One Piece: Path to Power

Chapter 161: [161] Liberation

[3350 words]

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The Undying spent the next two weeks under the guidance of the God of War. With Ares' combat sense and life of strife, he could unload an arsenal of knowledge and techniques.

*Krrrr* *Szzzzz*

In the depths of Eternal Hell, a shirtless Damien stood like a tempest forged from molten fury, his presence unsettling even the darkest corners of Impel Down. His body pulsed with newfound, seething energy—a harmony between his Armament Haki and the Pulverization Fruit's raw power. This fusion manifested as a molten-like Haki that coursed over his skin, blazing in fiery, red-orange cracks that seemed to breathe with a life of their own. 

"Ruhahahaha! It looks like your Armament Haki was waiting for a little push to evolve. It really is impressive!"

Ten days of war under Buddha shockwaves and a primal ape's explosions, alongside Ares' two weeks of training, had also sharpened his appearance—the striking resemblance to the War God was unmistakable!

[Current Damien Image (in Discord)]

.

Damien breathed in his frenzy state. With a flex, he flooded his left arm with the energy, allowing it to concentrate along the limb.

*Fwwm!* It was similar to the usual black sheet but filled with cracks of atomizing power. A callback to his very first power-up, but so much more.

'Where my Empyrean Release held the pulverizing energy in place, requiring double the energy… this Haki has both flowing in harmony and becoming one… an Empyrean Haki!'

Simultaneously, a blue screen flashed in his mind.

[Armament Haki Mastery has reached the Grandmastery (I) Stage.]

As per reaching Grandmastery, Damien unlocked his version of the Ultimate Skill alongside his {Empathy}, {Destiny Perception}, {Natural Dread}, and now {Empyrean Haki}.

[Empyrean Haki: Perfect harmony between Ryuo and Atomizing energy.]

[New Haki Image (in Discord)]

.

Damien savoured the feeling, only to be graced with a thunderous smack. *Bang!* Ares tattooed his hand to his son's back, laughing out loud, "I've never seen anything like that. As expected of my boy!"

The Sin Incarnate reined in his new Colours of Arms, his mind stuck on another thought: "I'll need some more time for Observation Killing, though," he sighed with pity, shaking his head.

"..." Meanwhile, Ares' smile twitched from the comment, "Hey, hey, don't be so greedy. You know that Conqueror's Haki can't be trained like that–"

He suddenly felt a sharp, throbbing pain run down the left side of his body. With a grunt, Ares hunched over, clutching his heart.

Damien quietly watched his old man panting through the pain. "How long can you hold on?"

"Heh," Ares chuckled, looking up with bloodied teeth. "I still have a couple months left. Why? Are you feeling sad about your dad? Come, let me give you a hug!"

Bam!

A sizzling boot smacked the older pirate, throwing him across the floor and crashing into a wall, his hand slamming on a diamond-hard bar with enough force to shatter a normal man's skull.

"I want you to meet a few people," Damien explained in the direction of the dust cloud.

Ares found his way out of the crash zone, seeming quite curious. "Oh, my son's trusted companions?" Though his eyes suddenly became playful, "And someone a little more special than that…"

Damien shrugged at the insinuation, "You could say that."

Ares shot up from the floor, standing roughly eye-to-eye with Damien, squinting as if to read his very soul.

"Ruhahaha! As expected, my son is popular with the ladies. Reminds me of myself!"

However, he suddenly froze. For some reason, Ares thought he was missing a few pieces of the puzzle. "More than one?" he blinked.

Damien nodded candidly.

Ares felt his mouth dry up, "Your mother would kill me if I tried something like that…" Though his face turned cheery once again, "Ruhahaha! I look forward to meeting my daughters."

There was relief hidden under the glint of his single eye. Relief that his eventual grandchildren would have a better father than he ever was.

"So," Ares solemnly said. "When do we plan on leaving here?"

Damien looked at the darkness around him, feeling all the knocked-out prisoners. "The World Government has made quite the dent in the pirate population in the past half-month. I suppose it's time to spice things up…"

The Sin Incarnate's crimson eyes flashed with mischief as he approached a gloomy cell.

"How 'bout it, Mors. You wanna get out of here?"

The frightening words resounded in the dark enclosure, reaching the ears of the aged pirate. Two cold eyes fell upon Damien, almost as if trying to decipher his every intent.

"What's in it for you?"

Damien smirked. "Well, though I'm ready to break out, my fellow companions are not prepared to take on the full brunt of the World Government," the young pirate explained. "So I need a few people to take some of that heat."

