I am the Bandit King of the East Sea.

“...Okay.” Sugar nodded obediently.

A year later, she also learned to play the role of a good child.

However, she tilted her head slightly and couldn't help but ask a question in a low voice:

"Sig, is the toy you mentioned legitimate?" Sugar's face flushed slightly as she asked in a trembling voice.

"Do we want to turn Caesar into... a... realistic one?"

As soon as he finished speaking, Sieg felt several scorching gazes fixed on him.

Stussy's expression was awkward but polite; she knew the truth about Higuma being a lolicon. Back on All Things Island, when Higuma and Doflamingo were waging a media war through the newspapers, it was she who had helped them.

But now...

The Dragon King stared wide-eyed, looking as if he had been greatly frightened.

"Brother, your sexual fetishes are really weird! I heard Caesar was a man, right?" The Dragon King smacked his lips, then suddenly looked astonished, as if he had discovered a new continent.

"Sig doesn't leave the house for a year, but when he does, he's always grabbing men!"

"No wonder you didn't do anything bad while hiding in the room earlier. So you were holding back, preparing to unleash your lust on Caesar, and even planning to erase other people's memories... mmm... mmm..."

Before the Dragon King could finish speaking, Sieg covered his mouth, but his eyes still curved into crescents, and he winked at him with a comical smile.

This made Sieg suddenly regret releasing the Dragon King.

"Ahem... Stusi, you can open the door first," Sig said.

He opened a vacuum shield, silencing the Dragon King, and then gently pressed his hand on the silver bracelet on his wrist. The next moment, silvery-white metal flowed out of the bracelet, like water ripples across the skin, forming a fully enclosed glove that covered his hands.

With a creak.

Stussy reached out and a spatial portal quietly opened, and she and Sieg stepped inside.

.....................................

A moment later.

Deep within the ruins of the research base, sealed by ice, lies the entrance to one of the only relatively intact research institutes.

A large door silently opened in the air, and Sieg stepped out.

Before him lay a massive and majestic creature, fast asleep.

It was clearly a... dragon.

The red dragon has two wings on its back and four claws. Its appearance is ferocious and majestic, just like the fire dragon that often appears in stories and legends.

Sigmund knew the plot; this dragon was an artificial creature created by Vegapunk, originally intended to guard the research facility...

Seemingly sensing the gaze of Sig and the others, the giant dragon slowly awoke, its golden vertical pupils reflecting the likeness of Sig and the others, before it became fully awake.

When it stretches out its body, its massive form, tens of meters long, casts a large shadow, creating a powerful sense of oppression.

"Roar~~~"

The fire dragon roared to the sky, spewing out a ball of scorching flames from its giant mouth, which descended upon Sig and the others, the intense heat distorting the air.

The flames were extremely hot, and the glacier beneath Sig's feet melted rapidly as the flames spewed out, creating a deep crater.

The fire dragon let out a soft hum, spewing two small flames from its nostrils, and its eyes were about to close again, as it became sleepy once more.

"So, Vegapunk didn't completely go astray; his research was still effective," a low voice murmured.

The fire dragon suddenly became alert.

The flames in front of him subsided, and a small, faint black flame danced in the air like a ribbon, drifting around Sieg.

Sig raised his head, his eyes meeting the fire dragon's vertical pupils across the distance, and the latter seemed to sense the threat, letting out an uneasy roar.

.............................

at the same time.

"Lord Caesar, something terrible has happened!"

A pirate shouted and ran deep into the research institute, knocking on Caesar's research room.

"Someone's attacking! We don't know who it is, but they seem to be a formidable enemy that the fire dragon can't handle!"

"Oh? Don't panic." Caesar turned around, still quite calm.

"Whoosh whoosh whoosh... That fire dragon is Vegapunk's creation, so it's normal that it's not very reliable, after all, it's outdated. If anything really happens, you'll have to rely on me, after all, I am the strongest scientist."

Caesar was tall with long purple-blue hair and a pair of long horns on his head. He was wearing a lab coat, and his body turned into smoke as he floated to the monitoring room.

Here, the telepathic signal of the video Den Den Mushi is transmitted to the monitoring screen, which is playing the scene at the entrance of the research institute.

In the scene, a gigantic fire dragon, several stories high, is confronting a man face-to-face. The fire dragon roars and slowly retreats.

Due to the camera angle of the video Den Den Mushi, the man's face was not captured; only a small portion of his profile was vaguely visible, making it difficult to discern his features.

"Lord Caesar, what's the point of watching the surveillance footage at a time like this?" a pirate asked.

“Foolish. Only by understanding the enemy’s true nature can we find a way to deal with them,” Caesar then said.

