Crack!
The crisp shattering sound exploded beside Mr. 5's ear, timed to Ryoma's light question.
Immediately, bone-piercing cold poured from the hand pressed to his nape, racing down his spinal nerves. Wherever it passed, blood froze, muscles stiffened, and even his thoughts stuttered.
"Ugh… ahh…"
Meaningless gurgles rattled in Mr. 5's throat. He tried to struggle, to detonate his own body and blow the man behind him to cinders.
It was the proudest technique of the Bomb-Bomb Fruit user, full-body explosion, and as the fruit's owner, he was completely immune to the blast.
Yet the invasive frost devoured his nerves and mind, cutting the impulse short. He couldn't spark the tiniest explosion.
W-what… h-happening…? Why… no… reaction…?
Terror drowned his sanity.
Ryoma's heart didn't stir, he almost felt a yawn coming on.
"No Haki at all, swallow a devil fruit and think you're invincible? Pathetic."
"If it had been a Logia-type, you might've had a sliver of a chance to escape."
"Moron."
Ryoma delivered the verdict with disgust, then gave a light push to the hand on Mr. 5's nape. He didn't bother looking back, merely flicked his fingers with distaste, as if he'd touched something filthy.
At that instant, the cold entrenched inside the man erupted.
Crack! Crack...
Clear, glittering ice spread outward from his nape. Neck, shoulders, chest, waist, legs—everything was sealed in thick crystal within a second.
Mr. 5 was entombed in a translucent coffin of ice, the snarl of terror on his face perfectly reproduced—a lifelike ice sculpture.
Boom!
The heavy block slammed onto the distant street, spider-web fractures racing across it, then it shattered along with Mr. 5 inside, reduced to sparkling rubble.
All of Whiskey Peak went still. Fugitives, hiders, peeping bounty hunters froze in place.
Mouths hung open and eyes bulged. They stared at the icy debris, hearts clenched by an invisible fist.
One move—just one!
Baroque Works' High-Rank Agent Mr. 5…
Gone?
"Gulp."
Someone gulped audibly in the dead silence.
"I… I told you… he's a monster…"
The man who had first yelled the warning sat slumped, face ashen, lips trembling, unable to string a sentence together.
Terror spread like plague, a tangible beast devouring every scrap of courage and hope.
On the second-floor balcony of the cactus-shaped building, the air solidified.
The smile on Miss Valentine's face froze. Her dainty blue-and-yellow parasol clattered to the floor, rolled, and stopped beside her foot. Her lips parted and pale-green pupils shrank to pinpricks, reflecting the overly calm man below and the frost-littered ground beyond him.
Impossible…
That was Mr. 5!
A formidable Bomb-Bomb Fruit user, her partner.
Down in a single exchange?
She hadn't even seen how he'd done it.
The man had simply vanished, reappeared behind Mr. 5, and…
A soul-deep shiver chilled her limbs. Confidence in her own strength, pride in her status as a High-Rank Agent, shattered in an instant.
She finally understood: the terror of the men downstairs wasn't cowardice, it was the purest instinct to survive.
The thing they faced wasn't even in the same dimension as them.
Ryoma brushed non-existent dust from his sleeve.
"Tch, forcing my hand."
He was annoyed. He could have waited quietly while the Log Pose charged, but trouble never disappeared on its own. It actually came looking for him.
He lifted his gaze, calm eyes cutting through the chaos to lock on the blonde girl on the balcony, now pale as paper.
Under those placid eyes, Miss Valentine shuddered, a chill shooting from her soles to her scalp. She felt like prey marked by an ancient predator, yet the gaze held no killing intent, only utter indifference.
Run—get out now!
The thought screamed in her skull.
High-Rank pride, avenging her partner...
Everything was flung aside.
Before absolute death, survival was the only option.
"Ahaha…"
A laugh more wretched than a sob tore from her throat.
She snatched up her parasol, body turning feather-light, ready to ride the wind away. But she'd barely risen half a meter when an indifferent voice drifted up.
"Did I say you could leave?"
Before the words finished, the air around her plummeted in temperature. Countless glittering ice crystals condensed into a dazzling, lethal storm of frost. The crystals looked beautiful, yet each edge was razor-sharp, whirling about her weightless body with a soft hiss.
She didn't doubt that the slightest movement would dice her into mincemeat.
She hung frozen mid-air, neither up nor down, face drained of every trace of color.
"W-what… do you want?" Her voice quavered uncontrollably.
Ryoma didn't answer at once. He paced forward, unhurried, toward the cactus building.
The surrounding bounty hunters erupted in panic, shrieking and scrambling aside to clear a path.
Ignoring the small fry, he stopped beneath the building and looked up at the woman suspended in mid-air.
"I was just passing through, waiting for my Log Pose to charge. You were the ones who jumped out to ruin my quiet, weren't you?"
His tone stayed level, yet to Miss Valentine, it felt like mountains collapsing.
"W-we were wrong! Please, great sir, have… have mercy and let me go!"
All dignity discarded, she begged frantically, regret gnawing her guts.
"Let you go?" Ryoma tilted his head.
"Not impossible."
Hope flared in Miss Valentine's eyes.
His smile turned cold. "But I hate trouble. To stop any more fools bothering me, rooting out the weed sounds better."
Ryoma looked up at her, beaming. "So, do you know where Crocodile is?"
Crocodile?
The moment Miss Valentine heard that name, her mind went blank.
Of course, she had heard the name. Crocodile, one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, a notorious pirate in the first half of the Grand Line.
But the problem was, how could she possibly know the whereabouts of such a major figure?
What did this man mean by suddenly asking her this?
Ryoma understood everything when he saw the fear and confusion mixed on her face, and he sighed silently.
She was just a low-level tool kept in the dark. Given the pyramid structure of Baroque Works with its layers of secrecy, these so-called Top Agents probably wouldn't know who their boss was until they died.
Seriously... the sea is full of people who have ambition and confidence but absolutely no common sense.
Ryoma even thought of the plot he had watched before his transmigration—even when Marine Admiral Kizaru personally appeared and demonstrated his overwhelming power by crushing Supernovas one by one, there were still fools who didn't know their place, dreaming of killing an Admiral with one shot to achieve fame and glory.