"You bastard, how dare you hurt Mama! I'm going to cut you in half and burn you to ashes!" the blazing longsword Napoleon roared.
"You bastard! That slash you just gave me hurt like hell! I'm gonna fry you to ashes!" Zeus bellowed.
"Die!" Charlotte Linlin's blood-red eyes locked on Rosinante. She gripped her sword with both hands and swung down at him.
A sweeping horizontal slash tore through the air, fast and vicious, as if determined not to give Rosinante a chance to dodge—one swing to cleave him clean in two.
This slash was unbelievably fast, fierce, and overbearingly powerful.
"Seriously? Do you have to be this over the top?" Even Rosinante was stunned by the sheer magnitude of the attack.
Snapping out of his shock, he ducked low, the massive slash whistling over his head.
BOOM! BOOM! The attack missed him and slammed straight into the walls of the Cake Castle.
Rosinante glanced back. The wall had been cleaved clean through, leaving a massive gaping hole.
"Die!" Charlotte Linlin growled coldly.
Napoleon flashed in her hands as she swung again and again. Gigantic, exaggerated slashes tore through the air.
Horizontal, vertical, diagonal—the sweeping attacks crisscrossed into a deadly web, sealing off every escape route Rosinante had.
And Zeus swooped above, unleashing bolts of lightning to give Rosinante not a shred of room to maneuver.
Rosinante activated Flying Shadow Streamlight, weaving and darting to evade.
But in the end, he couldn't dodge them all. Wrapping his longsword in the power of Silence and Armament Haki, he blocked Charlotte Linlin's brutal slashes and Zeus's thunderbolts head-on.
The sheer force of the blows drove Rosinante backward until he slammed into the wall.
Immediately, another barrage of slashes rained down where he stood, tearing everything apart, clouds of dust exploding into the air.
At the same time, Zeus's lightning poured down, relentlessly striking Rosinante's position.
"Is he dead yet?" Oven asked after a long moment.
The violent mix of sword energy and lightning had kicked up so much dust that he couldn't see a thing.
"Haha! He's definitely toast! That was Mama's slash and Zeus's lightning together! Even someone as strong as Rosinante wouldn't survive that," Prometheus laughed.
"Mamamama!" Charlotte Linlin grinned at last. Her eyes were still blood-red, making her look even more terrifying.
"Indeed, with that kind of attack, it's hard to imagine anyone could live," Baron Tamago said, a gleam in his eyes.
"Haha, I knew it. Mama is the Empress of the Seas! No matter how outrageous Rosinante is, he could never be Mama's match," Oven said smugly.
"Exactly! I was worried for nothing. No matter how capable Rosinante might be, once Mama gets serious, he'll still be smashed to pieces," Daifuku chuckled.
Katakuri frowned briefly, then relaxed. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"No… watch out! Rosinante might not be dead!" Perospero suddenly cried out.
And right on cue, a flash of light shot out from the storm of lightning and dust.
The beam pierced through the haze and went straight for Zeus, slicing through him in an instant.
"Ouch!" Zeus yelped in pain.
In the next moment, Zeus was split clean in two once more.
"Rosinante!" Perospero shouted, looking toward the sky.
Everyone followed his gaze—there he was, standing calmly in midair.
Rosinante's clothes were torn, marked with slash wounds, and streaked with blood. Yet strangely, there wasn't a single visible injury on his body.
"He used Healing Seal!" Perospero said through clenched teeth.
That was how he knew Rosinante hadn't died—he could sense the seal's effect.
"How is this possible? He's completely fine after that?! This Healing Seal is ridiculous! No wonder Mama has been so fixated on it," Daifuku exclaimed.
"Indeed, the Healing Seal is insanely powerful. But the price of such an ability is that your life ends up in someone else's hands," Perospero said darkly.
At those words, everyone glanced at Perospero's own battered state and felt a shiver run down their spines.
"Rosinante!" Charlotte Linlin roared furiously, enraged that she had failed to kill him.
"I got cut in half again!" Zeus wailed, flying back to Linlin's side.
Sure, being sliced in two wasn't fatal for him—he could easily merge back—but the pain was very real.
Unlike Prometheus, who was just a mass of flames and barely felt physical strikes, Zeus was a mixture of cloud and lightning. His body was more substantial to contain the electricity, meaning sword blows hurt.
"If you're gonna fight, then fight! You think I'm afraid of you?" Rosinante snarled, glaring into Linlin's blood-red eyes.
To everyone's shock, he suddenly sheathed his purple-bladed sword and tossed it to Katakuri.
"Hold this for me," Rosinante said.
"Rosinante's… ditching his sword?" Daifuku said in disbelief.
"What, does he think he can take Mama on barehanded?" Owen sneered.
"Has Mama scared him stupid? Giving up his weapon now? Is he surrendering?" Muscat said mockingly.
"How strange… At this point, there's absolutely no reason for Rosinante to abandon his favored weapon," Perospero muttered with a frown.
The last time he'd seen Rosinante, the man had been using a sword—only switching to fists after Katakuri had cracked the blade. So Perospero had assumed swordplay was Rosinante's specialty.
Katakuri took the sword, his brows knitting together.
He knew the truth—Rosinante was finally getting serious.
Others didn't realize it, but Katakuri did: Rosinante's swordsmanship was actually nowhere near his real level.
Well, that wasn't entirely fair—it wasn't bad, just not a true match for his strength.
Rosinante's real power lay in his fists.
Yes, he could adapt his fist techniques into sword attacks, but swordsmanship was swordsmanship, and martial arts were martial arts. Forcing one into the form of the other looked impressive but lacked the raw, pure effect of the original.
"There's nothing strange about it. He's just not a sword specialist," Amande said coolly, taking a drag of her cigarette.