Kuzan and Fujitora fell almost simultaneously beside Sengoku.
The instant they landed, both men collapsed to their knees, their faces deathly pale.
The ten thousand elite marine officers and soldiers who had just perished—
It could be said that the two of them had personally escorted those lives straight into the gates of hell.
The crushing weight of guilt nearly tore their souls apart.
Blood-stained tears streamed uncontrollably from their eyes.
If they could trade places, they would rather it had been the two of them lying dead,
instead of those ten thousand courageous marines who had charged ahead, only to fall into that vicious trap.
High above, Roya streaked across the sky at blinding speed.
In his haste, he had only a single glance to spare at the deck of the Pluton.
The next instant, his body plummeted like a cannonball, smashing down upon the skull of the beast that had just devoured so many lives.
This despicable creature had to be destroyed immediately.
First—because the courage of every marine had been nearly extinguished by its insidious trickery.
Only by repaying it in kind, by tearing it down, could their morale be rekindled.
Second—because by consuming so many lives at once, it had gathered more than enough biological matter to trigger a battlefield metamorphosis.
And Roya had no doubt that all the combat data he had ever revealed was already fed by the traitor into these bio-weapons' systems.
If this monster were allowed to complete its mutation, then even he would struggle greatly to bring it down.
It was undeniable—
this traitor had used their deep knowledge of the Navy, the pirates, and the Revolutionary Army to fracture the battlefield into its current state.
The vast hordes of alien beasts were thrown against the pirates and revolutionaries, pulling Roya's attention elsewhere.
But the true killing stroke was delivered against the Navy, who outwardly seemed the stronger force.
And in mere minutes, half the marines' main fighting strength had been annihilated—feeding the beasts with enough life matter to mutate.
Had Roya not realized the deception and rushed here without hesitation,
at least two of the twelve titanic beasts on this line would have already absorbed enough to evolve into weapons specialized to counter him.
Once that happened, as long as those two could stall him for even a short while, the remaining ten could annihilate Mary Geoise and wipe out both the pirate and revolutionary lines in one fell swoop.
Then what awaited him would not be twelve ordinary giants—
but twelve fully mutated monstrosities.
The thought made Roya's hatred for the hidden traitor burn ever fiercer.
And yet his heart grew colder, calmer.
Because he was the last line of defense for this world.
If he let his emotions cloud his judgment, failing to counter each deadly move in time, the world would surely fall.
From his palms burst forth streams of observation-based spiritual energy,
forming two high-speed rotating drills at arm's length.
They whirled with the hardened resilience of Armament Haki,
and the destructive edge of Conqueror's Haki.
The beast's skull yielded like paper—pierced instantly by Roya's drills.
As he expected, beneath the skull there was no brain tissue,
no organ to house consciousness or direct movement.
These bio-weapons were crafted to mimic the shapes of known lifeforms,
creating false weak points to lure humans into traps.
Roya would not be deceived.
The drills spun, quickly locating the creature's "stomach sac."
Without a moment's hesitation, he bored straight toward it.
So long as he seized control of that sac,
no matter how massive or powerful this body was, it would collapse and submit beneath his feet.
But the beast had no intention of letting him reach its core unchallenged.
Its insides bristled with deadly snares.
Bone spurs—numberless as a field of flowers—erupted around him,
growing endlessly, pressing against his path.
And from hidden recesses, thick bone spears launched unpredictably, aiming to skewer him.
Forced into such a cage, Roya expanded his domain of Observation Haki,
phasing his body partially outside of space itself,
evading the unseen spears and wild growth of bone thorns.
But his progress slowed drastically.
Worse, a faint sense of danger was crawling into his heart.
He realized at once—the mutation had begun.
His drills struck a dense cluster of bone spurs.
This time, he felt the difference—
his penetration speed slowed ever so slightly.
It was imperceptible to most, yet clear enough: the metamorphosis was taking effect.
His senses analyzed instantly.
"So, it's already grasped the essence of my attacks—how I unravel matter at its roots."
"And your solution is to increase the density of your structure, hoping to delay my disintegration…?"
"Should I call that naïve—or simply stupid?"
"After all, you're no true mind—just a crude intelligence, drawing from a preset library of countermeasures,
selecting what seems optimal without true adaptability."
Roya was certain this was the truth.
And that certainty gave him confidence.
"If that's the case, these twelve thousand-meter beasts pose far less of a threat than I first imagined."
"I'll crush them quickly—and force the traitor to reveal their next move."
His heart steadied.
He shifted the output of his spiritual energy, tuning it to unravel high-density matter.
His speed surged.
Within moments, he was less than ten meters from the sac.
Sensing death, the monster unleashed a desperate defense.
Layer upon layer erupted around the sac:
densely woven bone armor to resist piercing,
hollow bone shells to absorb impact,
forests of spears bristling with spikes,
elastic muscle-like fibers,
leather, scales, and every other defense its database could summon.
All converged on that single core.
From Sengoku's vantage, the beast's abdomen swelled grotesquely, as though bloated with disease.
Its head and tail shrank as tissue mass poured into its belly, twisting its body into a bizarre spindle-shape.
The next instant, the spindle exploded from within.
From the blast, a lone figure emerged—dragging behind him a black sac the size of a house.
He landed squarely on the deck of the Pluton.
It was Roya, who had driven straight through the beast's skull.
Please drop some power stones supper me at my
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