"P-Punishment Fragment?" Blood still flowed from the corner of Usopp's mouth as he stammered at the man who had suddenly appeared.
"Never mind. This isn't the time to talk." The man's brow relaxed, and he turned toward Koza.
Koza's eyes were faintly red as he growled at the white-haired man. "You still dare to appear before me?!"
He immediately raised his gun and fired three times. The bullets formed a straight line aimed at the man's forehead.
"So Anzu has already begun using the experiment on all of you?" The white-haired man sighed softly. "Very well. I'll wake you up for now."
It was impossible to see how quickly he drew. Gunfire seemed to ring out for only an instant, and the three bullets approaching him in a straight line were deflected to either side!
Koza rushed forward, but the white-haired man somehow appeared directly in front of him, pressing a white pistol against his forehead.
"..." Koza froze. Even with his exceptionally sharp eyesight, he had completely failed to see the man move.
"Sand Shadow Belit..." He gritted his teeth. "You traitor! You still dare to show yourself?!"
Belit's expression remained unchanged. He said calmly, "If you don't come out, I'll completely destroy this portion of your power."
"What are you talking about?" Koza sneered, unable to understand him.
Suddenly, unbearable pain erupted in Koza's brain. It felt as though someone were pulling a steel spike out of his skull.
"Argh!"
Koza screamed in agony. A moonlight-like power shattered in the next instant, and his body abruptly collapsed. He breathed rapidly through the pain, his eyes unfocused and the world before him blurred.
Eventually, he raised his head and looked at the familiar yet unfamiliar figure.
After so many years apart, the man appeared much older, yet still seemed just as energetic as before.
"T-Teacher?" Koza murmured.
The man before him was indeed Sand Shadow Belit, his teacher and one of the Cartel's original founders.
After leaving the Cartel, Belit had wandered from place to place. He had once appeared in Alubarna and stopped a Cartel attack, but his movements were unpredictable, and no one knew whether he had remained in the city.
No one could have expected him to appear here, directly in front of Koza.
"The situation has reached its worst possible state," Belit said. "Order the army to stop its attack. Otherwise, Alabasta... and perhaps the entire world will be destroyed!"
"..." Koza remembered what had happened earlier. His final clear memory was of confronting Cobra. After learning that the entrance to Hell had disappeared, his mind had become hazy. After that, he seemed to have...
Had he shot Cobra?
His pupils abruptly contracted. "How could I...?"
Koza hurriedly found his communicator and shouted, "Stop the attack! Cease fire! Withdraw from Alubarna!"
No one responded. The communicator remained silent.
"As I thought, they've been completely controlled. More accurately, they've entered an artificially induced state of fanaticism. They can no longer listen to anything in this condition," Belit said gravely.
"Teacher... what exactly is happening?" Koza looked at Belit in confusion. He understood none of this, but his teacher clearly knew something.
"We'll discuss it after suppressing this conflict." Belit looked around. Sure enough, large numbers of Cartel soldiers were already surrounding them.
"What are you... doing?" Koza frowned. "Stand down!"
The soldiers acted as though they could not hear him. They pulled their triggers, sending countless bullets pouring forward.
The entire Cartel army in Alubarna seemed to have sensed Belit's arrival and was converging on his position.
The royal guards had been almost completely annihilated. Aside from civilians hiding underground and in air-raid shelters, over ninety-nine percent of the people moving through the city were Cartel soldiers. They now streamed endlessly toward Belit.
Aircraft circled overhead, combining with the forces below to form an inescapable net around him. Nothing but absolute destruction could remain within that encirclement.
"We're finished..."
Usopp stared in shock. What was happening? Instead of chasing Luffy and his companions, all these people were gathering around him?
Something unbelievable happened in the next instant.
Murderous fire descended like a rainstorm. Several armed helicopters strafed the ground while the surrounding soldiers pulled their triggers together. More than a hundred thousand bullets seemed to converge on Belit and the other two.
Just then, Belit's breathing became incomparably heavy. At the instant before the bullets swallowed them, he moved.
He moved with unbelievable speed!
His agile body appeared in every corner of the battlefield, moving so quickly that even machines struggled to track him. Only afterimages resembling dark feathers remained along his path. His speed vastly surpassed that of the bullets.
Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat!
Belit fired with perfect composure. Gunfire and muzzle flashes combined with his high-speed movement, making feather-like rain appear to fall throughout the area. At the final moment, his body abruptly appeared behind an approaching tank.
With the last gunshot, all his remaining power gathered at the muzzle. The pistol fired a bullet containing power no handgun round should have possessed, a final shot capable of destroying even a tank!
Seventh Flow!
Time seemed to return to its normal flow. Koza and Usopp stared blankly at the scene, unable to say a word.
They had no idea what had just happened. They only saw the more than one hundred thousand bullets approaching them suddenly lose their momentum or get pierced by newly fired rounds before falling to the ground. Bullets rained down with a tremendous clatter, forming a clearly raised mound across the ground!
They had merely seen Belit disappear from beside them and appear behind the tank. Then, after he fired a single shot, the tank exploded.
"W-W-W-What just happened?!" Usopp lay on the ground and rubbed his eyes. He wondered whether this was a hallucination before death. He had been sinking into despair, only for such an astonishing reversal to occur.
"Teacher... has grown stronger." Koza knelt on the ground and stared in disbelief. "Much stronger than he was in the Cartel!"
"An old man still needs to exercise occasionally." Belit somehow reappeared before them.
