"Apologize to you? You're just a hunk of iron! I'm not listening to you! Watch me dismantle you!"
Queen still did not take the robot's threat seriously. Due to its size and structure, Blitz looked somewhat comical when moving in its overloaded state, and its bulky body did not seem particularly threatening.
Facing the charging robot, Queen bent his legs and leaped into the air after a brief buildup of force. Gripping his blade with both hands, he raised it over his head and slashed at Blitz's neck.
"You actually left such a weak spot in the design. What else is there to say about such an obvious flaw?"
Compared to Blitz's heavy body, its neck was indeed much thinner. However, Blitz's response was simple. A little steam vented from its body, and its neck retracted backward, disappearing directly into its metal collar.
Clang!
The blade struck Blitz's body, but only chipped away some paint. Blitz itself was completely unharmed, while Queen's hands were numbed by the impact.
In the original timeline, both Judge and Queen would become formidable after growing stronger. They would not be among the top monsters of the New World, but they would still count as high-end combatants. Right now, however, they had yet to reach that level.
Whether in terms of technology or combat ability, they had only just begun.
Bear had contributed a great deal to Blitz's creation. Without equipment such as stamping machines, the Paw-Paw Fruit had become the most useful tool. Whether for compression or purification, it was extremely convenient.
Blitz's main body was made from a special alloy. Its hardness, strength, ductility, and toughness had reached a relatively ideal balance, while it also possessed strong corrosion resistance.
Against Blitz, whose entire body was made of special metal, even a swordsman who had mastered the ability to cut steel would gain little advantage.
Someone who could not even cut steel had no way of dealing with it.
"Metal is harder than flesh."
Bang!
Blitz's charged fist slammed into Queen's stomach, sending him flying even higher into the air. He performed a graceful free fall before finally landing in a nearby stream.
For now, Blitz only intended to teach them a lesson and make them apologize, so its punch had not been too powerful. Before long, Queen crawled out of the water, drenched and bent over.
"Hahaha, Queen, you really look pathetic. Is this the powerful body you always brag about? It doesn't seem like much to me."
"What are you laughing at? Why aren't you coming to help?"
"This was your mess. Why should I help you?"
Judge put on an act as though he had no intention of interfering. At that moment, he seemed to have forgotten that when Queen had been narcissistically boasting about his own abilities earlier, he had chimed in a few times as well.
Humans might have been able to tell that Judge had only been humoring Queen, but Blitz was different. Still growing, Blitz had already classified Judge and Queen as the same kind of person.
Whoosh!
While Judge was still mocking Queen's predicament, the Rocket Grab was already flying toward him.
"Hey, hey, hey! How exactly do you identify enemies? This clearly has nothing to do with me!"
That explanation was obviously useless. Blitz twisted its upper body and flung Judge toward Queen, sending Queen, who had just crawled out of the stream, tumbling back in.
It was fortunate that Queen had not eaten a Devil Fruit yet. Otherwise, after going back and forth like this, he might have sunk straight to the bottom.
"Bastard, I'm not useless like Queen! Taste my power!"
Judge pulled out something resembling a gun muzzle and attached it to the end of his flintlock. After taking a simple aim, he fired it toward Blitz.
Blitz's unretracted Rocket Grab caught the object Judge had fired in midair, but Judge wore a smug smile. The arrowhead suddenly exploded, and a powerful electric current traveled along Blitz's arm and into its body.
"Stay sprawled out there, you stupid hunk of iron!"
It was an electric shock gun Judge had been researching. He intended to use the powerful current to short-circuit and paralyze Blitz. Amid a burst of intense electricity, Blitz's movements gradually slowed.
"See that, Queen? This is the proper way to do things. You idiot, you actually tried to brawl with a robot? I really don't know what you were thinking.
Sorry, little kitty. We broke your robot. How about we help you fix it later?"
It was not that Judge had any sense of responsibility. He was simply curious about the robot's internal structure and wanted to see what Blitz looked like inside. Yet from Kate's gaze, Judge saw only pity.
"Meow thinks you'd better run now."
Kate had followed Oran and witnessed Blitz's creation. She knew that after entering overload mode, Blitz would experience a brief period of stiffness and its movements would slow down.
Although electricity was now crackling around Blitz's body, making it look as though it had short-circuited, it had nothing to do with Judge's attack. That current actually came from Blitz's internal energy core.
Judge's electric shock round had not stopped Blitz. Instead, it had activated its combat stance.
The next moment, Blitz seemed to go berserk, charging toward the two of them at even greater speed while swinging its electrified fists.
"Judge! You idiot! Look what you did!"
"Wasn't this started by you, you bastard?! What right do you have to blame me?!"
Crackle!
The electricity around Blitz began to spill outward as it approached them. Having seen how troublesome Blitz was, they gave up on confronting it head-on and began dodging its attacks instead. But the flying Rocket Grab and the leaking electricity left them miserable.
"Queen! Hurry up and apologize to it! Make this iron thing stop already!!"
"I refuse! Where would that leave my pride?!"
"If you don't apologize, you should start thinking about where our lives will be left!"
Under the noon sun, Blitz chased the two men before it, constantly teaching them a lesson.
Although Queen gave in after holding out for a while, it seemed to be too late. Blitz's goal appeared to have changed from making them apologize to simply teaching them a lesson.
"Oran, something's wrong with Blitz. He's beating up two people who came down from a ship called MADS, because earlier
Do we need to stop Blitz?"
Kate called Oran through the Den Den Mushi, described what had happened, and asked what to do next.
By her judgment, the two were not villains yet, so there was no need to kill them outright. However, their earlier contemptuous tone toward Oran had also displeased her greatly, so she had not interfered with Blitz's actions.
After all, Blitz had not activated extermination mode yet. No one would die.
"MADS? Looks like they're your subordinates. Is there anything you want to say?"
Oran did not answer Kate immediately. Instead, he looked at the tall figure before him, someone whose head was nearly as large as his body.
(End of Chapter)
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