The battle had grown even fiercer than before.
Magellan pressed his assault with the enhanced Hydra, the Nine-Headed Hydra (Ouroboros), mercilessly engulfing the surrounding prisoners while simultaneously bombarding with poison shells and poisonous Gas.
Sue deflected and parried it all with countless Paper blades and gusts of Wind whipped up by her Paper Wings, forcing openings to land her own attacks. Even direct hits of poison severe enough to be fatal were nullified through molting.
Perhaps owing to the difference in their styles, one centered on evasion and the other on defense and endurance, it was Magellan who kept accumulating wounds. On top of that, Sue neutralized his poison attacks through molting, and anything she couldn't neutralize she blocked with Paper or her sword. The result: Magellan's offense was being rendered almost entirely ineffective. Aside from fatigue and minor damage to her clothing, Sue was unscathed.
Magellan wasn't unscathed, but his injuries amounted to little more than numerous shallow cuts. Nothing that would hinder his ability to keep fighting.
But of course, merely being able to continue wasn't good enough.
The matchup of Powers was bad, the matchup of fighting styles was bad, and the battle was crawling forward at a glacial pace. Down below, Hannyabal and the rest of his subordinates were putting their lives on the line to hold back the prisoners, and Magellan needed to reach them before it was too late. Yet no matter how much time passed, he couldn't break free. Pinned down by a single female prisoner, unable to go to their aid.
Worse still, the better Sue fought, the more it emboldened the prisoners watching from the sidelines. Even now, in places beyond Magellan's reach, the skeleton keys Mr. 3 had crafted were surely being used to unlock cells and free the remaining inmates.
On top of everything, there was still no report from Shiryu, who had been sent via the lift toward the main entrance. Not that he'd have had a moment to answer a Den Den Mushi in this situation even if one came. No information had come in yet about how the Blackbeard situation was being handled, either.
'The longer this drags on, the worse things get. We're well past the point of being choosy about methods!'
His patience exhausted, Magellan made his decision: to unleash his trump card. No, his Forbidden Move. From his body, a poison began to seep out, different from the blue-violet hues of before. A deep crimson.
"This poison is a Forbidden Move... It could destroy Impel Down itself. But given how far things have gone, I deem it unavoidable...!"
The ominous deep crimson venom rose up, taking on the shape of an enormous demon. The sight was so grotesque that Sue, the prisoners, all of them went wide-eyed and trembled.
"Venom Demon... Hell's Judgment!!"
Moving in sync with Magellan, the colossal arm swung down toward Sue.
Toxic liquid splattered from the point of impact. But it didn't stop there. Using the impact site as its origin, the poison spread as though infecting everything it touched, corroding a vast area.
The same applied to the countless Paper blades Sue had used to defend herself. The moment Sue discerned this property, she immediately severed and isolated the contaminated portions of Paper from the rest. But those severed pieces fell lifelessly to the ground.
Just like when Paper was burned by Flame, the damage and alteration had exceeded their tolerance threshold, rendering them impossible to control.
Magellan pressed the advantage, swinging his arms in rapid succession, reducing the volume of Paper dancing through the air at a terrifying rate.
"Wh-what the hell is that poison!? It keeps spreading from wherever it touches... this is bad!"
"That's... I've never seen anything like it...!"
"So this is Magellan's trump card..."
"D-dammit, it's no use... I knew a jailbreak was impossible...!"
"Get further back! If you're too close, the Erosion will get you!"
"Lady! You need to run too! That thing... there's no way even you can handle that!"
"Don't be ridiculous. I won't let a single one of you escape. You pulled this stunt in my castle, clung to your worthless hope... spend your remaining moments regretting it!!"
With a declaration that was the very embodiment of despair, Magellan drew back his arm alongside the Venom Demon. He moved to sweep it in a wide horizontal arc, intending to mow down scores of prisoners in one stroke.
He tried to sweep them away. But he couldn't.
"'Papercraft.'"
