"This is... Alabasta! It's a desert!" Crocodile roared, his voice rasping like broken bellows. "As long as I'm still standing on sand... I won't lose! I'll still have a chance to turn this-"
His roar stopped.
Because Lin Xuan's dead-fish eyes were watching him calmly. That gaze held neither contempt nor mockery, but an indifference that saw straight through to the essence-as though he were looking at a grade-schooler throwing a tantrum.
"Looks like his brain got knocked loose too." Lin Xuan sighed and raised a foot to step forward.
At that very instant.
A razor-sharp killing intent erupted from the shadows of the rubble behind him to one side.
There were no wasted words, nor any windup.
The tall figure lurking in the darkness sprang forward like a cheetah.
His arms had turned entirely into blades, and his whole body became a silver-white whirlwind, aimed straight at Lin Xuan's unguarded nape.
It was Mr. 1, Daz Bones.
As the wielder of the Dice-Dice Fruit, he had poured every last scrap of his stamina and Haki into this all-out strike.
He knew perfectly well that he couldn't win head-on, so he had been waiting. He had waited for the moment Lin Xuan relaxed his guard and focused all his attention on Crocodile.
"Rupture Slash!"
The sound of air being sliced reached his ears only an instant before contact with skin.
Yet Lin Xuan's eyelids didn't even twitch.
He didn't even turn around, keeping his foot raised to step forward, as though the assassin behind him were nothing more than a passing draft.
Because there was no need.
Clang-!
A clear ring of steel rippled through the ruins, instantly drowning out the piercing sound of cutting.
A green afterimage moved later but arrived first, forcing its way into the fight at