The Noah District was the dark, rotting underbelly of Fish-Man Island. A cavernous, sunken slum built in the shadow of the massive, ancient ark, Noah. The air was thick with the smell of rusted iron, stale alcohol, and the aggressive, seething hatred of a hundred thousand outlaws.

These were Hody Jones’s followers. The New Fish-Man Pirates’ standing army. They were extremists and street thugs who believed in absolute racial superiority, gathered here to wait for the signal to invade the palace.

Instead, a single human had walked through their front gate, asked for directions, and drawn his weapons.

Roronoa Zoro stood in the center of the main dirt plaza. His black bandana was tied securely around his head. Sandai Kitetsu was gripped in his left hand, Shusui in his right, and the white hilt of Wado Ichimonji rested firmly between his teeth.

Surrounding him, on every rusty pipe, balcony, and patch of dirt, were one hundred thousand heavily muscled, weapon-wielding fish-men.

"KILL THE HUMAN!"

"TEAR HIM APART!"

"SKIN HIM ALIVE FOR CAPTAIN HODY!"

The roar of the mob was deafening, echoing off the cavern walls like a violent sea. Tridents pounded against the dirt. Swords clashed against iron shields. The sheer noise and hostility would have paralyzed an ordinary man.

Zoro, however, did not look paralyzed. He didn’t even look interested.

"You guys are loud," Zoro grunted around the blade.

He took a slow, deep breath. He closed his lone eye.

Zoro opened his eye.

THROOOOOOM.

The air in the Noah District cracked. A massive, invisible shockwave of pitch-black and deep-red lightning erupted from Zoro’s body. The burst of Supreme King’s Haki rolled outward in a perfect, expanding dome, moving faster than the speed of sound.

The impact was absolute.

The front rows of charging fish-men didn’t even have time to swing their weapons. Their eyes rolled into the back of their heads. The heavy iron tridents slipped from their hands.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

It started as a few drops of rain, then escalated into a torrential downpour of bodies. Fish-men collapsed face-first into the dirt. Entire balconies of snipers slumped over the railings, unconscious. The thugs hanging from the scaffolding lost their grip, raining down onto the streets below.

The wave of Haki washed over the district, selectively crushing the wills of the weak.

In exactly three seconds, the deafening roar of the mob was completely silenced.

The dust settled.

Zoro stood in the exact same spot.

Around him, stretching for hundreds of yards in every direction, the ground was covered in unconscious bodies. Out of the one hundred thousand fish-men that had been screaming for his blood a moment ago, half of them lay completely paralyzed in the dirt, foaming at the mouth.

The remaining fifty thousand fish-men who had managed to stay conscious—the veterans, the officers, and those with slightly stronger wills—froze.

The weapons in their hands shook. The aggressive, bloodthirsty sneers melted off their faces, replaced by a cold, paralyzing terror. They looked at the sea of their fallen comrades, and then back at the single human standing in the center.

He hadn’t thrown a single strike.

A collective, involuntary step backward rippled through the remaining army. The fish-men swallowed hard, their gills flaring as panic set in.

Zoro tilted his head, a slow, savage grin spreading across his face.

"What’s wrong?" Zoro asked, his voice low but carrying effortlessly across the silent plaza. "Are you scared?"

The taunt hung in the air, thick with disrespect.

For a moment, no one moved. Then, the massive hammerhead shark fish-man let out a furious, spit-flecked roar to mask his own terror.

"HE’S JUST ONE MAN!" the shark fish-man screamed, pointing his mace at Zoro. "HE USED A TRICK! DON’T BE COWARDS! ATTACK HIM! CRUSH THE HUMAN TRASH!"

The spell of fear broke. Driven by their fanatical hatred and the sheer mathematical advantage of fifty thousand to one, the fish-man army roared again. They surged forward from the alleys, the balconies, and the streets, a tidal wave of muscle, scales, and steel converging on the center.