In that instant, Sue gathered her Paper Flakes, and then began pulling in the countless chunks of rubble scattered all around. Beside her, they changed shape. Arms formed, legs formed, a head formed, clad in armor like a suit of plate mail, and in its hand, a massive sword of Paper and rubble took shape.
"Kokujo Tengen Myo-oh!!"
The Paper-and-rubble colossus, encased in armor and its face hidden behind a curtain-like mask, caught the Venom Demon's arm on its sword. It didn't stop at merely blocking. It followed through, slashing the arm apart and cleaving deep into the Venom Demon's main body.
The strike had been launched on a trajectory that would catch Magellan himself. He reflexively blocked with his other venomous arm, barely managing to stop it, but was shoved backward with his balance badly broken.
He teetered on the brink of falling flat on his backside before barely holding his ground. But when the onlookers saw that Sue's blow had repelled Magellan's most powerful technique...
UOOOOOHHH!!
"Are you serious...? Lady, you could do something like that!?"
"Amazing, that's incredible! She pushed back Magellan's poison Giant, the one that looked totally deadly!"
"She's not losing! She's not losing at all!"
As the crowd's energy surged once more, Magellan's face twisted with irritation. Before his eyes, part of the sword's blade, contaminated by poison from that last exchange, peeled away and fell. She had severed it before the Erosion could spread. The missing section was immediately filled in by new Paper pushing out from inside, repairing the damage. As if nothing had happened, the Paper Giant stood there.
'A Paper Giant that can freely change shape and sever its own parts... handling the poison's Erosion with such ease. And because she's incorporated rubble, her attacks carry real weight. Even if it's damaged, she can gather materials from anywhere and repair it endlessly...'
"Everything about this is a nightmare to deal with...!"
"I'll take that as a compliment. So then... shall we continue? Oh, everyone, could you back up a bit more? From here on out, things are gonna get a little kaiju-battle, and I'd say your chances of getting caught up in it are pretty high."
"""Y-yes ma'am!"""
Even as he listened to her provocative words, Magellan regenerated the Venom Demon's missing arm.
Then he thrust a fist of corrosive deadly poison at the Giant as it raised its great sword once more.
'...Hmm... Should be just about time, I think...?'
***
"Th-this is Level 3! Prisoners are... prisoners are pouring up one after another!"
"That's impossible! Wasn't Vice Warden Hannyabal holding them at the stairway!? Did they break through? What's the Vice Warden's status!?"
"Chief Jailer... we can't reach Sadi-chan or Chief Guard Saldeath either! Even if we wanted to check, we simply don't have the personnel to send down to Level 4..."
"The Guard Room's been taken and they've seized the keys! Level 3 prisoners are being freed one after another!"
"Where the hell is Chief Warden Magellan!?"
The chaos from below had already reached Level 3.
Until just a short while ago, Vice Warden Hannyabal with his naginata Chisui, along with a thousand-strong Prison Bullet Bazooka Unit deployed on the stairway, had been barely managing to hold the line. But in the middle of that struggle, an event occurred that transformed the situation in an instant.
"What happened!? How could a thousand-man force be wiped out this quickly...?"
"W-well, it was... from behind... from further up the stairs, the beasts from Level 2 suddenly attacked us! Manticores and Puzzle Scorpions... We'd been focused entirely on what was ahead of us, so we collapsed in an instant..."
"And on top of that, for some reason those creatures completely ignored the prisoners and the weirdos, only attacking Guards and Jailers... We were caught in a pincer, and there was just... there was just no way to respond!"
"The beasts!? Why would they be here... And they only attacked Guards and Jailers!? How is that even possible!? We can't even control the beasts besides the Blugori and the Jailer Beasts! That's why we just block the exits and keep them confined to Level 2! Taming them would be..."
"We know that! But it actually happened...!"
This extraordinary turn of events was connected to something Sue had done.
Rewind several dozen minutes. Having arrived at Level 2 before Magellan, Sue used Conqueror's Haki to swiftly knock out every beast loitering about, and then...