Mors breathed deeply as he considered the options. But his silence didn't last long…

Clang!

The thick chains snapped as the titanous man stood up and walked to the gate, looking down to meet the undying pirate eye-to-eye.

"If you wanted that, you could just break open all the other cells in this entire floor, let alone this prison. So what else do you want from me?" 

Damien grinned at the man's speculation; his skepticism was warranted.

"One added condition for your release," he offered, studying the monster before him. "You will give me your Devil Fruit when you are about to die, whenever that may be."

Mors narrowed his eyes, glaring into Damien's very soul.

*Fwooo* An ominous breeze picked up while the Bloodspawn's thick braided hair and beard floated in the air, strand by strand, crackling with black lightning.

Boom!

A seething reddish purple field of Haki suddenly raged out, enveloping the younger pirate. The air was screeching in pain, releasing sharp frequency sounds like scratching your nails on a chalkboard.

Ares watched with interest from the side, smirking at the sight of the unmoved Damien.

"..."

"Morararara!"

The tense atmosphere crumbled within seconds as the hulking pirate burst into deep laughter.

He gave a devious smile that resembled a rekindled flame. "I am already at my life's end, so going down under the flames of war is far more inviting than rotting away in this cell."

With a firm nod, he promised, "You can have my fruit when I'm at death's door, even if I have to come back from the afterlife to give it to you!"

Damien was pleased, a smile stretching across his face.

He placed his hand on the Seastone door, and with a little force, the metal warped around the fingers.

*Krrr* Boom! The gate was ripped off its hinges, allowing Damien entry. The thick chains were broken with similar ease, granting freedom to the pirate who had been locked up for over thirty years!

.

Ares, who was outside the cell, squinted his sole eye, exhaling a dangerous breath: "Bloodspawn, you better not try anything."

Mors walked out of the cell, stretching his muscles. 

"Don't insult me, Ares," he scoffed, cracking his neck from decades of stiffness. "A Warborn always pays his debts."

The father of the year hummed and turned to Damien, who had walked up to another cell with the same scheming smile.

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"Looks like Linlin and Shiki left you in quite the mess…" the young pirate muttered, knocking on the cell to announce his arrival.

The woman within looked up with eyes the colour of the infinite sky. Her pale blonde hair cascaded down the prisoner garb, but it didn't detract from her beauty.

"How about it? Do you want to go and take revenge on those who threw you in here? 'Fallen Angel' Herja!"

The once-feared threat, Captain of the Valkyrie Pirates. Her silky hair was unsullied even after two years. 

"You were the one who took down Enigma, the Sin Incarnate," she softly said. "What happened? Did Rocks leave you to die?"

Damien almost laughed, "Rocks? He's dead."

Herja's eyes widened, and her jaw fell open.

Meanwhile, the undying pirate took the time to tear open the door again.

The warped metal door crashed to the side, allowing Damien to enter and remove the woman's cuffs.

Herja looked at the thick shackles on the floor, the echo still drumming across the Eternal Hell. 

"Why?"

Damien met her bright eyes and casually replied, "Shiki left us for dead at God Valley. Give him my hello."

The woman narrowed her eyes, almost as if she were trying to read her liberator's thoughts. "Very well."

Boom!

The woman suddenly burst with a flash of white, bringing the day to a perpetually dark Eternal Hell. It was as bright as the sun, and the light had a comforting warmth attached to it, like a warm blanket.

Moments passed to reveal a changed Herja.

The woman stood poised with timeless grace, her golden armour glistening like liquid sunlight against her flawless skin, each polished plate echoing the elegance of a warrior goddess. Her long, platinum hair cascaded down her shoulders all the way to her feet, framing a face of ethereal beauty, both fierce and serene, with eyes that held an intensity capable of piercing the soul. 

Though her armour exuded an aura of strength, her beauty remained undeniable, making her appear both as a vision of battle and a symbol of divine allure.

Sure enough, she was true to her moniker as the most beautiful woman in the world!

[Herja Image (in Discord)]

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As of now, there were four endlessly dangerous prisoners outside their enclosures, and the guards of Impel Down were none the wiser.

Damien hummed a tune, walking to a few more such cells.

Boom!

The doors were thrown off one by one, allowing the ones inside to walk out. At first, they were reticent, fearful of the monsters at the center. But their personalities soon made their debut:

"Oh, freedom at last. They locked me away, tried to bury my art, but you can't cage brilliance, sorry thank you," a dark-haired prisoner said. Her eyes widened, a deranged smile twisting her face, wild and gleeful. "Now, I'll finish what I started… flesh, bone, screams—all mine again, sorry… thank you."

