“Forget it, I won’t make things hard for you. From now on, this kid is yours to manage.”
This group of Emperors of the Sea might look more reckless than the next, but in truth, every single one of them was sharp as a tack. Unless they entered their respective unstable states, each and every one of them had intelligence to match their strength.
Even Charlotte Linlin, whose performance was poor in her old age, was a “schemer” when she wasn’t having one of her episodes.
Hercules’ troubled expression had already told Kaido everything, but that would not change Kaido’s decision. At most, it would change how things were handled afterward.
To this day, Arceus possessed jurisdiction over all Pokémon species. Even if some Pokémon were to stand against Arceus in the future, Kaido would not intervene. That was something Arceus needed to handle himself.
At the same time, Luffy, who had been sent flying by Kaido, stood up once again.
“You can still stand? You’re the most special one among your generation of pirates, brat. What I said just now still stands. Are you going to keep insisting?”
“Yeah, of course. I’m not going to admit defeat.”
Pressing down on his hat, Luffy walked back over. Compared to the original timeline, the battle between Kaido and Luffy was very different. In the original timeline, Luffy had long since firmly resolved to defeat Kaido, while Kaido had indulged his own personality even more.
Let alone enemies, prisoners, or the people of Wano Country—even if he accidentally killed a few of his own men, he wouldn’t have cared. Compared to Kaido in that state, the current Kaido was already much more bound by rules.
On top of that, Luffy’s fish-like memory made him forget certain things. Although they were fighting, there was not much hatred between them.
Then Luffy repeated his previous action, biting into his arm and beginning the process of inflating himself. But this was not Gear 3’s Bone Balloon. It was Gear 4’s Muscle Balloon.
“Gear 4, Boundman.”
Boing. Boing.
The combination of Haki and his Devil Fruit ability made Luffy’s body extremely elastic. Even standing steadily had become difficult, forcing him to bounce in place again and again.
After all, combat was one of the few times when Luffy would not completely throw away his intelligence. Knowing full well that Gear 3 was useless, he would not waste his stamina on it.
“Interesting. You’ve developed your fruit to this extent?”
Although it looked somewhat comical, Kaido had no intention of mocking him. At the end of the day, it was a method of combat, and there was no value in laughing at it. However, Kaido’s steps were no longer as unsteady as before.
Having grown somewhat interested in Gear 4’s strange appearance, Kaido had already begun controlling his body and leaving his drunken mode.
“Gum-Gum Kong Gun!”
Luffy’s feet continuously repeated the motion of retracting into his body before springing back out, replacing flight with a bizarre, rapid-fire motion, while his fists followed the same pattern. At this moment, Luffy’s arms were like springs, granting his punches even greater impact.
His fist shot straight toward Kaido’s head, but Kaido showed not the slightest intention of dodging. Instead, he simply strode forward without a care. Luffy’s fist struck dead center, yet it failed to make Kaido’s steps pause in the slightest.
The punch he had thrown with all his strength could not even be called an ant trying to shake a tree. At least if there were enough ants, they could bend a branch. But using a strand of cotton to stab an iron plate would achieve nothing no matter how many times it was done.
Under Kaido’s steady steps, Luffy was bounced into the air by him.
“Damn it, what is this guy made of? How is he so hard?! Gum-Gum Leo Bazooka! Gum-Gum Rhino Schneider! Gum-Gum Culverin!”
Luffy used everything he had, but whether he kicked with his legs or struck with his fists, he could not shake Kaido’s position. Due to the changes in the timeline, Luffy had missed some battles that hovered between life and death. At this moment, Kaido was the most troublesome opponent he had ever encountered in his life, bar none.
His battle was like cavalry charging at a heavily armored tank. The horse and saber he had always relied on to survive were being crushed by the march of a new era.
When a sharp blade capable of cutting through an enemy’s body met thick tank armor, even breaking the blade would not inflict the slightest effective damage.
But his fighting spirit did not fade because of that. He continued repeating that futile process.
“Gum-Gum Lizard King Bell!”
Luffy headbutt collided with Kaido’s head at close range. They were even close enough to clearly see the look in each other’s eyes, but the result still did not change. Luffy was simply bounced even farther away.
“You still dare to raise your fists at me? Brat, I admire that courage of yours. Though you lack some tempering, you still have room to grow. Join under my command, and I can consider making you an officer.”
Kaido shook his arm. Along with the sound of bones grinding together, Kaido extended another invitation. Most people, seeing that they could not even break through his defenses, would have long since started thinking about running away, but Luffy still had not fled.
At first, Kaido had only taken a little interest in him because of Hercules. Now, however, he had developed an appreciation for Luffy himself. Arceus would roughly screen people before recruiting them, and that alone reduced the number of targets Kaido could recruit by more than half.
It was rare to see someone this decent, so Kaido naturally could not help himself.
“I refuse. I don’t want to stand behind you and watch you become Pirate King. The person who’s going to become Pirate King is me!”
