: the unyielding art of the blade.
Boom!
The ironwood beam beneath Arthur’s boots shattered into splinters as he closed the thirty-pace distance in an imperceptible blur.
He arrived before Mihawk with the sudden, violent velocity of a falling lightning bolt.
His arms crossed in an inverted scissor strike, the twin Meito blurring into a blinding crescent of silver light.
“Pendragon Style: Sky Cleaver!”
A vertical shockwave of compressed blade-light erupted from the crossing point of his swords, sharp enough to sever the breath of the sea itself.
It was the signature technique Arthur had forged during his two-year crucible on Merveille—a strike born of absolute physical precision, aligning the grain of his steel with the atomic fissures of the target.
Yet, Dracule Mihawk did not yield an inch of ground.
CLAAANG!
With a single, effortless flick of his right wrist, Mihawk brought the flat of Yoru across the trajectory of the strike.
The massive black blade intercepted the twin Meito at the exact geometric apex of their kinetic acceleration.
There was no wasted motion.
No dramatic strain.
Mihawk’s yellow eyes did not even blink as he channeled the colossal kinetic energy of Arthur’s strike downward through his arms, his spine, and into the sea beneath him.
A trench of ocean water thirty yards deep parted on either side of Mihawk’s boots, while the warlord himself remained entirely stationary.
“A clean breath,” Mihawk murmured, his voice infuriatingly composed amidst the ringing metal.
“You perceive the pulse of steel and stone.
You know how to make your blade slip through the seams of matter.
But your edge is too eager, Arthur.
You strike to destroy, not to sever.”
Before Arthur could retract his blades, Mihawk’s wrist shifted by a mere fraction of a millimeter.
The crossguard of Yoru caught the collar of Oto, twisting it violently outward while the black tip of the massive blade traced an impossibly fast, horizontal arc aimed directly for Arthur’s throat.
Shing!
Arthur’s combat instincts, honed through hundreds of near-death spars against Shiki, screamed in warning.
He tilted his chin back by a quarter of an inch.
The razor edge of Yoru passed so close to Arthur’s throat that the displaced vacuum sliced through two strands of his golden hair, leaving a microscopic red line across his skin that did not even have time to bleed before the flesh sealed itself.
Arthur somersaulted backward through the air, his boots touching down twenty paces away on an overturned cannon carriage.
‘Incredible,’ Arthur’s mind analyzed the exchange with cold, crystalline detachment.
He had achieved the realm of Daikengou—a Great Swordsman who could hear the heartbeat of nature and cut steel like butter.
But Mihawk’s mastery was on a completely different plane of perfection.
It was not merely that Mihawk was fast or strong; his technique possessed an absolute, terrifying economy.
Every millimeter of movement was calculated, every deflection bled momentum, and his counterattacks flowed naturally from his opponent’s own overextensions.
In a pure contest of technical swordplay, Mihawk was an impenetrable fortress of razor-sharp diamond.
Aboard the Baratie, Zoro’s breathing hitched.
“He deflected that…
with just the flat of his blade?!
That dual-sword strike had enough force to split a galleon, and Hawkeye didn’t even shift his feet!”
“Look at their footwork,” Zeff muttered, his eye wide with awe.
“Neither of them is wasting a single grain of energy.
Every step is anchored to the motion of the waves.
If either of them loses his balance for a tenth of a second, his head will fly.”
Out on the wreckage, Arthur’s golden eyes ignited with a savage, ecstatic heat.
“Again,” Arthur said softly.
Arthur dropped his stance, his center of gravity sinking low as his shoulders broadened.
He drew both swords back against his hips, adopting the iconic, predatory crouch of Golden Lion Shiki.
His twin blades began to vibrate at high frequency, their edges humming with the ruthless, overwhelming sword intent of the old era.
“Shiki Style: Senjindani (Thousand-Blade Valley)!”
Arthur unleashed his arms in a blinding tempest of dual-sword slashes.
Within the span of a single breath, over three hundred golden flying slashes (Tobu Zangeki) erupted from Oto and Kogarashi.
The air screamed as a dense, overlapping lattice of razor-sharp vacuum blades cascaded toward Mihawk like a golden avalanche, chewing through the floating wreckage, slicing the sea into boiling froth, and blotting out the afternoon sun!
