Noah quickly converted Dalia and Syl into Apostles within the mechanical fortress.
Chariot: Dalia (Arms-Arms Fruit)Temperance: Syl (Slow-Slow Fruit)
The Zoan-type user, Wood, was also transformed into an Apostle, though he was assigned to the Minor Arcana rank. His Devil Fruit was the Chameleon form of the Lizard-Lizard Fruit.
With Wood's transformation, an unexpected surprise came to light.
"You're an agent of CP4?" Noah asked.
"Yes, my lord!" Wood replied respectfully.
Noah smirked at his unintentional discovery. "Quite a lucky find. Dalia really was careless, letting a CP agent infiltrate his ranks. No wonder he was later removed."
At that moment, Mary walked in.
"Big brother, things are worse than expected. Among the 573 people inside the fortress alone, there are 16 spies from various factions. Three are from the World Government, one from the Navy's SWORD, six from the underground kingpins, one from the Donquixote Family, one from Barrack Workshop, two from Big Mom's pirate crew, and two from the Revolutionary Army."
Noah was speechless. Dalia's lair was like a sieve, letting in both friend and foe.
Kro frowned as well. "Lord Noah, if we leave things as they are, Dalia's position will remain precarious, and he could easily be undermined by these factions."
"What do you propose?" Noah asked.
Kro's gaze turned icy. "We might as well go all out. Using the Fungus-Fungus Fruit, we could destroy Stuka Island entirely. Let these spies and criminals perish here, and transfer the viable members to Storm Isles."
"Excellent idea." Noah approved, recognizing that Kro wasn't just skilled in combat but also a sharp strategist.
By now, Stuka Island had been deeply infiltrated by various factions. Leaving it as is would only lead to more trouble down the road.
If they relied solely on Mary's ability to screen everyone individually, it would take at least a month to secretly investigate all 30,000 people on the island.
Noah made the decision at once. "Kro, go ahead and implement the plan. Make sure no one leaves Stuka Island."
"Understood!"
Kro quickly organized the forces, while Noah blocked the island's communication snails and unleashed a widespread fungus to induce unconsciousness.
In less than thirty minutes, every living creature on Stuka Island was knocked out.
Wearing gas masks and protective suits, Mary and her team, with the help of Gal Tino's makeshift quarantine chambers, began the screening process. Given the urgency, Mary conducted a rapid assessment, interrogating large groups at once, simply asking if they belonged to any outside faction or had committed heinous acts.
Six hours later, Mary completed the preliminary screening of over 30,000 people. All problematic individuals were promptly poisoned by Noah, resulting in 4,736 deaths.
Dalia's subordinates suffered a near-complete wipeout, as their past crimes of murder and arson made them unworthy of mercy. Only a few with strong physiques were kept as experimental subjects; the rest were executed.
As for the spies, Noah showed no leniency.
At dawn, with the first light of morning, Ari used his wormholes to swiftly transfer the screened survivors to Storm Isles.
To avoid leaving any trace, Kro ordered the bodies of eliminated gang members from the West Sea's ice storage, where they had been kept after a large-scale purge of over 100,000 undesirables from the Five Families.
These corpses, covered with Noah's fungi, were soon overgrown with multicolored mushrooms, obscuring their original features.
Meanwhile, Noah sealed the essential production lines on Stuka Island, scattered a pile of junk metal, and detonated explosives.
Wood, one of the few "surviving" spies, immediately reported the incident to his CP4 superiors.
The story was that Dalia, along with his remaining forces, had narrowly escaped from Stuka Island, breaking free from his previous predicament.
Seven hours later
Three Navy warships docked at the harbor of Stuka Island.
Leading the mission was Vice Admiral Maynard. Through his binoculars, he saw a devastated harbor strewn with blast craters, smoldering fires, and a landscape covered in mushrooms.
"What a terrifying sight…" Maynard murmured, visibly shaken.
Clad in protective gear and gas masks, Navy soldiers ventured into the heart of Stuka Island.
The core area was littered with corpses covered in mushrooms and torn-apart machinery. After a quick survey, they concluded that the island's population was effectively wiped out and hastily withdrew.
Maynard wrote up a report based on his soldiers' observations and photographs, recommending that Marineford classify Stuka Island as a forbidden zone.
The mushrooms continued to spread, and test animals developed symptoms of poisoning within an hour, indicating the island was no longer viable.
This was exactly one of Noah's goals.
While it appeared that he had destroyed Stuka Island, in reality, he hadn't truly given up on it. With his Fungus-Fungus Fruit, he could restore the island's ecosystem whenever he wished.
Meanwhile, in the Marineford Fleet Admiral's office.
Kong and the Five Elders spent over ten minutes in conversation. Though both parties were deeply dissatisfied with Dalia's recent failures, they begrudgingly agreed to allow him to retain his position among the Warlords of the Sea, as there was no suitable replacement.
The loss of Navy and CP spies was also dismissed as an acceptable sacrifice; after all, the life of a spy is always at risk.
The following day, the World Economic News ran extensive coverage on Dalia's narrow victory against a Fungus-Fungus Fruit user and the destruction of Stuka Island.
For the factions with spies stationed on Stuka Island, this news was like a bitter pill.
But they had no choice but to accept it.
No one could have foreseen that Dalia would go so far as to destroy his entire island to root out spies.
With Stuka Island's fall, global black-market arms prices immediately skyrocketed, temporarily reducing the intensity of conflicts in various regions.
At this point, the Donquixote Family hadn't yet taken control of Dressrosa, and Doflamingo hadn't allied with Kaido, so Dalia held a near-monopoly on the black-market weapons trade.
Now that the terrifying weapon master Dalia was temporarily out of the picture, it was likely that the Donquixote Family would accelerate its expansion along the Grand Line.
Noah wasn't particularly concerned by this development.
After all, the Donquixote Family was merely a middling power. In the New World, they were like cattle awaiting slaughter. When the time was right, Noah wouldn't hesitate to eliminate Doflamingo and the Donquixote Family, even if it meant clashing with Kaido and Big Mom.