Norton pressed a hand to his forehead. They had really wasted no time running away, had they?
"Mongula, don't let them escape!!"
Seeing this, the Celestial Dragon Saint Ari hurriedly ordered Mongula, the CP0 agent wearing a black chrysanthemum mask.
"As you command."
The instant those words left his mouth, Mongula vanished.
Six Powers: Shave!
Every member of CP0 had fully mastered the combat arts known as the Six Powers.
In an instant too brief for an ordinary person's eyes to follow-0.36 seconds or even less-Mongula stamped the ground dozens of times, the tremendous reaction force launching him like a rocket!
The scenery on either side blurred into shadows.
Moving at high speed, Mongula locked his gaze on the Duke. Under Shave's tremendous speed, the distance between them dwindled to almost nothing.
How should I kill the Duke? Pierce his heart from behind, slit his throat, or cut him in half at the waist? Mongula hesitated.
Prey of such high standing was rare, so Mongula decided to kill the Duke in the most fitting way possible.
"Who said you could go past me?"
Suddenly, a man's voice interrupted Mongula's thoughts.
The next instant, tremendous force slammed down on Mongula's head!
As though struck head-on by a massive battering ram, Mongula was stopped in his high-speed charge and driven straight down into the floor!
Boom!
With a thunderous crack, the Royal Palace Hall's lavish, sturdy marble floor split apart!
Once the dust cleared, Mongula climbed out of the human-shaped crater. His white suit was covered in dust, and half his black chrysanthemum mask had shattered, exposing the cold, sinister face beneath.
"You're pretty tough!" Norton grinned, his eyes gleaming.
Setting sail had truly been the right choice! He had found his first opponent in years who could take one of his punches!
Mongula reached up and touched his dusty forehead. A streak of red stained his fingers, and then blood began trickling from the open wound.
"Who the hell are you?"
Mongula licked the blood from his fingers.
He had never imagined that the silver-haired young man before him, whose presence seemed utterly ordinary and whose only distinguishing feature was his exceptional good looks, was hiding such terrifying strength!
The instant the blow landed, Mongula had hastily activated Iron Body and protected himself with Armament Haki.
Yet even with both defenses, Norton's fist had still injured him!
If I sensed that correctly...
This silver-haired young man didn't even use Haki. He broke through my Armament Haki with nothing but raw strength!
Mongula could never have guessed that Norton actually had no idea how to use Haki.
To Mongula, it was simply impossible for someone this powerful to be unable to use Haki.
"Me?" Norton pointed his thumb at himself and smiled. "I'm the man who's going to rule this sea!"
"Are you another troublemaker who set sail in pursuit of the One Piece?" Mongula wiped the blood from his forehead.
"The One Piece?"
Norton clenched his hand into a fist. "If I find something like that, fine. If I don't, it doesn't matter. What I want is to build a country of my own! Then I'll use it as my foundation to become the great King of the World!"
"Absurd!!" Mongula growled.
"A lapdog raised by the World Government like you would never understand. You're not weak, but that's all you've got!" Norton said.
Mongula's expression gradually twisted into a snarl. "I don't care where you crawled out from. You're dying here today!"
"Finger Pistol: Red Lotus!"
As his words fell, Mongula vanished and closed in right in front of Norton.
His Armament Haki-coated index finger shot forward, flames blossoming like a red lotus from its high-speed friction with the air!
Norton tilted his head slightly, effortlessly evading the deadly finger thrust. The force of Mongula's strike tore through the air and hit a stone pillar inside the hall. The pillar, so thick it would take ten people to encircle it, collapsed instantly. Falling rubble roared like thunder, and dust billowed like dense fog.
It was hard to imagine what that finger thrust would do to a human body!
Seeing that Finger Pistol: Red Lotus had failed to hit Norton, Mongula pressed his fingers together, flattened his hand, and unleashed an even stronger attack.
"Palm Pistol!"
An invisible force shot out like a hurled spear, piercing the air with a shrill whistle!
This strike caused even greater destruction than Finger Pistol: Red Lotus! It pierced several of the hall's pillars, each thick enough to require ten people to encircle it, reducing them to heaps of rubble. Amid the tremendous roar, the entire Royal Palace Hall shook without stopping!
But as the dust dispersed and Norton's figure gradually emerged from the foglike clouds, Mongula's pupils abruptly contracted.
"How is that possible?! He dodged it again?!"
Even against those powerful advanced Six Powers techniques, Norton remained utterly at ease and completely unscathed.
"With attacks that slow, it'd be stranger if I couldn't dodge them, wouldn't it?" Norton said with an easy smile. "Don't disappoint me. Show me what you can really do!"
Mongula's face grew steadily darker, his brows knitting beneath his broken black chrysanthemum mask.
"Mongula! What are you doing?! Hurry up and kill that bastard!" By now, the terrified Celestial Dragon Saint Ari had hidden behind the throne.
"I will, Saint Ari," Mongula said hoarsely.
He removed the remaining half of his black chrysanthemum mask, rolled his shoulders, and flexed his fingers. His bones crackled all over his body.
Then Mongula's body underwent an astonishing transformation!
Black fur burst from beneath Mongula's skin, tearing through his white suit. The same black fur sprouted across his cold, sinister face...
After a series of distortions, in just a few breaths, Mongula transformed from a tall, sinister human man into a terrifying wolf-headed monster nearly ten meters tall!
The wolf-headed monster towered so high that his shadow completely engulfed Norton. His black fur hung like willow branches, giving off an aura of death.
For a moment, the entire Royal Palace Hall became eerie and terrifying.
"A Devil Fruit?" Norton looked up, studying the wolf-headed monster with interest.
"That's right! I'm the wielder of the Human-Human Fruit, Mythical Zoan, Werewolf Form!"
Now a wolf-headed monster, Mongula opened his menacing jaws and exhaled a foul, bloody breath.
"Young man, you probably don't know what a Mythical Zoan means, do you? Devil Fruits are already rare treasures known as the secret treasures of the sea. Any one of them is worth over a hundred million Beli..."
"They're divided into Paramecia, Zoan, and Logia!"
"Generally speaking, Logia is the rarest of the three Devil Fruit types."
"But there's another kind of Devil Fruit even rarer than a Logia! And that's the Mythical Zoan I possess!"
The towering wolf-headed monster thrust his enormous claws toward Norton in the shadows!
"Palm Pistol: Wolf Soul!"
The massive, black-furred claws whipped up a violent, blood-reeking gale. Its pressure instantly sent the rubble on the floor flying, clearing an open space.
And at the center of that pressure, the black shadow of a claw suddenly descended! The air cracked like an explosion!