Next Bonus, 100!!
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Issho vs. Saint Sommers.
Faced with the immortal Saint Sommers, Issho held the clear advantage, yet victory remained elusive.
Sommers, incandescent with rage, unleashed his full arsenal but could make no headway. His immortality was the only thing keeping him in the fight.
After several spars with Jin, Issho had finally gained the experience he lacked against opponents of Yonko-Commander caliber. Sommers himself was only at the level of a mid-tier Warlord—his true threat lay in his inability to die, allowing him to ignore fatal attacks and trade wounds for kills.
BOOM!
Sommers's thorns descended, blanketing a small mountain. In a grinding tear, the entire landmass was pulverized into a ruin of shattered rock.
Issho moved with placid grace, sidestepping the blow. His Observation Haki picked up another attack—a wave of invisible thorns surging toward him.
For an instant, the pain was bone-deep.
Of course, for a blind man like Issho, there was no difference between the visible and the invisible.
He pressed down with his Gravity Blade.
The immense gravity stored within the blade was unleashed with his swing, tearing the invisible thorns to shreds. Everything in his path was crushed, utterly annihilated.
Even Saint Sommers was blasted away by the tremendous pressure wave generated by the sword's edge.
Sommers pushed himself up, his body already knitting itself back together with thorns. "It's useless," he sneered, tendrils of black smoke sealing his wounds. "You can't even scratch me."
"A man of your strength... why would you serve that king? Come, join my God's Knights! I can even petition for you to be made a Celestial Dragon!" Sommers promised.
"A Celestial Dragon?" Issho replied. "I was under the impression that was a hereditary title."
"It is," Sommers admitted. "But for a powerhouse like yourself, should you be willing, you could be adopted into one of the families. Become one of us."
His eyes turned cold. This blind man was a troublesome opponent. To secure victory, he didn't mind revealing a few secrets.
"Become a Celestial Dragon, and you will have supreme power! What do you say?"
"Power?" Issho said calmly. "What use does a blind man have for power? More interesting than that, however, is a secret I've just discovered about you."
"Oh?"
"Your immortality," Issho continued. "This time, it took you longer to recover."
A flicker of fear crossed Sommers's face.
BANG!
A single gunshot.
A pirate captain slave with a 70 million Berri bounty dropped to the ground.
Van Augur lowered his scoped rifle. "An unfortunate fate has arrived," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. As the man who would one day be sniping biscuit soldiers, his skill was already formidable. The presence of a sniper like him on the battlefield cast a pall of oppressive threat over the enemy.
No one knew where the next bullet would come from, or who it was for.
Under that invisible threat, everyone had to watch their backs.
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Suleiman's opponent was a towering, brutish slave. A thick beard covered his dark-skinned face, and his muscles bulged, straining the fabric of his clothes. He was a mountain of raw power.
A single slap of his shovel-sized hands sent a ferocious gust of wind tearing through the air—a terrifying, overwhelming force.
Suleiman leaped back, dodging the strike.
The hand slammed into the ground where he had been, shattering the earth and leaving a deep crater.
Suleiman was shaken. This man was no nameless grunt. To think that even someone like this could be captured and turned into a slave...
He began to circle his opponent cautiously.
The clash of steel, the shouts of battle—the fight raged on. Just as the two sides reached a stalemate...
"CHARGE!"
Another force emerged from the island's interior—a fresh wave of reinforcements composed of the captains and crews of the East Blue Trading Company. Two thousand strong.
Nami had ordered them to hold back. Their strength wasn't enough to withstand the initial onslaught.
But now, with the battle deadlocked, the arrival of fresh troops—regardless of their strength—was a massive psychological blow to the enemy.
The Kingdom's navy wore uniform, and the allied crews wore armbands bearing the Winter Blossom emblem. There was no risk of friendly fire.
Caught in a pincer attack, the remnants of the auxiliary army—the nobles, merchants, and their servants—were the first to break.
Their retreat triggered a chain reaction. The newer recruits in the CIU ranks, accustomed to easy victories, instinctively began to fall back. The only ones holding the line were the elite soldiers, drawn from the ranks of the Marines, and the Celestial Dragons' slaves. For them, there was no retreat.
But now, facing an overwhelming encirclement, even they were forced to give ground.
The localized rout quickly turned into a full-blown collapse.
Seeing this, Saint Sommers roared, "USELESS TRASH!"
He was sent flying by another of Issho's attacks, crashing to the ground.
"Failure?? This is unacceptable... You have angered me! It is time to end this!"
Sommers, his wounds already healing, glared at Issho with pure hatred.
He raised a hand.
The mark on his body began to glow. A massive, five-pointed star materialized on the ground around him—a summoning circle.
He was going to call in the other God's Knights and turn the tide of the battle.
Issho, though he could not see, could feel a bizarre, alien ki radiating from the circle, wild and unrestrained.
Just as a triumphant smirk spread across Sommers's face, a hand clamped down on his shoulder.
"Calling for backup when you can't win? That's cheating, isn't it?"
Huh??
A jolt of pure terror shot through Sommers.
The hand that rested on his shoulder was wreathed in a golden aura, like the sun, radiating a power that was both majestic and terrifying.
The full force of Conqueror's Haki crashed down on him.
His eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed.
Issho's descending blade stopped mid-air and returned to its sheath. "Your Majesty? So you've decided to intervene."
"Mm. It's better not to let him summon his friends," Jin said, stepping out from the shadows. "We're not ready for an all-out war just yet."
He had been there the whole time, observing.
For a person, for an organization, to grow, it must be tempered by the storms of battle.
A flower raised in a greenhouse, no matter how beautiful, will shatter in the first real storm.
The Whitebeard Pirates were the best example of that. Whitebeard had protected his "sons" too well. After he died, not a single one of them could stand on their own. After the Summit War, they had only lost two of their top fighters, Whitebeard and Ace. Yet they had been decimated by Weevil, then crushed by Blackbeard, and had ultimately been reduced to a second-rate crew.
Jin would not allow the Winter Blossom Kingdom to suffer the same fate.
He had invested heavily in the development of his army.
And now, it was time to see if they could fight.
Real combat was the only true test of strength.
There would be bloodshed, there would be sacrifice, but in the long run, it was necessary.
Forged in fire, an army of steel.
Overall, he was satisfied. The CIU and the Marines recruited from all over the world, taking the best of the best. It was no surprise that their forces were stronger.
But after this, with more positions to fill, more Devil Fruits to distribute, and more intensive training, I can create a new generation of powerhouses, Jin thought.
The real gap was in the number of mid- to high-tier fighters.
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