“Dammit, where on earth is this place…” On a small boat, Rayleigh irritably ran his fingers through his blond hair, sighing at the nearly crumpled nautical chart in his hand.
He had simply wanted to return to Amazon Lily from the Sabaody Archipelago to check on those little girls, but he had ended up losing his way mid-journey.
There wasn’t a breath of wind in this sea area, and the currents were eerily unpredictable, leaving his small boat spinning in place.
“This is so annoying!” Just as Rayleigh was so frustrated he felt like jumping overboard to swim, an indescribably massive aura suddenly emanated from the far horizon.
That aura was as vast as the mountains and seas, carrying an ancient, primal sense of oppression that made even a battle-hardened veteran like him feel a tremor in his heart.
Rayleigh instantly shed all irritation, his eyes becoming as sharp as a hawk’s as he stood up abruptly and gazed toward the source of the aura.
At the edge of his vision, an incredibly massive dark shadow was approaching at high speed.
The shadow’s size was so exaggerated that it looked like a moving island.
“A super-giant Sea King?” Rayleigh’s right hand subconsciously rested on the hilt of the sword at his waist.
However, he soon noticed something was off.
Atop the head of that Sea King, there seemed to be a figure standing.
It was a hundred-meter-tall behemoth with long golden hair fluttering in the sea breeze; even from a distance, one could feel that aura of absolute sovereignty.
“What kind of monster is this?” Rayleigh’s pupils constricted, and he drew the longsword from his waist without hesitation.
Regardless of who the opponent was, such a massive presence appearing in the Calm Belt was a huge threat in itself.
He had to test the opponent’s strength.
In the next second, a silver slash over a hundred meters long left the blade, tearing through the air with a sharp whistle as it struck directly at the Sea King.
“Hmm?
Is this how pirates say hello?” Mina watched as a massive silver crescent moon slashed toward her mount at extreme speed.
“Haha, perfect timing!” Mina immediately broke into a wide grin.
Gently placing the small boat containing the Kuja tribe members onto the Sea King’s head, Mina grinned at the panicked Toritoma and the others.
“Sit tight, I’m going to show you how to smash sword energy with my bare hands!” Before her voice had even faded, her massive body leaped from the Sea King’s head like a cannonball, charging head-on toward that hundred-meter slash!
The next moment.
“BOOM—!!!” Under the horrified gazes of the Kuja and Rayleigh, Mina’s fair fist collided violently with the silver slash that was powerful enough to tear an island apart.
The impact instantly generated a colossal sound.
That hundred-meter slash shattered inch by inch under Mina’s fist like fragile glass, turning into a sky full of light specks that dissipated into the air.
A violent shockwave expanded outward with her at the center, blowing the sea surface into a massive concave crater.
“Smashing a slash…
with bare hands?” Rayleigh’s grip on his sword tightened, a solemn expression appearing on his face.
Then, his gaze locked onto the thick, curved horns atop Mina’s head.
“Those horns…
an Ancient Giant?!” A race that had supposedly vanished into the long river of history had actually appeared here!
In the moment of Rayleigh’s shock, Mina’s beautiful, mature face broke into an extremely excited smile.
“Let me see how much skill a legendary pirate actually has!” Her fighting spirit was high; giving Rayleigh no time to think, she threw a punch through the air across thousands of meters of sea!
“Galaxy Impact!” This move was all slogan and no substance; in truth, she didn’t understand the technique at all.
As the punch was thrown, a violent shockwave of fist-wind transformed into a visible white airwave, tearing through the sea in a fan shape and sweeping toward Rayleigh’s small boat.
Everywhere it passed, the seawater was forcibly pushed aside, leaving behind a temporary bottomless trench.
“What a powerful physique!” Rayleigh’s expression changed drastically, and he no longer dared to hold back.
Armament Haki coiled around his blade, so condensed that it even sparked with threads of black lightning.
