The isolated Caribou had no idea that the "comrades" behind him had already begun crowdfunding ideas for what should be carved onto his epitaph, in memory of his magnificent yet pathetic life.
In the end, everyone decided not to carve anything at all. They would simply leave behind a QR code linking to the video of his battle against Saul.
Presumably, several years from now, once Personal Terminals became common across the world, QR code systems would become widespread as well.
When that time came, anyone passing by Caribou's gravestone would be able to scan the code and witness the most glorious moment before this guy's death.
As for whether Caribou might survive?
Heh.
Anyone who had ever worked with Robin knew that Robin was the textbook definition of an angelic face with a devilish heart.
Want Caribou to live?
Impossible!
...
...
Poor Caribou had no idea that he was walking step by step toward death.
However, Saul did not react much to Caribou's mockery.
"So that's how it is. A Logia user, huh? In that case, close combat is the only option!"
Boom!
A surging force of blood and vitality abruptly transformed into pitch-black Armament Haki, completely covering Saul's fists.
The next instant, Saul's enormous body suddenly began to move. He did not seem particularly fast at first glance, yet in the blink of an eye, he had already swung his heavy fists and arrived above Caribou.
BOOM!!!
Both fists clenched tight, he smashed them downward like a gigantic meteor crashing from the sky.
Seeing this, Caribou finally stopped running his mouth.
Faced with the terrifying assault of a giant, he hurriedly waved his hand. From his palm, muddy swamp sludge surged out rapidly like an endless abyss.
"Swamp Barrier!!!"
A huge amount of mud churned wildly as though it cost nothing, and in the blink of an eye, it completely wrapped around Caribou and the area around him.
Splurch!!!
The heavy fists did not pause in the slightest because of the mud's appearance. Relying on Armament Haki's special effectiveness against Logia users, Saul smashed his fists straight into the muddy swamp barrier.
In an instant, an unusual pressure came from the surface of his fists.
Swamp matter was a non-Newtonian fluid!
The stronger the force striking it, the tougher and harder it became.
Even in the bizarre world of pirates, where physics basically did not exist, this physical phenomenon still persisted.
So when Saul's heavy fists slammed forcefully into the swamp mud, Caribou's ridiculous, muddy shield likewise became even muddier and denser.
This was something Caribou had only learned about his own fruit ability after joining the Straw Hat Pirates.
One could only say he had suffered from being uneducated.
However, what Caribou did not know was that he was not only going to suffer because he lacked education.
Today, he was also going to suffer again because his opponent was too educated!
"Hm? Is this a swamp!?"
Feeling the sensation transmitted through his fists and looking at everything before his eyes, a flash passed through Saul's gaze, and he instantly realized something.
As someone who had hidden away in Elbaf's Owl Library for nearly twenty years and constantly read all kinds of books, he naturally knew the properties of non-Newtonian fluids like swamps.
Although there was no Newton in the pirate world, Saul still abruptly changed his fist into a palm, withdrew all his strength, and merely let his Armament Haki-coated hand wriggle gently.
"!!?"
Caribou, who had thought everything was foolproof, widened his eyes and stared in disbelief as the swamp barrier was forcefully pierced open by one thick finger, creating a passage through it.
"How is that possible!?"
He turned pale with shock.
But in the next second, the owner of that finger seemed to sense something. Using the empty space inside the barrier, he suddenly bent his finger, then flicked it violently toward Caribou's body.
Bang!!!
Like a heavy hammer descending from the heavens, it slammed onto Caribou's body, instantly compressing and distorting him.
The sudden attack directly made it impossible for Caribou to maintain his Devil Fruit ability any longer. The swamp barrier collapsed along with him, turning into a puddle of rotten mud scattered across the ground.
And the moment Saul saw the swamp barrier shatter, he struck again. The hand that had attacked Caribou pressed against the ground for support, while his other hand clenched into a pitch-black heavy fist and smashed fiercely toward Caribou's body.
BOOM!!!!!!!
Under that terrifying force, the earth suddenly cracked open in a spiderweb-like pattern, spreading rapidly in all directions.
The ground collapsed, and dust billowed into the air.
