Blazing flames surged into the sky, making the nighttime forest seem to turn back to dusk.
Faced with this savage force of nature, both sides of the melee scrambled out of the way.
Isabella's blast of fire cleared an empty path.
"-Damn it-what's going on!?"
The soldiers from the Marine Dojo were driven back by the heat wave.
Their minds were indeed "controlled," but they retained their normal combat judgment. Faced with something they "couldn't" resist, they wouldn't throw their lives away.
"It's the Flame Angel-what's she doing here!"
Simply coating a blade in flames was hardly a novel trick on these seas.
But a calamity like this, resembling an entire forest fire, made it unmistakably clear that she was a Flame-Flame Fruit user.
"The Flame Demon!? It's her! How is that possible!"
Golden Lion's underlings fled through smoke and fire, with some also escaping the area of the initial conflagration.
The survivors lay or leaned haphazardly among the trees, watching countless sparks dance wildly upward in the hot air nearby.
"Cough, cough-something's wrong... cough, hurry, report to Lord Shiki!"
They had only survived because the fire hadn't spread farther through this tropical rainforest's hilly terrain, crisscrossed with waterways.
"Didn't they say only the 'Holy Knight' would be here!"
Unlike the first wave of cannon fodder sent to their deaths, Shiki had given them a fairly straightforward briefing.
But his assessment had been based on information supplied by the "Praying Hands," along with "common sense."
"We can't get through to Lord Shiki's Den Den Mushi! What the hell is happening inside the dojo!?"
They had only launched this nighttime raid after confirming there were no formidable fighters inside the Marine Dojo.
"Then report to Dr. Indigo!"
A bald, one-eyed man propped himself up with a serrated broadsword in his right