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Chapter 433: Aerial Bombardment In The Face!
Fighting through the severe cramps in his abdomen, Doflamingo braced himself against the ruined hallway wall and forced himself to stand. He knew perfectly well that his current mortal frame couldn't survive a lethal blow from that black pan. He had to run. Even if it meant crawling out of this building like a dog, it was better than dying at the hands of this muscle-brained monster.
He turned, using his hands and feet to scramble toward the stairwell.
Suddenly, an ear-piercing siren tore through the container yards and residential blocks of Georgopol.
"Wooo—Wooo—Wooo—"
The sound was deafening, like the roar of a giant Sea King screaming directly into their ears. Immediately following the siren, the sky outside the shattered hallway windows shifted colors. The relatively clear sky was suddenly engulfed by an eerie, blood-red glow that bathed the entire district in crimson. The oppressive atmosphere felt exactly like the suffocating dread right before the Marines launched a Buster Call.
"What is that sound?" Kaido paused his advance.
Peering through the narrow observation slit of his Level 3 Helmet, he looked up at the ceiling. He had never heard a siren like this before, but his beast-like intuition was screaming that something utterly terrifying was gathering directly above them.
A dense whistling sound descended from the sky. It wasn't the wind. It was the high-pitched shriek of heavy metallic objects tearing through the atmosphere at breakneck speed. The sound grew closer rapidly, moving so fast that it left no time to react.
BOOM! The first bomb smashed into the roof of a two-story house across the street without warning. A deafening explosion erupted, sending a massive orange fireball and billowing black smoke into the air. The concrete house, which had seemed reasonably sturdy, was instantly vaporized as if it were a paper toy against such absolute firepower and explosive yield.
A terrifying circular shockwave blasted outward. Gale-force winds, carrying crushed stone and debris, slammed violently into the red building where Kaido and Doflamingo stood.
Crash! Every remaining glass window in the hallway shattered simultaneously. Countless glass shards flew through the cramped space like bullets. Kaido instinctively raised his armored arm to shield his faceplate. The glass ricocheted off the ballistic ceramic plates with a sharp clatter, and even the pan in his hand vibrated with a loud hum.
"DAMN IT!" Doflamingo's face drained of color, his lips trembling. "This island has artillery coverage!?"
He finally understood what the blood-red glow meant. This wasn't a Buster Call; this was indiscriminate, carpet bombing—a chaotic destruction far more psychotic than any Buster Call. At least a Buster Call had a targeting process. This was just blindly hurling meteors at the ground.
Back when he had the String-String Fruit, he could have stepped on clouds to fly away or used his Awakened Birdcage to slice the shells out of the sky. But now? In this damned game, he was just a fragile, mortal man. Stripped of his aerial mobility, he was nothing more than a living target in this Red Zone.
Run! Doflamingo abandoned whatever shred of Warlord dignity he had left, ignoring his greed for the gear. He practically threw himself down the stairs. Breaking his nose in a fall was vastly preferable to being blown into meat paste. His pink feather coat caught on a stray nail near the landing, and he tore half the sleeve off trying to yank himself free. Survival was all that mattered.
Kaido felt the same unprecedented threat of death. His eyes widened behind the helmet. He knew that regular explosions would have barely scratched his itch in the past; they might have burned a hole in his clothes, at worst. But this mortal body absolutely could not handle it. Even wearing the vaunted Level 3 gear, the most it would do against a heavy aerial bomb that leveled buildings was guarantee him an intact corpse. The intense heat and shockwave would simply liquefy his internal organs.
"DAMN BOSS! WHAT KIND OF HELLISH GAME IS THIS!" Kaido roared.
He didn't bother chasing Doflamingo. The stairs were too slow. Turning his massive body like a maddened wild boar, he charged straight for the hallway's dead-end wall.
Smash! Bricks flew as Kaido violently bulldozed through the relatively weak masonry. He leaped from the gaping hole on the second floor straight toward the muddy backyard below. Factoring in his heavy frame and the dozens of pounds of gear, his landing produced a deep, thunderous thud.