Mihawk’s eyes sharpened.
Instead of dodging, the World’s Strongest Swordsman took a single step forward, walking directly into the teeth of the golden hurricane.
Clang-clang-clang-clang-clang-clang!
What followed defied the limits of human perception.
Mihawk did not swing with wide, theatrical arcs.
His black blade moved in a mesmerizing blur of miniature circles, parries, and directional deflections.
With the tip, the edge, and the heavy spine of Yoru, Mihawk met every single one of Arthur’s three hundred flying slashes.
Sparks exploded in the air like an endless chain of volcanic fireworks.
Each deflection bled the momentum of the strike, redirecting the golden slashes harmlessly into the open sea, detonating the water into towering geysers fifty feet high.
Not a single vacuum blade touched Mihawk’s coat.
“Shiki was a storm upon the sea!” Mihawk’s voice sliced through the cacophony of ringing steel as he advanced step by step through the golden blizzard.
“He threw his weight around with reckless abandon, relying on his flying islands to mock the heavens!
But you…
you have his blades, yet you lack his madness!
Your slashes are too disciplined, Arthur!
You think like a general, not a butcher!”
Mihawk closed the distance, his blade sweeping upward from the floorboards in a sudden, brutal counter-slash:
“Black Blade: First Arc!”
A colossal, emerald-green wave of compressed energy erupted from the timber, threatening to cleave Arthur and the entire wreckage in two.
Arthur’s reaction was instantaneous.
He did not attempt to parry the emerald wave head-on.
Instead, he twisted his torso in midair, driving Kogarashi down to redirect the emerald arc into the sea while bringing Oto around in a vicious, horizontal decapitation strike:
“Pendragon Style: Excalibur’s Shadow!”
BOOOOM!
The collision of the two master blades generated an explosive shockwave that blew the surrounding sea backward.
The ocean water hollowed out into a hemispherical basin sixty feet wide before crashing back inward with the deafening roar of a wounded leviathan.
Both men were thrown apart by the violent recoil.
Mihawk landed lightly upon the surface of the ocean swells, his boots skimming across the water as if he weighed nothing at all.
Arthur flipped through the spray, landing with a heavy thud atop a floating section of the dreadnought’s keel.
Arthur stood upright, his breath coming in steady, controlled draughts.
Along the lapels of his black coat, two clean tears had opened, severed by the phantom vacuum of Mihawk’s sword-aura.
“You have mastered the craft, Arthur,” Mihawk said, resting Yoru casually across his shoulder, his yellow eyes cool, unyielding, and assessing.
“You can stand among the great swordsmen of the Grand Line without shame.
But in pure swordsmanship…
you are still a novice standing before the gate.
You cannot cut me down with steel alone.”
Arthur looked down at the polished edges of Oto and Kogarashi.
He knew Mihawk spoke the truth.
Two years of training under Shiki had elevated him to the summit of mortal swordsmen, but Mihawk had spent decades dedicating every waking second of his existence to the solitary god of the blade.
In a duel bounded strictly by the rules of classical fencing, Arthur’s probability of victory was less than twenty percent.
Fortunately, Arthur Pendragon had never intended to be a fencer.
He was a conqueror.
A deep, resonant laugh rumbled from the depths of Arthur’s chest.
His shoulders relaxed, his posture straightening into the unyielding, majestic silhouette of an absolute emperor.
He slowly lifted his head, his golden eyes burning with an ancient, terrifying majesty that caused the hair on the back of Mihawk’s neck to prickle with sudden alarm.
“You are correct, Hawkeye,” Arthur said, his voice dropping into a deep, imperial register that vibrated through the marrow of every man within a nautical mile.
“You are the undisputed sovereign of the sword.
In your domain, your supremacy is absolute.
But I did not come into this world to be an artist of the blade.”
Arthur crossed the hilts of Oto and Kogarashi before his chest, the twin Meito catching the crimson glow of his soul.
“I am a king.
And a king does not bow to the limitations of an art.”
BZZZZZZT—!
Without warning, the world turned pitch-black.
The afternoon sunlight vanished, eclipsed by an unnatural, suffocating spiritual density that descended from the upper atmosphere like a falling iron ceiling.
