Sound Lightning

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

A series of deafening explosions.

Rang out at the port of the Krol Kingdom.

Hailstones like icebergs fell from the sky, smashing everything in the port to pieces like meteors.

Under the immense impact.

Not a single pirate who had fled to the port, aside from Patches, survived.

The cold seemed especially fitting for the night.

As the hail from the sky fell ever more fiercely.

Although it was currently summer in the Krol Kingdom, temperatures within its borders had dropped below freezing.

The kingdom, already left in ruins by the pirates.

Was now even more battered under the assault of the massive hail.

When the hailstones had still been small, some of the more valiant pirates had barely managed to withstand them.

But once the hailstones grew as large as water vats, even carriages.

No one could stop the hail falling from the sky any longer.

More than half the pirates in the kingdom had now gone to see the Pirate King.

And those still alive.

Either had missing arms and legs, or were pinned beneath heavy debris, wailing where they lay.

Especially here at the port of the Krol Kingdom.

Because Roy had given this place special attention, under the pounding of the massive hailstones.

The once-spacious deepwater port had become a series of craters resembling the surface of the moon.

"Damn it! Why did this happen?"

Looking at his subordinates, crushed into pulp by enormous icebergs.

Patches shattered a massive chunk of ice with one wing, then threw back his head and roared in grief and fury.

This should have been the moment for him to enjoy the fruits of victory, yet this sudden natural disaster had dragged his dreams straight into hell.

Patches' mind was clouded by rage and bewilderment as he watched the icebergs continue to fall from the sky.

"Damn you, heavens! I will never forgive you!"

Everything was gone.

The fortune he had painstakingly built up over most of his life had completely vanished in this disaster.

Thinking of the pirate ships sunk by the hail and his dead subordinates.

The cruelty of dreams colliding with reality turned Patches' eyes bloodshot.

No one could easily accept the plunge from heaven to hell in an instant.

Just a moment ago, he had seemed poised to possess the whole world, but now he was poorer than a beggar anyone would disdain.

The crushing sense of loss had left Patches unable to think clearly.

Thinking of how he now had nothing left, he looked upon the tragic scene of corpses strewn everywhere.

"Ah!"

Patches let out an enraged, despairing roar.

Transforming into a black eagle once more, he shot upward like a sharp sword into the boundless night sky.

"Oh, you can't take it already? But I haven't even gotten angry yet. What right do you have to be angry?"

The Echo Map had Patches firmly locked on.

Roy felt nothing but contempt for Patches' current outburst.

Although the Black Eagle Pirates had been wiped out except for Patches, how could those pirates possibly know that Roy had lost an entire weapons factory?

Compared with a goose that laid golden eggs, a group of unknown pirates.

In Roy's eyes, grinding the Black Eagle Pirates' bones to dust a hundred times would not make up for the losses those pieces of trash had caused him.

The weapons factory in the Krol Kingdom was an enterprise Roy and Spandam had put enormous effort into establishing.

The factory had begun turning a profit last year, but before Roy and Spandam could use it to expand their plans.

The Black Eagle Pirates' attack had ruined every one of their next steps.

And because pirates occupying a World Government member nation was such a serious incident, Roy and Spandam had no choice but to painfully destroy all the groundwork they had laid.

It was simply an undeserved disaster.

No one knew the pain in Roy's heart as he personally brought down the hail.

After all, building that factory below had cost Roy and Spandam a great deal of money!

And according to the original plan, the factory would have served as a link for Roy and Spandam to connect with various forces.

But now, everything had been destroyed.

So how could Roy not be angry?

Weaving left and right to evade the giant hailstones plummeting downward.

Patches flew higher and faster into the sky.

The black eagle shot directly into the pitch-black storm clouds.

Patches had no particular destination.

The only reason he flew upward was because he wanted to vent the frustration bottled up inside him.

The density of the storm clouds made Patches' wings feel heavy.

And as he flew higher and faster, the temperature plummeted rapidly with his ascent.

Whoosh!

The black eagle burst through the thick layer of storm clouds.

But when he raised his head, he did not see a starry sky above them.

What appeared before Patches was a swirling mass of clouds shaped like a tornado.

And hailstones as massive as icebergs were continuously falling from the tail of that tornado-like cloud mass.

Everything before him had clearly overturned Patches' understanding of the sky.

When he encountered stormy weather in the past, Patches would sometimes fly into the sky on a whim.

But he had never seen such a bizarre sight as this in his life.

Storm clouds like a tornado.

Massive hailstones constantly forming from the tail of the clouds.

The sight before him left Patches staring wide-eyed as he swallowed hard.

"Damn it, was this cloud mass what destroyed everything I had?"

After the brief shock came rage that filled his heart.

Thinking of how he had been left with nothing, and of the storm clouds that had caused it all.

Blood red once again filled the whites of Patches' eyes.

Still in the form of a black eagle, he let out a cry that pierced the heavens.

Then something happened that surprised Roy.

This Zoan Devil Fruit user actually charged straight at the black cloud mass before him.

Judging by his momentum, he seemed intent on slicing the entire cloud mass apart.

"Is this guy an idiot? Diving into storm clouds? Is he looking down on me because there's no lightning in my clouds?"

Watching Patches rapidly approach through the Echo Map.

Roy glanced up at the mass of sonic energy above the sky, where it was continuously colliding and amplifying.

"It should have accumulated enough by now.

"I may not be able to create lightning out of thin air yet, but I wonder whether you can withstand noise as stimulating as lightning."

He raised his arm high.

"Let the echoes within expand without end!"

"Sound Lightning!"