Crocodile's eyes had gone dark.
His organization had collapsed. His subordinates had betrayed him. And now he was being used as a fucking whetstone by some rookie pirate from the weakest sea.
Every failure and every setback had been building up inside him like pressure in a volcano. And now that volcano was about to erupt.
Luffy noticed the shift immediately. His expression grew more serious as that strange precognitive sense in the back of his mind started screaming warnings at him.
Even if Crocodile's hook just grazed him now, it would hurt. Really hurt.
What the hell was going on?
He didn't understand the mechanics, but he trusted this instinct completely.
In the next instant, he found himself caught in a pincer attack. The hook came from one direction, and a condensed Desert Spada blade from the other.
Before this moment, he would've dodged the Desert Spada and tanked the hook hit. After all, the hook had never given him that gut-level sense of danger before.
But this time was different. The threat felt overwhelming, like staring death in the face.
So he dodged the hook instead, taking the Desert Spada across his back. Even with the diamond armor reducing the damage, he was still injured.
"What did you do?" He stared at Crocodile.
"This is the Haki you keep talking about needing to master. Haven't you seen it before?" Crocodile said.
But Luffy was frowning at something else, Crocodile's facial features seemed... softer somehow. His whole presence felt different, almost like...
"Why do you remind me of Bon Kurei right now?"
Before he could get an answer to that bizarre observation, another combination attack came.
He scrambled to dodge. Why had the hook suddenly become so dangerous? Was Haki really that powerful?
But what did Haki actually feel like? How was he supposed to recognize it, let alone use it?
The questions kept piling up as he kept dodging, and the more he avoided those attacks, the more curious he became.
Finally, using Soru to get some breathing room, he managed to put some distance between them.
The sandstorm had grown even larger during their fight. Even sunlight couldn't penetrate the swirling mass of sand anymore.
Luffy came to a decision. If he wanted to understand this Haki thing, really understand it on an instinctive level, he'd have to take a hit. Feel it for himself. He'd been considering it for a while now, but kept hesitating. But not anymore.
"Gum-Gum... Jet Rocket!"
He vanished from his position, leaving only wisps of white steam behind. The air pressure from his movement created a visible shockwave.
Crocodile wasn't surprised. Through his Observation Haki, he'd already seen exactly where Luffy would appear, right in front of him, committed to a straight charge.
Armament Haki wrapped around his hook, turning it pitch black in the perception of anyone who could see such things. The weapon cleaved through Luffy's strongest attack like it was nothing, continuing forward with the clear intent of impaling him completely.
But when the hook's point struck Luffy's chest, it stopped. Couldn't go any deeper.
That weird combination of rubber's natural flexibility and an unnatural hardness prevented even a Haki-enhanced strike from piercing through.
Crocodile's eyebrows rose. He twisted the hook, shifting from a thrust to a slash.
A thin line of blood appeared across Luffy's body, stretching from chest to abdomen.
"What is your body made of?!" He could tell Luffy wasn't using Armament Haki to harden his defense. This was purely the strength of his physical body. Even Bullet, if caught by that attack, would've taken damage. But this kid only had a scratch, barely broke the skin.
This kind of defense was terrifying.
Was this what Kaido was like? Or had this brat inherited Big Mom's iron skin somehow?
Could he be some illegitimate child of those two monsters, lost to the world?
It wasn't an unreasonable thought. His last strike hadn't just used Armament Haki, he'd employed advanced techniques, the kind that destroyed from within. Yet the boy had barely been scratched.
In reality, blood was trickling from the corner of Luffy's mouth. The internal damage from the advanced Haki had definitely hurt him.
But he was grinning despite the pain. This was exactly what he'd needed.
"That was close... if it weren't for my friend's help, you probably would've run me through just now," he admitted Crocodile's strength frankly. After all, he wasn't fighting alone, the diamond armor had been a gift from his crew.
"What do you mean?"