The clouds above began to swirl into a violent, churning maelstrom, spiraling directly around Arthur’s figure.
Then, the lightning arrived.
It was not the pale blue of natural storms.
Thick, jagged serpents of pitch-black and blood-crimson lightning erupted from Arthur’s chest.
The spiritual discharge was so immense, so utterly saturated with supreme, unyielding dominion, that the surface of the ocean began to foam and boil.
The wooden debris of Krieg’s dreadnought fractured into splinters, unable to bear the spiritual weight radiating from his frame.
Advanced Conqueror’s Haki.
Conqueror’s Infusion.
The black-and-crimson lightning coiled around Arthur’s forearms like living dragons, violently hissing as it condensed into the steel of Oto and Kogarashi.
The twin Meito, already legendary weapons, groaned under the sheer intensity of the infusion, their silver edges disappearing beneath a shimmering, spatial distortion of pure imperial will.
Aboard the Baratie, fifty yards away, half the cooks instantly rolled their eyes back into their heads, collapsing unconscious onto the deck with foaming mouths.
“Gah…!” Sanji dropped to both knees, clutching his skull as an excruciating, crushing agony gripped his mind.
“Wh-What is this?!
The air…
I can’t breathe…!”
Zeff’s face was completely drained of color.
His single eye was wide with pure, existential terror.
“Conqueror’s Haki…
and not merely the awakening!
He is coating his blades in his own sovereign spirit!
That boy…
who in god’s name is he?!”
Don Krieg, who had been crawling toward a lifeboat, fell flat on his face, his golden armor clattering against the deck, his body paralyzed by a dread so absolute he wet himself on the spot.
Luffy gripped the wooden railing with white knuckles, his straw hat trembling violently in the spiritual gale, his teeth gritted as his own dormant Conqueror’s spirit resonated in frantic, desperate resistance.
“Arthur…”
Out on the sea, Mihawk’s eyes widened to their absolute limit.
For the first time since he had crossed the Grand Line, a genuine, electric thrill of life-or-death danger surged through the warlord’s veins.
He took his left hand off his hip, gripping the leather hilt of Yoru with both hands, sinking his weight deeply into a defensive stance.
“Conqueror’s Infusion…” Mihawk breathed, his voice barely audible over the roaring thunder.
“You truly are a sovereign.”
BOOM!
The ocean exploded beneath Arthur’s boots.
Arthur crossed the distance in a zero-frame blur, bypassing the air itself.
When he descended upon Mihawk, he did not strike with classical form; he struck with the wrath of an emperor passing judgment upon a rebellious world!
“Pendragon Style: Sovereign Dragon Cleaver!”
KRA-BOOOOM!
The twin blades crashed downward toward Yoru.
The swords never physically touched.
An invisible, impenetrable void of black lightning three inches wide separated Yoru from the twin Meito.
The spiritual detonation was so catastrophic that the air between them shattered like tempered glass.
A shockwave resembling an expanding ring of solid force gouged a crater two hundred yards wide into the surface of the ocean, throwing up a circular wall of water three stories high!
The kinetic and spiritual recoil was so overwhelming that the floating debris beneath them was pulverized into microscopic dust.
Whoosh—!
Both men were propelled across the surface of the sea like artillery shells.
They skipped across the rolling swells, crossing nautical miles in seconds, moving far beyond the sight of the Baratie, beyond the sight of the Straw Hats, until they reached the barren, desolate expanse of an uninhabited volcanic archipelago five miles out in the open ocean.
They collided with a colossal sea stack of black volcanic basalt.
CRASH!
The four-hundred-foot stone pillar shattered under the impact of their arrival, raining house-sized boulders into the churning surf below.
Mihawk slid to a halt atop a jagged slab of basalt, his breathing heavy, his burgundy cloak torn in half a dozen places.
His hands, usually stone-steady, vibrated faintly from the bone-jarring impact of Arthur’s Conqueror’s Infusion.
“Magnificent,” Mihawk rasped, a wild, sharp grin cutting across his pale face.
“You make up for your lack of technical finesse with the overwhelming weight of a king’s will.
But against my Black Blade, even Conqueror’s lightning is not enough to break me!”
