Ready to Fall into the Endless Abyss? / Isn't Arlong Just Another Dead Fish?

The crack extended all the way out into the sea. From a distance, it looked as if someone had sliced a giant slab of jelly.

The seawater on both sides kept pouring into the crack, and it showed no sign of closing even after a long time.

"Hachi."

Only then did the Fish-Man watching Arlong's hill react. He shouted toward Hachi in the Waterway.

The Fish-Men all turned toward Kuta in unison. Their bodies trembled, their eyes bulged, and they were terrified beyond measure.

"Great Swordsman?"

"He's a Great Swordsman!"

Although they had never seen a Great Swordsman, they had heard of them!

They were monsters capable of splitting mountains, splitting the sea, and cutting ships apart on the ocean.

Even in the terrifying New World, they were people who could become great figures!

They stood frozen in place, their bodies icy cold. They knew they were doomed this time.

Kuina ignored what was happening behind her. As long as Kuta was there, all she needed to do was keep moving forward.

She lowered her head and stared at Captain Nezumi, who was sprawled on the ground. Extreme disgust flashed through her cold eyes.

Facing Kuina, who stood before him, Captain Nezumi was already scared senseless.

His body trembled as he propped himself up with both hands behind him and pushed against the ground with his feet, constantly crawling backward.

He shouted frantically.

"I..."

"I..."

"I'm a Marine! If you kill me, you'll be hunted!"

"You'll be hunted?"

Kuina tilted her head and shrugged indifferently.

"Then let them hunt me."

Kuina took a step forward and slowly raised her sword toward Nezumi.

Her movement was a little slow this time—so slow that she looked like an old man.

She wanted Nezumi to savor the feeling of death drawing near.

As Kuina raised her sword, Nezumi's body began to tremble even more violently.

His eyes were fixed on Kuina's blade. The glinting steel reflected his current disheveled and terrified appearance.

Kuina's steadily rising right hand was like a Black Hole, firmly gripping his mind and making his stomach churn.

Just then, he suddenly felt an uncontrollable urge to urinate.

A moment later, a patch of wetness slowly appeared between Nezumi's legs. As time passed, it grew larger and finally burst forth like a flood, gathering beneath his buttocks before flowing out like a stream.

Clearly, Nezumi had been scared into wetting himself.

Kuina looked at his pathetic state, her eyes filled with disgust. A flash of swordlight passed. Her raised right hand swung cleanly at Nezumi's neck.

Nezumi's trembling body suddenly stopped.

He stared ahead with wide, terrified eyes, filled with a desperate longing for life.

He tried his best to move his body, but it was useless. His central nervous system had already lost contact with his body.

He could already feel the endless darkness approaching, slowly dragging his soul into the depths of Hell.

He had never felt time pass so slowly. That instant seemed to him as long as an entire century.

His eyelids grew heavier and heavier. Only after his soul had been completely devoured by the endless darkness did the last glimmer in his eyes finally fade.

Until the very end, this man never knew who was standing before him or why she had insisted on killing him, even at the risk of being hunted.

Kuina stood where she was and flicked her sword backward, splattering the blood on its blade onto Nezumi.

That trace of blood broke the stillness of Nezumi's body.

His head suddenly slid backward and dropped to the ground with a "thud!"

His headless body, like a Domino tile, lost all support and collapsed limply onto the ground.

His blood mixed with his urine and flowed like a stream into the Pool beside him.

Kuina quietly watched the bloody stream flow past her feet. The disgust in her eyes faded somewhat.

This was probably a true depiction of the filthy life Nezumi had lived!

Even his blood flowed with dirty filth.

Kuina glanced indifferently at Nezumi's corpse, then turned her gaze toward the two Marines behind him, who had already been frightened unconscious.

"What should I do with these two?"

"Kill them?"

She thought about it, then shook her head.

"Forget it. I'll leave them for Kuta to deal with."

She then turned her eyes toward the remaining Fish-Men.

The Fish-Men felt that familiar, Death God-like cold gaze lock onto them once again.

They knew that the female demon had come to deal with them.

At that moment, their instinct for survival temporarily broke through the fear in their hearts and gave them strength from nowhere.

"Ah...!!!"

They shouted as they dragged their exhausted minds and heavy bodies toward the Pool with great difficulty.

That was their only path to survival.

After witnessing Kuta's Slash, they no longer believed that their boss, Arlong, could live long enough to save them.

