Chapter 986: Victory Belongs to Me, Aeridar!

Chapter 986: Chapter 986: Victory Belongs to Me, Aeridar!

"Gol... den... Ring... Ae... ri... dar...!!!"

Charlotte Linlin spat out each syllable of Aeridar’s name through ground teeth. The raw, murderous malice and burning fury laced within her words were palpable to anyone within earshot.

"I am going to slaughter you—!!!"

A piercing shriek tore from her throat, causing the atmosphere to shudder violently as a localized shockwave of sound waves rolled outward.

Her face contorted into a monstrous visage, Charlotte Linlin charged forward with massive strides. Napoleon, her giant, flame-wreathed blade, whistled through the air as she swung it down, the intense thermal energy visibly warping the surrounding atmosphere.

"Airquake!!!"

Aeridar’s expression darkened. He hoisted his arm high, wrapping his fist in a translucent, spherical bubble of highly pressurized air, and drove his punch straight forward.

CRACK—!

A sharp fracture rang out as dozens of jagged fissures snaked wildly through the empty air.

RUMBLE— RUMBLE—

In the next instant, a cataclysmic force detonated. The earth violently quaked as a surging wave of white, concussive pressure intertwined with blistering hellfire, radiating outward in all directions.

Under the catastrophic impact of their colliding might, the ground within a hundred-meter radius shattered into a web of dense fissures resembling a massive spiderweb. The entire section of the terrain then imploded downward, collapsing into a hollow crater that looked as though it had been struck by a meteor.

"Whitebeard’s quake power...!"

Charlotte Linlin’s countenance turned incredibly grim. Her gaze flared with pure venom as she locked her eyes tightly onto the man before her.

Among the original Four Emperors, Whitebeard had stood as the undisputed pinnacle, the first among the Yonko. His mastery over the tremor-inducing power, capable of literally fracturing the air, was something that neither the supposedly immortal Kaido nor she, the ’Iron Balloon,’ could easily withstand. The vibratory force rattled an opponent thoroughly from the inside out.

Coupled with Whitebeard’s own monstrous physical conditioning, that specific power was the exact reason why that man had been able to single-handedly suppress the other three Emperors of the Sea.

Yet now, Charlotte Linlin could faintly see the silhouette of that dead legend overlapping with the thirty-year-old man standing right in front of her.

"Zephyr, can you still hold your ground?" Aeridar asked, tilting his head slightly back toward the older man behind him.

"Hahaha! Captain, are you seriously looking down on this old man?" Zephyr laughed heartily as he straightened his posture, acting as though the severe trauma riddling his body didn’t even exist.

"The situation over with Ain and Binz is looking a bit grim. I’ll have to trouble you to head over to the harbor’s coast right away," Aeridar requested. He refrained from explicitly mentioning that Ain had been critically wounded by Smoothie, keeping his phrasing deliberately vague.

Hearing this, Zephyr’s sharp mind instantly grasped the underlying gravity, and a sudden wave of anxiety washed over his heart.

Ain, Binz, and Shuzo were his most cherished students, individuals he loved and protected as if they were his own flesh and blood.

"I’m on my way!"

Without a second word, Zephyr turned on his heel and vanished into the distance.

Linlin watched Zephyr retreat but made no move to intercept him. She knew all too well that with Aeridar standing directly in her path, any attempt to give chase would be completely futile.

"To be entirely honest, watching our relationship deteriorate to this point is something I really wanted to avoid," Aeridar remarked, looking at Charlotte Linlin with a sigh of helpless resignation. "In my original timeline, I hadn’t factored in an early conflict with a Yonko. You’ve thoroughly disrupted my schedule."

He paused to scratch his head before continuing, "While I wasn’t particularly thrilled about handing the gigantification technology over to you, it wasn’t completely off the table if you were willing to pay a price that satisfied me. I just didn’t expect your reaction to be so radical. Your appetite is simply too voracious, trying to swallow my hard work whole in a single bite."

At the mention of the word ’gigantification,’ the crimson hue in Charlotte Linlin’s eyes flared with an even more feral intensity. She barked in a savage tone, "Cut the useless chatter! When a pirate wants something and the other party refuses to give it up, there is only one option—you take it by force!"

"I am nothing like those spineless politicians of the World Government!"

Her voice resonated with a volatile cocktail of fury, utter disdain, and chilling resolve.

