149
The shudder of near death and the humiliation of being toyed with became a command for destruction.
Centered on where he stood, a raging tornado of sand erupted!
In an instant, yellow sand swallowed the world.
Amid an eardrum-ripping howl, coconut trees were uprooted, and houses of earth and stone tumbled through the air like scraps of paper.
The civilians and rebels hiding among the buildings were like ants caught in a hurricane, flung in dense swarms into the murky yellow sky.
Only those few exceptionally strong companions could hold their ground in this chaos: the orange-haired navigator, the blond cook, the green-haired swordsman, and the reindeer in human form.
The reindeer shielded the boy and girl below with his body.
"Stop... stop!"
Watching their childhood friends swept into the raging sand, the girl and boy stared with eyes stretched almost to bursting.
But before such overwhelming natural power, they could not even stand. They could only let anger burn in their chests.
"Covering the whole area..."
Electric light flickered at the edge of the sandstorm, and the body Rossi controlled solidified again.
He had to admit that the sand manipulator had chosen the most effective response: after recognizing "Rossi's"
overwhelming advantage in perception, prediction, and combat technique, he had gone straight for an indiscriminate wide-area attack, leaving no opening for a precision assassination.
Although Rossi brought top-tier battlefield awareness, exquisite control, and fine mastery of the Devil Fruit's power, this body's own attributes had not changed-muscular strength, Haki intensity, bone density. None of these could be bestowed out of thin air.
Precisely because his offensive power fell short, Rossi had adopted that earlier strategy of intimidation through "pulling his blows"
rather than following through.
Against a sandstorm that swallowed everything, this body's defenses were likewise inadequate.
"Bare hands