Chapter 429: Trial by Thunder: The Skypiea Gauntlet

“I have to pass this trial, no matter what… for power!” Enel clenched his fists, his voice burning with longing.

When Karl came to Skypiea, he only took the Rumble-Rumble Fruit, leaving Enel’s fate hanging with no clear direction.

After all, it was the Rumble-Rumble Fruit that made Enel who he was—not the other way around. He’d honed its power for years, but still couldn’t defeat Luffy. That was why Karl cast him aside.

Gripping his weapon tight, Enel charged forward, the blade in his hand slashing through the air as he lunged ahead.

“This one’s got some real fight in him. Looks like the Holy Knights will soon welcome another full-fledged member.” Siyue sat high among the clouds. Seeing Enel’s performance actually stirred something in her.

Every year plenty manage to clear the second stage, but the third? That’s rare. In Siyue’s eyes, Enel definitely had the potential to make it through.

The entire primeval forest covered a five-kilometer radius.

Normally, running from the edge to the center meant taking on attacks from vines, puppets and treants—nothing unusual.

But to truly see what the Straw Hat Crew was capable of, Siyue had cranked things up a notch for Luffy, Zoro and Sanji.

As for that mysterious Ye Fan… she couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d crossed her path before. That hunch was why she hadn’t tweaked his trial.

The first to notice the spike in attack strength was Zoro.

“What’s this… Armament Haki unleashed?”

Zoro had no idea how far he’d gone, but the puppet standing in his way was now shrouded in a pitch-black shell.

“You… how’d you end up with an opponent like that?”

“I’ve never seen anything like that before!”

Following the sound, Zoro spotted a group of five approaching from the right. When they saw the shadowy wooden puppet facing him, they all froze in shock.

If you lived on Skypiea you knew all about Three-Colored Haki—but even after all these years of trials, no one had ever seen Lady Siyue give a challenger an opponent infused with Armament Haki.

Just how strong was this guy to make Lady Siyue personally up the difficulty?

“Thud, thud, thud…”

“Hey! Come look at this!”

“What? No—don’t!”

They must’ve lingered too long, because now the wooden puppets coated in Armament Haki had marked them as targets too.

In a blink, five pitch-black puppets had surrounded them.

Regret crept in fast. If they’d known how savage these puppets were, they’d never have hung around.

“We withdraw! We’re out! Please just let us go!”

“Yes! We surrender!”

“Drop your weapons!” The burly man in the lead hurled his blade to the ground, dropping to his knees before the puppet in a plea for mercy.

The others saw his move and quickly followed suit.

The second and first trials were nothing alike. Pass the first, and if you had stamina, you were fine. But the second had a death list—a whopping 90% elimination rate.

Even so, people lined up each year. This was one of the few truly fair shots they had at moving up in the world.

But those jet-black puppets? They weren’t about to talk things over.

A dark fist smashed down—hard. The leader’s head burst in a spray of crimson, blood spattering across the faces of the other four.

Nobody in the One Piece World was safe or innocent. You couldn’t survive this long without power, cunning, and a bit of ruthlessness.

Come here with a bleeding heart, and you’ll either get sold off by slavers or wind up as dinner on someone else’s plate.

If you were a woman, you might face even crueler fates.

The puppet’s bloodstained fist drew back, leaving the four survivors rooted in shock by the grisly scene.

But the other puppets didn’t slow for a second.

“Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!”

“No, stop! Please!”

Zoro snapped out of it just in time to watch all five fall where they stood.

Zoro wasn’t exactly a good guy, but he never raised a hand to regular folk.

He wanted to know—just who was unleashing this level of carnage?

Anger simmered. All three of his swords shined with black Haki, another wellspring of power inside him itching to burst free.

With Armament Haki reinforcing his blades, his presence was fierce and magnetic. These wooden puppets didn’t stand a chance for long. He tore through them like a wild bull, smashing everything in his path.

“If not for the rules, I’d jump down and fight you myself,” Siyue admitted, a spark in her eyes as she watched Zoro’s sudden burst of strength. In her family, she only sparred with her siblings and the top dogs in Karl’s Pirate Crew.

The outcome was always the same—a light spar, nothing serious. Siyue was Karl’s daughter, after all. No one could afford accidents, especially not her brothers and sisters, who’d rather sail off into the open sea.

But as one of the officials for the first two stages, Siyue couldn’t join the action herself. Only in the third and fourth could you face challengers one-on-one.

If the proctors from the first two stages jumped in, hardly anyone would pass these so-called trials.

“Too slow. By the time he fights his way up here, I’ll have lost all interest,” Opera muttered. With a flick of her spirit-binding array, she whisked Luffy—who was busy yanking little red flags in the second stage—straight up to the top.

At the same time, she told Zikt, stationed at the third stage, not to let anyone else sneak through.

“Hey, Nami, Usopp—looks like someone nabbed Luffy,” Chopper called out. He was too small to help sell food, so he just perched on the rooftop with a telescope, scanning the battlefield and relaying updates.

While making his usual rounds, he saw everyone making progress—until he got to Luffy. Right then, something nameless swooped down, yanked him away and vanished.

“Nani, nani?”

“Can you spot Luffy anywhere?”

Business was booming below, so Nami didn’t stop her sales pitch. Only Usopp looked up and shouted the question to Chopper.

Honestly, they figured nothing on Skypiea could really threaten them anyway. And if Luffy and the others couldn’t handle this, well, they’d only be cannon fodder themselves.

If Luffy’s team couldn’t handle this, none of them would stand a chance.

“Alright, I’ll keep looking,” Chopper replied, still scanning the field through his telescope.

At first, he hadn’t thought to check further back. He hadn’t seen Luffy in stages one or two, so he finally turned the telescope toward the third stage.

After a careful sweep, he found nothing. Suspicion crept in—was Luffy really in the fourth stage?

Even doubting it, Chopper angled his telescope over. To his surprise, there stood Luffy in the fourth stage, face-to-face with a man wrapped in lightning.