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The frost-tusk mammoth's foot descended through the smoke.
Hiyori remained curled over the trapped giant child, her small arms wrapped around his head while the broken fruit stall groaned around them. She knew her body could not stop the creature. She knew that covering him would change almost nothing.
She did it anyway.
The child beneath her squeezed his eyes shut and screamed for his mother. Hiyori lowered her head, pressing herself closer as the shadow above them swallowed the last of the morning light.
Then the air cracked.
A dark figure struck the plaza between one heartbeat and the next.
Giovanni landed beneath the mammoth's descending foot with one knee bent and his left shoulder raised. The impact drove him deep into the shattered terrace, splitting the stone beneath his boots in every direction. Dust and broken timber erupted around him, swallowing Hiyori and the trapped child from sight.
The mammoth's enormous foot stopped.
For an instant, the entire marketplace seemed to fall silent.
Giovanni stood beneath a limb several times larger than his whole body, supporting its weight on one shoulder. His boots continued to sink into the fractured stone, and the muscles across his back strained beneath his torn black coat. A thin line of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth, but his posture did not buckle.
He could feel Hiyori directly behind him.
Alive.
That single fact pushed everything else out of his mind.
The mammoth trumpeted in panic and pressed down harder. Its weight increased as it tried to crush whatever had stopped its foot, but Giovanni did not answer with a burst of uncontrolled power. Black lightning did not tear across the village. His Haki remained packed close to his body, dense enough to make the air tremble without striking the civilians around him.
His right hand rose.
Giovanni pressed two fingers against a point just above the mammoth's lower joint. Armament Haki flowed through his fingertips, passing beneath the thick hide rather than fighting through it. He searched for the gap between bone, tendon, and nerve, following the living rhythm inside the beast.
Then he struck.
The blow looked almost gentle.
A compact pulse of Advanced Armament entered the pressure point and spread through the mammoth's leg from within. The creature's muscles seized. Its raised limb went limp, and the mammoth's eyes rolled back as the interruption travelled through its nervous system.
Giovanni shifted his shoulder and redirected the collapsing weight away from the ruined stall. The enormous creature fell sideways with a deafening crash, sliding through broken market stands before coming to rest against a stone platform.
It did not rise again.
Dust rolled through the plaza in thick waves. For several seconds, Toki could see nothing beyond the enormous shape of the fallen mammoth. She stumbled forward, ignoring the pain in her palms as she searched the haze.
"Hiyori!"
A small silhouette appeared behind the man standing in the crater.
Hiyori lifted her head.
The moment she saw the open black coat, the blond hair, and the familiar sword secured at his side, the fear vanished from her face.
"Gio!"
Her voice carried complete certainty. She did not ask why he was. To Hiyori, his arrival was not another danger that needed to be understood.
It meant she was safe.
Giovanni looked back over his shoulder. The cold focus in his eyes softened for only a moment.
"You hurt?"
Hiyori shook her head quickly. "The boy is trapped."
Giovanni crouched beside the wreckage and lifted the heavy timber with one hand. The young giant child pulled his injured leg free, sobbing as Hiyori helped him crawl away from the broken stall.
"Can you stand?" Giovanni asked.
The child tried, but his injured leg folded beneath him. Giovanni caught him before he fell and settled him against the mammoth's motionless side, far enough from the beast's head to remain safe.
"Hiyori, stay with him until someone reaches you."
She nodded without hesitation. "I will."
Toki finally emerged through the dust and dropped beside her daughter. She pulled Hiyori into her arms, holding her tightly enough to make the girl squeak in surprise.
For one breath, Toki allowed herself to feel nothing except relief.
Then she looked at Giovanni.
The path of destruction leading from the distant hillside made it clear that he had not been released through any lawful order.
"You escaped," Toki said quietly.
Giovanni glanced toward the rest of the village, where the ironhide boar continued tearing through the lower homes.
"I left."
"That distinction will not matter to the council."
"No," he agreed. "It probably won't."
Toki's relief twisted into fresh fear. Giovanni had voluntarily accepted imprisonment to keep Elbaf from becoming another battlefield. By breaking out now, even for Hiyori, he had placed himself exactly where the frightened council expected him to be: armed, free, and standing over a fallen beast in the middle of a ruined village.
She knew why he had done it.
That would not stop others from seeing only a dangerous pirate who had shattered his chains.
Boots thundered across the plaza.
A group of young recruits pushed through the settling dust with shields raised and spears pointed toward Giovanni. Their formation was uneven, and several of them were visibly injured, but the sight of the escaped prisoner forced them to remember the order they had been given.
"Surround him!" one of the recruits shouted. "The prisoner has escaped!"
The others spread out, attempting to place themselves between Giovanni and the upper terraces.
Toki rose, keeping Hiyori behind her. "He just saved two children."
"We haven't received word from Elder Jarul," the recruit answered, his voice shaking despite his effort to sound firm. "Until the council clears him, he remains under arrest."
Giovanni did not reach for Ace.