Under this thunderous strike, Caribou's body was instantly hammered into a meat pancake. His muscles and bones snapped throughout his body, and he was smashed into the earth while covered in blood.
In the blink of an eye, Caribou, who had just been mocking Saul nonstop, looked like nothing more than a corpse lying there.
Victory and defeat seemed to have been decided at that moment.
"Hm!?"
Watching the battle situation suddenly reverse so sharply, viewers all over the world sitting in front of their televisions revealed stunned expressions.
What was going on?
The person sent out by the Straw Hat Pirates had actually lost!?
And it happened so suddenly?
It was not that they had never considered the possibility of the Straw Hat Pirates losing, nor was it that they had never imagined a battle ending quickly.
They simply never expected those two things to happen together at the same time.
After all, the two consecutive battles before this had already displayed the might of the Straw Hat Pirates.
Whether it was Drake transforming into a gigantic dinosaur, or Urouge transforming into a great warrior monk, both possessed the ability to end a battle in an instant.
But now…
"Is it over just like that?"
At that moment, even the giant formation revealed looks of confusion.
According to the agreement, as long as Elbaf's side could win one match, the Straw Hat Pirates would have to respect Elbaf's independent sovereignty and would never again have plans to rule Elbaf.
But had all of this happened a little too quickly?
And what surprised them even more was that… the victor was Saul, the person they had least expected anything from and had treated as nothing more than a filler participant.
What was going on?
Had Moria been careless and sent out a weakling?
In the crowd, Shanks blinked blankly, thinking he no longer had any chance to appear.
But when he raised his head and saw that the Straw Hat formation on the opposite side remained as calm as ever, and even saw a mysterious smile tugging at the corner of Moria's mouth, he immediately realized that things were not as simple as he had imagined.
Seeing Saul about to stand, Shanks hurriedly shouted a warning in alarm:
"Be careful, Saul!"
In truth, this kind of action was already somewhat suspicious of cheating.
However, as the commander-in-chief of the Straw Hat formation, Moria merely grinned.
"Kishishishishi, too late!"
As he spoke, a small swamp suddenly formed on Caribou's cheek as he lay on the ground.
Immediately afterward, an opened bottle of Super Potion slowly emerged from that tiny swamp. The medicine flowed out naturally, just in time to fall into Caribou's mouth.
Under the effects of the Super Potion, Caribou's ruined body recovered visibly.
This sounded complicated, but in reality, everything had already been completed the moment Saul withdrew his fist.
So by the time Saul looked at Caribou again, Caribou had fully recovered and directly used the Ground-type move Dig, disappearing into the earth and leaving behind only a strange patch of deep purple mud.
"What?"
Hearing Shanks's reminder, Saul's nerves instinctively tightened.
But before he could react to anything, an unbearable pain suddenly came from his hand.
He hurriedly looked at the back of his hand, only to see that at some point, several of his fingers had been stained with small sharp spikes mixed with murky swamp matter.
Meanwhile, the area that had just come into contact with Caribou had now turned into a deep purple so dark it was nearly black.
That intense sense of déjà vu immediately made Saul realize something.
He had been struck by the Straw Hat Pirates' unique poison, the same one that had affected Dorry before!?
"Kehahahahaha…"
"Don't you think it's a little too late to realize that now, you stupid pig?!"
At that moment, Caribou's figure slowly emerged from the ground in the form of rotten mud, then gradually condensed back into his original appearance.
Caribou's Pokémon typing was Ground + Dark.
In the pirate world, where type matchups were not particularly obvious, this type combination was not actually that powerful.
But coincidentally…
Caribou himself was the user of the Swamp-Swamp Fruit.
And some Ground-type moves happened to pair perfectly with his fruit ability.
For example, this utterly ordinary move, Dig.
Originally, it was a move that allowed Pokémon to rapidly dig through the ground and hide inside it. But when combined with Caribou's Logia-type Swamp-Swamp Fruit ability, it allowed him, who could transform into a swamp, to move freely underground. It was extremely convenient.
Of course, if that was all there was to it, Moria would never have felt comfortable handing such an important match over to him.
