Uchiha Puppet Master, Starting from One Piece.

Im uttered the name again, and this time, the longing in its voice was even stronger than before, so strong that the Five Elders could clearly feel its presence.

"It has been such a long time since I last saw it."

The five elders stopped breathing at that moment.

The impact of the name Nighogg on the Five Elders was so profound that it defied description. This name signified the period before the establishment of the World Government, before the war that altered the entire world order, and before an era in which the name was sealed by history, unrecorded in any existing document, and erased from everyone's memory by the World Government through every means possible.

This terrifying existence.

“Nighogg was a… no…”

There was a brief pause in Im's voice, like someone recalling the past getting stuck on a detail of their memory and needing some time to sort it out.

"He is synonymous with destruction."

Im paused here, its jaw twitching slightly in the shadow of its hood.

The five elders stood there, unable to utter a single word.

The Five Elders saw Im's lips.

Those were thin, almost invisible, bloodless, pale lips, their curves slightly upturned, forming an arc that wasn't a smile but was more unsettling than one.

That curve was telling the Five Elders something.

Im was very happy.

It's not the simple, direct happiness that humans experience when faced with pleasant things, but rather a kind of happiness that comes after a long, tedious period of calm, finally allowing it to rediscover the concept of "being alive," a happiness tinged with excitement and cruelty.

"interesting."

Im uttered a word that it had rarely used in the past eight hundred years.

"How interesting, an old friend has appeared."

At this moment, Satan made a decision that he knew might anger Im, but as one of the Five Elders, he had to make it.

He stepped forward.

"Lord Im."

Satan's voice was steady, but there was a solemnity that only appeared when facing a real, irreversible danger.

"Please take back the idea you are considering."

Im did not answer.

Its hood tilted slightly, as if looking at Satan, or as if seeing through Satan, as if seeing through Satan's body, Satan's soul, and the entirety of Satan's existence.

“Nighogd is no ordinary being, not even your old friend…”

Satan continued, "It is one of the most dangerous beings in the history of this world. Its decaying power can erode everything in this world, including Haki, Devil Fruit abilities, and even space itself. Your personal journey to Elbaf is far too risky, far beyond what we can bear."

"We can't bear it?" Im repeated these six words, his voice carrying an emotion that Satan couldn't discern.

“Yes, we can’t afford it,” Satan gritted his teeth. He knew that what he was about to say might cost him Im’s trust, but he still had to say it.

"You are the cornerstone of this world's existence, the sole reason why this world's order is maintained. If anything happens to you—"

"If anything happens to me..."

Im interrupted Satan: "What will this world become?"

Satan opened his mouth, but no words came out.

"Lord Im."

Vochuli's voice was gentle, with a carefully calculated sense of proportion that would not offend Im but still allow him to express his views.

“Satan’s words are not without merit. While Nighogg’s decaying abilities may not pose a real threat to you, Nighogg himself possesses many abilities that we have not yet fully understood. If someone else were to interfere while you were fighting Nighogg—”

The five elders exchanged glances.

Im did not speak.

Its body turned again, from facing the Five Elders to having its back to them. Its gaze passed through the window between the flowers, through the thick clouds above the Holy Land of Mary Geoise, through the boundary between the sea and the sky, and was directed towards the unimaginably distant land of giants, Elbaf.

"I'm going to see an old friend. Don't worry, there won't be any problems."

Im said that the nostalgia in his voice was so intense that it was almost overflowing.

"By the way, I'd like to see if the owner of those eyes is qualified to inherit that name."

The last of the five elders, who had remained silent until now, finally spoke.

"Lord Im."

Nasujiro's voice carried a firmness completely different from Satan's. Satan's dissuasion stemmed from his concern for Im's safety, while Nasujiro's dissuasion was driven by an emotion he rarely showed in public.

"If you insist on going, at least let us accompany you."

Im tilted his head slightly, his face expressionless.

"you?"

Im uttered a word and then paused for less than a second, but in that brief moment, the Five Elders felt something more unbearable than any rebuke.

Chapter 238 The Throne of Heaven

When the light of the teleportation array shone on the land of Elbaf, the sky over the entire giant kingdom changed color.

It wasn't that dark clouds obscured the sun, nor that a storm whipped up waves; rather, it was the sky itself—the sky that had maintained a certain unchanging blue since the existence of Elbaf—that, in that instant, seemed to be torn apart from within by something. The blue began to fade from the very center of the sky, like ink being drawn from rice paper. The fading was neither too fast nor too slow; fast enough that everyone who looked up at the sky could clearly see the process, yet slow enough that everyone who witnessed it felt as if they were witnessing a disaster that would never end.