Zoro’s grin widened. "Finally."

Zoro met the charging wave head-on.

A dozen eel fish-men thrust their spears simultaneously, aiming to skewer him from all sides. Zoro stepped inside their guard. He didn’t block; he simply spun.

"Santoryu: Tatsu Maki!" (Dragon Twister).

Zoro rotated his body violently, creating a localized tornado of cutting wind. The twister caught the eel fish-men, lifting them high into the air, shredding their spears into splinters, and dropping them onto the hard dirt in a chaotic rain of bodies.

The center of the mob collapsed inward to fill the gap. Hundreds of fish-men piled into the center, climbing over the unconscious bodies of their allies, trying to bury Zoro under a mountain of pure mass.

Zoro vanished into the crowd. For a few seconds, he wasn’t visible. There was only the sound of clashing metal, breaking bone, and screams of pain.

Then, the center of the mob erupted.

"Santoryu: Oni Giri!"

Zoro burst out of the pile, his three swords crossed. The high-speed, forward-charging strike carved a clean, cross-shaped trench through a platoon of swordfish fish-men, sending them flying backward.

He moved through the crowd like a shark through a school of baitfish. His footwork was flawless. He didn’t waste a single movement. A sword thrust toward his back; he sidestepped, letting the blade pierce a different fish-man. A heavy club swung for his head; he deflected it with the flat of Shusui and delivered a brutal knee to the attacker’s jaw.

"He’s too fast!" a thug screamed, clutching a broken arm. "We can’t surround him!"

"Use the heavy artillery!" an officer bellowed from above.

From the rusted balconies of the slums, fifty fish-men rolled out heavy iron cannons. They aimed the barrels down into the plaza, completely disregarding the safety of their own men fighting on the ground.

"FIRE!"

Fifty cannonballs shot through the air, raining down on Zoro’s position.

Zoro didn’t run for cover. He planted his feet. He crossed Shusui and Sandai Kitetsu in front of his chest.

"Nitoryu: Nigiri - Maguma!"

Zoro swung both swords downward in a savage arc. He didn’t just cut the air; he gripped the atmosphere with his raw physical power. The razor-sharp air blades shot upward like a localized hurricane.

The fifty cannonballs met the wind pressure and abruptly stopped in mid-air before being sliced cleanly in half. One hundred pieces of iron rained down into the dirt around Zoro, smoking harmlessly.

"My turn," Zoro growled.

He jumped, his boots cracking the dirt. His sheer leg strength propelled him fifty feet into the air, landing squarely on the iron scaffolding of the second tier.

"He’s up here! Get him!"

Zoro sprinted along the narrow metal walkways. He held his swords out at his sides like wings.

"Santoryu: Karasuma Gari!"

He launched a flurry of rapid, mid-air slashes, intercepting a squad of flying fish-men attempting to flank him from the upper levels. His blades cut their weapons to pieces, sending them tumbling off the balconies. He landed on a stone outcropping, assessing the battlefield below.

There were still over forty thousand fish-men swarming the streets. They were organizing now. A massive phalanx of spear-wielding warriors formed a wall of pointed steel, advancing slowly toward the structure he stood on. Behind them, archers dipped their arrows in poisonous blue venom.

"We have him pinned against the wall!" the commander of the phalanx yelled. "Shields up! Advance!"

Zoro watched the organized approach. He looked at the sea of scales and iron. He realized that cutting them ten by ten was going to take too long.

Zoro crouched low, his swords crossing in front of his chest. He focused his Armament Haki, coating his three blades in a dense, flowing layer of dark purple energy. He twisted the muscles in his torso and arms to their absolute breaking point, creating maximum tension.

"Santoryu..." Zoro mumbled around the blade in his mouth.

The fish-man phalanx stopped their advance. The sheer, overwhelming killing intent radiating from the lone swordsman made their instincts scream at them to run.

"Hold the line!" the commander shrieked. "Brace yourselves!"