"Right, let's get this done quick... Heaven's Door!"
She turned the beasts into Books and opened their pages. Then she selected a random page with plenty of blank space and wrote the following with her pen:
"Go down the stairs to Level 3, then to Level 4."
"Attack Guards and Jailers. Do not attack prisoners or weirdos. Do not attack anyone you cannot tell apart."
Heaven's Door, one of Sue's Awakening Powers. It could do more than just turn people into Books to peek at their memories. It could turn non-humans into Books as well, and by writing text in the blank spaces, she could give them commands.
Being an Awakening technique, it consumed stamina, and it couldn't be used unconditionally on just anyone. Commanding someone of significant strength was difficult, as were commands that went against deep instinctive aversions. The power seemed to be classified as a form of hypnosis or suggestion, making it less effective against those with strong resistance to such things. Commands wore off over time, too, and the duration varied from individual to individual.
Against animals with low intelligence, though, commands could be written and enforced with near-total reliability. And as long as the power took hold, it wasn't limited to constraining behavior. Commands along the lines of "believe this to be true" were also effective, making even memory rewriting possible.
Using this, Sue had selected beasts from Level 2 that were small enough to pass through the stairways to other floors and written her commands into them. All to help Luffy and the others break through Level 4, and to overcome the Prison Bullet Bazooka Unit led by Vice Warden Hannyabal, who was, despite appearances, quite a formidable opponent with a respectable degree of competence.
Just as planned, the Bazooka Unit's position on the stairway was advantageous for blocking the enemy's advance, but it also meant their own movement was severely limited in the narrow, unstable footing. The ferocious onslaught of beasts from behind shattered their formation in one stroke. The prisoners and weirdos, ignored by the creatures, managed to break through to the Level 3 stairway before they even fully understood what was happening.
Incidentally, the creatures that Blume, who had been sniping from concealment within the Mist a short while earlier, had spotted and recognized as reinforcements from Sue before letting them pass were these very beasts.
As a result, the main force of the uprising flooded into Level 3, their numbers swelling further. Most personnel had already been mobilized and sent down to Level 4, and Blume had been systematically taking out whoever remained on Level 3 in advance, so the escapees crossed the entire floor with virtually no resistance. Blume herself then joined the group with a "Sorry for the wait!" met by a "Hey, good work!" and the escaped prisoners set off together, making for Level 2.
***
Meanwhile, on Level 2.
The battle between Sue's Kokujo Tengen Myo-oh and Magellan's Venom Demon raged on with ever-increasing intensity.
Magellan deployed not only the Venom Demon but also Poison Pufferfish and Poison Cloud, attempting to overwhelm Sue with sheer volume and variety. Sue cut down every last attack with the Sword of the Myo-oh, which moved with a swiftness that belied the colossus it belonged to.
Even so, the Venom Demon's poison steadily encroached on a wider and wider area, gradually cornering Sue and the prisoners, forcing them back. This was tantamount to the destruction of Impel Down itself, hardly something Magellan welcomed either. But it was also true that it was bringing the battle closer to a conclusion. He forced himself to look past it and focused on the enemy before him.
...However,
"H-hey, is it just me? Doesn't Magellan look like he's... struggling?"
"Yeah, I see it too... What is it? His usual Diarrhea?"
"And it kinda seems like that crazy poison is spreading slower too... The Giant's movements look like they're getting more sluggish bit by bit."
"Hah... hah... ...!?"
Where the prisoners directed their bewildered gazes, Magellan had been drenched in sweat and gasping for breath for some time now. Despite not being on Level 4, the Scorching Heat Floor, poison-laced perspiration dripped steadily from him onto the ground at his feet.
His movements had lost their sharpness, and the frequency with which Sue's attacks landed seemed to be gradually increasing.
The one most confused by this was Magellan himself.
'What is this... this agony? I have a headache, my vision is blurring... dizziness too... Did I overuse my poison and upset my stomach? No, I've never had symptoms like this from that...'