Kaido performed a tactical roll to disperse the kinetic energy, but his right ankle wound burst open again, soaking the bandages in fresh blood. He didn't even let out a grunt of pain.
Rumble! Shell after shell began to rain down frantically within the red-lit district. The earth convulsed. Dirt, bricks, and shattered wood flew everywhere amidst the fire. A massive tree, thick enough for two men to hug, was uprooted and slammed onto nearby shipping containers. The outskirts of Georgopol had genuinely transformed into a living hell of random, absolute destruction.
Kaido had barely scrambled to his feet and run a dozen meters when an agonizingly sharp whistle locked directly onto the red building behind him.
Get down! The single thought flashed through his mind.
He threw his colossal body forward into the dirt just as a high-explosive shell scored a direct hit on the roof.
BOOOOM— An explosion ten times more violent than the last detonated. The two-story red building collapsed entirely in the fire, its brick-and-mortar structure ripped to shreds. The massive shockwave hit like a solid wall, shoving Kaido violently from behind. Even flat on the ground, the terrifying force launched him into the air. He flailed clumsily like a tin can before crashing heavily into a muddy puddle.
Mud splashed everywhere as his black Level 3 Helmet plunged deep into the muck. Kaido struggled to yank his head out, shaking the sludge off his faceplate. High-pitched ringing filled his ears, drowning out all other sounds. His chest felt terrifyingly tight, and a sweet, metallic taste rose in his throat.
Spitting out a mouthful of bloody saliva, he gripped the pan tightly. "Fucking thrilling," he rasped, stretching his lips into a hideous, crazed grin. It had been decades since he last felt the genuine thrill of mortal peril.
Doflamingo's luck, however, was far worse. He had just dashed out of the front door and reached the edge of the street when the building exploded behind him. The shockwave swept up a storm of debris, creating a lethal tornado of shrapnel. A heavy wooden plank embedded with a rusty nail caught the blast wave and flew right at him.
Squelch! The plank slammed brutally into Doflamingo's back. The pinky-thick nail drove straight through his flashy pink shirt, burying itself deep into his back muscles.
"AAAARGH—!" Doflamingo shrieked in agony, losing his balance and face-planting into the street-side greenery. He swallowed a mouthful of mud and weeds, his face completely twisted by the excruciating pain as the veins on his forehead throbbed wildly.
He, Donquixote Doflamingo, the King of Dressrosa and the supreme ruler of the Underworld—when had he ever suffered such humiliation? Ambushed by a broken piece of wood! He struggled to push himself up, but the heavy plank pressed down like a mountain. Every slight movement caused the nail to grind deeper into his flesh, making him draw sharp breaths of cold air.
The blood-red Red Zone continued to flash. The shadow of death still loomed heavily over the area, the distant artillery fire rolling on endlessly as if it would never stop. This justice from above didn't care if you were an Emperor of the Sea or a Warlord. Under absolute firepower, all beings were equal.
Gritting his teeth, Doflamingo forcefully spat out the mud, the taste of dirt and blood filling his mouth. Supporting himself with his hands, he painfully rolled over and lay flat on his back by the road, gasping heavily. One lens of his signature red sunglasses was shattered, hanging comically off his nose, and his blonde hair was matted with dust and sludge.
He stared up at the eerie red sky.
Suddenly, a whistling sound—sharper and more piercing than any before it—echoed from directly above. It was so loud his eardrums felt ready to tear. Doflamingo's pupils shrank to pinpricks. He saw a dark, heavy aerial bomb with tail fins plummeting straight down, tearing through the air with a deathly shriek. It was aimed perfectly at his face.
The bomb magnified rapidly in his vision; he could even see the crude weld marks on its iron casing. There was nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run.
"You've got to be kidding me..." Doflamingo rasped through his dry throat, shutting his eyes in absolute despair.
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