Bacchus Island's inland region, deep within the Primordial Hunting Ground.
This had once been a quiet, isolated basin sheltered by enormous ancient trees. It was a sacred land where the island's native tribes had thrived for generations.
But now, this sacred land had been transformed into a sea of fire and a living hell.
"Boom!"
With a deafening explosion, several towering trees so massive it would have taken ten people to encircle them came crashing down. Pungent yellow-green poison gas spread through the forest. The natives, armed with crude bone spears and bows, fell in droves before the well-equipped, heavily armed poachers, like wheat being harvested.
"Hahaha! Release the poison gas! Smoke those savages out!"
"Don't shoot them and ruin their pelts! The Baron ordered it. The natives' bones are just like those ancient giant beasts' young—they'll fetch a good price at the underground auctions!"
Several hundred poachers in black uniforms laughed cruelly as they tightened the encirclement.
And at the very center of the battlefield—
An Ancient Kong nearly forty meters tall, its entire body covered in silver-gray fur, let out a heartbroken roar. It was the guardian beast worshipped by the tribe for generations.
Now its body was covered in horrifying wounds, and several enormous, specially made harpoons were embedded deep in its flesh, their barbed hooks restricting its movements.
Standing opposite the Kong was a man of immense proportions, so fat he looked like a mountain of flesh.
He was Gluttony Baron Truff.
He wore an extravagantly luxurious noble's suit that had been stretched out of shape by his bulk, and he held a half-eaten dinosaur leg in one hand. Faced with the Ancient Kong's enormous fist, powerful enough to shatter boulders, Truff didn't even try to dodge. Instead, an intensely greedy, murderous glint shone in his eyes.
"Ancient Zoan: Entelodont Fruit, Ancient Giant Boar form!"
Truff sneered. In an instant, his rolls of fat shrank and hardened, turning into coarse, tough, dark-brown bristles and hide. His head became as fearsome as an ancient giant boar's, and two sharp tusks several meters long jutted from the corners of his mouth.
"Wouldn't it be better to behave and let yourself be slaughtered, big monkey?"
Truff casually tossed aside the bone in his hand. His massive body sank slightly as he clenched his right fist.
"Vmmm—"
A layer of Armament Haki, dark and deep as obsidian, instantly covered his entire right arm and half his body.
"Boom!"
The Ancient Kong's massive fist slammed into Truff's Haki-coated fist.
The sickening crack of breaking bones rang out. The Ancient Kong, dozens of times Truff's size, let out a pained whimper. Its supposedly unbreakable knuckle bones caved in against the hardness of Armament Haki. The terrible force of the impact sent its enormous body staggering backward, crashing hard into a cliff and smashing it to pieces.
"That's all the strength you've got, and you call yourself a guardian deity? What a disappointment."
Truff shook his fist, a sneer of contempt stretching the fat across his face. "If those big shots in Mary Geoise hadn't changed their tastes lately and specifically asked to eat primate brains, I wouldn't have bothered coming all the way out to these mountains myself."
He had roamed the New World in his youth and had trained in both types of Haki. Later, he'd cozied up to some nobles and gradually retreated to Paradise, where he'd become a local tyrant. His bounty had been kept suppressed and unchanged.
Truff turned to look at several hunting officers standing behind him, each radiating a savage menace.
"You lot, take half the men and seal off the forest around the basin."
He issued the order coldly. "Not even a fly gets out of here after what happened today!"
"Yes, Baron!"
The officers accepted the order and immediately led a large force toward the surrounding forest.
Truff turned back to the Ancient Kong, lying in a pool of blood as it tried to protect the elderly, the women, and the children behind it. The tusks at the corners of his mouth gleamed coldly.
"All right, time for the main course."
Just as Truff began trudging forward, ready to deliver the Ancient Kong a fatal blow—
"Whoosh!"
A razor-sharp silver slash, accompanied by a fierce whistling wind, burst without warning from the nearby trees, aimed straight at Truff's throat!
"Hm?"
Truff's Observation Haki instantly sensed the danger. He didn't panic. He simply raised his thick arm, coated in Armament Haki.
"Clang!"
A piercing metallic clash rang out. The razor-sharp slash, powerful enough to split rock, struck Truff's blackened arm, but only sent a shower of dazzling sparks flying. It couldn't penetrate his Haki defense at all.
"Get your filthy hands off our tribe's guardian deity, Truff!"
A sharp, furious cry rang out, brimming with desperate resolve.
A wild, dark-red ponytail flew through the air. Like a furious lioness, Leona landed with a crash in the clearing between Truff and the Ancient Kong, gripping two enormous Bone-Cleaving Blades, one black and one silver.
"Lady Leona! Lady Leona's back!"