Facing that world-destroying shockwave, Rayleigh didn’t choose to dodge, but instead swung his sword in kind.
“Pluton Slash!” A massive slash entwined with black lightning crashed into Mina’s fist-wind!
“BOOM—!!!” The sound this time was even more explosive than before.
The collision of two extreme forces instantly ignited the entire sea area.
The sea surface was forcibly torn open, kicking up water hundreds of meters high and forming a wall of water that blotted out the sky, completely cutting off their line of sight.
Rayleigh’s eyes sharpened.
Seizing this opportunity, he stomped his foot, his figure moving like a ghost as he charged directly into the sky-filling spray.
As a top-tier swordsman, he knew well that to deal with this kind of power-type opponent, he had to get close!
Passing through the water curtain, Rayleigh appeared before Mina.
Compared to Mina’s hundred-meter body, he was as tiny as an ant.
Yet this “ant” erupted with heart-stopping killing intent, his longsword turning into a streak of black light aimed straight for Mina’s throat.
“Whoa, no sportsmanship!” Mina’s Observation Haki gave her a warning.
In the next second, her massive body tilted her head back with surprising agility, dodging the lethal strike by a hair’s breadth.
At the same time, her right fist, burning with golden-red flames and carrying heat enough to boil mountains and seas, slammed toward Rayleigh’s position!
The speed of this punch was too fast and its range too wide, almost sealing off all of Rayleigh’s space to dodge.
However, Rayleigh was the legendary “Pluton” after all.
At the critical moment, he erupted with incredible speed to forcibly teleport, narrowly avoiding that punch of glowing embers.
“BOOM—!!!” Mina’s attack missed, the scorching fist-wind brushing past Rayleigh’s body and soaring into the sky.
A terrifying pillar of fire over a hundred meters in diameter pierced through the clouds, shooting into the heavens and dyeing half the sky the crimson red of a sunset.
The Kuja tribe in the distance stared blankly at the persistent pillar of fire in the sky, then at the bottomless gash in the sea, instantly losing their ability to think.
Is this…
the battle of top-tier powerhouses?
Just the aftershocks of the exchange were enough to change the weather and tear the sea apart.
Having missed her strike, Mina wanted to continue her attack when a tearful, youthful voice suddenly came from behind.
“Uncle Rayleigh!
Stop!
She’s our friend!” It was Hancock!
She stood on the Sea King’s back, waving her small hands frantically, her face full of anxiety.
Hearing this voice, Rayleigh, who was preparing to charge again, paused and looked back, a hint of surprise on his face.
“Hancock?
Why are you with a monster like this?” Mina also stopped her movements, pouting with some dissatisfaction.
She was just getting into the fight; why did someone have to come and break it up?
However, she also knew her own limits; she certainly couldn’t beat a legendary pirate of the old era.
“Fine, I’ll let you off the hook today!” Mina jumped back into the sea, her massive upper body floating in the raging waters.
Soon, under the joint mediation of Toritoma and Hancock, a disaster-level battle was safely called to a halt.
After a long period of mediation, the atmosphere between the two sides finally softened.
However, Mina was not a magnanimous person.
This old guy had gone for the kill right from the start; she couldn’t let this slide, and besides, she hadn’t mocked him yet.
So, she crossed her arms and looked down at Rayleigh from her height, a mocking smile curling her lips as she spoke in a sarcastic tone.
“Oh my, oh my, I wondered who it was.
It turns out to be the famous ‘Pluton,’ the Pirate King’s right hand.” “What, the grand Vice-Captain of the Pirate King actually got lost in this tiny little Calm Belt?” “This is just too funny!” The merciless mockery caused the newly relaxed atmosphere to instantly drop to the freezing point.
A vein on Rayleigh’s forehead throbbed uncontrollably as he looked at this troublemaking, simple-minded girl with dark lines on his face, squeezing out a few words through his teeth.
“Mind your own business!”