"Fair enough. We are pirates, after all," Aeridar let out a sharp laugh, clenching his fists in agreement. "The weight of one’s fists has always been the ultimate metric for dictating who’s right and who’s wrong!"

BOOM—!!!

In the next fraction of a second, two cataclysmic auras erupted simultaneously, slamming into one another with the force of a tectonic collision. An invisible yet terrifyingly tangible clash of Conqueror’s Haki tore through the earth and pierced straight into the heavens. The air trembled with an unnatural, high-frequency vibration, buckling under the sheer, oppressive weight of their wills.

Had it been daytime, countless onlookers would have witnessed the towering cloud bank over Unzan Port being split cleanly apart, leaving a gargantuan, hollow void in the sky.

"Surrender all of your blueprints like a good little boy!" Charlotte Linlin roared, her face contorted in a demonic snarl. "Do you honestly think you can defeat me, you arrogant brat?!"

"Then let’s find out who walks away from this alive, BIG MOM—!!!"

A highly distorted, manic expression of pure battle-lust surfaced on Aeridar’s face as he unleashed a feral, deafening roar: "Victory will absolutely belong to the Chris Pirates! It belongs to me, Aeridar!!!"

THUD! THUD! THUD!

Heavy, thunderous footsteps shook the ground as Charlotte Linlin cleared meters of ground in a single stride, bringing her flame-wreathed giant blade down in a devastating, linear cleave.

In that singular moment, a blinding explosion of vibrant pink light completely illuminated the night.

Meanwhile, high above, a massive armada composed of over a hundred small-scale vessels, each spanning dozens of meters in length, descended rapidly toward the outer perimeter of the harbor district. An endless tide of pirates and armored soldiers swarmed off the decks, forming a dense, black sea of reinforcements.

Accompanying them was a legion of animated beasts—giant eagles, stone gargoyles, horned demons, and the like. More importantly, the broader backs of the colossal avian constructs, pterodactyls, and dragons served as airborne transports, carrying entire complements of specialized animated forces, including stone knights, rock behemoths, and iron-clad vanguard soldiers. ℴℴ𝘮

A massive, multi-tiered animated army had officially consolidated its presence within Unzan Port!

Gilbert Arlan, Myles Dimitri, Boa Hancock, Quiniel Vito, Enrod... a sequence of powerhouses whose notorious names carried devastating weight across the waters of the New World stepped onto the battlefield. The main vanguard of the Chris Pirates had arrived!

"Charge—!!!"

"Crush the Big Mom Pirates!"

"Drive these bastards back into the sea to feed the fish!"

"..."

The ferocious war cries rose to a deafening pitch. The injection of this highly potent, fresh military force instantaneously flipped the momentum of the entire battlefield. The standard officers and division commanders of the Big Mom Pirates simply possessed no counter-strategy against the monstrous vanguard deployed by the Chris Pirates.

"Oven! Step away from him!"

A deafening, authoritative roar echoed across the plaza, catching Charlotte Oven completely off guard as he relentlessly pursued a retreating Binz. Startled, Oven instinctively snapped his head toward the source of the voice.

In the midair distance, a dashing man clad in a royal blue suit was rapidly closing the distance. Each time his feet stomped against the empty air, they generated a crisp, circular ring of compressed vapor, the kinetic propulsion forcing his body forward at extreme velocity.

"Arlan—!!!"

Oven couldn’t help but gasp in shock, completely abandoning his imminent attack on the severely battered Binz who was mere inches away.

Catching sight of Binz’s body, which was covered in raw, blistering thermal burns, Arlan’s face flushed with explosive rage. He bellowed at the top of his lungs, "You miserable bastard, Oven! Take this!!!"

Arlan drove a high-powered, haki-infused fist directly toward Oven’s face.

"Damn it! Heat Fist!!!"

Oven’s face drained of color. Recognizing that he had no time to maneuver out of the trajectory, he hastily channeled his Devil Fruit power, swinging his glowing, white-hot fist upward to meet the strike head-on.

BOOM—!!!

The instant their knuckles collided, a deafening explosion ripped through the immediate vicinity.

A pillar of blazing fire shot straight into the sky, accompanied by thick, billowing plumes of black smoke. As the violent shockwave rolled outward, a heavily scorched silhouette was hurled backward out of the smog, crashing violently into the ground below. It was Oven.

"Pwaugh..."

Oven hacked up a thick pool of blood onto the earth. The liquid hissed violently upon contact with the cold stone, releasing wisps of scalding, thermal steam.

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