John had only just looked up when a pitch-black halberd came cleaving straight for his head!
There was no need to look.
Even without seeing it, the dull roar the weapon carved through the air was enough.
John instantly knew—this thing weighed a terrifying amount.
He absolutely could not afford to be hit!
Otherwise... "Magnetic Pull! Iron Wall!!"
He roared, silver hair standing on end as his Devil Fruit Power surged.
A powerful magnetic field snapped open, dragging every scrap of metal nearby into a whirling vortex that slammed together in front of him.
In an instant a titanic shield of scrap steel took shape above his head.
Carlo's halberd came down.
He hadn't even coated it with Armament Haki.
He simply swung with one hand!
BOOM!!
The instant the wide crescent of the heavenly dragon halberd met the metal shield,
brute force burst through like a breached dam, blowing the several-metre-thick wall to pieces.
SHREEEK!
The dark, razor-sharp moon-shaped blade sliced the shield in two and kept falling toward the man beneath.
But that momentary barrier had bought John a breath.
Ignoring his sorry state, he dove forward in a nimble roll and shot clear of the weapon.
The moment he scrambled to his feet,
the memory of his own dishevelment stung him into fury.
He spun around to face Carlo.
"Who are you?"
"Me? You don't even know who I am, yet you came to claim my head for the bounty?"
Carlo walked slowly forward; a heart-stopping pressure, like a volcano rousing to life, rolled out in every direction.
Under that pressure, John's crewmates who had meant to help froze as if a monstrous beast had them in its gaze.
Carlo's words made John frown; a moment's thought and his eyes widened.
"You're the new Fourth Division Captain of the Rocks Pirates—Sorus Karlo, worth one-point-eight billion Berries?"
"Correct... but there's no prize."
A sudden gale whipped up; thirty metres away Carlo vanished.
Scarlet light flickered in John's eyes as Observation Haki flared and he thrust both hands outward.
"Repulsion Field!"
A ring of invisible force blasted outward from him.
The next instant,
magnetism that normally worked only on metal sent the ground beneath John rippling like furious surf.
A five-metre wall of earth surged outward!
BOOM!
To his right the rolling wave of soil exploded.
A black blur flashed past and vanished from sight.
"So fast—but I've got you!"
John's head snapped toward it, his free hand clawing the air.
"Iron Coffin!"
CRASH!
The ground under Carlo erupted as countless scraps of metal shot skyward, trying to wrap him in a cage.
He merely swept the heavenly dragon halberd once.
The clods of iron and dirt were flung aside like mud.
Then—BOOM!
Air burst white in front of John as the black halberd thundered in again.
A second time!
"Magnetic Pull—Mechanical Dragon Fiend!"
John howled; powerful magnetism clamped to his body.
The ground churned as scrap metal burst up, covering and reshaping him.
In seconds a ten-metre steel puppet with a dragon's head loomed over Carlo, swinging a massive claw.
Crackling electricity danced across the metal.
Its might was staggering!
Yet the next moment,
the moment that titanic claw met the halberd's tip it began to shatter, inch by inch.
A mountain-cleaving force erupted from the heavy weapon.
Driven by Carlo's hundred-thousand-ton strength—surpassing even giants—
the halberd struck with the kinetic fury of a small nuclear blast.
The mechanical dragon John had forged with magnetism
was obliterated the instant the heavenly dragon halberd touched it.
Shrapnel flew, revealing John's stunned face.
Carlo's right hand shot out, fingers splayed, clawing the air; he seized John's still-dazed head and slammed it toward the ground.
"Fist Bone—Abyssal Fall!!"
John's world spun.
When he snapped back to his senses his back had already smashed into the earth.
BOOM!!
The port of Hachinosu cratered more than ten metres down.
Dust surged skyward like an angry dragon.
Gah!
John bounced, coughing blood, face pale.
He had no time to breathe.
Because deadly peril was already bearing down on him again.
WHOOSH!
Through the hole above, a black slash dozens of metres long cleaved the air like a falling sky.
"Celestial Dragon Star Burst Slash!"
John clenched blood-flecked teeth, eyes bloodshot; black Haki poured over his arms as he thrust them upward.
"Magnetic Compression!"
The ground split with a roar; metal whirled in, clicking and locking into a huge square cannon more than ten metres long above him.
Blue-white lightning danced across its dark muzzle, radiating dreadful energy.
The instant it formed it fired a one-metre-thick azure beam straight at the descending slash.
It was no mere beam—
it was electromagnetism compressed to the limit!
"Die! SUPER—RAILGUN!!"
The sapphire pillar shot skyward like an arrow piercing the blue dome.
The black slash was broken in half by the blast.
Still roaring, the beam locked onto Carlo high above, intent on vaporising him.
At the last heartbeat
John saw something impossible.
Carlo, targeted by the railgun, did not dodge.
Instead he cast aside his mighty weapon.
With a roar his white hair bristled as dense Armament Haki burst out, coating his towering frame until he stood like a black diamond.
"Battle Armour—Adamantine Body!!"
He... intended to take the railgun with bare flesh?
Had the man lost his mind?
John's railgun could obliterate a Marine battleship in one shot!
"Arrogant fool—be vaporised by my railgun!!"