Sure enough, Kisuke Urahara had guessed it right.
This "Background King" ranking video for this round really wasn't over yet.
After that, when the screen dimmed—
New subtitles did appear.
But it wasn't a brand-new title, or a new king-tier epithet.
Instead…
Just like the previous five rounds—
Another new "background supporter" figure was revealed and plastered up on the wall for everyone to see.
At that moment, on the screen, the subtitles slowly surfaced:
[Sixth Background]
[Marine Admiral: Aokiji, Kuzan]
When those words appeared clearly on the screen—
One wave hadn't even settled before another crashed down!
In an extremely short time, it set off a massive shockwave.
A moment earlier,
the audience's arguments hadn't even cooled down yet.
Plenty of people were still mocking the Fleet Admiral as trash, and—
taking the Navy's top brass and powerhouses one by one and complaining they all performed terribly, like they were straight-up actors.
But who would've thought—
this newly revealed background supporter…
This time, it was actually Aokiji, one of the current three Admirals!
Now that was interesting!!!
"???"
"What… what is going on?!"
"Even Navy Admiral Aokiji is Luffy's background supporter? That's way too absurd…"
Some island on the Grand Line.
Inside a temporary camp where he and his crew and subordinates were stationed—
a Yonko watching the video along with his men, Red-Haired Shanks, lifted his head and swept his gaze across the screen.
The moment he read every word and took in the subtitle's full meaning—
his first reaction was a mix of surprise and shock, his face completely blank with confusion.
What the hell?
A Navy Admiral…
The Marine Headquarters' highest combat power!
One of the absolute top-tier monsters on the seas!
A being that even a Yonko like him found troublesome and worth avoiding!
And yet…
With zero warning beforehand.
Not a friend.
Not family.
Not even the same side, and not a shred of blood relation.
For no reason at all—
this guy was getting dragged into Luffy's orbit?!
And after Sengoku, he was becoming Luffy's "backer" too?!
With a plot reveal this ridiculous—
even Shanks, normally calm and steady, someone who'd seen more storms than most people could imagine—
still felt thrown.
No—more than that.
He was genuinely shocked.
His instincts screamed that this was too unbelievable!!!
"Yeah… / …"
"I think it's absurd too!!!"
Beside Shanks—
his "first mate," Benn Beckman, a man widely suspected to have Yonko-level strength himself,
lit a cigarette, staring at the screen with a puzzled look as he spoke:
"It can't be that the story is just continuing from what we saw earlier… and then it goes on to expose the Marineford battlefield next, right?"
"And after that, Admiral Aokiji uses his Hie Hie no Mi (Ice-Ice Fruit) to help that Straw Hat kid escape?"
From a strategy and intellect standpoint—
Beckman was recognized by the world, like Sengoku, as one of the great military minds.
And in his view, that kind of possibility was very real.
Because as a pirate who'd faced the Navy, he knew the Ice-Ice Fruit's power all too well.
If Aokiji got serious—
if he released the full force of the Hie Hie no Mi—
then in a single thought, freezing an entire stretch of ocean solid wasn't some impossible fantasy.
And most importantly—
don't forget: Marineford happens at Marine Headquarters.
And Marineford, that island—
is surrounded by the sea on all sides!
An endless supply of water, wrapping it completely.
So with that kind of battlefield terrain,
for Aokiji—someone who could easily dominate the ocean itself in the middle of a chaotic war—
it was practically a perfect setup.
Which meant…
afterwards,
he could deliberately repeat what Sengoku did—hold back on purpose, let someone go.
Freeze the sea—
use it as cover.
It wasn't impossible.
And in fact, that possibility felt huge!!!
However—
Beckman was still analyzing—
but the moment his words fell, he was immediately hit with a question and rebuttal from Usopp's father, Yasopp.
"Ahem… cough…"
After clearing his throat and giving a light cough, Yasopp asked seriously:
"First mate… if you're saying the sea around the battlefield gets completely frozen…"
"Then how is the Straw Hat kid supposed to get out of that battlefield afterward? Even if that okama king is covering him, he can't just leap across it out of nowhere."
"Wouldn't it be worse for him? He'd just end up boxed in, with all his escape routes sealed off."
In Yasopp's view,
once the surface of the sea was frozen—
with that amount of seawater,
the ice that formed would be unimaginably thick.
At that point,
unless you had a special icebreaker ship—
any vessel, especially a pirate ship like the Thousand Sunny—
would have an extremely hard time moving at all.
Even the Moby Dick would be the same: barely able to budge.
(End of Chapter)
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