In the midst of it all, in the moment he caught himself from stumbling, Magellan saw it. A sly grin spreading across Sue's lips.
'...! Could it be... poison!? No, impossible... no poison that could affect me, a Poison Man...'
Thanks to his ability, Magellan possessed powerful resistance to toxins. Ordinary poisons couldn't affect him even if administered. Perhaps somewhere in the world such a poison existed. But even if it did, obtaining and preparing one on the fly inside Impel Down was something he could state with absolute certainty was impossible.
And yet...
'Oh, that expression... He's figured out he's been dosed. But he can't believe it, 'cause there shouldn't be any poison that works on a Poison Man. He's baffled. Heh heh heh. Too naive, Poison bastard. It does exist. A conveniently powerful poison just like that.'
Sue's grin deepened, as if she couldn't help herself. Magellan, growing even more confused at the sight, pressed his assault more fiercely, desperate to end this quickly. But his movements grew duller and duller.
Handling him with room to spare, Sue thought:
'Well, actually, to be fair... what I used isn't technically a poison...'
What she had used was not poison. Far from it. It was something anyone could easily obtain. Even an ordinary citizen living in a normal household. Of course, it could be found in Impel Down, and for that matter, in Newkama Land too.
It was salt.
One-hit-kill attacks through poison, combined with overwhelming toughness that wouldn't go down from minor damage. Judging that fighting Magellan head-on carried too great a risk, Sue had prepared in advance by using Enigma to transform large quantities of salt into Paper for storage.
Then, during combat, she mixed it into her Paper Flakes and launched it at Magellan. The instant the Paper pierced him, she released the transformation, injecting massive amounts of salt directly into his body under cover of her attacks.
'Plain old poison probably wouldn't work on him, but since he gets Diarrhea and sweats, his bodily functions other than poison resistance should be the same as anyone else's. It wasn't a sure thing, admittedly... but I won my gamble.'
In effect, Magellan's current state was equivalent to having drunk massive quantities of seawater: acute salt overdose. And since the salt hadn't entered through his stomach but had been essentially stabbed and injected directly into his body, the progression was devastatingly rapid.
When the body's salt concentration rises too high, the human body desperately tries to expel the excess. In the process, it consumes enormous amounts of internal water, attempting to flush it out as sweat and urine. This is exactly why you must never drink seawater when thirsty. Drinking it only causes more of the body's water to be expelled, making the thirst even worse.
As the process advances, severe dehydration sets in, along with a cascade of other critical abnormalities.
Cells die as water is stripped from their interiors. The kidneys and numerous other internal organs begin to fail. A host of symptoms manifest in ways the sufferer can feel, and the body becomes increasingly unresponsive.
When an Ability User is weakened, the more powerful and difficult to control the ability, the more conspicuously the deterioration shows.
Like rotting flesh crumbling and sloughing off a Zombie's body, the Venom Demon had begun to collapse, piece by piece. It was visible to everyone.
"You're looking rough... You okay, Chief Warden? Want to take a break?"
"Don't get cocky... Something like this is nothing! As for a break, I'll take one at my leisure... after I've swiftly carried out your sentences and this is all over! Hell's Judgment!"
He raised his arm high. But when he brought it down, Sue's Sword of the Myo-oh slashed it apart with ease. Clearly more brittle than before, the poison spreading more slowly. His recovery sluggish, his movements dull.
Sue watched this, then sprouted six wings from her back and took flight, sending vast quantities of Paper swirling around her. Senbonzakura Kageyoshi, which she had withdrawn after judging it a poor match against the Erosion property and the Venom Demon's resilience, was activated once more, standing alongside the Kokujo Tengen Myo-oh.
"Now, now, don't be like that. No need to hold back. If you feel bad about it, I'll even help you out, so don't push yourself. Take it nice and easy, get some proper rest. Although..."
"...it might end up being forever, though."
To be continued...