"...Senhachiju Pound Ho!"

Zoro swung.

It wasn’t a slash. It was a natural disaster.

Three massive, elongated, spiraling waves of compressed, Haki-infused air erupted from his blades. They merged instantly into a colossal, spinning bird of destruction that tore across the plaza.

The attack hit the shield wall.

The iron shields didn’t break; they vaporized. The front three rows of the phalanx were instantly lifted off their feet, caught in the tearing winds of the 1080 Pound Phoenix. The attack didn’t stop. It plowed through the center of the army, carving a fifty-yard-wide trench straight through the middle of the mob, throwing thousands of fish-men into the air.

Zoro jumped back down into the remaining crowd. The phalanx was broken, but new squads of specialized fish-men rushed to fill the void.

A massive pufferfish fish-man rolled forward, expanding his body until he was a giant sphere covered in venomous spikes. "Die, human! Poison Needle Roll!"

Zoro didn’t slice him. He stepped to the side, brought the flat of Shusui against the fish-man’s spiked side, and used a powerful, blunt-force parry.

"Gyuki Yuzume!"

Zoro thrust his blades forward in a straight, concussive strike that didn’t cut, but acted like a battering ram. The blunt impact sent the pufferfish flying backward like a spiked bowling ball, crashing through a squad of his own men and knocking them out like bowling pins.

"Use the nets! Trap his swords!"

From the shadows of an alley, fifty thugs threw massive, heavy chains woven with thick sea-prism stone netting, aiming to entangle him completely.

Zoro saw them coming. He planted his feet.

"Santoryu: Hyo Kin Dama!"

Zoro crouched and leaped forward, spinning like a rolling ball of blades. He didn’t cut the nets; he slipped flawlessly through the gaps in the heavy chains, maintaining his spinning momentum until he slammed directly into the squad of net-throwers, sending them flying with blunt-force trauma.

The fight dragged on. Ten thousand left. Eight thousand.

Zoro moved continuously. Block, parry, slice, step. He fell into the zone—the state of ’Nothingness’ where the sword and the swordsman moved automatically. He cleared a massive section of the central plaza.

Five thousand left.

The remaining army was broken. The fanaticism had been beaten out of them, replaced by the primal instinct to survive. They started to run. They dropped their tridents, their swords, and their shields, sprinting toward the dark alleys to escape the slaughter.

The elite commanders of the district—the ten strongest fish-men who had stayed in the back, waiting for the grunt forces to tire Zoro out—realized the battle was lost. But their pride wouldn’t let them flee.

They stepped forward. They were massive, heavily scarred fighters wielding heavy iron maces, poisoned scimitars, and spiked knuckles.

"If we all strike at once, he cannot block us all!" the lead commander, a massive Lionfish, shouted. "For the pride of the New Fish-Man Pirates! DIE!"

The commanders activated their own crude, rudimentary forms of Armament Haki. Their weapons took on a dull, cloudy gray sheen as they channeled their willpower into the steel.

The ten elite commanders charged simultaneously from ten different angles. They moved incredibly fast, their dull Haki-coated weapons aimed at Zoro’s vital organs.

Zoro didn’t drop into a defensive stance. He didn’t tense his muscles for a massive attack.

An octopus fish-man commander lunged first, swinging six dull-gray Haki-coated swords at Zoro’s neck.

Zoro casually raised Wado Ichimonji and Sandai Kitetsu, parrying the flurry of blows without shifting his footing. He didn’t just block; he scrutinized the attacker’s weapons.

"Cheap iron," Zoro critiqued like a disgruntled blacksmith, dodging a thrust and parrying another. "Bad balance. Terrible grip. Your edge alignment is a joke."

Zoro stepped inside the octopus’s guard, disarming him with a swift twist of his wrists. He caught one of the fish-man’s dropped swords in his free hand, tested its weight for a split second, and threw it away in absolute disgust.

