"Who gave you permission to touch them?"
Ace's voice was steady, cutting through the thick stench of gunpowder and copper. That calm, clinical question hit the poachers like a physical blow to the solar plexus.
Truff narrowed his eyes, which were nearly lost in the folds of his porcine face. The second Ace appeared, Truff's Observation Haki had flared red—detecting an aura within this black-haired man that felt like a bottomless, silent abyss.
"I wondered who'd be stupid enough to interfere," Truff spat, wiping grease and blood from his chin. "So, it's the rookie from the papers. The record-breaker from the East Blue."
Truff sneered, his tusks glistening. " 'Eclipse' Ace. 50-million-Berry bounty. You should've stayed in your little pond, boy. Coming to the Grand Line just to die is a waste of a good headline."
At the mention of a "50-million East Blue rookie," the hundreds of armed outlaws felt a surge of greedy confidence. In their world, East Blue bounties were jokes—inflated numbers for big fish in small ponds. To them, Ace was just a high-value "fat sheep" delivered straight to the slaughterhouse.
"Baron, don't waste your breath! The executives are holding the perimeter. We'll handle this brat!"
Several squad leaders leveled their heavy muskets and chemical grenade launchers. Their eyes burned with murderous intent. "Brothers! Turn this arrogant brat and these savages into a sieve! OPEN FIRE!"
Hundreds of barrels—rifles, cannons, and gas launchers—snapped toward Ace, Leona, and the huddled survivors.
"GET DOWN! THE GAS IS LETHAL!" Leona screamed from the feet of the Primal Kong, her eyes wide with terror.
But Ace didn't move. He didn't even raise a hand.
Facing a wall of imminent death, he simply raised his gaze. In the depths of his pitch-black pupils, a sudden flash of dark gold exploded.
HUM—!!!
An invisible, tidal wave of pressure—heavy enough to feel like the sky was physically falling—erupted from Ace. It swept across the basin like a psychic tsunami.
This was the absolute aura of a King. Conqueror's Haki.
"What... what is this..."
"I can't... breathe..."
The bloodthirsty grins on the poachers' faces turned into masks of frozen horror. Their minds went blank as if an invisible giant had reached into their chests and squeezed their hearts flat.
Without a single shot being fired, hundreds of heavily armed men rolled their eyes back, foamed at the mouth, and collapsed like a wheat field in a hurricane.
The poison gas shells rolled harmlessly into the mud, their owners already unconscious.
In two seconds, the entire army was gone.
The tribal survivors stared in a trance, forgetting to breathe. Leona was so stunned she forgot the agony in her ribs. She looked at that broad back—the man who had dismantled an army with a single glance—and a primal shiver traveled down her spine.
"The Conqueror's Spirit?!" Truff's sneer vanished.
As a veteran, he knew exactly what that one-in-a-million talent represented. The man before him wasn't a rookie here to die. He was a monster with the potential to stand atop the New World.
"The flies have been cleared," Ace said, pulling his hands from his pockets. He stepped over the bodies littering the mud, his eyes locking onto Truff. "Your turn."
"Don't get cocky, brat! Conqueror or not, I'm the King of this route! I'm worth 85 million!" Truff roared, violently ripping away his shredded noble's coat.
His muscles surged and hardened, dark bristles erupting as he fully committed to his Hell-Hog form. Truff ballooned into a ten-meter tank of bristles and Haki.
"PRIMAL JUGGERNAUT!"
With enough kinetic energy to level a city block, Truff launched a thundering charge. The earth groaned and cracked under his weight as he hurtled toward Ace.
Facing the Haki-clad tusks of an Ancient Zoan, Ace didn't dodge.
He dropped into a slight crouch, the rock beneath his boots spider-webbing instantly. His palms were dyed obsidian as he pushed his Armament Haki to its limit. Ace met the charge head-on, reaching out with bare hands to catch the tusks!
BOOM—!!!
The collision sent a visible white shockwave tearing through the basin, uprooting trees for fifty meters in every direction.
"GET BACK!" Truff screamed, trying to use his massive weight to crush the human into the dirt.
But horror dawned on him. No matter how much he strained, those black-armored palms were like iron anchors. Ace didn't move a single inch.
"Impossible! I'm an Ancient Zoan! How can a human have this much raw power?!"
"Is this the 'monstrous strength' of an Ancient Zoan?" Ace looked up, his eyes cold and unimpressed. "Disappointing. This bloated fat of yours is nothing compared to Garp's fists."
As he spoke, the muscles in Ace's forearms flared.
SNAP!
A sickening, wet crack echoed through the forest. Truff's massive, Haki-coated tusk—his pride and joy—was snapped off like a dry twig by Ace's raw, monstrous strength.
"AAAAAAAAAGH!"
Truff shrieked, his massive body lurching as the pain shattered his balance. Ace didn't give him a heartbeat to recover.
He dropped the broken tusk and chambered a fist. Scarlet-gold Celestial Flame ignited with a roar, twisting together with the black Haki until the air itself distorted from the heat.
"Watch closely, Chef," Ace said, glancing back at Leona. "This is what a real hunt looks like."
He pivoted his hips, and a soaring uppercut connected squarely with Truff's massive, hairy chin.
"ENKAI: KYOSHIN!"
A pillar of fire erupted from the punch, spiraling into the sky.
Truff's tens-of-tons of weight was lifted clean off the ground. He was launched into the air like a flaming cannonball. The celestial heat bypassed his Zoan hide, incinerating his bristles and scorching his very soul.
K-BOOM!
Truff crashed into the forest a hundred meters away, carving a massive crater into the earth. Charred, smoking, and with his Haki shattered, he reverted to his human form—a broken, bloated man twitching in the dirt before slipping into total darkness.
An 85-million-Berry veteran hadn't even lasted two rounds.
The basin fell into a holy silence.
Leona leaned against the Kong's finger, her cat-like pupils wide with shock. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
Hundreds of men downed in a second. An Ancient Zoan's tusks snapped like glass. A tycoon turned into a cripple with one punch.
When this man told her he'd take her to the New World to hunt legends... he hadn't been joking. Not even a little.
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