Dice-Dice Fruit

"Find the man called Rain, learn his route, and report back to me immediately."

This was the absolute order issued several hours earlier by Crocodile, the hidden boss of Baroque Works, through a Den Den Mushi from an underground office in Rainbase, the "Dream City."

At the time, Crocodile's voice carried an exceptionally rare trace of gravity. "Listen carefully, Daz. No matter how confident you are in your own strength, do not engage that Logia without my permission. Stone may be dull, but without Haki or an opposing attribute, ordinary physical attacks are meaningless against him."

"Scout only. Do not engage. That is an order."

Deep within the Alabasta Desert stood an ancient ruin, eroded by wind and sand until only several broken stone pillars remained.

The sunset was blood-red, dyeing the yellow sand a dark crimson.

A bald, enormously muscular man in a warrior monk's robes stood silently atop a towering dune several hundred meters from the ruins. His vulture-sharp gaze was fixed on the black-clad young man resting against a stone pillar at the center of the ruins with his eyes closed.

Baroque Works' chief assassin, the Dice-Dice Fruit user, Mr. 1—Daz Bones.

"So this is the 'Grayrock' who turned Golden Sands City upside down..."

Mr. 1 watched Rain expressionlessly. Even while resting, the young man in black radiated an aura as steady and cold as a mountain.

But so what?

Mr. 1 slowly raised his hands. His fingers spread slightly, and his palms and fingertips gleamed beneath the sunset with a cold, cruel metallic sheen.

As a top assassin from the West Blue, he had tempered his body to the limits of humanity. Combined with this Devil Fruit, which could turn any part of his body into a sharp blade, he was a walking steel meat grinder.

"Boss, you're being too cautious."

Mr. 1 gave a cold sneer inwardly.

Crocodile was one of the lofty Shichibukai, accustomed to crushing his enemies with schemes and absolute power. But in Daz Bones' eyes, the pride of a swordsman and assassin had never come from hiding in the shadows to "scout."

"Physical immunity as a Logia? Impossible to cut?"

Mr. 1 suddenly clenched his fists, his bones cracking with a teeth-grating burst. Without warning, two half-meter-long refined steel blades shot out from the insides of his arms, gleaming with a chilling white light!

"In my dictionary, there's nothing I can't cut. Even steel can be split in two by me. A few lousy rocks dare make me too afraid to do more than watch?"

His desire for slaughter and arrogance in his own strength overcame Crocodile's orders at that moment.

Daz Bones decided to ignore that command. He would use the head of this Logia, famous throughout Alabasta, to prove his peerless "path of slaughter"!

Whoosh—!

The next second, Mr. 1 vanished from the dune, turning into a sharp silver afterimage. With a shriek that tore through the air, he hurtled toward Rain amid the ruins at an unbelievable speed!

At the center of the ruins, Rain sat cross-legged in the shadows, holding a flask of fresh water seized in Golden Sands City and slowly replenishing his hydration.

Although his interception of Bellemere from the King's Army had not become a fight to the death, using Rock Swamp over such a wide area had still drained a considerable amount of his strength. Before heading to his next target, he needed to restore his body to peak condition.

Suddenly.

An overwhelmingly intense sense of lethal danger, like a needle piercing between his brows, surged through Rain's entire body in an instant!

There were no footsteps, no leaking killing intent. Only a silver bolt of lightning, fast beyond measure, had already closed in on his blind spot to the left!

"Someone!"

Rain's reaction was incredibly fast. In the one-ten-thousandth of a second when that sense of danger erupted, the rudimentary Observation Haki of his Rock Vein Sense caught that exceptionally pure sharpness in the air—a sharpness that carried the uniquely cold cruelty of metal.

Clang!

Rain did not even have time to stand. He sharply tilted his head, and the flesh-colored surface of his left shoulder and neck instantly vanished, turning into a heavy layer of dense gray-white Granite Armor!

"Man Slayer!"

A low, icy voice exploded beside Rain's ear.

Immediately afterward, a refined steel blade extending from an arm came down with terrifying force, enough to split an adult Sea King in two, and slammed viciously into Rain's petrified neck!

Crack—!

An ear-piercing explosion of shattering stone erupted through the ruins!

Rain's pupils contracted sharply.

His prized Granite Armor, which had once blocked countless cannons and blades in the West Blue, was split cleanly in two the instant it met that blade, like a fragile block of tofu!

It was sharpness in its purest form! It ignored the hardness and density of stone, carrying a savage concept of cutting that instantly cleaved through the granite and bore straight toward Rain's physical veins hidden beneath the rocky layer!

Not good!

Every hair on Rain's body stood on end. Borrowing the tremendous force of the enemy's slash, he threw himself into a hard roll to the right. At the very last instant, half his body scattered into a turbulent stream of loose rubble, barely evading that fatal decapitation strike.

Boom!

The fierce slash missed and struck an ancient stone pillar over two meters wide behind Rain.

There was no explosion, nor did any rubble fly. The upper half of the sturdy pillar simply slid smoothly downward, its cut surface polished like a mirror!

Rain re-formed five meters away. He knelt on one knee in the sand, the left shoulder of his black trench coat already torn open.

Drip.

A drop of vivid red blood slowly slid down his left cheek and fell onto the scorching sand.

This was the first drop of blood Rain had shed since entering the Grand Line. If his elemental transformation had been even one-tenth of a second slower, half his neck would have been sliced open.

Rain raised a hand and wiped the blood from his cheek. There was no panic in his pitch-black eyes, only extreme coldness. He slowly rose to his feet and looked at the bald man before him, whose hands had become blades, like a beast of steel.

"Dice-Dice Fruit. Daz Bones." Rain spat out a mouthful of blood-tinged saliva. "I was wondering when Crocodile would finally let his hunting dog loose."

"As expected of prey worth fifty million. Your reflexes are faster than I imagined." Mr. 1 lowered his arms, the twin blades gleaming with bloodthirsty light beneath the sunset. Looking at the blood on Rain's face, he curled his lips into a cruel smile. "But stone is still just stone. Before my blades, no matter how thick your hide is, I can carve you into pieces."

Rain looked at the supremely arrogant Mr. 1 and suddenly let out a low, cold laugh.

"Your boss is a smart man. He must have warned you not to casually provoke a Logia." Rain flexed his left shoulder, still numb from the impact, while the fingers of his right hand slowly spread. The sand and stones beneath the ground around him began to tremble uneasily.

Rain suddenly raised his head. His gray-white stone power instantly receded, replaced by jet-black crystals spreading from his fingertips, compressed to an utterly frenzied degree!

"Today, I'll smash every last one of your steel teeth!"