Chapter 521: The Stalemate on the Battlefield (Part 1)
"Charlotte, you! Must die!" Kong roared, his face covered in blood as he stared at Charlotte. The aura around his body continued to climb.
"Redfield was able to defeat you back then, and I am going to kill you!" A red glint flashed in Charlotte's eyes. His longsword continuously struck towards Kong's vital points. Sword slashes crisscrossed the air, hacking at Kong from all sides.
But Kong's body was tense, his entire being protected flawlessly. He was no longer giving Charlotte any opportunities.
The clash between the two erupted with their formidable combat power. Wherever they passed, the ice shattered, and huge clouds of steam burst forth.
"Hah!"
Fine beads of sweat covered Charlotte's forehead. He was, after all, Fleet Admiral "Steel Bone" Kong, an expert on the same level as himself. Dealing with such a powerhouse was not so easy. To kill him in the shortest possible time was even more impossible, unless his opponent revealed some kind of flaw.
But that was clearly impossible. Having reached this level, any exposed flaw was likely a trap set by the opponent to lure you in. A single careless mistake and you could fall for their trick. If one wanted to determine a winner, the only way was to exhaust the other until they were completely spent.
It was another contest of time.
Charlotte glanced around. The battlefield was incomparably chaotic. The battle between the three great pirate crews and the Marines had not immediately produced a winner. The scales of victory had not even begun to tip. It was still a mutual slaughter.
"A contest of time... but this is the New World!" Charlotte's lips curled up slightly as he looked at the fighting crowds. He flicked his longsword and stabbed straight at Kong.
The longer this battle dragged on, the greater the chances of victory for their three great pirate crews.
Clang!
The longsword slashed against Kong's bronze-colored arm, leaving only a shallow white mark. His opponent's physical development had already reached its peak.
Charlotte glanced at the result of his attack and couldn't help but roll his eyes. He wondered how Redfield had dealt with Kong back then, and how he had defeated him. Could it be that his opponent, after his last defeat, had reflected on the painful experience and strengthened himself? The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed. Charlotte felt that this was an incredibly tough fight.
It wasn't just Charlotte's battlefield. The battlefield had been split into three parts. The opponents of the Whitebeard Pirates and the Big Mom Pirates were not so easy to deal with either.
Whitebeard Edward Newgate and Monkey D. Garp were now fighting with true fire. With impassive faces, they attacked with sword and fist. Neither spoke; it was merely a clash of fist and weapon that left both with various injuries. Garp's Marine uniform had been cut open in several places by Whitebeard. Whitebeard's bandana had disappeared in the fight, revealing his already thinning white hair. If one looked closely, one could see overlapping fist marks on Whitebeard's bare chest, clearly from the recent battle. The two were locked together, the constant clash of sword and fist making it so that no one dared to approach within a thousand meters.
The commanders under the Whitebeard Pirates were also fighting desperately against the Marines. Led by Marco, the Whitebeard commanders tied up the reinforcing Marine Vice Admirals, engaging in battle on the ice.
The Marine Vice Admirals, led by Aokiji Kuzan, were in a frantic slaughter against the sixteen commanders of the Whitebeard Pirates. Many of the weaker commanders and Marine Rear Admirals had already died.
The battle had been going on for half a day. So far, no one at the Vice Admiral level had been killed, but the number of injured was constantly increasing.
However, apart from the commanders, the regular crew members of the Whitebeard Pirates seemed somewhat powerless against the elites trained by Marine Headquarters. The low-ranking members of the Whitebeard Pirates were continuously cut down by the Marines, with no power to resist. And their commanders also seemed pale and weak against the smaller number of Marine officers. It even took three Whitebeard commanders working together to hold off a single Marine Vice Admiral, which severely tied up their command staff.
With the lower ranks collapsing, the Marines were making steady, organized progress.
"Damn it!"
After launching an attack, Marco flew into the sky. His heart felt like it was being twisted by a knife as he watched his comrades being killed continuously.
"Phoenix Brand!"
Marco attacked Kuzan with a kick. A blue-and-yellow phoenix claw locked onto Kuzan. Kuzan chose not to take it head-on and dodged. Everything that was happening around them was within Kuzan's sight.
The Marines clearly had the advantage against the rank-and-file of the Whitebeard Pirates; they just needed to advance steadily. In fact, even Kuzan was a bit surprised at how weak the Whitebeard Pirates' combat power actually was. In his view, their fearsome reputation was propped up entirely by Whitebeard himself. Apart from the Marco before him, as well as Diamond Jozu and Flower Sword Vista, the strength of the other Whitebeard commanders didn't seem to match their fame.
And this scene was witnessed by Whitebeard. His greatest fear had come to pass. In a large-scale battle, especially when he, the captain, was tied up, his sons had failed to shoulder their heavy burdens. Faced with the attacks of the Marine elites, they were actually being routed. This was the last thing Whitebeard wanted to see.
In comparison, the situation of the Big Mom Pirates was much better.
Led by Katakuri, the Big Mom children had gathered on their respective fleets and were dealing with the Marines' attacks with ease. Although their ships were frozen in the sea and unable to move, the Big Mom children immediately used these immobilized ships as fortresses to face the Marine elite's assault.
The firearms on the ships continuously spat tongues of fire. The younger, less combat-capable children of the Charlotte family were each armed with a Gatling gun. If the Rockefeller Pirates were here, they would definitely be shocked, because almost all the weapons in the hands of the Big Mom Pirates' crew came from them.
Those very Gatling guns were the ones Rockefeller Charlotte had ordered to be manufactured and then sold on the black market. Charlotte strictly controlled the number of units sold, and each sale would cause a frenzy among the buyers in the black market. A single machine gun was already being sold for three to four million Berries on the black market.
And now, facing a war that concerned the life and death of the Big Mom Pirates, Katakuri couldn't be bothered with hiding them anymore. He brought them all out and gave them to his weaker younger brothers and sisters, allowing them to have the power to protect themselves on the battlefield.
These machine guns had all been collected by Katakuri over the years, bought from the black market at a great price. As the pirate crew with the greatest conflict with the Rockefeller Pirates, Katakuri had always had a strong sense of crisis in his heart.
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