[Oden's Castle Basement, Kozuki Sukiyaki's Secret Room]
Even further down,
After hours of searching the castle, Enel, Ken and Franky finally managed to find the secret room that Ashen talked about.
"Shit! It was actually true!…I'll never doubt Ashen's words in my life" Enel said, smiling in satisfaction as he revel a secret underground passage. Without wasting anymore time, the three of them proceeded to go down immediately.
"It smells like shit in her" Franky remarked, carefully making his way down as the ground was covered with mold.
A few minutes later while still going down the passage, Ken noticed a dim light coming from a space in the side of the wall.
"Where is that dim light coming from?" Ken questioned.
"Aren't we underground, how is that even possible?" Franky said, as the curiousity got the better of them and three crawled inside the space to take a look.
"That's--!!!" the three looked shocked at the sight before them that looked like Wano but it was sunk under water.
"Is that Wano…underwater?!" Franky looked in amazement.
"Who knows, we don't know anything about this place…anyway let's stop wasting time!" Enel said as the three continued their journey to the end of the passage.
"We arrived. This is the Road Poneglyph" Enel said while looking at the large, mysterious red stele in front of him.
"It's really here…this is our second" Franky said.
"Now we need two more to travel to Laugh Tale…" Enel grinned in excitement before he spoke again "Alright, let's take a copy and get out of here!"
…
Floating in the air near Onigashima is the Sword of Xebec,
Shiki was calmly sitting on the ship's figurehead watching the battle down there while smoking his large cigar before he was interrupted.
"Purupurupuru… Purupurupuru… Purupurupuru…" a Den Den Mushi started ringing.
"Hmmm?...Puff…that's Ashen's Den Den Mushi…" After taking a few puffs from his cigarette, Shiki got on his feet and went to pick up the Den Den Mushi answering the call "Who is it?"
"This is Enel, we got what we were looking for" Enel informed Shiki, the latter smiled in satisfaction before responded.
"Ashen's crew sure is useful, I'll let him know--*GATCHA*" Shiki said, ending the call after that.
…
Gecko Moria and Queen fight,
"Brachio Launcher!" Queen activates rocket launchers equipped to his torso via a voice command, sending a rocket towards Moria.
*BOOOM* When the rocket hit him it caused a massive explosion while dealing serious damage to Moria who was knocked out of balance, before Queen finished finished him off by delivering a strong sword slash that cut his chest open.
"Huff…Huff…Muhahaha! You're a tough bastard Moria, but this is your limit" Queen said with a mocking smile while holding a giant dao sword in his hybrid form, he was looking down at the defeated Moria who was barely keeping consciousness.
Queen's Zoan fruit gives him strong durability and boosts his physical stats greatly, basically Moria didn't have enough raw power to cause serious damage, not mentioning Queen's cybernetics enhancements.
"Now what should we do with you? Should I just kill you, or maybe I--" Queen lifted his sword to deliver another strike before Shiki appeared out of nowhere with both his swords drawn.
With a swift move, Shiki came flying down at Queen, his swords imbued with Armament and infused with Conqueror's Haki, delivering two powerful sword slashes at the same time.
"Lion's Dominion Wave!!"
Queen eyeballs popped out from shock seeing Shiki "You old fart--?!!!"
*Splash* Without being able to even react Queen suffered a devastating blow, the Conqueror's infused attack was too much for someone like him, not talking about how exhausted he was after his battle with Moria, so he immediately passed out and was sent crashing into the Skull Dome behind him with two large sword cuts across his chest.
"ARRGHHH!!!--"
Shiki immediately picked up Moria after that.
"You fought well, but…you only have yourself to blame for this loss kid" Shiki said while carrying the heavily injured Moria back to the ship.
"Damn it" Moria cursed from frustration, throwing a mouthful of blood.
…
In the same battlefield both Ashen and Kaido's fight and Urouge and Mesagi's fight were locked in stalemates at the moments.
For top tier fighters like Ashen and Kaido, it could take another dozen hour maybe even more for one of them to finally gain the upper hand on the other.
"Kosanze Ragnaraku!!" Wielding his Kanabō with two hands, Kaido jumped into the air and quickly spined his weapon above his head as he imbued it with Conqueror's Haki, making it exude black lightning. He then, while descending, swinged his club down with great force, in an attempt to smash Ashen into the ground.
Of course, Ashen didn't fall for that and quickly held his sword with two hands above his head while using Conqueror's coating as well, he blocked Kaido's attack. Their weapons were barely touching each other as thick black lightning with red hue emanated from them.
A few seconds later the clash ended in stalemate as both of them jumped back to prepare for the next attack.
Even though the two of them were having a life and death fight, they both looked like they were enjoying themselves.
