One Piece: The Dragon All-Star - 193

Chapter 193: Birth of the World’s Strongest Pirate Crew

The barren island—

Was gone.

Wiped completely from the surface of the sea.

In its place yawned a colossal abyss, an endless pit the ocean kept pouring into.

The pull of the vortex dragged at the surrounding waters, and the ships at the rim felt an invisible giant hand closing on their hulls, dragging them helplessly toward the hole.

“Turn the ships around! Get us out of here, now!”

As the vessels crept closer to the mouth of death, the Beasts Pirates finally jolted awake.
Panicked shouts and roars crashed together across the decks.

They scrambled over wheels and rigging, doing everything they could to fight back against the brute force of nature.

King was the first to move, great wings snapping open as he shot into the air to hover over the void.

His sharp gaze cut through the roiling spray, locked on the chasm below that seemed to swallow endless seawater without ever filling.

For once, his usually calm face showed naked urgency.

Kaido-san, you cannot fall here.

Seeing no movement at all below, he clenched his teeth.
His wings tensed, ready to dive into the pit no matter what to search for Kaido and Kai.

Just then, a green divine dragon burst up through the steam, rising proudly from the abyss.

“Kai!” King blurted.

When he saw the figure clutched in Kai’s talons, his aura shifted.
His expression turned tangled and heavy.

So Kaido-san… really lost.

Kai dipped his great head to King in a slight nod.

With a small motion of his claw, he passed the unconscious Kaido gently into King’s waiting arms.

Then his massive dragon body coiled in the sky, turning a half-circle so that every ship could see him clearly.

Kai’s stern gaze swept over every flag and deck below.

“From this day forward, I, Kai, am captain of the Beasts Pirates,” he declared.

His voice rode the wind, ringing clear in every ear.

The first light of dawn chose that moment to spear through the clouds.
Golden rays spilled over his form, crowning him in a holy glow.

For an instant, it felt like the world itself was placing a coronet on his horns.

“Who is in favor? Who objects?”

Silence dropped over the sea.

Even the sound of wind and waves seemed to vanish.

Then—

“Captain Kai!”

The answering roar crashed over the water like a tidal wave, a volcano of voices erupting all at once and shaking the clouds.

The Beasts Pirates did not hesitate for a heartbeat in embracing their new king.

The strong ruled.

That was carved into the crew’s bones.

If a new strongest had proven himself beyond dispute, then if Captain Kai did not sit the throne, who would?

Even the last pillar of the old era, King, only caught Kaido’s limp form in silence.

He held his captain with care, a faint loneliness in his eyes as he quietly accepted the result.

Kai had beaten Kaido-san at his peak and still clearly held power in reserve.

King could not stand in his way.

Not when Kai already commanded monsters on his own level: Loki, Yamato, Kuma, Enel.

Today’s duel was less a simple captaincy struggle inside the Beasts Pirates and more a total, crushing consolidation of power.

The new force centered on Kai had just rolled over the old order and claimed it.

“Captain Kai!”

On the Rayquaza, Yamato threw her fist in the air, face flushed red, shouting louder than anyone.

It was as if the battered man King carried on his shoulder had nothing to do with her at all.

Hiyori, Robin, and Reiju traded looks.

In each other’s eyes, they saw the same mix of relief, excitement, and joy they could not hold back.

Smiles bloomed bright across their faces.

“Captain Kai!”

Chopper and Bepo sobbed openly, tears and snot streaming down their faces.

“Big Brother Kai is so cool!”

Bonney’s eyes sparkled like they were full of stars.

She did not blink as she stared up at the figure bathed in golden light, as if trying to burn the image into her memory.

“Incredible… truly incredible.”

A thin, sharp voice cut in, giddy with excitement.

It was drowned under the steady clack of a Den Den Mushi’s camera shutter.

Kuma frowned and turned. “You. Morgans.”

“Easy, easy,” Morgans said, hands still flying as he snapped Kai from every angle he could find.

