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"There's a scent about you that brings back memories."
Mihawk's gaze passed over the boy with three swords and landed directly on Luffy's face.
"...Rossi, explain your current state."
"Don't act like I'm not here!"
With Wado Ichimonji clenched between his teeth, Zoro had barely twisted around, his two hand-held swords not yet raised, when those eyes known as "Hawk-Eyes"
swept over him indifferently.
"Quiet."
Just a glance.
Yet to Zoro's senses, it was like a pitch-black rift tearing open the entire world.
Instinctively, he braced all three swords before him-then:
Boom!
Zoro was blasted backward, crashing like a cannonball into the wreckage of the enormous ship beside them, which had already split apart.
The crack of splintering wood swallowed his figure, leaving only a hole with charred edges to prove that what had just happened was no illusion.
"Zoro?!"
The pirates clinging to the enormous ship and the villagers on the Black Cat's deck all froze.
Everything had happened in mere seconds, leaving them no time even to change their expressions.
"Cough...!"
A stifled gasp came from deep within the wreckage.
Covered in blood, Zoro crawled out of the hole, one sword clenched between his teeth and another gripped in each hand.
His body trembled, but his resolve was shaken even more violently.
With Hawk-Eyes as his ultimate goal, he had wielded his swords all this time for the promise he had made to his childhood best friend.
But that instant just now-
"What was that?"
"A Devil Fruit? Or something else..."
A single look had almost robbed him of the ability to fight. The gulf between them filled Zoro's chest with burning fury and shock.
Impossible... There shouldn't be such an enormous gulf in this world.
*The reason I wield my swords was never to be unable