"Damn... damn Blue Sea dwellers... damn sand!"
Enel cursed in impotent fury, a tiny, uncontrolled arc of electricity shooting from his fingertips.
Crackle-!
Thunder roared, blasting a discarded component nearby into a charred lump of iron.
He looked at the smoking lump of iron, then at the empty giant ship, and a profound sense of despair seized him.
"Forget it. I'll go buy some things first... food, daily necessities, and tableware... come to think of it..."
"Besides sand, what is there to buy here?"
Meanwhile...
Less than an hour after Kirishima left the Sand Camel Bell Tavern, news explosive enough to rock the entire country swept through Rainbase like the fiercest sandstorm.
And it was still spreading at an astonishing speed toward Yuba, Katorea, and even the royal capital, Alubarna...
"The Demon King! Urizen, the Demon King who forced the Navy to cancel his bounty! He's appeared in Rainbase!"
"Right in the Sand Camel Bell Tavern! White Hunter Smoker and Straw Hat were both there! Fire Fist Ace, too! They were all scared stiff!"
"It's absolutely true! Someone saw his lackey, a weirdo carrying a Golden Staff, slap down several gold bricks! The Demon King was sitting in a white plastic chair!"
"What did he come to Alabasta for? Could he be behind this civil war?!"
"Is the end of the world coming? The Royal Army and the Rebels are still fighting, and now the Demon King's here..."
"That has to be fake, right? Why would someone that important come to a hellhole like ours?"
Panic, suspicion, disbelief, an apocalyptic uproar... the fuse called the "Demon King" set the entire country's already strained nerves ablaze.
In the royal capital of Alubarna, King Nefertari Cobra stood anxiously by the window, looking down at the city, still tormented by drought and now