“Kai-sama invited me here himself. Official access, all above board.”

He did not wait to see if Kuma believed him.

All his focus snapped back to his work.

He had no doubt he was watching history being made.

As an intern, he had missed God Valley, and that regret had stayed with him all his life.

This time, facing a moment like this, he would not miss a thing.

Every detail, every shot dripping with power, he would capture all of it.

In his gut, he knew.

Right here, right now, the strongest pirate on the sea had been born.

Yes.

Kai had beaten Kaido, the “strongest creature in the world,” in a straight fight.

That made him the unquestioned number one pirate alive.

What about the world’s strongest man?

Anyone with eyes could see Whitebeard was an old, sick tiger clinging to the title.

The frame was still there.

The force was not.

The thought of sending this story out across the globe, of the tidal wave it would set off, made Morgans tremble from beak to tail.

When he looked up at the dragon in the sky, he could already see it: in the not-too-distant future, the next Pirate King would be born in his pages.

Later, in the main hall on Onigashima, the Beasts Pirates’ officers packed the room.

Their ranks had swelled so much that the once-spacious hall was now standing-room only.

And that was without counting Loki, the giant prince too big to fit in the keep at all.

“What a ridiculous lineup,” Black Maria murmured.

Her eyes drifted over the crowd as she did a quick tally.

Her lips parted slightly in genuine shock.

At the top stood the newly crowned Kai and Kaido, defeated yet still very much a monster worthy of the summit.

Beneath them sat five emperor-level lieutenants: Loki, King, Yamato, Kuma, and Enel.

Below that, the mid-level officers and rising stars were too many to count.

Just listing out the Beasts Pirates’ strength was enough to make her hands shake with excitement.

This was a force that could shake the world itself.

Even Kai, sitting at the head of the hall, looking down at that sea of talent, could not stop the surge in his chest.

After years of grinding, he had finally stepped onto the true main stage of this ocean.

"Kaido-san, how does our lineup compare to the old Rocks Pirates?" Kai asked.

He glanced over to his right, where Kaido was drinking like always.

Thanks to Princess Mansherry’s Heal-Heal Fruit, Kaido’s wounds were already gone.

Kaido lowered his massive gourd, a look of reminiscence flickering in his eyes.

“In pure personal strength, you are not weaker than him anymore,” he said.

“Counting that weird new power you busted out at the end, I would not be surprised if Rocks lost to you.”

He still could not wrap his head around Kai’s new ability.

That bizarre crystal shell had ignored his flames completely and even shrugged off the sea itself.

His last memory before blacking out was Kai, wrapped in that armor, grabbing him out of the water.

He still was not sure.

Was that power immune to elements?

Or to Devil Fruits themselves?

“If you mean the crews, though, who would win?” Kaido snorted.

“That is no contest. The Beasts would crush them.”

“Rocks’ ‘pirate crew’ was less a crew and more a bunch of monsters taped together with money and threats.”

“When things go bad, they are more likely to tear each other apart than stand shoulder to shoulder.”

“Hell, they could not even split their loot without trying to kill one another.”

Kai nodded.

So the Beasts Pirates were the Rocks Pirates… pro max.

The same level of tip-of-the-spear firepower, stronger even, but with far more unity and pull toward the center.

Put the Beasts in God Valley instead of Rocks, and the losing side would not have been the Pirates.

It would have been the Marines and the World Government.

Even if Imu had come down personally riding Saturn.

Because Imu’s most terrifying “black conversion” control would not work on him.

Kai’s hand curled at his side, feeling the new tera energy humming inside.

He smiled faintly.

He had not expected it either.

In games, Terastallization existed to shore up a Pokémon’s type weaknesses.

But on this sea, it had turned into something like a “nothing touches me” buff.

Fire, ice, lightning, any natural element—useless.

Even “rule-type” Paramecia like the Hobby-Hobby Fruit and the Hollow-Hollow Fruit bounced off that crystal light.

And the same went for Imu’s prized black conversion.

