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Chapter 429: Pan Smashes Akainu
Kaido felt like his head was about to scrape the ceiling. Annoyed, he paced around the cramped bedroom. He couldn't find a single handy object. Where the hell did this ghost game hide the weapons?
Cursing under his breath, Kaido walked out of the bedroom. The door to the kitchen across the hall was ajar, emitting a sour stench of ancient grease. Kicking the kitchen door open, his eyes immediately locked onto a pitch-black, cold-gleaming pan sitting amidst the mess on the stove.
Kaido reached out with his thick fingers and pinched the handle. It was heavy. Forged from solid cast iron.
"What kind of bullshit weapon is this?" Kaido brought the pan to eye level, sizing it up with disdain. "Can this thing even kill someone?"
He casually swung his arm. The pan slammed heavily against the adjacent load-bearing wall. Accompanied by an incredibly dull thud, lime plaster flew everywhere. The wall was directly smashed with a fist-sized crater, sending broken bricks clattering into the sink.
Kaido pulled the pan back; there wasn't even a scratch on the bottom.
"Barely usable." He split into a wide grin. "Worororo!" Although he couldn't swing it as freely as his kanabō, using it to smash someone's head like a rotten watermelon would be absolutely no problem.
Pan in hand, Kaido walked out of the kitchen and reached the top of the stairs, preparing to head down. His massive physique almost entirely blocked out the light in the stairwell. He made no effort whatsoever to muffle his footsteps. The wooden stairs shrieked as if about to snap beneath his weight.
Just as Kaido stepped onto the very first landing, an incredibly agile figure lunged from the shadows in the corner below. There was no preamble. Not even a shout. It was an ambush launched purely for the sake of slaughter.
The rusted sickle tore through the air, aimed viciously at Kaido's right ankle. This was Akainu's calculated killing strike. As long as he severed the opponent's Achilles tendon, no matter how massive they were, they would be forced to their knees, left at his mercy.
The sharp tip of the sickle precisely pierced Kaido's baggy canvas pant leg. The sharp, rust-covered metal blade dragged directly across Kaido's thick calf, carving out a gash half a finger deep. Blood spurted out, splattering across the wooden steps.
"Hiss—" Kaido gasped, a sharp intake of cold air. A normal human's nerve endings simply couldn't block out this extreme, piercing agony. Stripped of the protection of his dragon scales, his flesh felt the torment of being sliced open by crude iron for the very first time.
Kaido's rage ignited instantly, like a fire doused in gasoline. Looking down, he locked eyes with that murderous gaze hidden in the shadows.
"The Marine's Red Dog?" Kaido recognized the ambusher's face. He was all too familiar with that scowling mug wearing the Marine cap.
"YOU COURT DEATH!" Kaido let out an incredibly brutal roar. Completely ignoring the bleeding wound on his ankle, the muscles in his right arm bulged high, thick veins twisting beneath his skin like tree roots.
He swung his arm in a full, wide arc. Accompanied by a deep, suffocating whistle that seemingly tore the air apart, that massive pan came crashing down from above, aimed squarely at Akainu's head.
The strike carried immense momentum and crushing weight, leaving Akainu absolutely zero room to dodge.
Akainu's pupils contracted. Years of battle instincts prompted an immediate reaction. He raised both hands, lifting the rusted sickle horizontally above his head in an attempt to block the descending blow.
Clang! A deafening metallic clash exploded in the narrow stairwell, vibrating the glass in the windows with a faint hum.
The already dilapidated, rusted sickle simply couldn't withstand the terrifying brute force behind the pan. The wooden handle snapped cleanly in two. The iron blade clattered onto the stairs with a crisp clink. Shattering the sickle's defense, the black bottom of the pan lost none of its momentum as it slammed solidly into Akainu's forehead.
Buzz— Akainu felt as if his brain had been shoved into a massive bell that was just struck viciously from the outside with a sledgehammer. His vision blurred instantly. Countless gold stars danced frantically before his eyes, and his ears were filled with a piercing, high-frequency ringing.
He felt a sudden warmth in his nasal cavity as two streams of hot blood flowed uncontrollably from his nose, dripping onto his white button-up shirt.
Dropping the broken wooden handle, Akainu clutched the rapidly swelling lump on his forehead with both hands. His legs went weak, and he staggered backward down the stairs for two or three steps, only managing to stabilize himself when his back slammed into the wall. Even standing up straight felt like the entire world was spinning violently around him.
The dignified highest fighting force of the Marines had actually been smashed near the point of unconsciousness by a frying pan.
...
Beckman dragged Shanks, rolling down the slanted sheet metal. The shrieking, dark red brick grazed right past Shanks's scalp, brutally smashing the edge of the adjacent blue container. Pale cement residue and iron shards scattered everywhere.
Garp stood high above, laughing wildly. "Bwahahaha!" He tossed a second heavy brick in his broad hand. "Running pretty fast, aren't you? Red-haired brats!" The old man's voice boomed with vitality.
Beckman didn't respond. Forcing down the intense agony radiating from his bruised right arm, he grabbed Shanks's collar tightly with his left hand. The two dove into a narrow gap between two red containers. The dark corner was piled high with discarded wooden planks and old tires.
Leaning against the rusted metal, Shanks gasped for air. Though his left arm was restored, this weak mortal body was still entirely unused to operating without the safety net of Haki. Even maintaining his balance while running had become extremely strenuous.
Beckman's gaze swept rapidly across the debris on the ground. A long, green military crate lay silently in a patch of weeds in the corner. The surface of the crate was stamped with strange, incomprehensible letters and numbers.
Beckman walked over and kicked the unlocked wooden lid open with the tip of his black boot. Inside lay a layer of moisture-proof dark oil paper. Resting in the center of the paper was a slender rifle, gleaming with a blued steel finish. The body of the gun possessed an incredibly smooth industrial aesthetic. Next to it sat two rectangular cardboard boxes, neatly stacked. A brassy metallic luster peeked out from within the boxes.
"A firelock?" Shanks leaned over, inspecting the contents of the crate. "That's a rare design. It doesn't even have a powder pan or a flint."
Beckman crouched down. With his uninjured left hand, he picked up the rifle by its wooden stock. It had a solid weight to it, the center of gravity designed perfectly. Resting the gun across his knee, he awkwardly used his right hand to quickly feel along the metal bolt.
As one of the most brilliant minds on the seas, Beckman's understanding of firearms far surpassed that of an ordinary person. He didn't even need anyone to teach him; he instantly grasped the basic structural principles. This gun lacked any primitive flintlock mechanisms, nor did it have an exposed fuse.
His fingers found the metal bolt handle. Pushing it up forcefully and pulling it back, the crisp sound of metal sliding against metal was incredibly satisfying.
"Striker-fired," Beckman rapidly made an accurate assessment. "The primer is located at the base of the bullet. A firing pin strikes it, directly detonating the gunpowder inside."
This thing was at least a hundred years more advanced than the scrap metal in the One Piece world, which required stuffing gunpowder down the muzzle for every single shot.
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