"You don’t deserve to hold a blade," Zoro stated coldly. "Stick to tentacles."

Zoro delivered a swift, brutal kick to the commander’s chest, knocking him out instantly.

The remaining nine commanders paused, staring at their fallen comrade.

Zoro sheathed Sandai and Wado. He placed his hand on the hilt of Shusui.

He didn’t draw the sword fully. He only pulled the blade an inch from its scabbard.

He channeled his advanced Armament Haki—Ryuo. He didn’t just coat the blade. He let the Haki flow, projecting his willpower outward past the physical edge of the steel.

The remaining nine commanders charged.

Zoro simply clicked Shusui back into its scabbard.

Clack.

The sound echoed through the silent cavern.

The elite commanders froze mid-strike. Their dull gray Haki weapons were inches from Zoro’s body.

A sharp, metallic ping followed.

The heavy iron maces, the poisoned scimitars, and the spiked knuckles wielded by the commanders all cleanly, perfectly split in half. The invisible, flowing edge of Zoro’s Ryuo had passed through the space between them, shattering their weapons without a single physical slash connecting. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

The force of the internal destruction bypassed their defenses entirely. Simultaneously, all nine elite fish-men collapsed to the ground, unconscious, deep impact wounds etched across their chests.

Zoro exhaled a slow breath. He loosened his grip on the scabbard.

He looked around.

The Noah District was silent. The deafening roar of the mob, the clashing of steel, the screams of the injured—it was all gone. The only sound was the distant dripping of water from the cavern ceiling.

Zoro walked slowly toward the center of the plaza. He wasn’t walking on dirt. The ground was entirely obscured by a carpet of unconscious, groaning fish-men. Bodies were piled on top of bodies. Broken weapons, shattered shields, and torn flags littered the area.

Zoro found a particularly large pile of defeated thugs near the center of the plaza. He stepped up onto the mound of bodies, his boots resting on the broad, unconscious back of the hammerhead shark he had defeated earlier.

He sat down on the highest point of the mountain of scales.

Zoro reached up with his left hand and pulled the black bandana off his head. He tied it casually back around his bicep. The physical exertion of swinging his swords thousands of times finally registered in his muscles. A dull ache throbbed in his shoulders.

Zoro leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. A single, thick bead of sweat rolled down his forehead, tracing a path over his scarred eye.

Zoro raised his right hand. He wiped the bead of sweat away with his index finger, looking at the moisture for a second.

With a careless, relaxed flick of his wrist, Zoro cast the sweat onto the dirt below.

A slow, highly satisfied grin spread across his face as he looked out over the sea of one hundred thousand defeated enemies.

"Well," Zoro murmured into the quiet cavern, his voice a low, rugged rumble. "That was a nice warm up."

He leaned back, preparing to close his eye and take a well-deserved nap.

Bloop-bloop. Bloop-bloop.

A loud, electronic ringing interrupted the perfect cinematic silence.

Zoro frowned. He tapped the small, black Kimoyo Bead bracelet Ben had given them for communication. He pressed the center bead to answer the call.

"Yeah?" Zoro grunted.

"WHERE ARE YOU?!" Nami’s voice shrieked so loudly from the tiny speaker that Zoro had to hold the bracelet at arm’s length to protect his eardrum. "WE ARE AT THE PALACE! THE INVASION HAS STARTED! WHERE DID YOU GO?!"

"I took a right at the coral reef," Zoro answered defensively.

"YOU WENT THE WRONG DIRECTION, YOU ABSOLUTE MORON!" Nami roared over the comms. "GET YOUR SENSE OF DIRECTION FIXED AND GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW!"

Zoro glared at the Kimoyo Bead. He let out an annoyed breath.

"I’m resting," Zoro stated flatly.

He tapped the center bead, hanging up on the furious navigator instantly.

Zoro crossed his arms, closed his eye, and went to sleep on his mountain of defeated enemies, leaving the palace invasion entirely to the rest of the crew.