Changes to the strong division's format, the martial arts tournament's staggering influence

Lind and the others were not the only ones who realized Urouge was about to come unstuck. Urouge himself felt he had overestimated his strength. He was still a little short of being able to take on an entire arena alone like Enel.

In particular, those Elite Vice Admiral-level experts were only half a step away from Admiral Candidate. Although that half step was a vast gulf, they were still strong enough to threaten Urouge.

During the God Valley Incident, even when the Rocks Pirates had been short of experts, they had not used a dozen Elite Vice Admirals against one Admiral Candidate-three or four at most.

A dozen Elite Vice Admirals attacking together could even tie down certain Admiral-level experts for a while. Urouge had truly gotten overconfident this time, relying on his Devil Fruit.

But with things having reached this point, he could hardly back down just like that. For a moment, Urouge felt stuck riding a tiger he could not dismount.

After agonizing a while longer, as his condition deteriorated again, Urouge finally chose to play it safe for the sake of securing the eventual tournament rewards. A move from his Demon-Subduing Kasaya Art blasted the surrounding enemies back.

Urouge quickly leaped out of the encirclement and switched to guerrilla tactics, no longer meeting them head-on.

Once Urouge adopted evasive tactics, the others found themselves rather helpless against him. After all, he was stronger than any of them, and with his decent Taijutsu and footwork, avoiding them was still quite easy.

The only thing was that his nearly four-meter frame looked rather incongruous hopping around the arena.

"Gurararara! This youngster's quite interesting. He's nothing like his rough appearance suggests." Watching Urouge hop around the arena, Whitebeard could not help teasing him.

"Hahaha! Urouge's nickname at school is