"I can't hold out..."
Someone forced the words through clenched teeth.
In mere moments, three captains with bounties over a hundred million had already fallen.
The rest began backing away.
Were they not strong enough? No, everyone here had mastered two types of Haki.
Twenty-odd years later, any one of them would have been enough to give those so-called "Supernovas" who had just reached the Sabaody Archipelago
a hard fight.
Yet now, they were the ones struggling.
Their Armament Haki was still at the stage of coating weapons or covering parts of their bodies. They could not even spread it over their entire bodies.
But the boy in the black haori had not only long since mastered full-body coverage-though that consumed Haki rapidly, so he usually covered only the necessary areas-but had also learned to release Haki outward during his fight with that Marine legend.
That heavy punch from a distance just now had been the result of Haki Emission.
Mastering that technique meant gaining another means of ranged attack, while also avoiding direct contact with certain bizarre abilities.
As for Observation Haki... the captains were almost in despair.
If they could not still faintly sense their companions' presences, they would have doubted whether they truly possessed that ability at all.
They could not detect the boy's presence whatsoever.
That Devil Fruit was different from most fruits, which granted power immediately upon being eaten.
In its early stages, it had only the effect of "eliminating sound,"
and in terms of direct combat power, it could not even compare to certain fruits called the "weakest."
But as its user grew stronger and developed it further, once it became capable of "blocking Observation Haki's perception,"
everything changed.
Without the assistance of Observation Haki, fighting meant relying solely on the most basic senses