Arthur stood atop a neighboring spire of stone, his black greatcoat shredded at the shoulders.
His golden eyes looked down at Mihawk.
“You are right, Hawkeye,” Arthur said calmly.
“It is not enough.
Which is why I will no longer insult you by fighting within the confines of a human body.”
Arthur closed his eyes.
Within the spiritual sanctum of his soul, the first core—the Ryu Ryu no Mi, Model: Imperial Pendragon—unfurled its slumbering, primordial wings.
‘Core One: Full Hybrid Awakening.’
GROOOOOWL—!
A sound echoed across the desolate archipelago that froze the blood of every creature swimming in the ocean depths.
It was not the roar of a beast; it was the ancient, primordial voice of a titan that had ruled the skies before mankind had learned to kindle fire.
Crimson-and-gold scales erupted across Arthur’s skin with the speed of wildfire.
His muscular frame expanded at a terrifying, unnatural rate.
His height did not merely grow by inches—his body stretched, thickened, and surged upward until he stood a towering six meters tall!
A colossal, draconic demigod of muscle and armor.
His forearms and chest were plated in interlocking, diamond-hard scales of deep imperial crimson, bordered by brilliant gold.
Two magnificent, serrated obsidian horns curled backward from his forehead like an imperial crown of sovereign dominion.
His jaw squared into a predatory, draconic muzzle lined with razor-sharp fangs, while his golden pupils narrowed into glowing, vertical reptilian slits that burned with primordial fire.
From his massive shoulder blades, a pair of colossal draconic wings burst forth, spanning over twenty-five meters from tip to tip, their golden webbing crackling with crimson dragon-fire.
Behind him, an armored reptilian tail as thick as an ancient oak whipped through the air, tipped with an obsidian blade-spur that shattered a stone boulder with a casual twitch.
In his massive, clawed hands, the twin Meito Oto and Kogarashi looked almost like elongated daggers, yet the spiritual pressure infusing the steel had multiplied tenfold.
The heat radiating from his six-meter frame was volcanic.
The sea spray that touched his scales evaporated instantly into hissing white clouds of steam.
His physical strength, his mass, and his vitality had ascended to the realm of true apex monsters.
Dracule Mihawk looked up at the towering, six-meter draconic sovereign, his sharp jaw tightening.
“A Mythical Zoan hybrid…” Mihawk murmured, his grip on Yoru shifting into a two-handed lock.
“Six meters of indestructible draconic sinew, armed with the blades of the Golden Lion.
You truly are a monster wearing the crown of a king.”
Arthur did not answer with words.
With a single, thunderous beat of his twenty-five-meter draconic wings, the air pressure around the basalt spire detonated with a sonic boom!
BOOM!
Arthur vanished.
Despite his six-meter mass, his speed was terrifying.
He appeared directly above Mihawk, his twin Meito descending like two falling meteors wrapped in thick coils of black Conqueror’s lightning.
“Pendragon Style: Imperial Dragon Cleaver!”
CLANG!
CLANG!
CLANG!
CLANG!
The battle transformed into an arena of unmitigated slaughter.
Arthur’s strikes now carried the kinetic weight of falling mountains.
Each blow forced Mihawk’s boots deeper into the solid volcanic basalt, cracking the sea stack down to its roots.
The Black Blade Yoru flashed in desperate, high-speed parries, deflecting blows that sent shockwaves ripping through the surrounding ocean.
Whenever Mihawk attempted to step inside Arthur’s guard, Arthur’s massive draconic wings would snap forward like impenetrable iron shields, deflecting the Black Blade’s edge with blinding showers of sparks.
When Mihawk tried to circle his flank, Arthur’s armored tail would whip through the air with the speed of a guillotine, forcing the warlord to leap backward!
Arthur was not merely wielding two swords; his entire six-meter draconic body was an engine of war.
Yet, even against this towering nightmare, Dracule Mihawk demonstrated why he stood alone at the summit of swordsmen.
With a master’s inhuman timing, Mihawk caught the infinitesimal pause between Arthur’s dual strikes.
Dropping beneath the sweep of Kogarashi, Mihawk stepped inside the reach of Arthur’s massive clawed arms, bringing Yoru around in a vertical, point-blank rising slash:
“Black Blade: Night’s Talon!”
