"Blasting Rock Throw!"
Gladius activated the gear-like device on his left arm, shooting out several gray, rock-like spheres. As the spheres flew, they began to rapidly expand in size, and Bellamy smelled the scent of danger on them.
"Is this your long-range move?" he mused. "How crude."
But this rock-throwing technique was, in fact, Gladius's most frequently used move. The rocks, having been touched by the Pop-Pop Fruit user, had been quietly transformed into bombs, ready to detonate at any moment. If Bellamy didn't dodge, he would be engulfed in the flames of the explosion in the next instant.
"What a troublesome Devil Fruit ability."
Bellamy had no choice but to throw a palm of wind, striking the incoming rocks hard. The moment the wind and rocks made contact, the spheres instantly exploded. In that split second, the massive explosion completely swallowed Bellamy.
"A direct hit," Gladius said, a triumphant expression about to form on his face when Lao G suddenly cried out in alarm.
"Watch out!"
A blurred figure leaped out from behind the curtain of fire, heading straight for Gladius. Since he already knew the rocks would explode, did they really think Bellamy would be unprepared? What he wanted was this very moment of complacency.
"I won't let you succeed!"
"Waaayayaya!"
Lao G let out a strange cry, stuck out his rear, and assumed an extremely bizarre posture.
"Jio-Ken: Lower Back Pain Stance!"
He looked exactly like an old man whose chronic back pain had just flared up. This was the peculiarity of Jio-Ken; the names of its techniques all came from common ailments of the elderly. From herniated discs to presbyopia, and other moves named after arthritis, heart disease, and shortness of breath. One could only imagine how miserable the final years of the martial art's creator must have been to have had so many of these experiences.
Regardless, as soon as Lao G assumed the Lower Back Pain Stance, his entire aura and power underwent a dramatic change.
"This old man isn't down yet!"
The seventy-something-year-old pirate lowered his head and charged at Bellamy like a raging bull.
Such a decisive charge. Was he willing to sacrifice himself to protect his teammate's ability to attack? It was, admittedly, the most correct response.
"Then I'll grant you your wish." Bellamy's form shifted, and his right leg instantly underwent a hyperbolic transformation. The sound of a bowstring being drawn taut quietly filled the air. He had perfectly adapted the supercavitating punch of the mantis shrimp into his kicks.
Before the kick was even thrown, the terrifying power hidden in his right leg began to violently friction against the air. Countless sparks flew, completely igniting the fighting spirit in Bellamy's heart.
"Armament: Supercavitating Power Kick!"
With a thunderous roar, the explosive kick, wreathed in countless sparks, shot forward. In an instant, their limbs collided fiercely in mid-air.
"ROAR!"
The kick not only carried the searing heat of innumerable flames, but it also concealed an unimaginable, terrifying force. The moment their limbs made contact, Lao G felt a colossal force, like a mountain collapsing, press down on him from above. Then, his entire body, along with the deck beneath him, was blasted into the sea.
When the roars faded, a large hole had been torn through the once-intact sailboat. Lao G's figure had vanished into the sea along with the shattered planks.
"That old man isn't going to just slip away, is he?"
Now, Gladius was the only officer left on the field. When Bellamy's gaze fell upon him, Gladius's throat couldn't help but bob.
"Bellamy, you can't kill me." The power of the Pop-Pop Fruit still gave him a sliver of confidence. "I am a user of the Pop-Pop Fruit! If you want to kill me, you'll be seriously injured yourself!"
This threat was, in fact, valid. If Bellamy wanted to force a kill, he would inevitably have to take a suicide blast. It was impossible to imagine the power of a final, life-or-death explosion from a Pop-Pop Fruit user.
Normally, Bellamy wouldn't have cared and would have just flown in with a kick. But now, he had more important things to do. He had to pause the fight for a moment, allowing Gladius a brief respite.
That old man, Lao G, was special. He possessed something Bellamy absolutely had to have.
"I used too much force."
He should have held back on that last kick. He had gotten carried away in the heat of battle, completely forgetting about the prize he had yet to claim.
Bellamy's Observation Haki was locked tightly onto Lao G's presence. Even if he sank thousands of meters into the sea, as long as he didn't fall into an ocean trench, he couldn't escape Bellamy's pursuit.
Gladius, assuming Bellamy was wary of his Devil Fruit ability and didn't dare to act rashly, let out a huge sigh of relief. But what was he to do now? He clearly couldn't win this fight, but he didn't dare to retreat either. The punishment for failure within the family was no joke. Gladius racked his brain, but he couldn't come up with a good solution.
Just then, Bellamy quietly sighed in relief. In his perception, Lao G, who had fallen into the sea, had already recovered and was now swimming rapidly towards them.
"That old man... he's tough."
"Since Lao G isn't dead, I might as well finish you off now."
These two, one on offense and one on defense, with their complementary abilities, were quite a handful. Bellamy naturally wouldn't let such a good opportunity pass him by. But breaking through the wide-area destruction of the Pop-Pop Fruit was not so easy.
Bellamy completely abandoned the idea of close-quarters combat. "Then I'll just have to kill you with a newly learned move."
He raised his foot and stomped hard on the deck. A massive force shot through the sailboat. With a violent shudder, the entire vessel sank into the sea. A huge amount of seawater surged towards them from all directions. Both were Devil Fruit users; if they were swallowed by the waves, they would immediately lose most of their combat strength.
"What are you doing!"
Bellamy's attack was completely outside of Gladius's expectations. He could never have imagined that Bellamy would use such a mutually destructive tactic. Wasn't Bellamy a user of the Spring-Spring Fruit? Wasn't he afraid of seawater?
"I'm killing you, of course."
Of course Bellamy was afraid of seawater. The moment it touched him, his stamina would rapidly drain, and the still-combat-ready Lao G could then easily finish him off. But he had absolute confidence in his own abilities. A little splash like this was not enough to stop him.
Bellamy made a grasping motion in the air, seizing a surging wave out of thin air. The seawater flowed gently in his palm, yet not a single drop touched his skin. His incredibly focused elasticity allowed him to easily perform techniques that ordinary people could not.
"Go! Fish-Man Karate: Ocean Current Shoulder Throw!"