Naval Battle

After leaving Whiskey Peak, Rain's sloop sailed alone across the boundless sea toward Alabasta.

The whiskey and sea beast steaks piled in the hold made the ship sit deep in the water. Rain still sat cross-legged at the stern, assimilating his legs into rock and connecting them to the underwater [Rock Turbine] to maintain steady high-speed travel.

During this time, Rain had never stopped trying to develop the [Rock-Rock Fruit]. He attempted to mimic the intense heat inside an active volcano, liquefying the rock on his body into crimson lava; or compressing rock molecules to their absolute limit, creating jet-black crystals harder than Obsidian with a metallic texture.

But all of it failed.

Without the guidance of Haki, the Devil Fruit within him possessed immense power but could not be controlled with precision. He could create tens of thousands of tons of rock to crush his enemies, yet he could not make a single stone undergo a fundamental leap in heat or hardness.

"Was I still being too impatient..."

Rain slowly opened his eyes. Just as he was about to close them and continue meditating, his pupils suddenly contracted.

At the edge of his vision, beneath the noon sun, three towering masts cleaved through the waves and charged straight at him.

It was a massive two-masted pirate ship. Its figurehead was a black shark with its bloody maw wide open. On its pale pirate flag was an all-too-familiar skull emblem—a skull with two enormous fangs.

West Blue, the Fang Pirates. Bounty: 22 million Beli.

"Following in the wake of defeated dogs..." Rain snorted coldly.

Like Capone Bege, the Fang Pirates were an established force that had operated in the West Blue for years before recently crossing Reverse Mountain into the Grand Line. They had crossed paths with Rain several times in the West Blue. Although Rain had killed several of their officers, their captain, "Brute Force" Otto, had always escaped through sheer cunning.

"Boom—!"

There was no probing or warning. Once the distance closed to five hundred meters, dense bursts of fire erupted from the black shark pirate ship's broadside.

Ten heavy cannons fired in unison!

"Court death."

Rain abruptly rose to his feet. Before achieving advanced development, his fighting style was still filled with a brutal kind of beauty.

Rain flung both hands upward.

"Rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble—!"

Before his sloop, amid a world-shaking roar, more than a dozen gray-white Granite pillars over two meters in diameter and soaring into the sky erupted from the sea!

These pillars were not arranged haphazardly. Instead, following some strange geometric pattern, they instantly formed a towering wall of rock before Rain's sloop!

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Heavy solid cannonballs slammed viciously into the rocky wall. Flames scattered, and stone fragments flew. The wall was quickly pocked with craters, but fresh rock swiftly filled the gaps, making the defense seem impregnable.

"Damn it! It really is a Logia! That brat in the black trench coat really ate a Logia Devil Fruit!"

On the Fang pirate ship's deck, a short, fat man with two sharp fangs protruding from his face let out an enraged roar.

"Captain Otto! What do we do? The bombardment is useless against him, and we're almost out of cannonballs!" his subordinates cried in terror.

"Idiots! So what if he's a Logia? Out here on this endless sea, that ship is his life!" A cruel, calculating gleam flashed through Otto's eyes. "Steer toward him! As long as we smash that wooden boat of his to pieces, he's dead!"

Using the wind and momentum, the pirate ship adjusted its course. Its hard black shark ram was locked onto Rain's sloop as it charged at full speed.

Two hundred meters. One hundred meters. Fifty meters.

Watching the pirate ship draw closer like a moving mountain, Rain's gaze remained cold, but his breathing began to grow heavy.

Controlling nearly all the rock to build a wall at sea, without any elemental replenishment, was an utterly terrifying drain on his stamina.

"You want to ram my ship? Then stay here forever."

Rain pressed both hands against the deck again.

Rain drew upon every last trace of Devil Fruit power in his body. His trench coat snapped wildly in the gale, while a strange flush born of extreme exhaustion began to appear across his skin.

"Crack... boom!"

Accompanied by a tearing roar.

Directly beneath the Fang pirate ship, a massive whirlpool suddenly erupted from the depths of the previously bottomless sea.

Then, an enormous reef silently emerged.

"What?"

"God! How could such a huge rock come out of the sea?!"

The Fang Pirates' crew screamed in despair. Staring at that enormous reef, they had no time to change course.

"Boom—!"

There was no avoiding it.

