I've Grown Stronger-No Longer Someone You Can Toy With...

Something was growing in the darkness.

Dozens of humanoid figures made entirely of darkness "stood" up from the floor. Their faces were blurred, featureless, yet every one of them lunged precisely at Shamrock and his group.

The Cipher Pol agents reacted swiftly, drawing guns and blades and taking up fighting stances. But the dark humanoids moved faster. They did not attack their upper bodies, instead throwing themselves at their thighs. Pitch-black arms clamped around the agents' legs like iron pincers before dragging them downward.

"What—"

"It's Darkness Men!"

The cries had barely rung out when the dark arms gave a fierce tug. Spandam, the Cipher Pol agents, and the Holy Land Guard Forces were dragged into the darkness whole, without even a chance to struggle.

Shamrock was the only one still resisting. A layer of flowing pink light emerged over his body, like a shield formed from gathered cherry blossom petals.

The dark humanoids' arms shattered the instant they touched that shield, but new dark humanoids kept rising from the ground and rushing forward one after another.

A ship was moored on the water outside the workshop. It was a colossal vessel over a hundred meters tall, its prow carved into the shape of a majestic, holy, domineering dragon head.

Its hull was black, and the entire ship radiated an ominous aura. It sat in the middle of the canal, almost filling its entire width. Compared to it, the surrounding ships looked like children's toys.

Several people stood on the deck of the dragon-headed ship.

At the very front stood a man in a white lab coat. He raised his right hand and spread his fingers, and a transparent hemispherical space expanded from him, swiftly enveloping all of Tom's Workshop.

He crooked a finger, and Tom, Iceburg, Franky, and