"Worororo-"
"These men of mine aren't sacrifices prepared for you."
The Azure Dragon swooped down, his body contracting and coalescing in midair into a burly human form.
A spiked club wreathed in black lightning smashed down with a crushing rush of wind.
"Thunder Bagua!"
Twin blades rose to meet it, colliding head-on with the heavy weapon.
There was no expected metallic clang, only a deeper silence that seemed capable of swallowing even sound, spreading from the point of contact.
The two remained locked together, like sculptures frozen in a single instant.
Then the first ring of pitch-black ripples spread out between them, tracing a perfect arc.
A second ring immediately followed-
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom!!
Muffled impacts erupted one after another, centered on the point where their weapons met, and the earth trembled.
Violent ripples overlapped and spread through the air, overturning the soil and making the atmosphere wail. In moments, everything within a hundred-meter radius had been swallowed into a deep crater.
"Fall back-"
"Get out of here! This is Mr. Kaido's battle!"
The elite pirates nearby blanched and frantically retreated.
Most of them knew Haki, and some could even coat their limbs in Armament Haki, but amid the shock waves of a clash on this level:
Run!
Run for their lives!
Run with every ounce of strength they had!
Several elites who were a little too slow were grazed by the spreading black rings. Their mouths opened wide, but no sound emerged.
Skin peeled away, muscles disintegrated, bones crumbled-in a mere instant, they turned to dust beneath the grinding pressure of the two forces of Haki.
To Kaido and Kozuki Oden, anyone with a bounty under two hundred million did not even qualify to enter their battle zone.
At their level, ordinary foot soldiers were meaningless.
Unless-