Roar!

The enormous fire dragon stood up completely, its massive body, tens of meters tall, casting a large shadow. It swung its claws with all its might, using its immense weight to slam down and flatten the enemy beneath its feet.

The man seemed oblivious and showed no reaction.

The dragon claw roared through the wind, and just as it was about to strike his head, the man finally moved.

He simply raised his palm, stretched it forward, and gently patted it onto the fire dragon's giant claw.

boom!

A visible ripple spread across the man's palm.

With a deafening roar, the fire dragon's claws twisted and contorted, bleeding profusely, clearly broken. The immense force simultaneously jolted the tens-of-meters-tall dragon from its crouching position, causing its neck to arch high backward before it slammed its massive rear end onto the ground with a thud, kicking up a cloud of dust and sending the ground trembling slightly.

"Such strength?" The pirate prisoners watching the surveillance footage exclaimed in surprise.

"What kind of monster is that? Even ordinary giants don't have such power, do they? That fire dragon is very strong."

"No!" Only Caesar's expression suddenly changed drastically.

He could see clearly that the man's palm had not touched the fire dragon's claws at all; it was an attack from a distance!

This isn't brute force! No amount of brute force could produce this effect!

"Is that Armament Haki? A master like Sentomaru, who is proficient in Armament Haki, can project it from a distance..."

Caesar's expression was not good. He was a Logia-type Gas-Gas Fruit user, and his elemental form was gaseous and very large. What he feared most were strong people who were proficient in Armament Haki.

Bang! Bang bang! Boom!

On the monitor screen, the man launched another attack, using no fancy moves, just ordinary punches and kicks.

But each punch and kick carries an astonishing power.

Sometimes he would use high-level Armament Haki to strike from a distance, and sometimes he would grab the fire dragon's large tail with both arms, swinging the tens of meters-tall fire dragon around like a windmill before slamming it to the ground.

Under the man's relentless attacks, the once majestic and powerful fire dragon was beaten until it whimpered and howled, like a dog owner beating a dog, with almost no power to resist.

This is a one-sided battle... no, it's more like a game.

As Caesar watched, he suddenly broke out in a cold sweat.

He suddenly noticed a detail he had overlooked.

Throughout the several-minute-long battle, no matter how intense the fight was, the man's true face was never shown on camera.

Sometimes it's blocked by the dragon's enormous body, sometimes by its hood, and sometimes it's just the angle, so you can only see half of its profile...

"It's about time, isn't it?" Just as Caesar realized this, a faint male voice suddenly rang out.

An invisible aura erupted instantly, crashing against the red fire dragon as if it were a tangible force.

The dragon's vertical pupils first showed surprise and confusion. It staggered back two steps, and the scene seemed to freeze.

After a while, the fire dragon's massive body suddenly tilted, its vertical pupils lost their luster, and it collapsed headfirst onto the ground like a mountain collapsing.

"Fallen down? So easily?"

"That looks like Conqueror's Haki, doesn't it? Why would a powerful figure with Conqueror's Haki suddenly come to this deserted island?"

"Lord Caesar, what do we do?" the pirate prisoners asked with mournful faces.

Caesar's face turned pale; his attention wasn't on the dragon's defeat at all, but on the man.

"Where is that man? How did he disappear? Where did he go?"

The monitoring room suddenly fell silent.

At this time.

The normally static surveillance footage suddenly jolted slightly.

Suddenly, a face filled the entire monitor screen. It was an unfamiliar man with a passerby's face. He slightly raised his chin and looked at Caesar and the others behind the screen with a half-smile.

"Got you."

The monitor screen signal was switched, and the screen went black.

Caesar was already covered in a cold sweat.

"There's been a major accident, we need to call for help..." Caesar was just about to pick up the Den Den Mushi when the alloy wall of the monitoring room behind him suddenly creaked.

A large door opened from within the wall, and Luo, Sugar, and the others walked out.

Chapter 1179 Vegapunk's Chamber of Secrets 7000

The perimeter of the glacier-covered research institute ruins.

Sig knocked out the surveillance video Den Den Mushi and turned to look at the bandits who emerged from the shadows.

The first person to emerge was Gilman, who was half-transformed into a Den Den Mushi, followed by Toki Amatsuki, who was holding a cat, and the other mountain bandits.

Gilman had noticed the Den Den Mushi (a type of electric scooter) in the corner a long time ago; he was particularly sensitive to the psychic waves it emitted.

Vegapunk's research base was vast, and although most of it was in ruins, finding Caesar's location from among these ruins would not be easy.

Although Caesar is a Logia-type Devil Fruit user, he is not particularly powerful.