The Plague was, as its name suggested, a disease.
And every disease needed time to take hold. Against the mighty fighters of the vast seas of the One Piece World, that time could be infuriatingly long.
Jack's powerful body and Doflamingo's resilient threads—strength and finesse combined. If Crocodile fought them head-on, he would only delay his defeat. He had never intended to beat them that way.
They had been fighting all this time, but Crocodile had already saturated the area with the Pathogens of his Plague. With every breath they took, they drew more of the Plague into their bodies.
To keep them from noticing, Crocodile had endured their blows and struggled through his counterattacks. Only when the Plague had taken enough hold to eat away at a monster as tough as Jack did he finally strike.
Did they think they were safe because they had never touched him?
No, no. Relying on touch to spread a Plague was the most foolish approach. He was no cautionary example from Loa's stories, no Magellan—the current warden of Impel Down, the "Poison Man."
Magellan's body was lethally poisonous, yet he insisted on getting close enough to attack before his poison could affect anyone. If poison gas existed, why not focus on that?
Perhaps that was the difference between the living and the Undead.
As one of the Undead, granted the Source of Plague, Crocodile had devoted his abilities entirely to killing the living. His year of training had taught him to spread a Plague powerful enough to do the job without his enemies noticing a thing.
Sprawled on the ground, both men felt every part of their bodies screaming in protest. The pain was more than an ordinary person could bear. Yet neither cried out. They gritted their teeth and glared at