Chapter 987: War That Gathered The Warlords

Chapter 987: Chapter 987: War That Gathered The Warlords

The first rays of dawn gradually illuminated the horizon, and the sun slowly climbed above the distant sea. The fierce, apocalyptic clash had raged continuously throughout the entire night.

Along the sprawling shoreline of Unzan Port, both the Chris Pirates and the Big Mom Pirates had deployed tens of thousands of combatants. A relentless influx of reinforcements from both sides poured into the fray, each faction fiercely determined to crush the other.

The Chris Pirates’ secondary forces had navigated the domestic canal network to reinforce Unzan Port. Meanwhile, the Big Mom Pirates had managed to anchor several massive, floor-length mirrors, each standing over ten meters high, directly along the coast. This allowed the armies of Totto Land to bypass normal navigation entirely, marching straight through Charlotte Brûlée’s Mirro-World to bridge the gap across dozens of islands and step directly onto the soil of the Clifford Kingdom.

When accounting for the animated beasts and Homies, the combined military force clashing at the harbor exceeded well over a hundred thousand units.

One side fought to drive the invaders back into the sea to feed the fish, while the other relentlessly sought to shatter the defensive line and seize the strategic port city once and for all.

The coastal harbor district had been thoroughly devastated by the flames of war, reduced to a wasteland of scorched earth. Nearly every building, warehouse, and defensive artillery turret had been obliterated into absolute nothingness.

As for the urban district of Unzan Port, it had first weathered the cataclysmic duel between Zephyr and Charlotte Linlin, only to immediately serve as the epicenter for an even more destructive, upgraded clash between Aeridar and the female Yonko.

The city was heavily scarred with countless pockmarked craters and jagged, crisscrossing chasms, virtually leveled to flat earth. It was only along the outermost fringes of the city limits that one could still spot fractured masonry and ruined walls, the sole remaining indicators that towering high-rises and residential complexes had once stood there.

Now, with the arrival of morning, both factions had nearly exhausted their stamina after a night of uninterrupted, high-intensity combat. The grand-scale war finally ground to a temporary, grinding halt.

After a grueling night of direct confrontation, Aeridar and Charlotte Linlin both recognized that a decisive outcome could not be forced within a short window. Consequently, they reached a tacit agreement to call a temporary truce.

Ultimately, the Chris Pirates voluntarily relinquished the immediate harbor area, pulling their forces back into the flattened urban district. The Big Mom Pirates, seemingly lacking the surplus energy to press an offensive, contented themselves with occupying the harbor and the shoreline, choosing to rest, reorganize, and await their secondary wave of reinforcements.

On the surface, this engagement concluded as a draw, given that neither supreme commander succeeded in overwhelming the other.

In reality, however, the Chris Pirates had suffered a marginal defeat. Backan’s Fourth Division and Zephyr’s "Z" Division suffered casualty rates exceeding two-thirds of their total strength. Furthermore, the Clifford Kingdom’s local garrison and the subsequent royal reinforcements lost nearly forty thousand soldiers.

Fourteen Dragonians were confirmed destroyed, over five hundred units of various mechanical weaponry models were rendered scrap, and among their affiliated pirate crews, eight captains were killed in action while six others sustained severe injuries.

To make matters worse, Backan, Ain, and Binz were grievously wounded, Shuzo sustained minor injuries, and Zephyr himself had been battered by Big Mom. Though the veteran former Admiral still maintained his combat capability, he would require several days of absolute rest to make a full recovery.

Most devastating of all, Unzan Port was in ruins. The civilian population alone had suffered casualties numbering between ten to twenty thousand.

Furthermore, over a hundred vessels of various sizes moored in the harbor had been sunk or destroyed. Excluding merchant ships and private property, the Chris Pirates alone lost more than twenty frontline warships.

While they had successfully slaughtered a massive number of rank-and-file Big Mom pirates and injured several key officers and subordinate captains, the Big Mom Pirates’ overall casualty metrics, across both mid-to-low-tier and high-level combat forces, were vastly superior to those of the Chris Pirates.

Nevertheless, this battle did yield an unexpected, resounding highlight: the near-total devastation of the Germa Kingdom!

Over fifteen of their giant snails were destroyed, thousands of clone soldiers were slaughtered, and Vinsmoke Judge alongside his three sons were completely incapacitated by the timely intervention of Gild Tesoro and his elite enforcers. Had it not been for Charlotte Daifuku’s desperate intervention to salvage the situation, the throne of the Germa Kingdom might have very well defaulted to Sanji, or left the kingdom to be ruled by a queen.