Luffy’s declaration spread across more than half of Udon. The pirates nearby listened with dazed looks in their eyes, never imagining that even now, someone would still dare say such a thing in front of Kaido.
“Is that kid saying his last words?”
“Could be the ravings of a madman too. How could any normal person say something like that in front of Boss Kaido? Look, he’s made Boss Kaido laugh from anger.”
Kaido would not usually talk about goals like becoming the Pirate King. In fact, he rarely even brought it up. To Kaido, the frequency with which he mentioned war was higher than that of Pirate King.
However, everyone in the Beasts Pirates knew that Kaido already regarded the title of Pirate King as something in his pocket. Roger was the first Pirate King, and no one else could surpass him.
When it came to those who came after, Kaido would not allow anyone to surpass him.
“Worororo, brat, looks like you don’t know just how vast the gap in this world is. You can’t become Pirate King. As long as I’m still here, your dreams of becoming Pirate King will forever be nothing but empty talk.”
“You won’t know something like that unless you try! Gum-Gum King Kong Gun!”
Luffy’s fist kept growing larger, even surpassing the size of Luffy’s own body. This was already the strongest punch Luffy could throw in this state. Meanwhile, Kaido also broke from his usual pattern of movements.
He did not use his face to take the punch again. Instead, he picked up his Hassaikai.
“Thunder… Bagua!”
The kanabo traced a semicircle, grazing past the fist Luffy had thrown before smashing into Luffy’s face.
Luffy’s King Kong Gun did not miss, but just like his previous techniques, it could not even break through Kaido’s most basic body defense. By contrast, after a brief stalemate of a few seconds, Luffy was sent flying backward like a cannonball.
Whoosh… Boom!
With an explosive crash, Luffy slammed directly into the outer wall of Udon. The wall here was not made of Seastone, but merely ordinary rock. Faced with Luffy being smashed into it, a circle of spiderweb-like cracks instantly appeared on the wall.
If the wall had not been built thick enough, he probably would have smashed straight through it.
Luffy, who was like a cockroach, finally stopped moving. His eyes rolled back, and not long after, he slid down from the wall to the ground. But from beginning to end, after taking that Thunder Bagua, his consciousness never returned.
“Pirate King—one more is enough.”
“Babanuki, remember to fix the wall. Also, don’t go around running your mouth everywhere.”
The battle was over. No, something of this level could not be called a battle at all. It should be said that after simply getting some post-drinking exercise, the drunkenness had already vanished from Kaido’s face, and he was clearly issuing his orders.
“Lock that kid up. As for you, just work as a prison guard here for now. You don’t have any objections, do you?”
“Heraaacross.”
“Good. Remember to persuade this kid more. Queen, clean up the rest of the matter. If there’s even the slightest problem, just wait for me to come find you for special training.”
Kaido had already had enough fun. After clearly giving all the instructions for wrapping things up, he carried his kanabo and walked out of Udon. However, before leaving, the glance he cast toward Queen gave Queen an extremely ominous feeling.
“Babanuki, that pit in the wall… I can’t be blamed for that, right?”
“Mm… I don’t know.”
“Can’t you learn a thing or two about flattery?! If you keep this up, you’ll probably be stuck here as the warden for the rest of your life!”
“Really? That’s wonderful. The rookies are getting fiercer and fiercer these days. If that happens, then things will be stable.”
Babanuki’s line of thinking successfully blocked Queen’s words, and made Queen once again set foot on the path of self-salvation.
First, he contacted the Rock-type Pokémon in the mine to repair the wall, then arranged cells for the prison’s newcomers.
Babanuki, meanwhile, found Hercules an armband representing its status as a prison guard, making it the first Heracross to hold a post in Udon, and handed Luffy’s management rights over to it.
Some people who came here had to risk their lives, but for others, coming here is like returning to their maternal home; even if something goes wrong, they can become civil servants in a matter of minutes.
“Before I knew it, it’s already dark… Wait, the bet should be over, but Boss Kaido didn’t say what to do with the remaining people…”
Glancing through the group chat, a user with the ID “Beasts Pirates Fund Transfer Station” was extremely irritable, shouting that Kin’emon and the others should be killed.
That was Delia’s ID. She was extremely displeased with Kin’emon and the others’ actions. At the same time, she had some dispute with the result, because Kin’emon and the others had previously been causing destruction using Luffy’s identity. In a certain sense, she felt it should count as Luffy being exposed first.
However, Kaido did not reply to her, and Queen had no interest in participating either. He even referenced Babanuki’s principle that as long as you did nothing, you would make no mistakes, choosing to watch from where he was and think about subsequent actions.
And tonight was destined to be an unrestful night. When the Straw Hats and Law returned to the gathering place as agreed, Law felt his mind crumble just a little.
“Can someone tell me why five people are gone after just three days? Even the beetle-ya is gone?!”
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