At the same moment, every surrounding soldier collapsed. The perfectly synchronized and continuous impacts formed a wall of bodies.
"But I can't keep exercising forever." Belit looked into the distance. "Let's move somewhere safe before we talk."
Compared with the Cartel soldiers inside and outside Alubarna, those Belit had defeated were only a drop in the ocean. This remained a dangerous place.
He looked at the injured Usopp and exhausted Koza, grabbed them both by their collars, and raced away with them.
.......
"Hmm? Why did they all suddenly change direction?"
Zoro had been fighting Mr. 1, but for some unknown reason, his opponent suddenly abandoned the battle and left.
That irritated Zoro. Mr. 1 had eaten the Dice-Dice Fruit. Zoro could have defeated him by now if they were fighting alone, but there were simply too many enemies nearby.
With the royal guards eliminated, Cartel soldiers were everywhere. They constantly interfered while Zoro fought Mr. 1. Individually, they were extremely weak, but their numbers seemed endless.
After Mr. 1 withdrew, Zoro turned his attention toward the soldiers. At that moment, however, they all began running in the same direction.
Dense beads of sweat covered Zoro's face. He leaned against a collapsed wall and panted heavily.
Fighting so many people without pause had left him extraordinarily exhausted.
His body was also covered in wounds, but when he slashed himself with the Reverse-Blade Sword, those injuries rapidly healed.
However, the Reverse-Blade Sword could heal injuries but could not restore stamina. In fact, its treatment accelerated his exhaustion. Zoro therefore continued panting heavily.
He lifted his three swords and was about to follow the soldiers to investigate when he abruptly stopped.
Someone had appeared behind him, someone with an exceptionally sharp presence.
Zoro turned and saw a woman.
She wore a wine-red coat and sky-blue trousers, with long black hair falling behind her. By the standards of this world, she was relatively petite. She now looked at Zoro with an unusual expression.
More accurately...
She was looking at his swords.
Zoro did not lower his guard merely because she resembled a child. He sensed an incomparably sharp presence from her. She was like a living sword.
Strong...
She was a swordswoman.
Strangely, however, she carried no sword.
"Who are you?" Zoro asked gravely, instinctively tightening his grip on his two drawn blades.
"Yachiru," the woman answered succinctly. "And you? Who are you? You're so weak, yet you have such extraordinary swords."
So she truly wanted one of his swords? Did she mean Dark Moon or the Reverse-Blade Sword?
Zoro spoke coldly. "You don't even have a sword?"
"Not having a sword doesn't mean I'm not a swordswoman." Yachiru scoffed. "Why should a sword be such an inconvenient thing?"
She pressed together the index and middle fingers of her right hand, then gently raised them.
"If you can't withstand this strike... then in exchange for sparing your life, you'll temporarily give me your black blade."
Indeed, Yachiru had her eye on Zoro's Black Blade: Dark Moon. One glance told her it was not truly his sword. In fact, anyone could have seen that.
Black blades were exceedingly rare in this world. How could someone on Zoro's level possess one?
"Oh? You're awfully arrogant. You're going to use only two fingers?" Zoro laughed in fury. "Don't get too conceited, brat."
He prepared to draw. Yachiru's true depth was impossible to determine. He could sense that she was powerful, but he had never heard any information about her.
Zoro knew something about every famous swordsman in the world. He had gone to considerable effort to find information about them, yet had never encountered any mention of such a woman.
Famous female swordsmen were already rare. If he had seen information about her, he could not have forgotten it.
Who was she? Why had she come to Alubarna now? She did not appear to belong to the Cartel...
But none of those questions mattered!
Zoro focused his entire mind. He knew only that the woman before him was a master, an exceptionally skilled swordswoman. Whether or not she possessed a weapon did nothing to diminish the pressure she exerted.
The first to strike held the advantage!
Zoro instantly surged forward, using Three-Sword Style with a blade in each hand and another clenched between his teeth. He unleashed Hiten Mitsurugi-ryu: Nine-Headed Dragon Flash!
With three swords, it became twenty-seven flashes!
He delivered twenty-seven slashes in a single instant, using each of the nine different fundamental sword strikes. Not even Kokushibo had been able to withstand this godlike barrage. It was currently Zoro's strongest attack.
Yachiru raised an eyebrow, not because Zoro's strength impressed her, but because she recognized the technique.
She possessed Ann's memories, and therefore Roger's as well. Roger had once lived alongside Himura Kenshin and Hiko Seijuro and was extremely familiar with Hiten Mitsurugi-ryu.
Although Roger had already split Ann from himself by then, the two still retained a special mental connection.
Ann had also fought beside Himura Kenshin and understood the techniques of her former comrade.
Seeing Zoro use the Nine-Headed Dragon Flash therefore aroused a little of Yachiru's interest.
However...
This was not the time to play with a child.
Clang!
The Nine-Headed Dragon Flash arrived in an instant.
Facing twenty-seven simultaneous slashes, Yachiru smiled faintly. Her two fingers moved faster than the limits of human perception, positioning themselves perfectly before each of Zoro's twenty-seven strikes!
"In terms of force, that was just about adequate for trimming my nails."
After blocking Zoro's final strike, the corner of Yachiru's mouth rose into an arrogant smile. "Boy, you still have a long way to go."
Slash!
Her two fingers swept downward. Zoro suddenly felt an intense pain in his chest. A sword wound appeared as though an invisible blade had cut him, and blood sprayed into the air!
----
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