Chapter 1024

Flames spread through Kaidou's palace while fighters from both sides drift toward the Live Floor. Kaidou comes at Yamato meaning to kill, declaring that anyone laying claim to Oden's name counts only as an enemy. The blows pull Yamato's thoughts back to the days right after Oden died, when Kaidou sealed him in a cave with several captured samurai and threw in one serving of food and a heap of swords to learn whether the group would butcher one another over it.

Sure the warriors would despise him as Kaidou's child, Yamato instead saw them slide the meal his way and tell him to eat, offering the same warmth they had once shown the true Oden. When he asked to become a samurai, one of them severed his chains, requesting only to be remembered as "Nobody Important." Together they pored over Oden's journal with the boy. Ten days later, afraid they might not live to witness the war Oden had predicted, they chose to break out at once and fight, so that Yamato would not perish in the cave as Kaidou wished.

Tama's group keeps hidden while Usopp pulls the Beasts Pirates' focus. Nami reaches Franky by Tanishi and finds him beside Bepo, Shachi, and Penguin, while Brook, carrying a sleeping Robin from the burning castle, contacts Jinbe, who has joined the Kid Pirates. Cho, Yatappe, and Kawamatsu stand guard over Zoro and Sanji's duels with the two All-Stars, blocking any interference.

Yamato's battle with Kaidou presses on. In flashback, Yamato, then known as the "Oni Princess" and already able to wield conqueror's aura, is chained within a cave alongside a trio of samurai who refuse to serve Kaidou, one of them belonging to the Shimotsuki Family. Those captives free him, bond with him over Oden's journal, and finally break out to fight.

In the present, a furious Yamato demands to know why Kaidou stripped both him and Wano of their freedom, and Kaidou replies only that life offers no easy questions or answers. The two then unleash Raimei Hakke, a collision of conqueror's auras so fierce that even Kaidou must acknowledge its strength. Speed clarifies that the pirates dropping nearby are felled by Big Mom's far-reaching aura rather than by Usopp. The cover is a plain title-only page with no special format, the issue carried the second part of the seventh popularity poll poster, and it ran beside chapter four of Shokugeki no Sanji. This is the 1024th chapter of the Wano Country Arc.