His expression turned serious as he stared at the Warlord. He'd sensed all along that Crocodile had been holding back, and only in that instant just now had he unleashed power that truly made him feel like death was breathing down his neck.
Reaching up, he removed the diamond hat from his head. Then, piece by piece, he stripped off the diamond armor Marcus had crafted for him.
The instant he did, the sand and grit battering his body immediately tore countless wounds across his exposed skin.
"What the hell?!" Crocodile stared at the scene in confusion.
Through his Observation Haki, the Luffy standing before him now appeared frighteningly fragile, someone he could kill with a single serious blow at any moment. The defensive boost from that armor had been massive.
"From here on out, I won't lose!"
Luffy's eyes burned with fire. He wasn't underestimating his opponent, far from it. But he knew that only by directly experiencing the power of Haki, by feeling it strike his own body, could he learn to grasp it quickly.
This was his fight. His breakthrough moment.
Using his friends' strength was fine, he'd never been too proud to accept help. But if he couldn't master Haki himself, what would happen when he faced opponents even tougher than Crocodile? Would he just keep relying on his crewmates' abilities forever?
As captain, he didn't care much about titles or grand ambitions. But the power to protect everyone, that, he absolutely had to obtain.
With his will firm, he unconsciously released a different kind of Haki. One unique to himself.
Crocodile's expression grew increasingly grim. The Straw Hat kid now threatened him far more than at the start of this battle.
Black and red lightning exploded where their Hakis collided, crackling through the air like a thunderstorm contained in the space between two fists.
If Marcus, or anyone else for that matter, had been present to witness this moment, they would've noticed something shocking: Crocodile's body was undergoing subtle but definite changes, slowly shifting toward a more feminine form with each passing second.
But the two fighters were too focused on their battle to notice such things.
"Gum-Gum... Jet Whip!"
"Desert Spada!"
Their Haki-wrapped attacks collided with earth-shaking force.
The entire sandstorm lit up with flashes of electricity. Even the sky above them resounded with thunder from the sheer power of their clash.
At thousands of meters altitude, Usopp shivered involuntarily. "W-Was that thunder?!"
He and Kira had been flying higher and higher to escape the sandstorm's expansion, and now they were well above the clouds.
Kira circled in the air, her multiple wings working to keep them stable. "Something's wrong. This sandstorm... it's not just moving sand around anymore. It's changing the weather."
Usopp nodded. At first, the sandstorm had only grown a little larger, like Crocodile was just showing off his power. But now it seemed to have crossed some kind of threshold. Even at this incredible height, they could both feel it clearly.
Clouds were gathering around them, not natural clouds drifting by, but dark storm clouds forming out of nowhere. The speed of their formation was unnatural and terrifying.
In just moments, lightning began flashing within the massing thunderheads.
Even up here, above the normal cloud layer, they weren't safe anymore.
"This storm really could destroy all of Alubarna..." He stared down at the rotating black clouds below them.
Even up here, he could feel violent winds buffeting Kira's wings. If someone were caught down there, at ground level, facing that power head-on... what would happen to them?
The city would be devastated. No less damage than if it had been carpet-bombed.
"So this is what Marcus meant when he said Logia users are walking natural disasters..." Kira finally understood the true terror of Logia-type Devil Fruit users.
Usopp squinted his eyes at the storm's eye, trying to track the two figures still locked in combat at the storm's center.
It only took a blink. Just one moment of distraction.
When he looked again, Luffy was completely drenched in blood.
"Shit! That's bad, Luffy's diamond armor must've hit zero durability!" He grabbed Kira's shoulder, pointing urgently at their captain's battered form.
"What?! Then what do we do?!"
She was flying somewhere inside the storm herself, protected by her own diamond armor. Without that protection, the violent sand and debris would've torn her apart in seconds. The armor was the only reason any of them could even approach this sandstorm.
Usopp's hand went to his bag, fingers closing around something he'd been saving for an emergency. He pulled out an egg that was pitch black.
