I Won't Lose to Anyone

At the same time, Tesoro swung the microphone stand in his hand and brought it smashing down on Sandersonia. She caught it in one hand, but the microphone stand exploded again! Yellow powder spread out with the blast.

"Poison powder?" Sandersonia, tricked once more, suddenly felt a flicker of panic. This was snake-catching powder specially used against venomous snakes! Machine-gun fire rang out from the yellow haze, making her body sway without pause.

Saint Charmak's excited laughter rang out from the stands. "Hahahahaha! I gave him the Navy's most advanced armor-piercing rounds! Even an iron plate would be turned into a honeycomb if it got hit!"

Yet Hancock merely stood far behind, coldly watching the towering snowman.

Snowman Butcher Machio also stood at the rear, completely motionless.

An unexpected change began to unfold in the arena. Gasps erupted from the audience as the eight-meter-tall Captain Dais failed to crush Marigold. Instead, he was gradually forced back.

"When it comes to strength..." Marigold's body kept growing. Her entire frame swelled, becoming taller and taller as she rose upright, eventually becoming far larger than Dais. At the same time, her tail coiled around his body, cinching his waist and arms as she pulled with all her might. Gradually twisting his posture out of shape, she then slammed him to the ground with a thunderous crash.

Cracking bones erupted all over Dais's body, followed by an earth-shaking scream.

"I won't lose to anyone! Tail Spear—!" Haki hardened the tip of Marigold's tail into a spear, which she drove fiercely into Dais's stomach. Dais flew like a cannonball and crashed into the wall. Marigold slammed her spiked club heavily into the ground and claimed an easy victory.

The gunfire on the other side stopped. Tesoro stared in shock at the battlefield as the smoke cleared. The snake woman across from him was completely unharmed?

"Snake Dance. Pretty, isn't it?" Sandersonia swayed her enormous head and even gave Tesoro a huge smile. "Not a single shot hit me."

Before the Observation Haki she had trained, it was crystal clear where Tesoro's bullets were aimed. In her eyes, his movements were entirely in slow motion.

"Monster!" Tesoro gritted his teeth and pulled out a grenade. Now, the only option was to die together! He only hoped Saint Charmak would keep his promise and set his beloved Stella free.

But green hair suddenly flashed through the air, and the grenade Tesoro threw was knocked hundreds of meters into the sky.

With a boom, a scorching shockwave erupted overhead. The grenade's power was terrifying. Even the spectators in the surrounding stands could feel the rolling heat.

Tesoro was dumbfounded. What had struck his hand? It was too fast to see!

Before him stretched a jade-green ocean, surging like waves. Tesoro immediately began to run; from this angle, he had no way to hit his opponent. But those jade-green waves chased after him, as though they could sense the direction of his escape. They blocked off every route of retreat, then transformed into eight giant serpents that bit down on Tesoro's limbs.

"This is... hair?" Tesoro finally saw clearly.

"Snake Hair Barrage! Yamata no Orochi!" Sandersonia raised her head. The long jade-green hair atop her enormous head surged like waves, each strand wrapping tightly around Tesoro's body.

Tesoro struggled and even fired a few shots, but he soon stopped moving. The jade-green hair flicked away, and Tesoro fell to the ground with his eyes rolled back. He looked as though he had been strangled unconscious.

From the stands, Saint Charmak cursed loudly, "Tesoro, you useless trash!"

When sparks raining down from above landed on Snowman Butcher Machio, the man who had been standing motionless in the back finally spoke.

"Boring."

An icy wind suddenly rose from the snowman. The shockwave from high above was instantly blown away without a trace, and even the spectators in the surrounding stands began to shiver. Snow suddenly began to fall from the sky. Cold winds swept through the entire arena, and the temperature plummeted by thirty degrees.

Miming stared at the snowflake landing in his palm, startled. Was this the power of a Logia Devil Fruit?

"Bring the cups over, now!" A group of Celestial Dragons, their noses running from the cold, shrieked.

The bulletproof glass around the stands rose and sealed against the ceiling, turning the area into an enclosed space. Warm air immediately began to blow inside.

By then, a thick layer of snow had already accumulated on the ground. Two enormous snowmen stood in the arena, the kind made by rolling snowballs. One was the more-than-eight-meter-tall Captain Dais, and the other was Tesoro.

Snowman Butcher Machio was in no hurry to attack. Instead, he happily began building snowmen. He rolled the two unconscious men across the ground, turning them into two snowballs in the blink of an eye, then piled more snow onto the heads left exposed outside the snowballs.

"I hate seeing blood. I don't like killing people either." Machio patted Dais's head, and the snow beneath his palm thickened until it quickly became round.

Then Machio pulled out a massive carrot from who knew where, snapped off the pointed end, and stuck it into the face of Tesoro's snowman. He then stuck the remaining part into Dais's face.

A wave of astonished cries rose from the stands. "Look, they're snowmen!"

In the blink of an eye, Captain Dais and Tesoro had become two bizarrely shaped snowmen. They bared their teeth and grimaced, somehow still retaining a hint of their original expressions.

"Now you can't tell they're human, right? They're monsters!"

As Machio spoke, he pulled a gigantic snow shovel from behind his back, his expression turning savage. "And monsters should be smashed like this—!"

Cheers erupted from the stands. "Snowman Butcher! So he's a Snowman Butcher who specializes in killing snowmen!"

With a bang, the snow shovel aimed at Snowman Tesoro smashed a terrifying crater into the ground.

Sandersonia's long hair swept Snowman Tesoro away just in time, but because of that movement, her body grew even colder, and her movements became stiff.

"Big sister, I... can't move anymore!" Marigold's voice came out with difficulty. Sandersonia did not look much better either, her body covered in a thick layer of snow.

Hancock was wrapped in a thick cloak and seemed cold as well. Especially since she was still wearing a full suit of iron armor and helmet; the snowflakes glittering across the metal surface had formed a thin shell of ice.

Sandersonia suddenly gathered all her strength and hurled her great sword with all her might. It struck Machio and buried itself deeply in him, piercing straight through his heart.

A wave of gasps rose from the stands.

Yet Machio seemed to feel nothing. He reached out, gripped the great sword, and pulled it from his chest as though pulling out a fruit knife. His body was completely uninjured.

"So far, very few people have been able to truly hurt me," Machio said coldly.

"How can this be?" Sandersonia and Marigold were too frozen to move, and they realized the severity of the problem.

Saint Rosward and Shalria Palace burst into laughter. Saint Rosward said smugly, "Now do you know why I was willing to pay such a high price? Snakes fear the cold most of all! Wahahahaha!"

Shalria smiled smugly. "And snowmen aren't human, so the Love-Love Fruit's petrification has no effect on them at all!"

A group of Celestial Dragons laughed loudly. No wonder Saint Rosward had been so confident. It seemed Dais and Tesoro had merely been there to make up the numbers.

In the arena, Machio shouted, "Don't worry. You'll become snowmen soon enough!" As he spoke, he raised his enormous foot and stomped down toward Sandersonia and Marigold. Their bodies were covered in snow, and they could no longer move.