Amid the endless yellow sand, Crocodile concealed himself within the sea of dunes.
The battered Crocodile hid in the dry sand, his clothes covered in black scorch marks left by lightning strikes.
Crocodile no longer possessed his earlier high spirits. Instead, he was thoroughly bedraggled.
"Damn it, that bastard..." Crocodile felt the injuries across his body, growing even angrier over this utterly inexplicable battle.
At the same time, his desire for Pluton grew even stronger.
To Crocodile, the conflict between the two of them had been utterly absurd from the beginning.
Just because of a warning whose reason had never been made clear, two Shichibukai were supposed to fight without reservation until one of them died?
That was impossible. Only someone without a brain would do something like that.
And even if he defeated the other party, there was nothing to gain. On the other hand, losing meant paying with his life.
Anyone with even a little sense would weigh the pros and cons and choose to retreat, wouldn't they?
Especially when they were already at a disadvantage. If he had held the advantage in strength, Crocodile would not have minded draining every drop of water from his opponent's body and leaving him as a dried corpse in the desert.
But reality had dealt Crocodile a fierce slap across the face. The gap between him and Enel was simply too great.
After losing to Whitebeard, Crocodile had become dispirited and given up training himself. Though he had not regressed as severely as he would seven years later, he was still no match for Enel, who had chosen to press forward through adversity and relentlessly grow stronger in order to settle the score with Kizaru.
So, after acknowledging his first defeat, Crocodile quickly accepted his second.
Crocodile was a shrewd and