Blood slowly spread across his chest, like a small, dark-red flower blooming.
"A king's command cannot be defied."
He steadied his breathing, his sword tip firm as a rock. "Even if it is only a phantom with copied memories... it is still my duty."
"A phantom?"
Katakuri suddenly cut in.
The trident's blades turned toward the nobleman. "A defective thing cobbled together from chips and a clone, inferior even to a Devil Fruit creation.
"The man you serve went mad long ago."
"Perhaps."
Stoke smiled, his lips twisting into a bitter curve. "But loyalty does not require reason."
The fog thickened.
The hum of machinery seeped through the iron door, like a heartbeat rising from underground.
That was when the hooded man-Rossi-moved.
Not forward, but back.
He pushed off with his toes, retreating like an ebbing tide beyond the trident's reach, his twin golden blades spreading into a defensive stance at his sides.
The movement made both other parties freeze for half a second.
"A man with no reinforcements,"
Rossi's voice came from deep within his hood, "is best suited to breaking a stalemate."
Before he finished speaking, the blade in his left hand suddenly shot from his grip.
Not at a person, but at the ground between the three of them.
The instant the golden blade pierced the rock, the Haki stored within it exploded.
Shattered stone sprayed upward like a torrential downpour, tearing a brief vacuum through the lead-gray fog.
Katakuri's scarf streamed backward, and Stoke narrowed his eyes and raised a hand to shield his face-in that gap of less than a second, Rossi vanished.
When he reappeared, he was standing beside the laboratory's iron door.
The long blade in his right hand rested against the gap in the door. His left hand was empty, but his