As they looked toward the Pool, the veins bulged all over their bodies. They used strength they had never managed to summon in their entire lives.

As long as they reached the edge of the Pool and jumped into the sea, they could use their identity as Fish-Men to escape alive.

Seeing the Fish-Men trying to run, Kuina hurriedly pushed off the ground with both feet and shot forward with a whoosh.

They were just about to reach the edge of the Pool, but to their despair, Kuina was already standing at the end of their only path to survival.

All they could see was a flash of swordlight. In the blink of an eye, every Fish-Man fell on the road leading to the Pool.

Clearly, this was not their road to survival, but the road to Hell.

Among the rubble of the collapsed wall on the right,

Arlong lay inside, completely motionless.

His head had been struck by a huge boulder, preventing him from getting back up immediately.

In the few dozen seconds that he remained dazed, the entire Arlong domain had already become a river of blood, and all his brethren had fallen dead.

Shaking his head amid a series of rumbles, he crawled out of the rubble.

He raised his head and opened his bleary eyes. When he saw the scene outside, his already dilated pupils rapidly contracted, and his mind instantly cleared.

Looking at the Fish-Man corpses covering the ground—especially Hachi, who had been split in two inside the Pool—he became utterly furious.

He regarded humans as an inferior race, but he was still relatively friendly toward his own kind.

Especially since all these Fish-Men had followed him from Fish-Man Island.

They had originally come out together to enjoy wealth and power.

Who could have known that they would all be dead now?

Even Hachi, a fellow former member of the Sun Pirates, had died—and in such a tragic way.

Arlong's eyes filled with blood and turned completely red, radiating an intense, bloodthirsty light.

The pupils in his eyes shrank until they could no longer be seen, showing just how furious he was.

He looked at Hachi, then suddenly thought of something. He turned toward Kuina and forcefully suppressed his anger before shouting, "Were Kuroobi and Chew also killed by you?"

Based on the timing, Kuroobi and Chew should have returned by now, yet they were nowhere to be seen.

Their final destination had been Cocoyasi Village, and these two humans had come from the direction of Cocoyasi Village.

Although he could already be certain that Kuroobi and Chew were dead, he still could not help asking.

"You mean those filthy Fish-Men who went to collect the head tax?"

Kuina stared coldly at Arlong, her voice clear and chilly.

"They've probably already been dried into fish jerky by now."

She did not sheath her sword. Holding it in hand, she charged toward Arlong.

"Instead of worrying about that, you should worry about yourself!"

As Kuina rushed toward him, the blood in Arlong's body began to circulate faster, and his entire body flushed red.

The veins bulging beneath his skin looked like pythons coiling around his whole body.

His already tall frame swelled another size, making him look from a distance like a walking blood-red monster.

He yanked the sawblade from the rubble, gripped its handle with both hands, raised it rapidly above his head, and viciously chopped down at Kuina, who had already reached him.

"Die, you human of an inferior race!"

He believed Kuina absolutely could not block this strike.

This strike had nearly twice the power of the previous one. It was a blow fueled by burning his own life.

"Rage Shark Sawblade!"

Looking at the sawblade tearing rapidly through the air above her head, Kuina did not try to block it head-on.

She was not stupid. She truly could not withstand the force of this strike, but dodging it was easy.

A red light flashed in her eyes as Observation Haki quietly activated. She nimbly shifted to the left, letting the sawblade's edge skim past the tip of her nose and strike the ground.

Bang—!!

The hard stone slabs on the ground suddenly shattered into several pieces and shot in every direction.

The sawblade continued downward and slammed a huge pit into the ground beneath the stone slabs.

Arlong's massive crash behind her did not affect Kuina in the slightest.

She stepped forward, passed beneath Arlong's arm, and swept her sword upward toward his completely exposed chest.

Arlong knew something was wrong the moment his strike missed.

But he had once fought his way through the Grand Line, and his combat experience was considerable. He knew there was no way he could dodge Kuina's slash, so he simply stopped trying.

A vicious glint appeared in his eyes. He lowered his head and slammed it toward Kuina, intending to pierce her with his serrated nose.

"Die!"

If he could stab her, then taking this slash in return would be worth it.

Unfortunately, Kuina would not give him that chance.

A red light flashed through Kuina's eyes. She stopped her forward momentum in advance, turned to the right, and retreated half a step, coming to a stop at Arlong's left side.

The sword she had swung followed through in a circle and slid into its sheath.