"Not convinced?"
Crocodile narrowed his dead-fish eyes, a smoking cigar clenched between his teeth. His right hand remained in his pocket, while only his left hand, transformed into a sand hook, was raised before his chest.
The black Coat of Justice behind him billowed with the windblown sand, which swirled around him in wisps of sandy mist.
The next moment.
Along with the sand hook, his entire left arm turned into earthy yellow sand and began vibrating at a frequency that was visibly blurred to the naked eye, accompanied by a faint humming sound.
At that instant.
The Third Raikage moved, charging forward in a straight line as a streak of black-and-blue lightning, without any flourish.
Fast!
Across a distance of less than a hundred meters, he was incomparably fast, unimaginably fast, fast enough to rival true lightning.
At the same time, a terrifying sound like thunder erupted. The earth-shaking roar produced surging sonic booms and shockwaves, forming visible rings of ripples in the air.
The layer of sand on the ground seemed as though a thousand tons of explosives had detonated, creating a towering curtain of sand behind the Third Raikage.
However.
Crocodile's side was no less imposing.
His left arm, transformed into a high-vibration Sand Blade, carried surging Haki power as it cleaved vertically at lightning speed.
A Sand Blade slash whose sharpness alone was enough to sting the eyes tore through the desert ground before him in the blink of an eye, streaks of purple lightning coiling within it.
[Roar!]
In an instant, the enhanced Desert Spada collided with the ultimate One-Finger Nukite in the middle of the field.
The boom was like thunder roaring right before their eyes. Thick, visible waves of air burst outward, while tsunami-like waves of sand swept in all directions.
The Cloud