Bomb

The all-out war in Alubarna had entered its most brutal and frenzied stage. With Koza's fall and Baroque Works' instigation, the battle between both sides had reached a boiling point.

Pulling his gaze away from the chaotic streets, Rain looked up at the towering Royal Palace. Even from this great distance, he could clearly sense the terrifying tremors and thunderous booms constantly erupting within it.

Those were the aftershocks of pure hand-to-hand combat and clashing Logia powers. Occasionally, a massive blade of sand would slice through the palace dome, followed by another dull, thunderous impact.

"Just as expected of the protagonist. He's even tougher than I imagined."

Rain stopped walking, the dust swirling above the palace reflected in his pitch-black eyes. Though his Observation Haki was still only in its infancy, he could sense the two auras violently colliding. One was wild and irritable, like an unkillable cockroach; the other was cold and immense, yet carried a trace of flustered weakness.

Sand Crocodile's stamina was being frantically drained by Luffy. The battle might already be nearing its end.

"Since someone is doing the grunt work of wearing him down for me, I'll make my entrance a little later."

A faint curve rose at the corner of Rain's mouth. As a qualified hunter, biting through his prey's throat when it was at its weakest and most desperate was the perfect revenge.

His gaze shifted from the palace to the conspicuous, towering Clock Tower in the center of the square.

As a transmigrator, Rain knew full well how insidious and ruthless Sand Crocodile was. That bastard never put all his eggs in one basket. By his calculations, the enormous timed bomb capable of wiping out the entire Alubarna square, along with both the rebel army and the King's Army, should be about to activate.

Rain did not take the stairs. He walked to the Clock Tower's base and pressed one hand against its hard granite outer wall.

"Rock Wall Assimilation: Upflow."

Rain's body melted into the Clock Tower's stone wall like a drop of ink dispersing in water, without the slightest obstruction. Under the Devil Fruit's control, the hard rock layers became a smooth elevator, carrying him vertically upward through the tower at tremendous speed.

At the top of the Clock Tower, behind the enormous clock face.

An absurdly heavy cannon was aimed squarely at the plaza below. Its shell's fuse was connected to a massive timer, its second hand ticking with suffocating precision.

Less than ten minutes remained before detonation.

On either side of the cannon stood two strangely dressed Baroque Works agents, a man and a woman.

Mr. 7, a sniper wearing a yellow trench coat emblazoned with the number "7," and Miss Father's Day, dressed head to toe in a frog costume. Holding sniper rifles, they looked down from above at the ant-like armies slaughtering one another below and burst into triumphant laughter.

"Ribbit, ribbit! In a few more minutes, those idiots down there will be blasted into the sky along with this specially made five-meter bomb!" the frog woman said, dancing excitedly.

"Boss's plan truly is perfect! Once that boom goes off, Alabasta will be ours! Hahaha!" Mr. 7 laughed maniacally as well.

"Vulgar taste. Awful laughter. Crocodile's eye for subordinates is as nauseating as ever."

A cold, emotionless voice suddenly rang out within the narrow upper floor of the Clock Tower.

"Who's there?"

The wild grins on the two agents' faces instantly froze. They raised their sniper rifles and turned toward the voice.

A layer of gray-white ripples seemed to spread across the Clock Tower's hard stone floor. A man in a dark gray cloak, his gaze colder than death itself, slowly "grew" out of the stone.

"Who are you? How did you get up here?!" Mr. 7 cried in terror, pulling the trigger without hesitation. "Yellow Shot!"

"Ribbit! Die!" The frog woman fired at the same time.

Bang! Bang!

Two specially made sniper rounds shot forth, striking Rain precisely between the brows and in the heart.

Yet there was no blood, no collapse. The instant the bullets touched Rain's skin, they rang out with two crisp clangs before being casually deflected away.

"A Logia?" The two of them sucked in a sharp breath.

Rain could not even be bothered to waste words on fodder of this level. He slowly raised his left hand and clenched his fingers.

"Stone Bind: Execution."

Crash!

The stone slabs beneath their feet instantly came alive! Two enormous granite hands burst from the ground and, with savage force, seized Mr. 7 and the frog woman in their palms before smashing them violently against the Clock Tower's thick stone wall!

"Puh—!"

With a bone-chilling crack, the two smug agents did not even have time to scream. Their eyes rolled back, blood spilled from their mouths, and like two swatted flies, they completely lost consciousness, sealed directly into the wall.

Rain did not even spare them a glance as he walked straight toward the cannon loaded with the enormous bomb.

He glanced at the timer. Eight minutes remained.

"Blowing up the whole city too. Ruthless."

Rain extended his bandage-wrapped right arm and gently pressed it against the shell's cold casing.

Smashing something like this with stone or pulling out its wires carried the risk of triggering the mechanical fuse, while using high heat would be an exceedingly stupid act of suicide. But Rain now possessed the most perfect "bomb disposal tool" on this sea: Logia assimilation.

He closed his eyes and deliberately suppressed the boiling magma in his right arm, returning it to the pure source power of the Rock-Rock Fruit.

"Logia: Inorganic Assimilation."

Rain's slender, fair left hand gently pressed against the shell's cold casing.

"Bzz..."

An exceptionally subtle gray-white ripple flowed from his palm, silently penetrating the pig iron casing and seeping directly into the gunpowder core and intricate mechanical fuse within.

Less than ten seconds later.

Along with an almost imperceptible rustling from inside, the terrifying explosive powder capable of flattening an area five kilometers wide, along with the metal gears that triggered it, instantly lost their original chemical and physical properties under the Devil Fruit power's forced alteration.

They were completely "petrified," transformed from an extremely dangerous explosive into a massive pile of heavy, cold, harmless gray-white granite powder!

The shell's casing remained perfectly intact, but inside, it was thoroughly dead.

After finishing all this, Rain did not stop the timer. Instead, he watched the second hand continue to tick dutifully, a wicked smile curling across his lips.

He pulled out his own wanted poster, which he had swiped from Cato Town, and casually flipped it over. Then, using a finger stained with the agents' blood, he scrawled a line of words across it.

Rain folded the half wanted poster and casually stuffed it into the cannon barrel, hiding it behind the shell.

It read:

"The bomb's interior has been taken care of. I left the timer running so you can enjoy the ticking. No need to thank me too much. — Grayrock"

Rain dusted off his hands and walked to the stone railing at the Clock Tower's edge.

At that moment, a dull, earth-shaking boom came from the direction of the Royal Palace, as though the entire palace were collapsing!

Rain's pupils narrowed slightly. His bandage-wrapped right arm began to emit dark red firelight beyond his control, and the surrounding air instantly warped under the extreme heat.

"Looks like the appetizer is finished."

Rain turned around, his cloak snapping in the fierce wind atop the Clock Tower. He leaped from the tower hundreds of meters high, becoming a gray-black afterimage as he sped toward the Royal Tombs in the west.

"Crocodile, I'll be waiting for you at the destination first."