In the fight with Kaido, he had deliberately let the flames hit him again and again, using the tera power to knock them away.

That was how he had pulled off that impossible, unstoppable charge.

"Everyone," Kai said.

He let his gaze travel across each officer, the air tightening with every word.

"Remember this moment. From today on, the Beasts Pirates are the world's strongest crew. There is no one left who can deny it."

Faces all across the hall flushed with pride and excitement.

Even Enel, who usually only acknowledged Kai himself, could not help the small curl of his mouth.

It felt like working at a company that suddenly leaped to number one in the world.

Even if the salary stayed the same, the thrill was real.

And on this sea, being on “the world’s strongest pirate crew” meant real deterrence, resources, and say in how things were run.

“Get ready,” Kai said again.

His voice carried a different weight this time, the kind that pushed eras forward.

“In five days, at the Fire Festival, I will announce a move bigger than anything the world has seen… something that will change the balance of the world.”

Those words—“bigger than anything,” “change the balance of the world”—fell into the officers’ ears like sparks into dry tinder.

Eyes lit up around the hall.

Blood pounded in chests.

After a brief set of orders, Kai dismissed them.

The hall that had been boiling with noise settled down quickly, leaving only a handful of true core members behind.

“Wororororo, Kai,” Kaido said.

He tipped back his gourd, eyes still sharp with curiosity and fighting spirit.

“Tell me. Which Emperor crew are you planning to hit first?”

As far as he could see, any “big move” meant all-out war with another Yonko.

Surely they were not going to flip the table now and jump straight to a total war with Marine Headquarters and the World Government.

Even he, for all his madness, would think twice before kicking that nest without overwhelming odds.

“Which one?” Kai shook his head, a small smile tugging at his lip.

“Kaido-san, do you not think the New World is a little too crowded?”

Kaido went motionless for a beat—then erupted.

His laughter crashed through the hall like a storm.

"Wororororo! Good! A true conqueror doesn't bow or beg. Only someone who wants the whole world can stand above me!"

“Kai, what are we waiting for then? Let us sail today and sweep the New World clean.”

Yamato’s eyes lit up.

She bounced to her feet, fists clenched, already seeing Beasts flags planted across every island in sight.

She looked ready to leap straight from the hall to the docks.

“Now? No,” Kai said.

He shook his head, a more mysterious smile on his face.

“Before I start a new age, there is someone I have to pick up.”

It was time to pull that hidden ace, Vegapunk, out of the World Government’s hands.

The Beasts Pirates’ next moves would never slip past the Government’s spies.

Once things started to shift, the Five Elders might preemptively move Vegapunk to some black-site no one knew about.

If that happened, the inside information Kai had fought to gather on Vegapunk’s current location would vanish overnight.

He could not bet on the story playing out the same way, with Vegapunk’s lab on Egghead in the New World.

He had to move first.

Now that he had the power to back it up, it was time to lay his cards on the table with the World Government.

After the others left, Kai took out a special Den Den Mushi designed to block eavesdropping and dialed a number.

After a short ring, the line clicked open.

A sultry, teasing voice purred through.

“Kai-sama. What wind finally blew you back to me?”

“I just saw you last month,” he said, rolling his eyes.

Then his tone turned flat.

“Enough small talk. The time has come. It is time to fulfill our agreement.”

“What? R-really?”

On the other end, Stussy’s surprise cracked straight through her usual velvet tone.

Every hint of playful flirtation vanished as she steadied herself, asking for confirmation again and again.

When she finally heard Kai’s hard, unshakable answer, she did not hesitate.

“Understood,” she said.

Her voice was cool now, professional, edged with a do-or-die resolve.

“I will use special channels to contact the Doctor, confirm his status, and his exact location.”

They would only get one shot at hitting Punk Hazard and taking Vegapunk.

Kai had to make it count.

If he missed, the trouble that followed would be beyond imagining.

He had no doubt at all how far the World Government would go once it decided to clean its hands.