"Hehe, this getting more fun as we go on" Ashen said, smiling excitedly.
"It's been a while since if fought someone strong" Kaido responded with a smile as well "I'm going to enjoy smashing your head into pieces"
"Keep dreaming about that" Ashen said before he started amassing dense flames around his body, slowly raising them into the air before he finally shaped them into a gigantic, humanoid avatar made of blue flames that surrounded him, it carried a gigantic flame sword shaped as Shusui and on top of that Ashen proceeded to channel his Haki to covered it, giving it an insane offense and defense.
"Behold my Susanoo!!" Ashen declared, standing on top of it, the gigantic humanoid avatar was easily dwarfing even Kaido himself. Though this move takes a toll on Ashen's stamina and Haki since he's using a lot of hit to coat the entire thing.
Kaido turned to his full dragon from right away in order to match its size.
"Boro Breath!!" Kaido gathered fire inside his mouth before breathing it out into a huge, conical blast toward Ashen. The latter lifted his sword and performed a downward motion, the Susanoo mimicked his movements, lifting the giant flame sword that resembles Shusui performing a downward swing.
*SWOOOSH* When the Susanoo sword met Kaido's blast, it managed to cut through it and disperse it, before it performed a thrusting attack sending Kaido crashing into the Skull Dome behind him.
While Kaido and Ashen were busy fighting, Shiki suddenly descended from the sky interrupting them.
"Party is over, we got what we want"
"Shiki?"
"Your crewmember just called. He got that Road Poneglyph"
…
Meanwhile,
[New World – Pirate Paradise, Hachinosu]
While Ashen was away in Wano an incident happened in Hachinosu, someone sneak in the island and freed Big Mom's children from their bomb collars and sea stone shackles around their necks and also freed the other prisoners including Charlotte Brulêe. Whoever did that, they knew off the fact that he kept several Big Mom officers under him by blackmailing them, so they took the chance to sabotage his plans of subduing them while he was away and creating some chaos in his territory.
"Quickly after them!"
"--If you don't want to lose your heads when Ashen comes back, then you better get your ass moving!" Diana shouted at the pirates around. She was holding her rifle 'The Giant Queller' before she aimed at Charlotte Mondee and fired several Haki-Coated bullets, the latter managed to dodge most of them but was still injured in her left shoulder.
"Damn it!" Mondee groaned with pain while holding her injured shoulder, but she kept running without a stop.
"Don't stop! Quickly into the ship!" Katakuri gave order.
"All of this is because of some fucker who already got away…where the fuck did they find the keys to open the bomb collars anyways?" Ian cursed in anger as he went after the running prisoners. Yamamoto and Amber were following behind.
"If brother Ashen find out we'll be in big trouble!" Yamamoto said in panic as he tightly gripped his Kanabō before he jumped in the air and enlarged it many and thrusted it at the injured Mondee.
Seeing that Katakuri quickly used his Mochi power to summon a giant Haki-Coated fist and blocked the attack. Giving the chance for the rest of his siblings to ran away.
"You fucking bastard!...Dragon Slayer!!" Ian lunged at Katakuri, his muscles bulging with power, he channeled his Hasshoken energy into his metal, imbuing it with a layer of Haki. As he was swing his weapon at Katakuri a vibrant green aura enveloped it.
Katakuri of course already foresaw his attack with his future vision and quickly retaliated by thrusting his trident at Ian sending him crashing back into a building.
Cracker also summoned some of his biscuit puppets to help his brother.
Amber and Diana joined the fight against him, tough he was no match to them alone he was able to stall them for a few minutes with the help of Cracker's biscuit soldier, until his siblings got on one of the ships in Rocky Port and started sailing away.
Cracker created a few more biscuit soldiers to hold back Ian, Yamamoto, Diana and Amber giving himself and Katakuri the chance to escape to the ship as well.
Eventually the four of them managed to defeat the biscuit soldiers, but unfortunately Katakuri and the other were already away in the sea.
"Whoever is responsible for this will pay for it dearly" Ian said in low menacing tone of voice "Prepare the ships we're going after them!"
"Are you sure it's a good idea, as much as I like to do that, they are not just some nobodies…and If I'm being honest the four of us can't defeat all of them" Diana said.
"I don't care about your opinion, if we let them go it would be a stain on the Ashen Pirates name. we're going after them, we'll either bring them back or sent them to reunite with their mother" Ian responded.
"But honestly, they couldn't have done this without an outside help, who could it be?" Yamamoto questioned.
"I can't think of anyone honestly…maybe government agent, CP agents sneaked in and freed them without us noticing, I mean doing missions like this is their specialty" Amber stated, trying to think of other possibilities.
"Stop thinking about useless shit and let's get this done with before Ashen comes back from Wano" Ian said.