"Carmelion Nera," Damien addressed her. "You drove many species to extinction with your experiments while you were under the Government… eating them whole."

While Nera giggled to herself, the pirate's gaze settled on Hou P. Lace. A lanky, scarred man covered in wounds at every stage of healing, his face twisted into an eerie, tearless grin that echoed with his unsettling "haehaehae." 

Born unable to feel pain or shed tears, Lace had always been an outcast, craving the comfort he never received. That craving twisted into sadistic cruelty, leaving him a deranged shell of a man—a fool doomed to rot wherever he ended up.

"Although you're batshit crazy, you have an interesting power."

Lace tilted his head with his permanent grin.

[Lace Image (in Discord)]

A third prisoner left Damien speechless with his attitude.

It was a sharp youngster named Lin Feng with sword eyebrows and jade skin: "Jie-Jie-Jie! After fifty years, this young master is free!" 

The three prisoners were awfully lost in their liberation, giddy beyond belief.

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"What are you planning?" Ares whispered to Damien.

Yet all he got in return was a smirk. "You three, don't get too comfortable now, I didn't free you to let you be free."

"..." The words caused a deafening silence and flared the trio's instincts.

Nera's form twisted and grew, scales rippling over her skin as feathers burst from her limbs, merging with fur in a chaotic blend of nature's fiercest predators. Her stuttering breath turned into guttural growls, and her once manic gaze burned with feral intensity, green eyes glowing like embers. She extended her clawed arms, wings stretching wide as her voice cracked into a mad cackle, "Sorry, thank you… for this… sorry, thank you." 

[Nera Image (in Discord)]

Boom!

Lace's harrowing gaze remained grinning while his hands materialized yellow cages floating atop his palms, each holding a power that focussed on the mind rather than one's physical defenses.

Unlike the others, Lin Feng extended both arms without flair, each swirling with a cold metal glint. *Click* Clack* A moment later, they turned into giant machine guns!

Damien hummed in approval under the three's malicious gaze. Each having lost many screws either before their capture or while rotting in Impel Down for decades.

"All you Level Six prisoners are monsters of your times," he applauded. "But how long can you remain standing?"

An overpowering burst of Haki screamed across the floor, swallowing all three of them in its weight.

Thud!

Boom!

Bam!

They were brought to their knees, their faces planting to the cold, hard floor of Eternal Hell. The paralyzing Haki threw them out of their fruit powers, making them feel the cold embrace of death that was moments away.

"I only ate people for the good of the world…!"

 "I-I can't die yet! I have to wear your face first!"

"Thirty years in Hedong and thirty years in Hexi, don't bully the young and poor!"

.

They each had a sales pitch under Damien's dreadful Haki, but it didn't amount to anything.

"You three barely add up to a bounty of a billion. Do you really think I have any use for washed-up rags of a forgotten era?"

The blunt words forced them to gulp in budding fear. Damien's undisguised glare scanned through them, reading out a few facts.

"Carmelion Nera, the user of the Glut-Glut Fruit. You give a new meaning to the saying, 'You are what you eat.'"

"'Hou P. Lace. The damned son who tortured and brutalized his own family in their minds, leaving their bodies untouched—the Psyche-Psyche Fruit."

"'Jade Arsenal' Lin Feng – Arms-Arms Fruit user who transformed himself to bomb Marine Bases."

"Amongst the hundred or so scum on this level, you guys have fruits well beyond your worth. The government hopes to keep power abilities from entering circulation so they can let you rot here."

A devious smile appeared on Damien's face as he dropped the bomb, "It's almost like they left you guys here for me."

The healthy complexion of the Sin Incarnate's arm began to grey out as a white fern-like pattern arrived. He extended the palm toward the three pirates as an ominous stream of energy came. 

"Ughhh!"

They each croaked and screamed as if their own hearts were being pried out from their chests, ripping them straight out. Yet what came out wasn't an organ; it was a fruit, three of them. 

Thud!

Each patterned fruit fell to the floor, the pirates mirroring the motion with their collapse. 

*Fwooo* The air shook as Damien placed the prized fruits in his inventory, leaving silence behind. 

Mors and Herja were both flabbergasted, looking as if they had seen a ghost. Ares' eyebrows were raised, his mouth forming an "O" shape. 

"…"

"So that's how you intend to take my power at my death, aye?" Mors managed to say. 

Herja shook her head in disbelief. "Such a power can turn the world upside down. Why take the risk by showing it to us?"

Damien heard their words and shrugged them off. "Do you think anyone will believe a long-standing fact being broken from two pirates?"