The Fang pirate ship slammed viciously into the giant reef. Its prized black shark ram instantly shattered under the terrifying recoil. The entire wooden pirate ship let out a teeth-grinding crack from its middle, then exploded apart!

Blood, rum, shattered planks, and the wails of pirates instantly filled this stretch of sea.

"Brute Force" Otto, worth 22 million, had run rampant across the West Blue by brute force, only to be crushed by an even purer and more violent method the moment he reached the Grand Line.

Though Otto was called "Brute Force," he was also a Zoan Boar-Boar Fruit user. In a naval battle, a ship breaking apart meant death.

Rain wildly fired stone bullets, harvesting the pirates struggling in the sea. At the same time, he controlled a flying rock to precisely knock out Otto, who was still struggling to climb onto a plank, then created two Granite ropes with his mind, binding him tightly and dragging him to the bow of his ship.

Captive secured. Fang Pirates sunk.

"Pant... pant... pant..."

Rain collapsed onto the deck. His hands trembled violently, sweat covered his face, and the Devil Fruit power within him had nearly been drained dry.

A naval battle on this scale had let him experience what it felt like to be close to complete exhaustion.

But before Rain could catch his breath, an incredibly piercing crack of splintering wood suddenly rang out from his sloop.

Rain whipped around, his pupils shrinking.

He had still been careless.

Although those dozen heavy cannon shots had been blocked by the rocky wall, the terrifying vibrations caused by the bombardment and the explosive showers of stone dust from stray shots had still reached his wooden sloop. Combined with the horrifying shockwave produced when the Fang pirate ship struck the reef, this medium-sized sailing vessel had reached its limit.

A massive, horrifying crack several meters long had appeared along the ship's side. Icy seawater was pouring through it in a frenzy, and the water level was rapidly rising.

"Damn it..." Rain slammed his fist down on the deck.

Rain gritted his teeth, forcing down the dizziness in his mind caused by overexertion. Drawing upon his last reserves of strength, he controlled some Granite in the hold, melted it down, and reshaped it into a massive stone "patch" that clung tightly over the crack in the hull.

But that only treated the symptoms, not the root cause.

Wood and stone continued to creak under the strain of seawater and gravity. Seawater kept seeping in around the edges of the rock patch.

"I have to go! I need to find an island before my strength runs out completely!"

Rain looked at the flooding hold, a resolute gleam flashing through his eyes.

He ignored the unconscious Otto at the bow and walked straight to the stern.

Of the fifty tons of rock in the hold, less than a tenth remained after the fierce battle, and most of that had already been used to repair the hull.

"I can only use the stupid method..."

Rain closed his eyes. Half his body began to undergo violent elemental transformation, turning to sand. He forcibly assimilated himself with the floor and keel of the entire sloop, slowly replacing them with rock that extended downward.

A super-miniature version of the [Rock Turbine] appeared.

But that tiny amount of thrust was still far too insignificant for the heavy vessel of fused wood and stone.

Every step was burning through what little stamina Rain had left.

One hour. Two hours. Five hours.

The sun gradually sank westward. The sea was dyed a dark crimson.

Rain's black trench coat was completely soaked with seawater and sweat. His eyes were bloodshot, and his consciousness was beginning to blur. He could clearly feel every muscle and every cell in his body crying out in pain. Due to excessive elemental transformation and exhaustion, his body was beginning to show signs of collapsing from the edges inward.

"Not enough... still not enough..."

Rain bit down hard on his tongue, using the sharp pain to stimulate his brain as it neared unconsciousness. He looked at the Eternal Pose in his arms. Its needle still pointed toward an unknown distance. He only knew that if he stopped now, he, his ship, and that 22-million-Beli captive would silently sink into the sea together.

Just as Rain felt he could no longer even lift his eyelids, a huge dark-golden outline that seemed to have no end slowly emerged upon the distant horizon.

There lay boundless dark-golden dunes, carrying an ancient aura of dryness and authority beneath the setting sun.

The superpower, Alabasta.

"Finally... made it..."

The instant Rain saw that golden desert, his vision went completely black.

With a bang, his body completely collapsed, turning into a lifeless pile of gray-white sand and gravel scattered across the beach.

Under the final strain of seawater and gravity, the sloop slowly slipped into Alabasta's hidden harbor channel. It let out a mournful creak, then sank completely.