The Deep Interior. The Sacred Basin.
What was once a tranquil sanctuary of ancient trees and tribal tradition had been transformed into a chemical purgatory.
BOOM!
Explosions leveled centuries-old timber. A sickly yellow-green nerve gas crawled through the ferns like a living shroud. The indigenous warriors—armed with nothing but bone spears and ancestral pride—were being harvested like wheat by the black-uniformed poachers.
"Gyahaha! Flush the savages out! Don't waste bullets on the pelts!"
"The Baron said tribal bones fetch a higher price at the Sabaody auctions than the beasts do! Round them up!"
Hundreds of poachers laughed, tightening a ring of steel and fire around the heart of the basin.
At the center stood the Primal Kong. Forty meters of silver-gray fur, now matted with gore. Harpoons with serrated barbs were buried deep in its shoulders, their thick chains anchoring the guardian deity to the earth.
Opposite the Kong stood a mountain of a man. He was bloated, his luxurious noble's suit bursting at the seams. He held a charred dinosaur leg in one hand, grease dripping down his multiple chins.
"Gourmet Predator" Truff.
As the Kong swung a fist capable of pulverizing bedrock, Truff didn't flinch. A predatory, prehistoric hunger ignited in his eyes.
"Ancient Zoan. Model: Entelodont!"
Truff's fat didn't just jiggle; it contracted and hardened into iron-like muscle. Coarse, dark-brown bristles erupted from his skin. His skull elongated into a monstrous, tusked snout—the visage of the "Hell-Hog," the most aggressive scavenger of the ancient world.
"Why not just roll over and be slaughtered, monkey?"
Truff tossed the bone aside. He lowered his center of mass and chambered a fist. A layer of Armament Haki, as black and polished as obsidian, encased his entire right side.
BOOM—!!!
The Kong's massive fist collided with Truff's Haki-reinforced punch.
The sound of shattering bone echoed through the basin. The Kong—dozens of times Truff's size—let out a harrowing wail. Its knuckles were pulverized by the sheer density of the Haki. The massive ape was sent reeling backward, slamming into the rock wall with enough force to cause a minor landslide.
"You call yourself a god? Pathetic," Truff sneered, his tusks glinting with saliva. "If the Celestial Dragons at Mary Geoise hadn't developed a craving for primate brains, I wouldn't have bothered hiking into this dump myself."
Truff turned to his officers—men radiating the cold aura of professional killers. "Take half the men. Seal the perimeter. Not even a fly leaves this basin alive."
"Yes, Lord Baron!"
Truff turned back toward the fallen Kong, which was desperately trying to shield the women and children of the tribe behind its bleeding body. "Now, for the main course."
He took one heavy step forward.
SHING!
A silver arc of light, shrill and blindingly fast, whistled through the jungle air toward Truff's throat.
Truff's Observation Haki pinged. He didn't even turn his head; he simply raised his Haki-coated forearm.
CLANG!
Sparks erupted as the blade struck his obsidian skin, failing to leave even a scratch.
"GET YOUR FILTHY HOOVES OFF OUR GUARDIAN! TRUFF!!"
Leona descended like a vengeful Valkyrie. Her red ponytail whipped in the wind as she landed between the Hell-Hog and the Kong, her twin blades—the black iron and the silver talon—gripped in bloodied hands.
"Lady Leona! She's back!"
The indigenous survivors, choking on the gas, felt a spark of hope flare in their chests.
"The little mouse," Truff chuckled, looking at the bruised blood on Leona's lip—a souvenir from her earlier encounter with Ace. "Why come back, little girl? Did you miss the smell of your people rotting? Or are you just eager to be buried with this big monkey?"
Leona didn't waste words. She looked at her decimated tribe and the dying Kong. In her feline eyes, grief and fury swirled into a lethal cocktail.
"Even if I have to drag you to hell by your tusks... This Queen of the Kitchen is ending you today!"
Leona lunged. She pushed her physical limits to the breaking point, her years of butchering prehistoric monsters manifesting in a lethal, high-speed blur.
"BONE-CARVER: THOUSAND-SLICING WALTZ!"
Her blades became a metallic storm. She tore through the poacher lines like a meat grinder; steel vests and flintlocks were sliced into uniform cubes in her wake. She carved a bloody path through hundreds of men, aiming straight for Truff's head.
"Impressive knife work," Truff said, watching his men die with total indifference. "But on this sea, martial arts without Haki is just... circus juggling!"
Truff took a deep breath. The raw, prehistoric stamina of the Hell-Hog surged. He didn't dodge. He met Leona's surgical blades with a brutal, Haki-clad headbutt.
CLANG—CRACK!
The Haki-reinforced tusks slammed into the Iron Tusk Cleaver.
Leona felt her radius and ulna scream. The webs of her thumbs tore instantly, blood spraying her own face. Against a New World veteran who had mastered Haki, her "dissection" techniques were like a mayfly attacking a mountain.
POW!
Leona was launched backward like a broken doll. She smashed through a dozen trees before collapsing at the feet of the Primal Kong.
"Roar..." The Kong let out a weak, mournful sound, extending a massive, trembling finger to shield her.
"Cough... dammit..." Leona struggled to rise, but her internal organs felt like they had been put through a thresher. The gap was too wide.
She watched in despair as Truff and his remaining army closed in.
"Tranq the Kong. Load it on the ship," Truff ordered coldly. "As for the girl... chop off her hands and feet. Throw her into the gas zone. Let her watch her tribe rot before she dies."
Several poachers approached with cruel grins, raising their machetes.
Leona gritted her teeth. She refused to close her eyes. If she was going to die, she would memorize their faces for the afterlife. But for some reason, her mind flashed back to the black-haired man eating meat by the fire.
What a bastardly, irresistible dream, she thought, a single tear of blood and salt tracing down her cheek.
The machetes began their descent.
SWISH—
A sudden, eerie breeze swept through the basin.
THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!
The poachers with the machetes didn't even scream. Their heads suddenly exploded like overripe watermelons under the pressure of a terrifying, invisible kinetic force.
The headless corpses slumped into the mud.
Truff's sneer vanished. He spun around, his Observation Haki screaming a red-alert in his brain.
In the center of the carnage, a tall, upright figure in a dark red windbreaker had appeared. He didn't look like a hero. He looked like a demon who had wandered into the wrong circle of hell.
Ace stood before Leona and the Kong, an insurmountable wall of shadow. He turned his head slightly, his cold, black eyes locking onto Truff with the terrifying stillness of a predator.
"Don't get it twisted, you bloated swine," Ace's voice was low, yet it carried an authority that silenced the entire forest.
"This woman... and every top-tier ingredient in this forest... they belong to me now."
Ace raised his fists. Jet-black Armament Haki flowed over his knuckles, shimmering with a metallic sheen.
"Who gave you permission to touch my property?"
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