One Piece: Scourge of the Seas

In the eyes of the outside world, Impel Down, the world's most formidable prison located in the Calm Belt, consists of five levels where prisoners are held.

Each level is an unforgiving hell, where countless inmates have perished over the years, their bones piling up as silent testaments to their suffering.

However, beneath the known fifth level, there exists a secret—Level 5.5.

This hidden space remains unknown even to the prison authorities, and the one who carved out Level 5.5 is none other than Morley, one of the four commanders of the Revolutionary Army and an acquaintance of Maude.

Beyond Level 5.5 lies the most terrifying of all—Level 6, where the World Government imprisons criminals so dangerous that they seek to erase them from history itself.

Due to the government's deliberate secrecy, the outside world believes Impel Down has only five levels.

As a transmigrator, Maude was privy to all of these secrets.

His original target had been the monstrous pirates locked away in Level 6's Eternal Hell, but unfortunately, things didn't go as planned.

Handing over the prisoners from Level 5 was the highest concession the Marines were willing to make.

Though disappointed, Maude knew that anyone imprisoned in Level 5 had a bounty of at least 100 million berries. That meant they had substantial experience, making them valuable assets.

Still, bounty alone did not define strength.

For instance, as Maude unleashed his Conqueror's Haki, more than fifty out of the sixty prisoners within the tower cells collapsed instantly.

Only a dozen remained standing.

Strangely enough, the combined bounties of those who fainted exceeded those of the ones who endured.

"To possess such Haki at your age... Tsk tsk..."

"This sea, where blood runs hot, is never short of monsters!"

"You're about to freeze solid—what's 'hot-blooded' about that?"

"Shut up!"

"Been locked up here so long... I wonder what the outside world looks like now."

Inside the tower cells, a thin layer of frost covered the walls, floors, bars, and even the prisoners themselves.

Yet, the ones who resisted the effects of Maude's Conqueror's Haki seemed unaffected by the cold, gripping the icy bars tightly as they stared at him.

To them, this imposing man standing before them was far too young.

Strong and young—a combination that sparked jealousy in their hearts.

"After filtering them out, only eleven remain..."

Using Observation Haki, Maude swiftly assessed the standing prisoners in the tower.

The temperature in Level 5 was so low that even water could not remain liquid, making survival a constant battle against bone-chilling cold.

Over time, inmates either froze to death or endured through sheer willpower.

These eleven had proven their resilience.

Their shadows were bound to be of high quality.

Shadow Flow.

Maude's shadow detached from his body, slithering across the ice-covered stone floor and slipping through the bars into the cell.

The tower cells were six stories high, each level holding about ten prisoners.

The shadow first entered the ground level.

Of the nine prisoners in this cell, only two had withstood Maude's Conqueror's Haki.

The moment the shadow entered, Maude switched places with it.

The two prisoners only saw a blur before the powerful young man they envied appeared inside their cell.

"What just happened!?"

They were stunned.

Maude ignored them, slowly drawing Shusui.

Shing!

A single thrust pierced straight through a heart.

In mere moments, Maude executed the seven prisoners who had fainted from his Haki.

As their lives were snuffed out, a stream of experience flowed back into him.

Not much, but effortless nonetheless.

With a flick of his arm, Maude shook the blood from Shusui's blade before turning toward the two remaining prisoners, their faces contorted in shock.

"You bastard, why did you do that?!"

"Shut up! Attack first!"

The two exchanged a glance before charging at Maude, shackled hands raised.

However, having endured the frigid conditions for too long, their stiffened bodies moved sluggishly, and their chains further hindered them.

Despite their strength and willpower, they posed no threat to Maude.

"Too slow."

With a mere flicker of movement, Maude reappeared behind them, slicing down to sever one prisoner's shadow.

The moment his shadow was cut, the prisoner collapsed unconscious.

The remaining one stared in horror as Maude grasped the struggling shadow in his hand.

"Wh-what did you do to Seron?!"

"..."

Maude said nothing. In a flash, he was right in front of him.

The prisoner's pupils shrank to pinpricks, his face twisting in fear. He tried to retaliate, but Maude severed his shadow first.

Thud.

The prisoner collapsed onto the frozen ground, unconscious like his cellmate.

"Plenty of work ahead."

Maude smirked at the two wriggling shadows in his grasp.

Slaughter. Shadow Extraction.

The same process would repeat many times today.

Tedious, but harvesting experience was always satisfying.

Under the watchful eyes of Magellan and the others, Maude proceeded to the second level of the tower, then the third…

It took about ten minutes to clear out the entire tower.

"Alright, let's move on to the next one."

Finished with the first tower, Maude turned to Magellan and the others, a faint smile on his lips.

