Chapter 279: The Secret Art of Great Teachers: The Awakening Club
Swish! Swish! Swish!
A torrential barrage of high-pressure water needles screamed toward Crocodile. Even though he frantically manipulated his sand body to dodge, his innate elemental intangibility actually increased his overall hit-box area against such a widespread attack.
As the razor-sharp water needles pierced his scattered form, the rapidly condensing moisture instantly clumped his sand together. Realizing what was happening, Crocodile's face turned violently pale.
Compared to Haki, water was the one substance he absolutely dreaded the most. The fatal weakness of the Sand-Sand Fruit was that if his sand became wet, it completely lost its ability to disperse. His elemental intangibility would be instantly neutralized, rendering his physical body entirely vulnerable to attacks.
However, a chilling realization quickly followed: since both of these brats could use advanced Armament Haki anyway, the loss of his intangibility was essentially redundant. They could already hit his true body.
"Sea Empress: Phantom Needles."
Under normal circumstances, when executing a coordinated tag-team assault with Yamato, Chloe avoided using her fire abilities. Aside from the niche synergy of "Fire and Ice" elemental reactions, their respective extreme temperatures usually canceled each other out, leading to drastically reduced combat efficiency.
However, this specific flanking maneuver was an exception. Even if the initial water attack missed, Chloe could utilize the residual moisture in the air to launch subsequent, devastating barrages.
"Why do you always attack first and then shout the name of your move?" Yamato asked, suddenly pausing to look at Chloe. "That's not cool at all!"
"Why on earth are you focusing on that right now...?" Chloe sweatdropped.
"It's about the imposing aura of the battle! Don't you think screaming your ultimate move while you attack makes it far more devastating?!"
"I think screaming your ultimate move just gives the enemy time to react," Chloe retorted smoothly. "I always strike first, and then announce the name."
In this regard, Chloe had developed a highly practical, ruthless combat habit. She genuinely felt that shouting a name while attacking was incredibly awkward and tactically unsound. However, she wasn't the only one on Fish-Man Island with this philosophy.
Nereus frequently launched devastating, apocalyptic attacks without ever uttering a single word. Because of this, his enemies could never accurately discern whether he was executing a casual, ordinary strike or suddenly unleashing his ultimate move until it was already too late.
Alber, on the other hand, occasionally shouted the name of a sword slash while simultaneously executing a lethal flying kick. It was a strategy built entirely on psychological misdirection. However, this tactic was only effective when both combatants possessed roughly equal Observation Haki.
If the opponent was too weak, misdirection was unnecessary. If the opponent was overwhelmingly strong, they wouldn't be fooled anyway.
"Never mind that," Yamato dismissed the topic with a wave of her hand. "I finally remember who this idiot is! He's one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea: Crocodile! His former bounty was 81 million Berries!"
"Such a pitifully low bounty," Chloe muttered, sounding genuinely unimpressed. "Are all the Seven Warlords this pathetically weak? How did he get the title if he doesn't even know how to use Haki?"
Every single word that casually fell from their lips felt like a jagged, poisoned dagger violently plunging straight into Crocodile's heart. Compared to the two brutal kanabo strikes to his skull, their dismissive chatter inflicted no physical damage, yet it caused an agonizing, excruciating psychological torment akin to being pierced by ten thousand arrows.
An initial bounty of 81 million Berries was actually considered incredibly high for a rookie in this era. However, the standards of the Ryugu Kingdom's internal intelligence agency were completely warped; they almost exclusively monitored the apex monsters of the New World, where bounties casually ranged in the hundreds of millions or billions.
Since bounties were permanently frozen upon accepting the Warlord title, Crocodile's frozen 81 million naturally appeared insultingly low to them.
"It really doesn't make any sense," Yamato scratched her head, genuinely perplexed. "I heard a rumor that back in his prime, he actually fought Douglas Bullet to a standstill."
"Bullet?" Chloe raised an eyebrow. "Then this Crocodile guy must be a complete, pathetic imposter. After all, there's absolutely no way a monster like Bullet couldn't instantly crush a weakling who doesn't even know Haki."
[Gurararara! Such an arrogant, ignorant brat who doesn't know the immensity of heaven and earth! Go temper yourself for a few more decades before you challenge me!]
A humiliating, agonizing memory suddenly flared vividly in Crocodile's mind. He remembered the day he had arrogantly challenged Whitebeard, overflowing with burning ambition to seize the title of the "Strongest in the World"—only to be effortlessly, casually crushed with a single, devastating strike.
The lingering phantom pain in his severed hand and the deep scar across his face suddenly throbbed violently. Yamato's casual, brutal words echoed relentlessly in his mind.
"What on earth... have I been doing all these years? To think I allowed the most critical, foundational absolute strength to completely rust away..."
As a highly infamous figure in the sea, Crocodile was historically known for his ability to at least temporarily trade blows with practically anyone. In the original timeline, his crushing defeat at Alabasta ultimately served as a brutal wake-up call, allowing him to dramatically "update his software" and violently re-enter the global stage after escaping Impel Down.
But right now, it seemed Crocodile had violently realized his own pathetic stagnation much earlier. Or rather, Yamato's two brutal kanabo strikes to the head had literally knocked the rust off his brain and beaten him awake.
