Elite Hunting

That question carried little inflection, yet it landed like a heavy hammer against every poacher's chest. Truv's tiny eyes, squeezed into slits by rolls of fat, narrowed slightly. The moment Ace appeared, Truv's Observation Haki had already sensed the dangerous aura surrounding the black-haired man.

"So you're the one. The rookie from the papers a few days ago who broke East Blue's bounty record."

Truv spat a mouthful of blood and sneered. "Eclipse Ace, with a bounty of fifty million Beli. Why aren't you enjoying your fame in East Blue? Come to the Grand Line to get yourself killed?"

At the words "the East Blue rookie with a fifty-million bounty," greed and cruelty returned to the faces of the hundreds of fully armed poachers around them. In their eyes, East Blue bounties were greatly inflated. Fifty million meant little more than a slightly tougher fat sheep, especially with Baron here.

"Baron, the officers have gone to the outskirts. Leave this to us!"

Several poacher squad leaders raised their Fire Pistols and grenade launchers loaded with Poison Gas Bombs. With no attempt to hide the killing intent in their eyes, they roared, "Brothers, turn this brat who doesn't know his place and those savages into pincushions! Fire!"

With their shouts, hundreds of dark gun barrels and cannons all pointed at Ace, as well as Leona and the natives behind him.

"Get out of the way! That's highly concentrated poison gas!"

Leona lay at the feet of Ancient Kong, shouting with eyes wide in terror.

But Ace stood where he was, without moving a step.

He merely lifted his eyes to the poachers raising their guns.

The next instant.

An invisible pressure spread from Ace.

It swept around Leona, the natives, and Ancient Kong behind him, crushing only the poachers in front.

"What is this feeling..."

"H-help..."

The poachers about to pull their triggers froze mid-sneer. Their minds went blank, and their hearts felt as if an invisible hand had clenched them tight.

Before they could even let out a full scream, hundreds of poachers carrying heavy weapons rolled their eyes back, foamed at the mouth, and toppled to the ground in waves.

The loaded grenade launchers drooped helplessly as their owners lost consciousness. The Poison Gas Bombs remained stuck in the barrels, unfired.

In just two seconds.

Apart from Truv, the noisy poacher force had been wiped out.

The natives, who had been wearing expressions of despair, stared at the scene in a daze, forgetting even to breathe.

Leona had forgotten the intense pain in her body, too. She stared at the back of the man who had felled hundreds with a single glance. Her slit pupils narrowed, and an instinctive shiver crawled up her spine.

"Conqueror's Haki?!"

The sneer vanished completely from Truv's face.

As a veteran pirate, he knew what it meant to possess a gift found in only one person in a million. The young man before him wasn't some East Blue rookie who had come to die. He was a true monster with the potential to conquer the New World.

"The annoying flies are gone."

Ace stepped over the unconscious poachers scattered across the ground and fixed his gaze on Truv.

"Now it's your turn."

"Don't get cocky, brat!"

Knowing there was no way to settle things peacefully now, Truv roared and tore off his luxurious noble's suit.

In an instant, the fat all over his body swelled and hardened, turning into coarse, tough, dark-brown bristles.

Ancient Zoan: Entelodont Fruit, Entelodont Form.

Truv's body instantly grew to over ten meters tall, like a heavy tank covered in bristles. His eyes were bloodshot, and powerful Armament Haki coated his massive tusks and arms.

"So what if you've got Conqueror's Haki? On this route, I'm the eight-five-million-Beli king!"

"Drop dead!"

"Savage Charge!"

Truv smashed the ground beneath his feet. His enormous body gathered momentum and charged at Ace like a moving mountain of flesh.

Facing the ancient giant boar, wrapped in Armament Haki and powerful enough to smash through castle walls, Ace didn't dodge.

He lowered his stance, and the rocks beneath his feet shattered instantly.

His palms turned pitch-black with Armament Haki. He advanced to meet Truv's enormous tusks, thrusting out both hands without backing down.

"BOOM!!!"

The two wildly mismatched bodies collided in the middle of the basin.

A white shock wave spread outward, sending dust and broken leaves flying from within dozens of meters. Several giant trees, already tottering from the explosions, crashed to the ground.

"Back off!" Truv's eyes bulged with fury as he tried to crush the man before him with the Ancient Zoan strength he prided himself on.

But the next moment, his expression changed. No matter how hard he strained, the two black hands clamped around his tusks remained as immovable as iron pincers.

"Impossible! I'm an Ancient Zoan! How could you have this kind of strength?!" Truv was rocked to his core.

"Is that all the strength of an Ancient Zoan?"

Ace looked up at him, his voice tinged with disappointment.

"How disappointing. This flabby body of yours is nothing compared to old man Garp's fists."

As the words left his mouth, the muscles in Ace's arms bulged.

"CRACK!"

A bone-chilling snapping sound rang out. One of Truv's enormous tusks, which he had been so proud of and which was coated in Armament Haki, was snapped off by Ace's sheer physical strength and Haki!

"Aaaaaah!"

Truv let out a bloodcurdling scream. Pain threw his massive body off balance.

Ace gave him no chance to catch his breath.

He released the broken tusk and clenched his right hand into a fist. Vermilion Bird Divine Fire blazed to life, intertwining with his black Armament Haki and warping the air around him with heat.

"Watch closely, Leona."

Ace turned his head slightly and spoke to Leona, lying behind him. "This is what top-tier hunting really looks like."

The next second, Ace drove his strength through his waist and delivered a simple uppercut straight into Truv's massive jaw.

"Divine Fire: Collapse Fist!"

A pillar of crimson-gold fire shot skyward with the punch.

Truv's body, over ten meters tall and weighing dozens of tons, lifted off the ground. He shot into the air like a blazing cannonball, hurled upward by the force of the blow.

The scorching Divine Fire spread from his jaw, burning through the Ancient Zoan defenses he had prided himself on and setting his thick bristles alight in an instant.

"BOOM!"

Truv crashed down in the forest a hundred meters away, smashing a massive crater into the ground. His body was charred black, his Armament Haki completely dispersed. He returned to his original obese human form and twitched twice at the bottom of the crater before losing consciousness.

The veteran powerhouse with a bounty of eighty-five million Beli couldn't last two rounds against the captain of the Eclipse Pirates.

The battlefield fell silent.

Leona leaned against Ancient Kong's foot, staring in shock at Ace, who stood where he was, not even breathing hard.

She swallowed a mouthful of blood-tinged saliva, her heart pounding out of control.

He had felled hundreds in an instant.

Snapped an Ancient Zoan's tusk with sheer physical strength.

Punched a monster of that caliber into helplessness.

At last, she understood that the man hadn't been humoring her when he said he would bring the monsters of the New World to her chopping block.

He really could do it.