Exploding Egg B1.
This was the result of days of careful work by Clucky. The chicken could produce exploding eggs based on how much wheat it consumed, but it could also hold back, storing up power without laying anything. This B1 represented the absolute limit of what Clucky could currently produce.
He didn't know the exact destructive capacity, he'd never tested anything this powerful. But he did know what a D4 could do. A single D4 had instantly killed a Sea King over a thousand meters long when it detonated on the creature's exterior.
On the exterior. Not even inside where the damage would be magnified.
If a D4 could do that, then a B1... hell, this thing could probably wipe out all of Alubarna without breaking a sweat.
"You're gonna fire it? But Luffy's still down there!"
"I can trigger early detonation, but once this goes off, the blast radius will be massive. You need to fly fast, really fast."
Usopp was already pulling out an ender pearl as he spoke, formulating a plan.
He bit down on his fingertip hard enough to draw blood, smearing it across the pearl's surface. Then he wound a strand of his own hair around it, tying it tight. Finally, he brought it to his lips and blew a breath across it, infusing it with his intent.
He loaded the pearl into his slingshot and aimed directly at the storm's eye.
The elastic band stretched to its limit, groaning with tension.
Six thousands meters. That was the distance between them and the ground.
Shooting the pearl down fast enough while also hitting a moving target in the middle of a sandstorm... the difficulty was almost incomprehensible. One miscalculation and he'd miss entirely, or worse, the pearl would be caught in the violent air currents and deflected off course.
He took a deep breath, forcing his thoughts to slow. His entire world narrowed to the target.
Snap.
The slingshot released with a sharp sound. The ender pearl shot forward, but its speed wasn't as fast as he'd hoped. After barely a hundred meters, the violent winds and thick water vapor in the clouds began buffeting it around. The pearl wobbled dangerously, looking like it might get swept away by the gale.
"Detonate!"
In the next instant, his Devil Fruit power kicked in.
The first explosion came from the breath he'd blown onto the pearl, a small burst that propelled it through the cloud layer.
The second explosion triggered from the hair he'd wrapped around it, giving the pearl a secondary acceleration that punched through the worst of the wind resistance.
The third and final explosion, powered by his blood, sent the pearl plummeting toward the ground.
---
Down below, the battle between Luffy and Crocodile had reached its climax.
Luffy's body was covered with wounds. His skin was raw and bleeding from thousands of tiny cuts where the sandstorm had scoured him. But worse than those superficial wounds were the deep gashes that showed bone beneath torn flesh.
The worst injury was at his waist and abdomen, a gaping hole that went completely through his body. You could literally see through him if you looked from the right angle.
Only his mastery of Life Return was keeping him from bleeding out. He'd manually sealed off the blood vessels, but he could feel his body struggling to maintain that control.
"You're definitely strong... but why won't you fight me with everything you've got?"
He was still grinning.
Crocodile, by contrast, looked almost untouched at first glance. But closer inspection revealed blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, and his poison hook hand was slightly deformed from taking direct hits from Luffy's punches.
"You don't understand anything." His eyes burned with battle spirit that he hadn't felt in years.
A pure strength-versus-strength brawl, he'd almost forgotten what this felt like. The last time had been against Bullet. This time, he didn't want to run from it. That burning sensation in his blood, the thrill of testing himself against a worthy opponent... it had been so long.
Even though Luffy's body was shredded, the kid was still radiating energy. His wounds were healing at an abnormal rate too, almost like he had some kind of Zoan-type regeneration factor.
"If you don't bring out your real power soon, you're gonna lose!" Luffy's grin widened, and Crocodile could feel the kid's aura rising higher with every passing second.
He looked up at the sky above them.
Rain was coming.
If this fight continued even a few minutes longer, he would lose. It was that simple.
When a sandstorm reached a certain threshold of power, when it grew violent enough to alter weather patterns and summon rain clouds... his abilities would be weakened.