He studied the young guards for half a second. None of them truly wanted to fight him. They were terrified, exhausted, and clinging to the one order they understood because the village around them had stopped making sense.
Arguing would waste time. Humiliating them would only make them attack to preserve their pride.
The white cave wolf bounded across a distant rooftop. The ironhide boar lowered its head toward a crowded stairway. Above them, the six-horned elk leaped toward a suspended bridge already splitting beneath the weight of fleeing civilians.
Giovanni's gaze shifted away from the recruits.
"You can put me back in chains after every child is safe."
The lead guard tightened his grip on his spear. "You cannot decide—"
Giovanni vanished.
A sharp crack split the air where he had been standing. The recruits flinched and raised their shields, but the only thing left before them was a shallow crater and a circle of dust.
Toki turned toward the rooftops.
Giovanni was already halfway across the plaza.
His Observation Haki spread over the village, catching hundreds of voices, movements, and intentions at once. The chaos appeared senseless from the ground: beasts charging wherever fear drove them, civilians scattering without direction, and inexperienced guards reacting too late.
The next three seconds opened before him.
The six-horned elk would land on the eastern bridge, feel the ropes give beneath its hooves, and leap again toward the third terrace. Its rear horn would catch the bridge rail and drag three civilians over the side.
The cave wolf would pursue a wounded recruit into a narrow alley, only to be startled by a falling roof beam. It would turn left, directly toward Gerd's clinic.
The ironhide boar would strike the shield line at the central stairway. The recruits would hold for less than a second before the formation broke, leaving a group of children exposed behind them.
The winged serpent would beat its damaged wings and climb above the market smoke. Its next tail sweep would tear through the supports of an occupied watchtower.
The stone-backed ape would throw the chunk of terrace it had just torn from the ground. The missile would miss Ida and crush the evacuation path behind her.
Giovanni saw each event before it happened.
More importantly, he saw where each one could be stopped.
The elk did not need to be cut down. A strike beneath the jaw at the instant of landing would disrupt its balance and drop it across the empty side of the bridge.
The wolf's body would be exposed during its turn toward the clinic. One hilt strike against the nerve beneath its ear would render it unconscious without breaking its neck.
The boar's armor was thick, but its charge committed all its weight forward. An internal blow through the softer hide beneath its foreleg would collapse its stance.
The serpent's wing membrane could be severed at the outer edge without cutting deeply into the body. It would fall, but Giovanni could direct the descent toward the abandoned market square.
The stone-backed ape required force, but not death. A Conqueror-coated kick to the chin, delivered upward instead of through the skull, would knock it out before the rock left its hands.
The village stopped looking like a disaster.
One beast. One opening. One strike.
Giovanni kicked the air and changed direction above the plaza. His fear for Hiyori had not disappeared. It remained buried beneath his ribs, sharp enough to make his hands ache.
But it no longer controlled every movement.
He reached the ironhide boar just as it lowered its tusks toward the recruits guarding the stairway.
---
On the far eastern ridge of Elbaf, the wind carried none of the village's screams.
Dracule Mihawk stood alone beneath the twisted branches of Yggdrasil, his long black coat shifting softly around his boots. His small coffin-shaped vessel had been left behind at the coast, and the path behind him bore the evidence of warriors who had tried to delay his passage without understanding whom they faced.
Eleven giant warriors now surrounded him.
Stansen stood at the front with his iron staff held across his body. Hajrudin occupied the opposite side of the ring, both hands wrapped around the hilt of his enormous sword. Beside them waited Bjorn with his fortress shield, while Sig, Thormann, Gantonio, and D.D. Tee closed the wider gaps.
Rhodes, Raideen, Kiba, and Blyue completed the circle, their weapons angled toward the lone swordsman from every direction.
They were Elbaf's elite vanguard. Together, they had repelled raiders, hunted beasts large enough to swallow ships, and defended the ancient kingdom against enemies who believed giant pride made them careless.
None of them relaxed.
Stansen studied the narrow face, the golden eyes, and the cross-shaped weapon strapped across the man's back.
"This is him," he said. "The swordsman Elder Jarul warned us about."
Mihawk's gaze moved across the formation without urgency. He showed no interest in their titles, their kingdom, or the accusations that had sent them to intercept him.
"Where is Giovanni?"
The blunt question unsettled several of the warriors.
Stansen lowered his stance. "You entered Elbaf without permission and attacked our people. You will answer the council before you go anywhere near him."
"I did not come for your council."
Hajrudin stepped forward, the earth shifting beneath his boots. "Then you should have remained at sea."
Mihawk's expression did not change.
"You are standing between me and the man I crossed this island to find."
Bjorn raised his shield. The remaining warriors adjusted around him, closing the final paths of escape. Iron chains tightened. Spearheads lowered. Axe blades turned toward the centre of the circle.
Stansen gave Mihawk one final chance.
"Put down your weapon."
Mihawk reached over his shoulder.
All eleven giants raised their weapons together.
Yoru slid free of its sheath.
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