Chapter 205: This Is My Battlefield

Silence.

A silence like death.

Everyone on the Island of Coins stared in stunned disbelief at the countless cannonballs suspended in the sky above their heads.

Gulp…

They swallowed hard, their eyes wide with shock.

"The cannonballs… they stopped in midair…"

"What… what just happened…"

"This is… this is unbelievable…"

"Was that the Marine's doing?"

"What in the world did he do!?"

…

And it wasn't just them.

On the decks of the aerial pirate fleet, countless pirates stared in shock at the frozen scene before them, unable to believe their eyes.

"Damn Marine brat!! What the hell did you do!?"

The Golden Lion roared.

Never in his life had he seen such an eerie sight.

Even Sengoku was visibly shaken.

Though he had long known Darren's Devil Fruit power, this was the first time he had witnessed it wielded on such a massive scale—seizing control of a whole storm of cannonfire.

"Here. Take them back."

Darren sneered coldly.

His outstretched hand clenched into a tight fist—

In the next instant,

The hovering cannonballs jolted in the air.

Propelled by a powerful magnetic field, they reversed course—hurling upward toward the very fleet that had fired them.

A tidal wave of cannonfire, dense as a swarm of locusts, filled the sky with explosive fury.

Sengoku's heart surged with emotion.

The terror of the Golden Lion came not only from his strength—but from his invincible aerial fleet.

High-altitude saturation bombing from air-dominant vessels—against which even he, an admiral, had limited countermeasures.

Despite the strength of his Mythical Zoan fruit, Sengoku had no surefire way to handle such overwhelming firepower.

And yet… Darren, alone, had caught their entire barrage!

Now the pirates above felt the same dread the people below had felt moments earlier.

"Shit!! They're coming back!!"

"Evade!!"

"There's no time!!"

"There are too many!!"

Panic erupted.

The moment a pirate ship took to the air, its rudder became nothing but a decoration—everything was under the Golden Lion's control.

So even as they stood aboard their own ships, the pirates could do nothing but watch the incoming cannonballs with dread.

"He controls metal! That's his power!!"

The Golden Lion's eyes narrowed—then twisted into a savage grin.

"Marine brat… don't underestimate me…"

Gripping his twin blades tightly, he shot to the front of the fleet.

Against the incoming storm of cannonfire, he crossed his swords—

"I'm the Golden Lion!!"

SLASH!

ROAR!

The twin famed blades—Sakura Ten and Kikuju—sliced through the air, wrapped in raging shockwaves.

A tempest of blade-force erupted skyward, crashing headlong into the rain of cannonballs.

BOOM BOOM BOOM—

Explosions erupted across the sky, forming massive fireballs, with rolling columns of black smoke.

"Yes!!"

"That's our Captain Shiki!!"

"We're saved!!"

"Hahahaha!!"

The flying pirates cheered wildly. To them, Shiki's golden-haired silhouette was like a god.

With him, their aerial fleet was unstoppable!

"Jihahahaha!! You see now!?"

The raging wind tore at the smoke. The Golden Lion laughed uproariously, blades in hand.

"You're decades too early to destroy my fleet, brat!!"

"…Is that so?"

Darren's voice echoed coldly from below.

The Golden Lion froze.

The wind finally cleared the lingering smoke.

And he saw the earth beneath him.

What he saw made his pupils shrink to pinpoints.

Click… click…

A pirate heard a strange noise near him—sharp, crawling, metallic.

"What… what is that…"

He turned toward the sound instinctively.

A building beside him—made entirely of coins—suddenly moved.

Coin after coin twisted and stacked, reshaping rapidly under some eerie force—until they formed a cannon.

Three meters tall, with a barrel half a meter wide, black and ominous, pointed skyward.

The pirate's throat bobbed.

The sight made him take a step back in horror.

And his back struck something cold, hard… like a wall.

He turned—and his heart nearly stopped.

Not a wall—

Another cannon.

Click… click…

The skittering sound of metal crawling echoed all around.

The pirate's eyes went wide with horror.

And it wasn't just him.

Across the Island of Coins—

In the trading ports,

On the commercial streets,

Upon luxurious buildings,

Amid the ruins of the auction house—

Anywhere coins and metal had been used for construction…

The metal moved.

Reshaped. Reassembled. Folded. Reformed.

From the Golden Lion's view above, it looked as if the entire island had come alive.

Buildings, roads, plazas—everything transformed.

Countless cannons rose from the ground, forming in waves like toppling dominoes.

Black cannon barrels pointed skyward—covering every inch of the island.

They stared at the fleet above like the hundreds of eyes of a mechanical war beast.

Their numbers—countless.

All eyes now turned—horrified—toward the Marine commodore.

Even Sengoku twitched involuntarily.

"This is… way too much…"

King muttered, stunned.

"He turned the whole island into his arsenal…"

At that moment—

Darren knelt with one knee to the ground, his hand pressed against the cold metallic earth. Blue lightning crackled around him.

He looked up at the frozen Golden Lion with a fearless, defiant grin.

"So… how will you block this one?"

As the words fell—

A crimson glint burst in Darren's eyes. A surge of electric-blue arcs expanded from his body, sweeping across the entire island.

"This place… is my battlefield!!"

"Electromagnetic Wrath: Ten Thousand Cannons!!"

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!

The ground trembled.

Ten thousand cannons fired as one.

The deafening thunder shook the heavens. Pirates fell to the ground, clutching their heads in terror.

They watched, horrified, as a legion of cannons on the island unleashed fire in unison. Their faces went pale as death.

In a heartbeat—

Countless shells erupted from the ground, propelled by electromagnetic force.

So fast that the human eye couldn't follow them—at least three times the speed of normal heavy artillery.

Each cannonball trailed a crimson streak through the sky, like blazing meteors ascending into the heavens.

"Damn it!! How is this possible!!!"

The Golden Lion's eyes were bloodshot. He slashed wildly with his swords, trying to intercept them.

But this time—the density and speed were on another level.

He couldn't stop them all.

A shadow of despair spread through his crimson pupils.

He tried to maneuver the fleet—but the Float-Float Fruit did not specialize in speed.

And so—

Amid the Golden Lion's furious roars,

Amid Sengoku's thunderous battle cry,

Amid the fear-stricken gazes of pirates who felt their souls slipping away,

Amid the thunder of ten thousand cannons—

The aerial fleet above the island… erupted into fire.

BOOM BOOM BOOM—

Explosion after explosion lit up the sky, one after another, like a grand pyrotechnic chain reaction.

Black smoke soared, and the thunder of ruin echoed endlessly.

---

To be continued…