SKRRRRRRT!
Sparks erupted from Arthur’s chest plate.
The razor-sharp edge of the Black Blade cut cleanly through the diamond-hard crimson scales, carving a shallow, diagonal wound across Arthur’s six-meter torso!
Golden-crimson blood hissed onto the stone.
Yet, before Mihawk could follow through, the primordial vitality of the Imperial Dragon flared.
The wound sizzled with incandescent heat, and before Mihawk’s eyes, the severed muscle fibers and scales began knitting themselves back together at visible, terrifying speed!
Arthur was thrown back fifty feet into the air, hovering on his massive wings.
He looked down at the fading wound on his chest, then looked down at Mihawk, who stood panting upon the cracked basalt, his yellow eyes blazing with an unyielding, ferocious battle-lust.
“Is this your summit, Dragon King?!” Mihawk called out, his voice echoing across the waves.
“Physical scale and dragon scales can make you a tyrant, but they cannot grant you victory over a blade that can sever the world!”
Arthur hovered in the sky, his six-meter frame casting a vast, dark shadow over the sea.
His golden reptilian eyes narrowed with a cold, calculating brilliance.
‘Against most opponents of the Grand Line, this form would be overwhelming,’ Arthur mused internally, his dragon heart thrumming with absolute calm.
‘But against the World’s Strongest Swordsman, overwhelming force alone is not enough.’
Arthur looked around the empty, desolate horizon.
The Baratie was gone.
The world was blind.
There was only him, Mihawk, and the vast expanse of the open ocean.
‘It is time,’ Arthur decided.
‘Let the hawk witness the true terror of the heavens.’
Arthur raised his left, clawed hand.
His massive, golden-scaled fingers snapped.
WUUUUUUUUUUUUUM—!
The fundamental laws of terrestrial physics collapsed.
Beneath Mihawk’s boots, the entire volcanic archipelago—millions of tons of black basalt, ancient coral reefs, sunken dreadnoughts, and towering spires of seawater—began to groan with the sound of a dying continent.
Then, gravity ceased to exist.
Rumble—!
Before Mihawk’s sharp, assessing eyes, dozens of massive stone pillars, some measuring over four hundred feet in height, tore cleanly away from the ocean floor and floated weightlessly into the sky!
The ocean itself defied nature.
Massive, roaring serpents of seawater coiled upward into the air, spiraling around the floating islands of stone in a majestic, terrifying planetary ring!
And at the center of this floating cosmos hung Arthur.
He was no longer flapping his wings.
His twenty-five-meter draconic wings were tucked neatly against his armored back, yet his six-meter body drifted through the sky with effortless, absolute freedom.
The gravitational mantle of the Fuwa Fuwa no Mi enveloped his entire frame, bending spatial momentum to his sovereign will.
For the first time in years, the absolute calm within Dracule Mihawk’s eyes fractured.
Mihawk did not step back.
Yet his fingers tightened around Yoru for the first time since Arthur had descended from the heavens.
His yellow raptor eyes sharpened with an intensity that burned like suns, taking in a sight that defied every foundational law of the universe.
He looked at the six-meter dragon body, the crimson scales, the horns, and the dragon-fire pouring from Arthur’s maw.
Then he looked at the floating islands, the weightless stone pillars, and the unmistakable spatial signature of the Golden Lion’s gravity fruit.
‘He is in Hybrid Zoan form…’ Mihawk’s mind registered the staggering, impossible reality.
‘A Mythical Dragon Zoan…
AND the Float-Float Fruit of Golden Lion Shiki?!’
An iron law established since the dawn of time: no human being could consume two Devil Fruits.
Yet standing before him was a living contradiction of the gods’ design.
A sovereign who wielded both the physical supremacy of the dragon and the spatial tyranny of the floating lion.
An electric, cold excitement ignited in Mihawk’s chest.
High above, Arthur looked down upon the solitary warlord, his voice reverberating through the heavens with the terrifying authority of an absolute emperor.
“You wanted to see the legacy of the Golden Lion, Mihawk?” Arthur spoke, his voice layered with the thunder of a dragon and the spatial echo of the floating sky.
“Then let us begin the true duel.”