And after that, even without Haki, Luffy would completely overwhelm him.
There would be no fairness left to speak of. Just a one-sided beatdown.
"Unfortunately, time's up."
"Time? What do you mean?" Luffy asked.
Crocodile's gaze lingered on the young pirate for a long moment. Despite everything, he felt something almost like respect for this stubborn kid.
"Straw Hat... let's save this fight for another time. Right now, you're still too weak."
With those final words, his body dissolved into sand and merged back into the storm, becoming indistinguishable from the billions of other sand particles swirling through the air.
Luffy froze for a second. Then he whipped his head toward a specific direction. He stretched his arm out, trying to grab the fleeing Warlord before he could escape.
But it was useless. His hand only grasped empty air, and worse, the storm's sand immediately began cutting into his arm, forcing him to retract it before it got shredded completely.
"Dammit!" he shouted.
He looked around the ground, trying to find the diamond armor he'd taken off earlier. If he could just put it back on, he could charge through the sandstorm and chase Crocodile down.
But no matter how hard he searched, the armor was nowhere to be found. The storm must have buried it under tons of sand.
"Ah... this is bad."
Just then, an ender pearl fell from the sky and landed right beside him.
Marcus materialized instantly, appearing in the heart of the sandstorm. He immediately summoned a stone wall to provide some cover from the sand blast.
His eyes swept the area, searching for Crocodile. But the Warlord was nowhere to be seen.
"Did you beat him?" That was Marcus' first assumption, Luffy had somehow managed to win.
But then he noticed Crocodile's marker on his mental map, slowly moving away in the distance.
"What happened?!"
Then he got a good look at Luffy's condition and nearly had a heart attack.
"He did this to you even with diamond armor?!" He stared at the injuries covering his captain.
Luffy instinctively looked down, whistling nervously.
"Y-Yeah... he's really strong, you know? Super tough fight."
"..."
Marcus studied Luffy's expression.
"Don't tell me you took the armor off on purpose."
"Shishishishi, what are you talking about? I would never do something like that!" Luffy's eyes darted around, refusing to meet Marcus' gaze.
"You idiot..." Marcus sighed, but he couldn't really stay mad. This was Luffy being Luffy, always pushing himself to the absolute limit.
He pulled out a stack of cooked beef from his inventory. "Eat this. Recover your strength first."
Seeing that Marcus wasn't going to lecture him, Luffy relaxed visibly. He grabbed the food and started wolfing it down, consuming more than thirty pieces before finally stopping.
And then, in an impossibly short time, the bloody wounds across his body began knitting themselves back together. Even the massive hole through his torso started closing, flesh and muscle regenerating at visible speed.
It wasn't just the food's healing properties, it was also Luffy's own ridiculous constitution and his mastery of Life Return working in combination.
The Den Den Mushi in Marcus' pocket suddenly rang.
Purururu. Purururu.
Gacha.
"Marcus, I'm about to drop B1. Get ready."
Marcus didn't panic. "Do it, Usopp. I'll handle things down here."
He turned to Luffy. "As punishment for carelessly losing the diamond armor I made for you, I'm telling Sanji to cut off your meals for a whole day."
"WHAT?! I'll starve to death!!" Luffy wailed in terror, looking more frightened of missing meals than he had of fighting Crocodile.
He tried to beg and plead for mercy, but Marcus was already encasing him in obsidian blocks, sealing him inside a protective shell.
Then Marcus sealed himself in obsidian too. Just to be safe, he wrapped both of them in three complete layers.
Obsidian was immune to explosions in Minecraft, but Clucky's exploding eggs weren't TNT. Their blast operated on completely different physics.
This would be a good test of obsidian's durability in this world.
And then... the explosion came.
Even through three layers of obsidian, the sound was so loud that his ears rang. But he wasn't the only one who noticed.
Every single person in Alubarna, from the royal palace to the poorest slums, looked up as a massive mushroom cloud rose into the sky.