Inside the reception room, Doflamingo and Crocodile did not part immediately after striking their deal. Instead, each continued making idle conversation and probing the other, harboring schemes of his own.
"Fufufu... Crocodile." Doflamingo lounged back against the sofa, tapping his fingers rhythmically against the armrest as he asked with feigned casualness,
"You went to all that trouble to meddle with a desert kingdom, even trying to take it for yourself...
Surely it wasn't just for that pathetic reputation as a 'hero' and those so-called national resources?
Could that country be hiding something more interesting?" He was trying to draw out Crocodile's true objective.
But Crocodile was no fool either. With a cigar between his lips and his eyes unreadable behind the smoke, he was also sizing up Doflamingo's ambitions.
"Hmph, you needn't concern yourself with my affairs, 'Joker.'" Crocodile exhaled a cloud of smoke and sneered, turning the question back on him. "Your reach is hardly short, after all.
You're in quite a hurry to find someone who can put you in touch with the 'Beasts' in the New World.
What, instead of conquering the Grand Line step by step, you want to connect directly with the Four Emperors and leap straight into that meat grinder called the New World?"
Both wore false smiles, their words laced with hidden barbs as each tried to uncover the other's trump cards and true ambitions.
Yet, at that crucial moment in their mutual probing,
Buzzzz!!! An indescribable, terrifying pressure, seemingly originating on the level of the soul,
swept in without warning from outside the base like an invisible yet impossibly heavy tsunami, instantly passing through the walls and engulfing the entire reception room!
This Haki was not directed at them. It was merely the residual force of a natural outpouring, yet it was