"Run! We can't beat him!" Rayleigh was kind enough not to say, "I can't beat him."
"Is this guy really impossible to defeat?" Ace was somewhat unwilling to accept it.
"Unfortunately, he truly has never lost!" Rayleigh was helpless as well. If he could, he really didn't want to become enemies with someone as unfathomable as Longinus.
"Stop hesitating! Take your companions and run!" Rayleigh shouted hurriedly while dealing with Longinus's torrential attacks.
"Companions..." Ace let out a pained growl, transforming into a whirlwind of flames that swept everyone toward the coast.
"You think you can escape like this?" Longinus laughed. "Minos, catch them!"
The clear cry of an eagle suddenly rang out in the sky, causing Rayleigh and Ace's expressions to change dramatically.
It was a truly sad thing. The son of the Pirate King and a super rookie among pirates couldn't even defeat Longinus's mount.
Even sadder was the fact that they were even slower.
"Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! Senior Rayleigh has already helped me so much, yet in the end, am I really going to be captured and taken back by his mount?" Ace roared inwardly.
If it had been an ordinary ferocious beast, he could have relied on elementalization to evade it even if he couldn't win. But that Griffin was even more proficient with Armament Haki than he was.
Ace, whose Armament Haki couldn't even match a bird's, despaired!
"Wait, I think I've heard that his Griffin ate a Devil Fruit!" Ace shifted his gaze toward one of the crewmen he was carrying. It was Wallys, a stingray Fish-Man.
Ace gradually increased the temperature of the flames covering Wallys's body, then accelerated and plunged headfirst into the sea.
"Hm? What's that..." Longinus turned his head toward the surface of the sea.
"Courting death