In truth, whether in basic combat ability, fruit ability, or the application of Pokémon power, Caribou was not among the outstanding captains.
Cavendish, who had joined the Straw Hat Pirates around the same time as him, had long since mastered the ability to evolve using two kinds of Pokémon power simultaneously, just like Drake.
Even Hajrudin had already completed Pokémon-ization for one type.
Caribou, who had only just touched the threshold of Pokémon-ization, should not have appeared on this battlefield.
But perhaps this guy was like Buggy and carried some strange luck, or perhaps there was another reason…
When Caribou loaded his Pokémon template, he had actually obtained an extremely powerful and even enviable Ability—Toxic Debris!!!
[Ability: Toxic Debris]
[Effect: When the user is hit by a physical attack, it releases large amounts of Toxic Spikes in the attacker's direction. Anyone struck by the Toxic Spikes will fall into a badly poisoned state.]
Dorry had already experienced Toxic before. It was an agonizing poison so intense that even a glorious warrior who had fought for over a hundred years found it difficult to endure.
One could say that with this Ability alone, Caribou had practically become the father of more than eighty percent of the strong fighters in this world.
After all, in the pirate world, physical attacks were always the most effective method.
Even bullets fired from firearms were considered a kind of physical attack under the Ability's judgment.
In other words, even if someone shot Caribou from eight hundred li away, it would still trigger Toxic Debris, causing large amounts of Toxic Spikes to be released from Caribou's body and shoot toward the enemy eight hundred li away.
However… at the end of the day, Toxic Spikes were still a physical tool that only poisoned the target after sharp objects pierced the skin. If the enemy's skin was tough enough, or if they had armor or Armament Haki protecting them, they could still defend against it.
And this was where Caribou's fruit ability—swamp—had to be mentioned!
As a Logia-type fruit ability, swamp did not possess powerful offensive capabilities like lightning or magma. But in some respects, it was even more powerful than lightning or magma.
Because the properties of a swamp were storage, adhesion, and flow…
In the past, Caribou had only used the storage ability of the Swamp-Swamp Fruit, relying on the infinite space within his swamp space to equip himself with large amounts of combat tools such as machine guns or battle-axes, focusing mainly on catching opponents off guard.
But using this fruit that way was simply a reckless waste of a heavenly gift!
In truth, there were quite a few people like him.
That was why Red had recently separated Reiju from the Scientific Research Corps and had her establish an entirely new department under it—the Tactical Inspection Team.
The purpose of this department was to collect detailed information on the strong fighters under the Straw Hats and, based on that information, help them find the best possible fighting methods.
After Caribou joined the Straw Hat Pirates, following multiple investigations and tests conducted by Reiju of the Scientific Research Corps, Reiju finally succeeded in designing a customized combat plan for him based on his abilities.
The tactic where Caribou's cheek swamp directly fed him a Super Potion just now was one of Reiju's results.
In this way, as long as Caribou prepared enough Super Potions, he would have countless chances to revive before being restrained by Seastone handcuffs or completely losing consciousness.
Meanwhile, his original storage-space-based combat method had not been abandoned. Reiju's department had merely manufactured many brand-new pieces of equipment for Caribou, designed to be used together with his fruit ability.
However, the vast majority of those pieces of equipment would head straight toward killing the target the moment they were taken out.
Caribou might be brainless, but even he knew that in today's battle, neither the Straw Hat side nor the giant side could suffer any real casualties.
So he had no intention of using those combat tools today.
But aside from that equipment, his other battle plan was to use the properties of the swamp, controlling its flow to combine with the Toxic Spikes released by his Ability. This allowed them to remain somewhat controllable even after landing on the enemy's body surface, ultimately poisoning the enemy.
One could only say that Saul's strength was ultimately only at that level.
Among Marine vice admirals, he could indeed be considered one of the best. But in the end, he still could not compare to even an ordinary Warlord of the Sea. No matter how strong he was, how strong could he really be?
So after Caribou recovered his stamina, the first thing he did was control the swamp-coated Toxic Spikes already attached to the back of Saul's hand…
Then, with a gentle push from the swamp, the current situation came to be.
(End of Chapter)