Even the El Pirates… Come to think of it, Lord El rarely got involved in this kind of business.
This thought made Doflamingo's mind wander again. He wondered if he should take the chance to suggest such ventures to his captain.
After all, these underground dealings brought in far greater profits.
But then he shook his head lightly. Knowing Lord El's temperament, such matters would never interest him. They were nothing but sordid, time-wasting schemes.
El possessed supreme, overwhelming power; whatever he wanted, he could take openly and justly—or rather, seize outright—by his own strength.
Given that, the methods the Donquixote Family had once relied on could never be copied directly into the El Pirates' way of doing things.
This realization had left Doflamingo brooding and frustrated for quite some time.
"What is it…"
Issho's voice cut through Doflamingo's train of thought.
"Are you, the mastermind behind this auction house, lost for words?"
Doflamingo did not know exactly what Issho had witnessed inside the building to spark such intense resentment, but he could easily guess.
The auction house trafficked in slaves, smuggled weapons, and traded intelligence—all manner of illegal activities.
Clearly, Issho was nothing like him.
Doflamingo shook his head slowly. "These are not matters you should be prying into… You do have some skill, I'll give you that—but you're still a long way from defeating me!"
He stopped holding back. If he did not give his all now, there was a real chance he would lose to this completely unknown opponent—and might not even get the chance to unleash his strongest techniques.
This was not a sudden loss of confidence in his own strength; it was simply a conclusion drawn from firsthand experience and the warning El had given him earlier.
…
Though El was not standing right there on the battlefield, as he had promised, he kept a close watch on the entire fight.
His own Observation Haki was sharp enough to sense the shifts in energy and determine the general flow of the battle without needing to be physically present.
He was waiting for the right moment to step in. If he wanted to recruit Issho, that timing would be crucial. Yet the task was far from simple.
Through his Haki, El had already gauged Issho's strength—it was almost exactly what he had expected. Doflamingo was by no means guaranteed to win.
Now that he had lost his advantage of hovering in the air, Doflamingo was clearly being pushed back and suppressed by Issho.
…
"So you refuse to shut this place down, no matter what?"
Issho's tone was deadly serious—nothing like the gentle, calm manner he had shown at first.
At this point, Issho still knew very little about how the pirate world worked. He had no idea who Doflamingo truly was.
Even if this single auction house were closed, Doflamingo still controlled countless other businesses of the same kind.
Issho was only targeting this one place because of what he had "sensed" going on inside. But what he saw as outrageous was, in the eyes of the great pirates, completely normal practice.
"You really understand nothing at all, do you?"
Doflamingo could not be bothered to argue further. Even though drawing out the conversation would work in his favor, he feared that talking too much might only cloud his own judgment later.
"Let's settle this with our fists instead!"
He dropped straight down to the ground. Being in the air no longer gave him any advantage; unlike Issho, he had to constantly use his power just to stay aloft.
For Issho, manipulating gravity was as natural as breathing, allowing him to move freely in the sky without effort—even more conveniently than Logia or Zoan users who needed to flap wings or maintain their form.
"Oh?"
Sensing Doflamingo's descent, Issho immediately followed suit.
His goal remained the same: to use his superior strength to force Doflamingo to abandon the auction house.
He had trained hard and developed his Devil Fruit power to its current level for one reason alone—to bring justice and fairness back to the world according to his own beliefs.
Hmph…
"So eager to defeat me?"
Doflamingo waved his hand, and in an instant, an exact copy of himself appeared before him—another application of the String-String Fruit.
By weaving countless fine threads together, he could form a lifelike "clone."
Though its combat power was far weaker than his own, it served well to confuse enemies and handle ordinary pirates.
But this time, the clone was not meant to fight. It was the setup for one of Doflamingo's most devastating techniques.
"Birdcage!"
The fake figure dissolved instantly into a storm of threads that shot high into the sky, then fell back down to form a massive, enclosed barrier trapping both Doflamingo and Issho inside.
The threads were flexible yet incredibly strong—hard and sharp as steel beams.
In theory, Doflamingo could expand the Birdcage large enough to cover an entire island, but there was no need for such scale now.
More importantly, he did not want to disturb El, and he also wanted to limit Issho's freedom of movement in the air.
Even Issho would need time to break through these unyielding threads—and that time was exactly what Doflamingo needed to strike.
"What is this…?"
Though blind, Issho's Observation Haki was extraordinary. He instantly felt the change in the air, sensing a faint but growing danger closing in.
"Trapped inside my Birdcage… you will end up nothing more than prey with no way to resist!"
Doflamingo laughed loudly. "Prepare to die!"
"Five-Colored Threads!"
Multicolored blades of thread shot from his fingertips. Using the bars of the Birdcage as anchors, he darted through the enclosed space straight toward Issho.
Now, Issho's greatest advantage—free movement in the air—was completely neutralized. The walls of the cage were too tough even for gravity to break through easily.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
But once again, Doflamingo's attacks failed to land. For beyond his Devil Fruit power, Issho's Haki was equally formidable.
Deprived of his sight, his Observation Haki had grown even sharper and more precise.
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