The natives, nearly suffocated by the poison gas, saw the tall figure standing before them. Hope and tears sprang into their eyes.
"Oh? I wondered who it was. Turns out it's you, that little mouse who's always skulking around."
Truff lowered his arm after blocking the attack. Seeing Leona panting, a trace of dried blood still at the corner of her mouth from where Ace had struck her earlier, he laughed with utter contempt.
"What is it? Tired of hiding in the mountains and playing savage? Come back to die alongside your tribe and that big monkey?"
Leona didn't answer.
She looked at the ravaged tribe, the people lying in pools of blood, and the Ancient Kong on the verge of death. Anger and guilt burned in her feline-like vertical pupils, so intensely they seemed ready to drip blood.
If only she hadn't lost time outside while tracking that Tyrannosaurus. If only she'd returned sooner...
"I don't care if I have to give my life today—I'm taking you to hell with me!"
Leona roared and pushed off the ground. She brought her extraordinary strength and years of experience dismembering ancient beasts to bear.
"Bone-Stripping: Frenzied Dance!"
The Black Steel Blade and silver blade became a metallic storm in midair, moving too fast for the eye to follow!
Leona charged into the enemy ranks with reckless abandon. Wherever her blades flashed, poachers in steel bulletproof vests were sliced apart along with their guns, reduced to even chunks of flesh. Like a heartless meat grinder, she carved a bloody path through the encirclement of several hundred men, charging straight for Truff!
"Your swordsmanship is pretty good."
Truff stood where he was, letting his men be slaughtered around him without so much as a flicker in his eyes. "Too bad. On these seas, martial arts without Haki are nothing but third-rate tricks!"
"Vmmm!"
Truff drew a deep breath, and the terrifying physical power of an Ancient Zoan boar erupted. He didn't dodge Leona's viciously precise dissecting strikes. Instead, he charged straight into the blades and smashed forward with a brutal headbutt!
"Clang—crack!"
His Armament Haki-coated tusks collided with the Black Steel Bone-Cleaver.
A desperate surge of force traveled up the hilt. Leona felt as if the bones in both arms were about to shatter. Her palms split open, and blood poured from them.
"Urgh!"
Her proud swordsmanship was like an insect trying to shake a tree before this seasoned Ancient Zoan fighter who had mastered Haki. Leona spewed blood and flew backward like a broken kite, smashing through more than a dozen thick tree trunks before landing heavily at the Ancient Kong's feet.
"Roar..." The Ancient Kong let out a weak, mournful cry and extended a massive finger, trying to shield Leona beneath its hand.
"Cough, cough... Damn it!"
Leona struggled to get up, but the agony in her internal organs left her too weak even to grip her blades.
The gap in strength was like a chasm.
She watched in despair as Truff and the remaining poachers approached, step by step.
"Inject that Kong with anesthetic and load it onto the ship. As for this woman—"
Truff walked up to Leona and looked down at her, his eyes icy. "Cut off her hands and feet, then throw her into the poison-gas zone. Let her watch her people rot."
Several poachers carrying heavy cleavers sneered as they stepped forward and raised their blades high.
Leona gritted her teeth and didn't close her eyes.
Even if she died, she would keep her eyes open and etch the faces of those bastards into her soul. But then, for no reason she could explain, the image of the black-haired man sitting by the campfire a few hours earlier, devouring meat, suddenly flashed through her mind.
"Send every monster in these seas to my chopping board..."
"What an impossible dream to turn down." A single resentful tear, mingled with blood, slid down Leona's cheek.
And yet—
Just as those cleavers were about to fall, just as her hands were a hair's breadth from being severed—
"Whoosh!"
A strange breeze suddenly swept across the edge of the battlefield.
Then—
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
The poachers who had raised their cleavers didn't even have time to react before their heads exploded under a terrifying, frenzied force, like overripe watermelons.
Their headless bodies crumpled to the ground.
The sneer on Truff's face froze. He whipped around, and his Observation Haki blared with alarm!
Amid the battlefield strewn with corpses and blood, before Leona's disbelieving eyes—
A tall, broad-shouldered figure with a dark-red back stood there, like a demon god.
He didn't shout about justice or spare a glance for the poachers recoiling in terror around him.
Ace strode forward like an impassable mountain, standing firmly between Leona and the Ancient Kong.
He turned his head slightly, his deep, cold black eyes calmly fixing on Truff in the distance.
"Don't get it twisted, boar."
Ace's voice was quiet, yet carried an absolute authority that could make the entire forest tremble.
"This woman—and all the top-grade ingredients in this forest—belong to me now."
Ace raised both hands, and black Armament Haki instantly coiled around his fists.
"Who gave you permission to touch them?"
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