Water 7, South District: Abandoned Timber Warehouses.
The cold rain cascaded through shattered skylights, mixing with sawdust and machine oil to wash away the thickening pool of crimson on the floor.
BOOM!
A massive support beam snapped like a dry twig. A half-man, half-leopard monster—slender yet corded with explosive muscle—was sent hurtling backward. He plowed two deep furrows into the muddy earth before sliding to a halt. His once-pristine black suit was a tattered rag; the right side of his feline face was swollen purple, and fresh blood bubbled from the corner of his mouth.
Rob Lucci.
He licked his bared fangs, a chilling mix of predatory rage and professional wariness flickering in his beastly pupils.
Thirty meters away, amidst the splinters and rubble, the mountain-like Mad Monk Urouge leaned heavily on the jagged remains of his hexagonal iron staff. His broad chest was a roadmap of deep puncture wounds, his monk's robes sodden with dark blood. He looked ready to collapse from blood loss at any second, yet he wore a fanatic, toothy grin that made the skin crawl.
Since the fight began, the two had flattened the warehouse—one moving like a localized hurricane, the other standing like an immovable peak.
Lucci had fully liberated the killing instincts of the Cat-Cat Fruit, Leopard Model. Combined with his mastery of the Six Powers, his speed and attack frequency had been a relentless blur. But this pirate possessed a vitality that defied logic, and his "suicide-style" counter-fighting was proving to be an assassin's nightmare.
"Swish!"
Lucci vanished, a black streak with no discernible trajectory. He reappeared in Urouge's left blind spot. With a whip-like snap of his waist, his leg carved a lethal arc through the air.
"Rankyaku: Leopard Tail!"
The spiral vacuum blade shrieked. Urouge didn't even try to dodge. He simply grunted, contracting his muscles as a layer of ink-black Armament Haki coated his forearm. He took the hit head-on.
The blade bit deep, the sound of wind-pressure grinding against Haki and bone echoing through the hall. But as blood sprayed, Urouge used the momentum. Ignoring the pain, he swung the heavy iron half-staff in a crushing horizontal sweep.
"Paper Arts."
Lucci's leopard form flowed like a willow leaf, his body losing all rigidity to drift past the iron staff's wind pressure. The moment he regained his footing, his eyes remained devoid of emotion. He exploded forward, diving into Urouge's chest.
"Shigan: Yellow Lotus!"
His fingers became a machine gun of steel-piercing thrusts, raining down on Urouge's abdomen and chest in a blur of motion.
Puff! Puff! Puff!
Blood mist filled the air. Any other pirate would have had their internal organs turned to jelly by such high-frequency penetration. But as the barrage ended, the defrocked monk didn't scream. He laughed—a deep, distorted sound of pure masochistic joy.
"Good finger technique," Urouge gasped. "Every strike... really found the meat."
Before Lucci could retreat, two massive hands, like iron clamps, snapped shut around the leopard-man's shoulders.
Lucci's pupils contracted. This madman had intentionally lowered his guard to take the Shigan just to pin him down!
"Now," Urouge's face was a mask of veins and gore, "it is time for this old monk to physically deliver you to the afterlife!"
Urouge's forehead turned jet-black with Haki. He snapped his head back and slammed it forward with the force of a battering ram.
BANG!!!
The sound was like two cannonballs colliding. Even though Lucci had reflexively used Tekkai on his neck and skull, the raw, unrefined brute force felt like a sledgehammer hitting plaster. His vision swam; his internal organs felt the shockwave of a detonating shell.
Lucci vomited stomach acid and blood, tearing himself free in a desperate scramble. He flipped backward, landing ten meters away in a low crouch.
It was a Shura field—instinctive, brutal blood-letting.
Lucci wiped his cheek. He had killed hundreds, but this man's vitality was an abyss. Worse, he realized the terrifying truth of Urouge's ability: stimulated by pain and injury, the monk's physical strength wasn't waning—it was climbing.
"His power is exceeding my threshold," Lucci realized. "I can't trade damage anymore. If my external strikes can't pierce his armor of muscle..."
Lucci stopped his high-speed movement. He stood rooted to the spot, drawing in a long, whistling breath of salty air. He overlapped his hands, forming a hollow cannon-fist shape at his waist. Every ounce of his life frequency, every scrap of his refined killing intent, compressed into a single point.
"The tricks end here, pirate."
The final verdict of the Six Powers:
"ROKUOGAN!"
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