That sharp scream sounded more like the death cry of a dying animal.
Before the words had even finished, Dellinger had already thrown himself away, rolling and scrambling across the ground in a miserable panic.
His high heels scraped harshly against the stone, and one of them snapped off on the spot.
Against an attack he could not understand, all his combat techniques and fighting-fish bloodline were useless.
Only his survival instinct remained.
However, the person he warned did not dodge.
Gladius not only refused to dodge, he actually stepped forward.
"Fuhahahaha! Dodge? Why would I dodge?!"
The muscles in his face twisted, and even his signature punk hairstyle seemed to stand up strand by strand.
He threw both arms wide open. The veins beneath his skin wriggled like worms, and his knotted muscles swelled at a visible speed, expanding again and again.
His body and the stone beneath his feet began to swell together, turning the entire plaza into a chained rupture waiting to explode.
Madman.
That was the only word that flashed through Zaraki's mind.
Using his own body and the surrounding ground as explosive material, trying to detonate everything and take the enemy down with him.
It was fanatical loyalty, and also stupid confidence.
"I'll use my strongest Fashion Punk to blow you and that ridiculous slash of yours into dust!"
Gladius roared, his voice turning muffled and distorted because of the change in his body.
Yet his face carried the expression of a man about to witness a miracle.
In the next second, his entire body erupted with blinding light.
Boom!
A massive explosion burst outward.
This was not simple gunpowder.
Gladius had swollen his body and the surrounding ground to the limit, making every inch of stone around him rupture at once.
A heat wave hot enough to scorch steel rushed out with a shockwave powerful enough to tear the plaza apart.
And yet, at the heart of that storm of destruction, the thin arc from Nozarashi finally arrived.
Only a single dark-gold line crossing the center of the blast.
The slash split the core of the explosion, carving open the pressure wave and forcing the blast to vent to both sides.
The white light divided like curtains torn apart by a blade, and the shockwave that should have swallowed Zaraki was cut open before it could reach him.
Time seemed to stretch at that moment.
The fanatical smile on Gladius's face froze.
In his vision, that thin line passed through the explosion he was so proud of, then through his swollen body, like a brush passing through mist.
'How... was this possible?'
That was his final thought.
His confidence in detonating everything collapsed instantly before this more brutal pressure.
Gladius's body rupture was never meant to kill himself. His Devil Fruit let him release and survive the blast.
But Zaraki's slash crossed him at the exact moment his body expanded, cutting through the instant when his defense was most unstable.
A thin, smooth black line ran straight down from the center of his forehead, crossing the bridge of his nose, his lips, and his chest, perfectly dividing his swollen body into left and right halves.
In the next instant, the explosion energy that had been split apart carried his bisected body with it and thundered away in two directions.
Until the final moment of his life, Gladius never understood how there could be a sword pressure capable of cutting an explosion open.
Zaraki stood quietly in place, his coat only fluttering a few times.
Before him, the ground now bore a deep, smoking trench, a narrow blackened scar stretching across the plaza and toward the King's Plateau.
Dellinger lay sprawled behind a broken fountain, pale and shaking, one snapped heel still hanging from his foot.
Zaraki did not bother finishing him.
The boy was no longer standing in his way!
**[Killed Donquixote Family officer Gladius. Reward: 500 points.]**
Zaraki did not spare a glance for Gladius's remains, which had been blasted away in two pieces.
Instead, his gaze followed the deep slash mark across the ground and slowly rose toward the distant King's Plateau crouching there like a giant beast.
That thin arc had not stopped after killing Gladius.
It had slipped through the battlefield, crossed the plaza, and entered one of the stone veins beneath the plateau where Zaraki had sensed the greatest hostile presence gathering.
The massive, silent body of the King's Plateau filled Zaraki's view, occupying the entire skyline.
It looked like a prehistoric beast crouching over the land, silently watching the sun rise and set over Dressrosa.
But the slash did not try to split the entire King's Plateau.
It followed the line where that hostile presence was moving, cutting through fused stone without bringing the mountain down.
Deep inside the stone, Pica had been moving.
The Stone-Stone Fruit allowed him to merge with rock, control it, and turn the entire plateau into his fortress.
Doflamingo's order had reached him moments earlier, and he had been wrapping layers of stone around the Toy House and the underground factory like a living wall.
Zaraki had no idea what face the presence belonged to.
He only knew it was large, hostile, and blocking the way.
So he cut there.
For one second, nothing happened.
The King's Plateau was still the King's Plateau, as though the attack had simply vanished into the stone.
Zaraki narrowed his eyes slightly.
Did it miss?
No.
His Reiatsu perception would not be wrong.
Deep within that rocky body, there had indeed been a fairly massive force coiled there, like a silent volcano.
Then the system notification that had been silent for a moment rang out in his mind again.
This time, its voice carried an entirely different weight.
**[Killed Donquixote Family highest officer Pica. Reward: 1,000 points.]**
Zaraki's eyebrow lifted almost imperceptibly.
Dead?
Just like that... he's dead?
He had not even seen the man's face.
He had merely cut toward the place where he sensed the largest concentration of hostile pressure, like tossing a spear into a pond where a giant fish was hiding.
And somehow, he had hit the biggest fish in the pond.
Was his luck a little too good?
Or rather, was the other guy's luck too bad?
He could even imagine the bewildered expression Pica might have had at the moment of his death, probably without ever understanding what had happened.
Did he think that just because his body had assimilated with stone, he had truly become stone and was indestructible?
Before Nozarashi's pressure, mere stone was nothing!
...
Inside the palace, Doflamingo's expression suddenly changed.
The stone beneath the King's Plateau went strangely quiet.
A moment later, Trebol stumbled into the ruined room, his face pale and his voice trembling.
"D-Doffy... Pica's Vivre Card..."
Doflamingo slowly turned his head.
Trebol did not need to finish.
The silence inside the stone already told him the answer.
...
Zaraki quickly accepted the result and turned his attention to the reward.
Diamante, 700 points.
Gladius, 500 points.
Pica, 1,000 points.
Together with the points from Jack and the defeated Buffalo and Baby 5, his total had finally crossed the price line.
**[Current points: 5,380.]**
Zaraki's consciousness sank into the system interface, and his gaze quickly found the limited item still glowing on the shop shelf.
**[Limited Commemorative Blind Box.]**
**[Description: Contains one random reward with a quality no lower than five stars. It may be a weapon, an ability, or an unexpected surprise.]**
**[Price: 5,000 system points.]**
The red countdown beneath it was still ticking.
There was no point hesitating.
"System, buy it."
**[Points deducted. Limited Commemorative Blind Box has been stored in system space.]**
**[Current points: 380.]**
**[Open immediately?]**
Zaraki took a slow breath.
The scorched smell of the explosion still lingered in the air, and somewhere ahead, Doflamingo was finally coming.
His heartbeat stayed strangely steady.
"Open it."