The blue of the sky didn't disappear; it was replaced by a new color.

That color doesn't exist in any of the songs of the bards of Elbaf, nor in any of the murals passed down through generations of giants. It's a color that the World Government has deliberately erased from the collective memory of the entire world, a color that, the moment you see it, will send an uncontrollable shiver down your spine.

The color of emptiness.

It is not black, not white, not gray, not any color you can describe in words.

If you insist on using language to capture it, you can only say that it is a colorless color, a color that does not exist in this world, a color that should not be seen by the eyes of any living being.

But your eyes did see it.

And when your brain processes this information, it will tell you a conclusion more profound than any fear.

You shouldn't be seeing this.

You shouldn't see this, because no creature that sees it will live long enough to describe it to another creature.

On the land of Elbaf, all the giants who were looking up at the sky stopped breathing at the same moment.

It wasn't out of fear or shock, but because their bodies made a judgment at the most primal level, beyond consciousness and will.

The giant warriors have faced the most terrifying sea monsters in the world over the past thousands of years, confronted tsunamis capable of destroying a country, and witnessed lava erupting from underwater volcanoes that could melt everything, but their bodies have never felt such fear as they do now.

The light from the teleportation array began to dissipate after a few breaths, but it didn't truly dissipate, because that void-like light never belonged to the category of "existence." It merely left an impression on your retina that was clear enough to convince you that you had indeed seen something, yet blurry enough to make you begin to doubt whether you were hallucinating.

After the light faded, a person appeared in the very center of the land of Elbaf.

No, not just one.

There are many people.

Once your gaze falls upon that central entity, you lose the ability to focus on anything around it. This is because your visual system has reached its limit in processing information about that entity, and your brain lacks the computational capacity to process any other information.

Im stood there.

It may be slightly taller than Kaido, but compared to the giants whose average height is over twenty meters, Im looks more like a child.

But at this moment, every giant near the teleportation array, including the elite giant warriors who were over twenty meters tall, felt as if they were looking up at Im.

It wasn't that they were looking up at it, but rather that their perception told them that the height of that existence could not be measured in physical units. Its height was the upper limit of the cognitive scale of this world, and their gaze had to pass through the highest point they could imagine to barely reach its feet.

Five people were standing behind Im.

All five elders.

Jaigolusia Satan stood on the far left, his eyes scanning the giant in front of him without any emotion, as if he were looking at something that couldn't speak, that didn't need to care about, or that wasn't even worth looking at for a second.

Behind the Five Elders, there are ten more people.

The Knights of God.

Not everyone.

There are ten people.

None of the Knights of God were wearing armor.

It wasn't because the armor would hinder their movements, but because for people of their level, the concept of protection was a joke in itself.

The leader of the Knights of God stood at the very front of the twelve.

These are people who cannot be found in any public documents of the world government. Their names are known to only a handful of people worldwide. If you accidentally hear their names, it means you have been placed on a list of people who should not be alive.

The other members of the Knights of God were scattered behind Garin, forming a loose, seemingly chaotic formation, but each person's position was just right to cover all possible directions of attack.

Their presence.

Shanks stood behind Bai Yu, his left hand gripping Griffin tightly. The patterns on the hilt were embedded in his palm lines. That familiar touch did not bring him any sense of security at this moment, because the information his Observation Haki conveyed to him in that instant was beyond what he could handle calmly.

His Observation Haki is among the best in the world. His Observation Haki can detect the opponent's killing intent the moment it arises, can see the scene a few seconds or even tens of seconds before the opponent makes a move, and can sense the aura, emotions, intentions, and vitality of all living beings within a radius of several kilometers when he closes his eyes.

But at the moment.

His Observation Haki was trembling.

Those scents.

The aura of the Five Elders was like five mountains that suddenly rose from the seabed, so high that they pierced the atmosphere, their tops completely free from the gravitational pull of this world, and entered some kind of space that did not belong to this world.

The aura of the Knights of God is completely different.

Shanks' face turned deathly pale in that instant. This deathly paleness was not a metaphor or a figure of speech, but a real, physical whiteness that appeared on his face after he had lost almost all of his blood supply.

"Loki."

"White Feather."

He paused for a moment.

"You must leave now."

"Leave?" Loki frowned, his eyes fixed on the area in the distance that was being enveloped in the color of the void, his anger blazing as if it were about to burst from his eyes.