Now This Was a Real Explosion with Every Slash!

As the saying went, you trained an army for a thousand days to use it for a single moment.

Other men hired pretty secretaries to do their work when there was work to do-and to do the secretaries when there wasn't.

But Crocodile wasn't nearly that shallow. He had sheltered the Devil Child, Nico Robin, precisely because he valued her ability to decipher Poneglyphs.

Crocodile used his title as one of the Shichibukai to protect her, while Nico Robin, in return, had to decipher Poneglyphs for him whenever necessary. They were using each other.

Besides, in his eyes, a mere woman's charms weren't worth a single plank from Pluton.

On these seas, ships and steel were a man's romance. Women would only slow down his sand-playing.

(Iceburg: I agree that ships are a man's romance, but a pretty secretary is important too. Except the CP9 kind, of course.)

"Although I do know where the Poneglyph recording Pluton's whereabouts is, why should I tell you?

"Because you're the boss who's never paid me a single wage? Or because you're one of the Shichibukai?"

"You're asking to die!"

Feeling that he had been toyed with all along, Crocodile finally lost his patience in the face of Yang Cheng's taunts.

As long as he didn't kill him, he still had ways to get the information he wanted out of Yang Cheng.

"Sables!"

He flung forward the small cyclone gathered in his right palm. The surrounding wind and sand were instantly drawn into it, and by the time that tiny cyclone swept up to Yang Cheng, it had grown into an enormous sand tornado over ten meters tall.

In Alabasta's desert, this move of Crocodile's could eventually develop into a sandstorm on the scale of a natural disaster.

After all, a sand tornado worked much like a snowball, growing larger and larger as time passed.

The initial sandstorm might have come from Crocodile's Devil Fruit ability, but the eventual disaster capable of sweeping away everything would be the power of nature itself.

That was why Yang Cheng had kept saying that Crocodile was practically invincible in an environment like Alabasta.

If Crocodile had opened with a battlefield-wide AOE ultimate when he first encountered the Straw Hat Pirates, the whole damn protagonist party would have been wiped out long ago.

Against a terrifying ability that could instantly suck even the moisture out of the earth, wasn't Luffy carrying that barrel of water just a complete joke?

But Crocodile simply refused to follow the sensible playbook. He could have finished them in an instant, yet insisted on discussing his ambitions instead. After taunting the world's chosen hero to his face and stacking power-up buffs on him, who could he blame for getting flattened?

Watching the sand tornado sweep toward him, Yang Cheng swiftly drew Rending Wound from his waist.

"One Sword Style: Dankū!"

Seeing Yang Cheng attempt to cut his Sables apart with a slash, Crocodile sneered around the thick cigar clenched between his teeth.

A great master swordsman might indeed have what it took to cleave his Sables apart with a flying slash.

But a mere master swordsman...

Have you ever seen wind and sand cut apart? As long as I'm here, with the power of the Sand-Sand Fruit, I can restore Sables no matter how many times it's split.

What Crocodile hadn't expected was that, as Yang Cheng's slash cleaved Sables from top to bottom, the sword in his hand would erupt with a dazzling light.

Boom!

With a tremendous explosion, the resulting shock wave and blast instantly scattered all the sand that had been about to gather again.

This was the power of a Famous Sword that had gained the Bomb-Bomb Fruit's ability through ability conversion technology!

An actual explosion with every slash was no joke! Even if the blade failed to kill its target, it could still treat them to a second, nuclear-blast experience.

"Shave!"

After splitting Sables and leaving an enormous crater in the ground with the explosion, sending clouds of sand and dust into the air, Yang Cheng vanished from his spot the very next instant.

When his figure flashed into view again, he was already right in front of the slightly startled Crocodile.

Watching Yang Cheng bring his sword down at his head one-handed, Crocodile didn't dare take any chances. He swung the Golden Hook on his left hand up to meet it.

Clang!

When Crocodile chose to meet him head-on rather than dodge, the corners of Yang Cheng's mouth lifted slightly.

The moment Rending Wound's blade collided with the Golden Hook on Crocodile's left hand, the sword erupted in a blinding light once again, as though someone had switched on its special effects.

Boom!

A small mushroom cloud rose over Whiskey Town, and the powerful blast blew away many of the surrounding buildings.

As the smoke from the explosion gradually cleared, it revealed an enormous crater dozens of meters across.

Apart from Yang Cheng standing there with his sword in one hand, the Shichibukai Crocodile was nowhere to be seen.

Watching nearby, Nico Robin, Princess Vivi, Miss Valentine, and the others were overjoyed at the sight.

With their limited combat experience, they all thought Yang Cheng's last attack had blown Crocodile to pieces, leaving not even his bones behind.

But as a gust of sandy wind swept past, the drifting grains quickly gathered atop a nearby house. Before long, Crocodile's body re-formed from the accumulating sand, perfectly intact, with his cigar still between his teeth.

Logia Devil Fruit Users were considered the strongest because, before their Devil Fruit abilities awakened, they possessed an ability unavailable to Paramecia and Zoan users: elementalization.

Elementalization allowed a user's body to transform into the same substance as their Devil Fruit, rendering them almost completely immune to physical damage.

The instant Yang Cheng activated the Bomb-Bomb Fruit's ability, Crocodile had sensed the danger and immediately elementalized to withstand the blast.

Although the explosion had affected him to some extent, injuries of that level weren't enough to determine the outcome of the battle.

"It seems you didn't step forward to oppose me simply because you're a fool. You do have some strength.

"I can give you one final chance. Tell me where Pluton is, and not only will I spare your life, I'll promote you to a higher position.

"Once I have Pluton, I have no intention of staying long in some little place like Alabasta.

"Perhaps you think you're powerful now,

"and that makes you rather conceited. But all I can say is that your horizons are still far too narrow.

"Someone at your level certainly has enough strength to throw his weight around in the first half of the Grand Line.

"But in the second half of the Grand Line, pirates at your level-or even stronger-are as countless as fish swimming across a river."

The strength Yang Cheng had displayed in their brief exchange had earned Crocodile's recognition.

Possessing such strength in the first half of the Grand Line was indeed quite rare.

Once he got his hands on Pluton, he would certainly return to the New World and compete with those truly great pirates to become the leading figure of this era.

But everyone else had hordes of followers. If he, Crocodile, went in alone, he would look far too unimpressive.

Crocodile wasn't considering the bounty hunters of Baroque Works.

After all, aside from Mr. 1, who was somewhat presentable, the rest were practically all small fry.

(Slacker's diary: I've been so lazy lately that my weight's been shooting up. I've officially joined the ranks of the fat.

"In a few more years, if I go bald too, I'll probably become one of those greasy middle-aged guys in hentai who specialize in cuckolding the husbands of beautiful married women.

"Thinking of it that way, it actually doesn't sound too bad (￣∇￣)...)