With both sides entering a temporary stalemate, news of the Big Mom Pirates’ sudden raid on Unzan Port seemed to grow wings, spreading across the face of the globe in the blink of an eye.

Instantly, the entire world erupted into an absolute frenzy!

The shocking report detailing how the Chris Pirates had heavily crippled the Big Mom Pirates’ Grand Expeditionary Fleet at Tail Island within the Fernal Archipelago had only just hit the printing presses. Before the public could even process it, an even more explosive piece of news followed immediately on its heels.

The sheer volatility of the conflict and the mercurial nature of the theater of war left the global populace completely dazed.

More importantly, the antagonist in question was a Yonko!

Big Mom, a legendary monster who had sat unassailable upon her imperial throne for over a decade, had just fought to a statistical draw against a young pirate who was a mere thirty years old. The sheer gravity of this revelation sent shockwaves through the world.

The destruction of Whole Cake Chateau, the crippling of one of the Three Sweet Commanders, the severe decimation of her expeditionary fleet, and now the failure of her surprise raid on Unzan Port... this rapid succession of military failures was directly dismantling the absolute authority and majesty of the Yonko Big Mom.

Even though the Chris Pirates had paid a catastrophic, bloody price of their own to achieve this stalemate, the world had officially begun to elevate their status, placing them on an equal footing with the undisputed rulers of the sea.

The global consensus was shifting: either a new Yonko was about to ascend, or the world was about to witness the birth of a Fifth Emperor!

At this very moment, the high command of Marine Headquarters and the World Government was paralyzed by sheer chaos.

The outbreak of this war had been far too sudden, and its sheer intensity and structural scale vastly exceeded their wildest projections!

The conflict had already dragged in seventy to eighty prominent pirate crews from the New World. Even the Kuja Pirates, Sir Crocodile, Gild Tesoro, and Germa 66 had actively thrown themselves into the meat grinder.

To make matters worse, naval intelligence had just received confirmed reports that Donquixote Doflamingo had officially mobilized and departed from Dressrosa.

Furthermore, Buggy the Clown’s pirate dispatch organization, "Buggy’s Delivery," had initiated a massive, widespread deployment. The entire Buggy Pirates crew, alongside an immense coalition of mercenary pirates, was currently charting a direct course toward the Clifford Kingdom.

It was only now that the Marines and the World Government painfully realized the terrifying extent to which the Chris Pirates’ sphere of influence had ballooned.

Including the "Golden Ring" Aeridar himself, four active Seven Warlords of the Sea had already joined, or were on the verge of joining, this monumental war, reinforced by Jinbe and Sir Crocodile, two former Warlords.

Excluding Dracule "Hawk-Eyes" Mihawk, who historically operated as a lone wolf, and the newly appointed Warlord Edward Weevil, more than half of the Seven Warlords of the Sea were now actively standing shoulder-to-shoulder within the exact same battle lines. Was this still a sub-faction of the World Government’s Warlords?

The Gorosei found themselves deeply interrogating that exact reality!

To add fuel to the fire, rumors were running rampant that Trafalgar Law, in tandem with Straw Hat Luffy, had successfully infiltrated the Clifford Kingdom. This implied that the Clifford Kingdom was on the verge of playing host to four active Warlords and three former Warlords simultaneously. This was turning into an unprecedented mega-reunion of the Warlords of the Sea!

Following a series of emergency high-level summits, Marine Headquarters dispatched Vice Admiral "Momousagi" Gion and Vice Admiral "Chaton" Tokikake, both of whom were official candidates for the rank of Admiral, to the Holy Land Mariejois to personally guarantee the security protocols for the upcoming Reverie.

Even former Fleet Admiral Sengoku, who currently occupied the office of Inspector General, alongside Monkey D. Garp, who had technically retired to serve as a Marine Instructor, were mobilized to maintain a strict, ironclad guard over Marine Headquarters at the original Marineford.

As for the G-5 Marine Base, currently commanded by Admiral "Fujitora" Issho, the higher-ups refrained from deploying substantial reinforcements, opting instead to send only a handful of additional warships, ammunition, and standard ordnance supplies.

The G-5 base stood as the Marines’ primary spearhead driven directly into the heart of the New World, their sole remaining fortress and the literal front line against the unchecked piracy of the New World. If the World Government authorized a massive, overt military build-up at G-5 under the current volatile climate, it might trigger an unpredictably violent, unified backlash from the various pirate factions ruling the territory.

After all, the other three Yonko had yet to make their move.