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Because Zoro continued getting hopelessly lost, Usopp and Leo had run for so long that they finally realized one inescapable truth: they could no longer rely on that directionally-challenged swordsman. Now Usopp had to forcibly log into his alternate account—the Soge King.
He retrieved the Soge King mask from his pocket with trembling hands. Though the mask possessed no special supernatural properties when worn, it provided crucial psychological courage that seemed to flow through his very being. The mental buff was exactly what he needed to face powerful enemies without fear, transforming his mindset from that of a cowardly sniper to a brave warrior.
The King's Plateau was only so large, and Pica was using his Devil Fruit power to absorb surrounding stones, making his giant avatar grow increasingly massive with each passing moment. The escape routes beneath their feet were becoming more treacherous by the second, with cracks appearing in the stone and unstable ledges crumbling away. If this were someone particularly prone to stumbling on flat ground, they would have suffered a concussion long ago.
"You've bullied me for so long," Usopp declared with newfound determination, his voice carrying across the battlefield with unexpected authority. "It's time for me to fight back!"
"Really, Usopp?" Leo crawled out of the man's pocket, his eyes sparkling with admiration and desperate hope. In his heart, he didn't want the descendant of a legendary hero to be a weakling who could only run and hide.
The Pica stone giant halted directly in front of them, taunting with its characteristic high-pitched, clip-like voice: "What gave you the courage to challenge me, you insignificant insects? Those plants growing on my body can't cause any real damage to me. Go to hell, bugs!"
A stone hand approximately one hundred meters wide came crashing down toward Usopp's position with devastating force. This time, the Sniper King didn't choose to dodge the dangerous attack—instead, he stayed exactly where he was and loudly summoned his magical arsenal on the spot.
"Tall-Nut Wall! Come out and help me control him!"
At the Sniper King's command, four massive brown nuts erupted from the ground near the stone giant's feet with tremendous force. They expanded to a height of several hundred meters within just a few seconds, trapping the stone giant from four directions with their incredible bulk and density.
"These useless plants look good, but watch me break them!" Pica controlled the stone giant's body and attempted to expand his form by absorbing more stones to burst through the nuts. However, he gravely underestimated the hardness of these magical plants.
By doing so, he was only tying himself up more completely. The stone giant had even less room to move around and was firmly pinned to the spot by four towering nut walls. The hardness of these plants was far beyond his imagination—they seemed almost indestructible.
He wanted to destroy the plants by pulling out their roots, but Pica searched underground for a long time and couldn't find any root system whatsoever. Could someone actually summon plants out of thin air?
But of course this was impossible. This was because Usopp had scattered countless magical seeds under his feet when he was escaping earlier, carefully luring the stone giant into this prepared encirclement. Unexpectedly, the plan had gone very smoothly—Pica was a young man who fought without using his brain, relying purely on brute force.
The Paramecia-type Ishi Ishi no Mi (Stone-Stone Fruit) was called the Pseudo-Logia, and the word "pseudo" was used particularly well. Pica could only absorb nutrients from the earth to form a stone giant—he couldn't flow freely between the earth like other Logia users, and he couldn't become an elemental being that was immune to physical damage. He just hid inside the huge body of the stone giant.
The thousand-meter-tall stone giant possessed very powerful terrain destruction capabilities, but Pica had never thought that one day he would be controlled by plants. He had no choice but to abandon the body of the stone giant entirely.
"Leo, watch my next performance!" The Sniper King raised his right hand into the air and struck a very cool pose that radiated confidence. "Pea Shooters, come on stage!"
The magical plants appeared again, following their master's orders with perfect obedience. In the blink of an eye, hundreds of pea shooters grew around the stone giant like a forest of artillery. Each of them stood hundreds of meters high, with special shooting holes on their heads that were filled with plant shells, waiting patiently for the order to fire.
"Tall-Nuts retreat! All Pea Shooters, shoot!"
The tall nuts completed their mission perfectly and withered away, leaving clear attacking positions for the pea shooters. Next came the green artillery's combat performance. Hundreds of plants simultaneously shot out green plant shells (peas) to collide with the hard body of the stone giant in a devastating barrage.
Seeing that his opponent had freed himself from the tall nuts, Pica wanted to stretch his body but didn't care at all about the plant shells shot from all directions. He directly used his stone hands to catch these green shells, once again underestimating the power of the magical plants.
Each of the green peas sprayed by the Pea Shooters was as hard as steel and moved with incredible velocity. The surface of the stone giant was soon full of pits and holes from the relentless bombardment. His hand that was used to block the shells was directly broken into pieces. In a short period of time, he was completely suppressed by the Pea Shooters' firepower. The speed at which the stone giant absorbed stones to repair his damage could not keep up with the speed at which the Pea Shooters caused destruction.
The pea shooters surrounded the stone giant and madly poured pea shells at him with mechanical precision. It seemed that the peas in their bodies would never be used up, as if they had access to unlimited ammunition. Although the shooting speed was steady rather than rapid, they fired one shot after another without pause, and the attack frequency did not change from beginning to end. With this kind of relentless assault, the stone giant could not hold on for much longer.
"You forced me to do this!" As one of Doflamingo's four major cadres, Pica was serious about washing away this unprecedented shame. The dignity of the strong could not be violated by the weak, especially not in front of the entire world.
Usopp possessed the best Observation Haki among the Straw Hat Pirates. He was the first to notice the changes in the earth beneath them—not only was the King's Plateau moving, but the entire island of Dressrosa had also begun to operate like a massive machine. The source of everything pointed to the location of the stone giant.
"This guy's Devil Fruit has awakened," the Sniper King said with cold sweat on his forehead. The worst possible thing had happened. Pica, the wielder of the Ishi Ishi no Mi, was simply the king of land warfare when his powers reached this level.
After awakening, Pica no longer needed to come into close contact with stones to extract stone elements from the earth. At this moment, he was like a huge black hole, constantly absorbing stones from all around to replenish his body with seemingly limitless appetite.
The land near the stone giant became its nutrients. The Pea Shooters who had been protecting Usopp were uprooted and merged with the earth and Pica's form. However, Usopp realized something strange was happening. He only saw the stone giant absorbing the earth but did not see his body expand proportionally. What was happening? Where did all the absorbed matter go?
A stone giant broke out from under Usopp with explosive force, launching a sneak attack on the Sniper King with a huge stone palm. He predicted this with his Observation Haki and used the momentum to leap into the air in advance, narrowly avoiding the crushing blow.
He took out a magical seed from his pocket and threw it at the stone giant's head with perfect accuracy. "Super Pumpkin, crush him for me!"
The magical seed sprouted instantly when it came into contact with the light, and then grew into fruit form with incredible speed. A huge green pumpkin that was so enormous it defied description, wearing an angry expression, sat down on the stone giant with tremendous force and sent the stone man who had not yet grown up back to the earth in complete destruction.
"Usopp, look around quickly!" Leo suddenly reminded loudly, his voice filled with alarm.
"Hey, hey, hey, are you really kidding me?"
With the Sniper King as the center, there were densely packed stone men emerging from the ground all around them. Each of them looked like a juvenile version and was about a hundred meters tall. These were the results of Pica's long-range assembly using the power of his awakened Devil Fruit.
With the blessing of the awakened Devil Fruit, even if he did not enter the stone men's bodies personally, he could still control these stone puppets and launch coordinated siege attacks on his enemies.
Nearly a hundred stone men appeared at the same time, and their number was constantly being replenished. Until all the soil and stone of the entire island of Dressrosa were used up by Pica, these stone men would not stop producing.
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