*Zap* With a wave of a hand, the de-fruited pirates were dusted away. 

"Feel free to make your way to the surface; we'll join you in a bit." He looked at Herja and said, "Do as you wish with those who remain."

Damien and Ares made their flamboyant exit, their bodies quaking with synergizing Haki to strike down any opponent before they could speak.

Herja remained at Level Six, looking at the desperate inmates with disdain.

"I've spent years enduring the lustful remarks of you infernal dogs."

"W-Wait, wait! T-That was a joke!"

"Yeah… we were just praising your beauty!"

The beautiful woman scoffed, looking down on their pathetic responses. "Miserable scum like yourselves deserve only one end."

She raised one hand, flooding it with a pale light.

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"Heaven's Fall!"

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The dark Eternal Hell was lit with light beyond what the sun could produce. As the new dawn calmed down, it revealed all but two people still standing.

"You just undid decades of the Government's work," Mors surveyed his surroundings with a smirk. "You have my respect, Fallen Angel."

…

While the combined force of the Bloodspawn and the Fallen Angel made their way up the different Hells, another duo strolled through the Starvation Hell.

…

Most prisoners in the Starvation Hell had bounties of over fifty million Berry. 

The heat from Level 4, the Blazing Hell, would endlessly seep up and into this level. That, in tandem with the sparse food and water, kept Starvation Hell's prisoners in a near-death state. 

The temperature alone had left the floor to appear like a desert: dry and littered with breathing corpses across its endless sea of cells. 

Soft steps echoed along the dunes of the layer, made by the father-son group of the Einar D. family.

Ares remained in his dusty, twenty-year-old shroud, but Damien had thrown on a new shirt.

A fitted black shirt adorned with intricate silver designs clung to his muscular frame and accentuated every sharp line of his physique. Crisp white pants contrasted sharply against the dark surroundings, with belts and buckles adding a rugged elegance to his look.

[New Clothes Image (in Discord)]

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"Hmm," Ares pondered, his boots sinking into the sand every step. "I wonder what could be so special to divert your attention here, Damien."

The younger pirate's eyes glanced at Ares before returning to the floor's sandy slopes—unnecessary suspense for a cliffhanger. 

They walked through, kicking away sand and creating dusty trails as they went. The weeping cries of half-dead prisoners left the place awfully spooky, but it was nothing more than background music to the duo. 

"Not 'what,' but 'who,'" Damien corrected; his target here was long-set. "I'm looking for a certain someone with an array of skills beyond simple combat. One that every crew needs…"

His words piqued Ares' attention. They walked ahead, ignoring the blaring alarms growing louder by the second.

…

After a good ten minutes, Damien stopped. He stood before an inconspicuous cell that was like all others: covered with the dead and dying, skulls and bones decorating the edges of the enclosure. 

Of the thirty prisoners in the cramped cell, only half were breathing. 

They looked past the humid air and onto the figures that blocked the light. The two silhouettes resembled mirages created from the sand. Yet amongst the dozen eyes was a sole pair of firm eyes.

The owner of the eyes was like a dried corpse; the only thing that showed life was the fact that his chest was ever-so-slightly expanded and constricted from respiration. 

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"His eyes are rather sharp for a man at death's door," Ares examined. 

Damien nodded, scanning the gaunt figure slumped in the cell. "It wasn't easy tracking down the right list of prisoners—the updates are few and far between. But I'm glad to see you're still breathing," he remarked, a hint of impatience in his voice.

The nearly-dead man had no strength to reply, his gaze fixed in silence, too weak to respond.

A faint smile touched Damien's face as he continued, "I once had a fateful encounter with a man named Quentin Hammer. He built a Titan of a ship for me... or, rather, for the crew I was with back then…"

The words sent a ripple through the prisoner, leaving him visibly shaken.

The former Fourth Division Commander leaned closer, his voice laced with a rare hint of sympathy. "The Titanic he forged was a true monster of a vessel," he said quietly, almost to himself. "But even she fell from grace, abandoned, with no one to tend to her."

Damien's piercing gaze bore into the man's eyes as he delivered the final revelation: "Hammer told me, just days before he was killed, that his son was enslaved before his very eyes. That son… that's you, isn't it? Quentin Kraft!"

To Be Continued...

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Author's Corner. 

Chapters 22 and 23 provide the backstory of Quentin Hammer, the man who forged the Titanic. I suggest reading those chapters to recall Kraft's past for the coming chapter of the jailbreak. Having a ship and a proper shipwright is essential for any crew... Oro Jackson, Moby Dick, Going Merry, Thousand Sunny, etc.

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