"Guhahahaha!"
Crocodile suddenly threw his head back and laughed, the sound cold, rasping, and utterly devoid of his previous arrogant mockery. "I suppose I should be profoundly thanking you two brats! You've violently reminded me just how pathetically weak my body has become without me even noticing! But now... let the second round begin!"
A terrifying, razor-sharp glint suddenly flashed within Crocodile's eyes—a fierce, ambitious light that had been completely absent mere moments ago. It was as if the arrogant, fiercely competitive rookie from decades past had suddenly reawakened.
These two brats were undeniably, terrifyingly strong. But in his youth, had he not also been universally hailed as an unparalleled genius?
"I still think those two hits just gave him severe brain damage..." Yamato muttered loudly to herself.
Yamato's comment perfectly reached Crocodile's ears. The imposing, rejuvenated aura he had just managed to summon instantly staggered, almost causing him to physically slump over.
"Desert Grande Espada (Desert Vajra Sword)!!"
BOOM! SLASH!
The sandy ground beneath them violently ruptured as four massive, highly compressed blades of golden sand erupted upward, slashing viciously toward Yamato. The speed and destructive power were exponentially greater than before. More terrifyingly, the attack perfectly predicted and intercepted Yamato's intended evasion route.
Decades of brutal, life-and-death combat experience hadn't vanished. Having been forcefully violently awakened by Kaido's personally transmitted "Awakening Club" technique, Crocodile was clearly beginning to reclaim the terrifying instincts of his prime.
WHOOSH!
"Careful! He's fighting completely differently now!"
The incandescent flame burning on Chloe's back instantaneously extinguished. With explosive, blinding speed, she darted to Yamato's side, grabbing her and violently yanking her out of the path of Crocodile's quadruple sand-blade strike.
"I can feel it!" Yamato grinned fiercely, her blood pumping. "We actually have to take this seriously now! Namuji Hyoga!"
Carried into the air by Chloe, Yamato essentially functioned as a heavily armed, mobile aerial artillery platform, constantly bombarding Crocodile from above.
Even having recovered his combat instincts and reawakened his Haki, dealing with these two was proving to be a logistical nightmare for Crocodile. Their flawless synergy, mastery of advanced Haki, and highly destructive Devil Fruit abilities severely limited his offensive options.
However, compared to the ridiculously fast, flight-capable Chloe, Yamato was a much easier, grounded target.
[When the flame on her back burns, her defense is absolute. When the flame extinguishes, her speed drastically increases, but her defense seems to drop... If that's the case...]
"Heavy Sables (Heavy Desert Storm)!"
An exponentially more massive, devastating sandstorm erupted from Crocodile's palm. The entire desert beneath their feet seemed to come alive, violently churning as he utilized the environmental chaos to visually and physically segment the battlefield.
Having successfully isolated his targets, Crocodile immediately shifted his full, lethal focus toward Yamato.
"Desert Spada!"
Exactly as Crocodile predicted, Chloe instantly dove from the sky to intercept the attack from his blind spot. Seeing her approach, Crocodile smirked. The massive golden hook replacing his left hand rapidly coated itself in a dense layer of black Armament Haki. Simultaneously, a highly concentrated, lethal purple venom began weeping from the hook's porous surface.
SLASH!
The two silhouettes violently intersected. Crocodile's Haki-coated hook successfully carved a shallow, bleeding gash across Chloe's forearm. Immediately executing a flawless tactical retreat, Crocodile distanced himself, giving the two girls absolutely zero chance to counterattack.
Using Yamato as bait to lure in the highly mobile aerial unit, capitalizing on the Lunarian's lowered defense in her "Speed Mode" to deliver a lethal, venomous strike—this was Crocodile's brilliant tactical calculation.
And he had executed it flawlessly.
"Guhahahaha! You can't move anymore, can you?" Crocodile laughed triumphantly, wiping a trickle of blood from his chin. "That venom is extracted from the lethal stinger of the Alabastian Death Scorpion! Even a single, microscopic drop is more than enough to instantly paralyze and melt the internal organs of a fully grown—"
BOOM!
"Thunder Empress: Howl."
Crocodile's villainous monologue was abruptly interrupted by a highly condensed orb of black lightning that Chloe casually hurled directly into his face. The violent detonation instantly gave Crocodile an explosive new hairstyle and coated his entire face in a thick, charred layer of black soot.
"What are you even blabbering about?" Chloe scoffed, casually wiping the small trickle of blood from her rapidly healing arm. "Do you really think a pathetic little trick like this is going to work? No wonder you couldn't beat Whitebeard."
A mere scorpion's venom? Please. If one didn't know any better, they might assume Magellan had just arrived and unleashed a localized Venom Demon given Crocodile's arrogant boasting. Against a Lunarian's absolute biological supremacy, standard organic toxins were functionally equivalent to tap water.
Pfft—
Crocodile suddenly felt a violent, agonizing spasm in his chest, as if his heart were literally giving out from sheer exasperation.
But before he could even utter another word, his newly reawakened Observation Haki began screaming in absolute, apocalyptic terror. However, his body couldn't react in time.
From his blind spot, a devastating, bone-shattering kick violently slammed into his ribs, launching him across the desert like a skipped stone.
☆☆☆
-> 30 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you