Arlong Park (6)

"Hey? There's a shark!" Luffy looked around but couldn't spot Arlong anywhere. Then the shark fin breaking the surface gave him a fright.

"Idiot, that's Arlong!" Everyone was speechless. He was a Devil Fruit user who wasn't even going into the water, so why was he afraid of a shark? If he really fell into the sea, the result would be the same whether there was a shark or not!

"The speed I gain underwater is unstoppable! Die!" With that, Arlong unleashed his ultimate move, Torpedo, shooting out of the sea from below and stabbing toward Luffy.

"What was that?" Luffy had barely avoided the vital point and had no idea what that black blur had been. He had merely sensed danger instinctively, and his body had moved on its own. If Luffy had hesitated for even an instant, his body would have been pierced through.

"You actually dodged it?" Arlong stood atop the building, looking down at the wounded Luffy. From his movements, it seemed he was preparing to use Torpedo again.

"That was close! It can even pierce the ground?" After barely dodging again, Luffy saw Arlong's nose embedded in the ground and finally realized how close he had come to death. Arlong's Torpedo was incredibly fast, but fortunately, it was a straight-line attack. Otherwise, Luffy would have been pierced long ago.

"Are that shark monster's bones made of iron?" Sanji said in shock after seeing that. He now knew Arlong had not gone all out when fighting the three of them earlier.

"Who knows?" William was equally horrified. The strength Arlong had displayed was absolutely no weaker than that of the former "Colonel William." Although William had yet to fully recover, he was already back to seventy or eighty percent of his former strength, and he now also had the support of his Devil Fruit ability.

Even the original Colonel William might not have been stronger than William before Hawkeye wounded him. It was only because William's severe injuries had yet to heal that he was temporarily no match for Arlong. Zoro was injured as well, and his wounds were even worse than William's. He was practically forcing himself to hold on at death's door, so both of their combat abilities had been greatly weakened.

After witnessing the speed of Arlong's Torpedo, William knew he had underestimated him. If Arlong used Torpedo to hunt them down, even William, the fastest member of the Straw Hat Pirates, could only barely evade it. The others would fare even worse.

"Luffy, hide! Arlong has dived underwater again!" Usopp shouted hurriedly. As a sniper, his eyesight was naturally sharp, and he could see that Luffy could only barely dodge Arlong's Torpedo attacks.

"No! I'm going to catch him and snap his nose! Rubber Shield!" Luffy stretched the four fingers of one hand into a rubber barricade, preparing to use it to block Arlong's Torpedo.

"What? Did he get hit?" Torpedo was too fast. Usopp only saw Luffy get sent flying by Arlong.

"No, he bounced himself away!" William, who excelled at speed, saw more clearly than Usopp. Knowing that Luffy had not been pierced by Arlong, he relaxed slightly.

"Hehe, that move doesn't work on me anymore!" But before Luffy could celebrate for long, Arlong launched another Torpedo and knocked him into the air.

"Die! Final blow!" At that moment, Arlong showed a delighted expression. If Luffy's earlier dodge had been luck, then with Luffy suspended in midair, he had nowhere to evade. In Arlong's eyes, Luffy was now a stationary target, ready to be struck at any moment.

"Rubber Net!" Although Luffy knew he could not avoid Arlong's attack while in midair, he had never intended to dodge. He crossed and overlapped his fingers, stretching them out into a giant net.

"Caught a fish!" Seeing Arlong trapped in his Rubber Net, Luffy immediately grew excited. At the same time, he overlapped the soles of his feet and used Rubber Pike to kick Arlong into the ground.

"It worked!" Seeing Arlong's body embedded in the ground and unconscious, the villagers cried out excitedly.

They had waited for this moment for eight whole years!

Today, when they had decided to end their lives through resistance, five young people had appeared. Then those five young people had actually destroyed all of Arlong Park. Everything had happened so unexpectedly that it was hard to believe it was real.

"Look, Arlong's awake!" Usopp, who had been celebrating moments ago, suddenly saw Arlong's eyes open. He was so frightened that he began to panic.

"No, Arlong's eyes have changed!" Sanji and the others immediately noticed something wrong with Arlong's gaze, and an ominous feeling rose in their hearts.

"That's the look in a Sea King's eyes when it's enraged. Looks like he's humiliated and furious." William had seen that look before when escaping from the Marines. Arlong showing that expression meant he would kill Luffy at any cost.

"This is the first time I've seen that look!" Nami said fearfully.

She had spent eight years in Arlong Park, yet no matter how angry Arlong had become, she had never seen that expression in his eyes. It seemed Luffy's actions had made Arlong feel insulted. Arlong was fighting to avenge his fellow fish-men, yet Luffy had repeatedly used strange moves to toy with him. How could he not be humiliated and enraged?

"You bastard! How dare you act so arrogantly before me, a fish-man!" Arlong grabbed Luffy by the head and flung him away viciously.

"Ah! That scared me to death. It didn't hurt, but this guy's really furious!" Luffy had just crawled out from the rubble when he saw Arlong thrust a hand blade at him. In his panic, he hurriedly dodged aside.

Arlong's palm pierced through the wall and grasped a weapon hanging on the other side. As the wall cracked apart, Arlong pulled out an enormous saw.

"What a huge saw!" Usopp and the others were terrified by the weapon in Arlong's hand. Just looking at it was enough to make them afraid.

"It's the Saw Sword!" As a former fish-man officer, Nami naturally recognized the weapon Arlong held. Arlong had never used this Saw Sword before because he believed no one in East Blue was worthy of making him fight with it.

Arlong raised the Saw Sword and slashed viciously at Luffy, sawing open the walls of the Arlong Park building. If a sailing ship like the Golden Merry were struck by it, it would absolutely be split in two with one blow. Even Marine warships would not dare claim they could emerge unscathed before the Saw Sword.

"They've gone up there. Straw Hat has been driven into a corner!" Although the villagers of Cocoyasi Village could not clearly see the battle, they knew Luffy had been forced to flee everywhere.

As a rubber man, Luffy feared bladed weapons most, and the Saw Sword in Arlong's hands was precisely his nemesis.

"They went inside?" The Straw Hat Pirates and the villagers watching from below saw Luffy flee into a room after reaching the rooftop, with Arlong following him inside. They had no idea what was happening within.

Nami recognized the room at a glance. It was the map room Arlong had once prepared for her. Arlong needed Nami's talent to fulfill his ambitions. To him, a gifted navigator like Nami was impossibly rare, so there was no way he would let her go.

"Stop getting in my way, Straw Hat bastard!" Arlong said, pressing the Saw Sword against Luffy's neck. But he discovered that the Saw Sword in his hand would not move at all.

"Something flew out! A table?" After the rooftop had gone quiet for a while, sounds suddenly came from it again. A table crashing through a window startled everyone.

"This is too strange. What exactly happened?" The rooftop was not shaking violently, but things kept falling from it. No one knew what Luffy and Arlong were doing inside. The only thing they knew was that their battle was still ongoing.

"Torpedo Sawtooth!" Arlong charged at Luffy with the speed of Torpedo, intending to bite Luffy to death with his Iron Teeth Technique.

"Rubber Axe!" Luffy also staked everything on his final move, kicking open the roof and stretching his leg to its limit, maximizing the increase in power generated by the Rubber Fruit's expansion and contraction.