Magellan nodded impassively.

Momonga and Domino, however, instinctively glanced at the distant, ice-covered towers.

Before long, every prisoner in these towers would be dealt with by Maude.

The thought made Momonga and Domino uneasy.

As they made their way to the next tower, Domino pulled her coat tighter, ensuring her skirt didn't expose any skin that might provoke the prisoners.

Yet, she underestimated their desperation.

Despite her efforts, the moment the prisoners in the second tower saw her, they erupted into wolfish howls, rattling their bars in excitement, as if they would tear them apart to reach her.

Even in such freezing conditions, their depravity was clear.

Maude ignored their crude howls and responded with another blast of Conqueror's Haki.

One by one, prisoners collapsed, their bodies hitting the ground with dull thuds.

Silence fell over the tower.

"Conqueror's Haki..."

"This guy… is terrifyingly strong!"

The prisoners who could withstand Maude's Conqueror's Haki were, for the most part, seasoned and experienced pirates.

They stood behind their frozen cell bars, shocked as Maude unleashed his Haki without hesitation.

"Not bad, this time there are twenty-four of them."

With his Observation Haki, Maude sensed the number of conscious presences remaining within the tower-like prison block. He hadn't expected the selection ratio to be nearly one-to-one.

Without delay, he swiftly dealt with the prisoners in the second tower, then immediately moved on to the third.

One by one, he cleansed each prison block.

He noticed that the deeper he went, the "quality" of the prisoners increased.

In fact, in one of the prison towers, over fifty prisoners had all resisted the shockwave of his Conqueror's Haki.

That had surprised Maude.

To maintain a controlled balance between the number of shadows and corpses, he randomly executed about twenty prisoners before proceeding to the next tower.

With every kill, experience flowed into him like a steady stream, feeding back into his body.

His physique, swordsmanship, and even his Haki were visibly improving at a rapid pace.

Yet, despite these changes, Magellan and the others who had been closely following Maude failed to notice any discernible difference.

All they saw was Maude moving through the prison, coldly cutting down prisoner after prisoner and seizing shadow after shadow.

To them, this man was ruthlessly cold to the extreme.

As the great purge neared its end, some of the prisoners in the deeper sections of Level 5 who possessed Observation Haki began to sense that something was terribly wrong.

"The prison... is purging its inmates!"

"What?!"

Realizing the grim reality, a wave of panic spread through the remaining prisoners.

But no matter what they did, when their time came to be judged, none could escape the fate that awaited them.

If they fell, they died.

If they remained standing, they lived.

However, even if they survived today, they would never make it past the war at Marineford.

Maude strode towards the final tower-like prison block.

His emotionless eyes swept across the prisoners who were standing at the ready, and in that silent moment—

Some lived, some died.

"You're the last ones."

Maude's words sent a bone-chilling dread through the prisoners in the final tower block.

Not just physically—even their very souls felt as if they were being sliced apart by an icy blade.

But these were not weaklings. Sensing the impending danger, even though their bodies were stiff from the cold and their hands and feet were bound by shackles, they refused to sit and wait for death.

Unfortunately,

Maude was here.

And that meant the outcome was already decided.

Once Maude finished purging the prisoners in the last tower block, the immense gains he accumulated from the slaughter brought yet another qualitative leap in his strength.

He realized that if he were to fight Doflamingo again, reliving their battle from two days ago—

This time, it wouldn't be a drawn-out struggle.

Instead... he would hold the absolute advantage!

"With this, I have even more confidence in Marineford."

Maude looked down at his hands, feeling an overwhelming surge of power flowing through his body.

If not for being inside Impel Down, he would have wanted to unleash a Hakoku right then and there.

"It's a shame I couldn't touch Level 6."

The rewards from Level 5 alone had left Maude exhilarated, but they also made him feel an even deeper sense of regret.

What couldn't be done, simply couldn't be done.

There was no point in dwelling on it.

Maude shook his head slightly, pushing aside thoughts of Level 6 as he stepped out of the prison block.

"It's over already...?"

Domino watched as Maude walked out of the tower block, her expression slightly dazed.

In all her years working here, she had never imagined an outsider entering Impel Down and carrying out mass executions within an entire level.

Especially not an outsider who was a notorious pirate.

"Not yet."

Maude chuckled softly, a chilling glint flashing in his eyes.

"Next, I have to go through the trouble of making those corpses move... Only then will it truly be over."

-------

Want to read waaaay ahead of schedule? Head over to my Patreon ——— patreon(.)com/EmperorGarus [remove the parenthesis ( )]

NOTE: This fanfic has been fully translated and is available on my Patreon!