"What insane strength!"
Luffy stared at the woman in front of him in sheer astonishment. This woman with massive bat wings possessed a level of physical power that felt even more terrifying than the monstrous apex predators he had fought on Ruskaina Island.
Looking closer, Luffy finally recognized her. "Hey, Bat Woman! I remember you! You're that woman who was standing right next to Aeridar back then!"
True to his usual style, Luffy's localized nickname instantly hit a nerve, pushing Mina straight over the edge.
"B-Bat Woman?!"
Mina's eye twitched violently. Gnashing her teeth, she roared in unbridled fury, "You brat... You're dead!"
With a violent sweep of her wings, she covered the distance between them in less than a second, materializing right in front of Luffy.
"Blood Claw!!!"
With a fierce screech, her right hand flexed into a claw, flushing a sinister, deep crimson as she ripped it straight toward Luffy's head. Those razor-sharp, elongated nails were lethal; if they connected, they wouldn't just shatter a human skull, they would punch five clean holes right through solid steel.
"So fast!"
Taken completely by surprise, Luffy threw himself into a frantic roll, narrowly evading the strike in a somewhat undignified scramble.
Sliiiice!
The solid stone floor offered as much resistance as soft tofu, effortlessly gouged into five deep, jagged trenches by Mina's deadly talons.
"Gear 2!"
Luffy grunted. His skin instantly flushed a vibrant pink as plumes of white steam began hissed from his pores. With a sharp whoosh, he vanished from the spot.
"What?!"
Mina's beautiful eyes narrowed sharply, completely losing track of Luffy's trajectory in her field of vision.
In the next fraction of a second, Luffy materialized out of thin air directly behind her, launching a lightning-fast fist aimed squarely at her spine.
"Gomu Gomu no… Jet Pistol!!!"
Sensing the sudden distortion in the air behind her, Mina twisted her waist with incredible agility. Pivoting on her heel, she whipped her slender right leg backward like a cracking whip, meeting Luffy's incoming fist dead-on with the sole of her red high heel.
Boom!
A deafening shockwave erupted from the point of impact, unleashing a localized gale that violently blew away the surrounding dust and sent a barrage of gravel flying in all directions.
The collision forced both combatants back several paces, each heavy step fracturing the reinforced ground beneath them.
"Gomu Gomu no… Jet Gatling!!!"
Luffy roared, throwing his arms forward in a blur. A dense, overlapping wall of fist shadows blanketed the sky, raining down upon Mina like a relentless tidal wave. The sheer force of the compressed air pressure grew so intense it was practically suffocating.
Whoosh!
Mina's wings snapped back, transforming her into a streak of crimson light as she soared directly into the upper reaches of the vault.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Bereft of its target, the torrential barrage pulverized the thick stone wall a dozen meters away. The wall crumbled into a mountain of debris, throwing up a massive curtain of dust that instantly obscured half the storage room.
"Uh oh!"
Luffy snapped his arms back with a sharp clack, turning his head wildly to scan the haze. Suddenly, a flash of crimson light cut through the dust from his blind spot, hurtling toward him at an impossible velocity. Caught off guard, Luffy quickly initiated Soru-like movement, vanishing into thin air just in time.
"Blood Wing Slash!!!"
Rumble—
A cataclysmic shockwave echoed through the sector as the crimson energy arc cleanly sheared through the opposite wall of the vault. It left a gaping, ten-meter-long fissure that exposed the adjacent rooms, neatly cleaving hundreds of stored firearms in two.
"Whoa, incredible!" Luffy gasped in awe, his eyes wide with genuine fascination. "She can actually use her wings to slash things!"
"Miserable brat, stop running away if you have the guts!"
Mina hovered in mid-air, glaring down at Luffy with simmering irritation. Her massive wings were proving to be a double-edged sword; within the enclosed, structural confines of the storage vaults, her movements were restricted, preventing her from unleashing her maximum velocity.
"ROOM!!!"
Suddenly, a massive, translucent spherical barrier expanded at a dizzying speed, instantly encapsulating both Luffy and Mina within its domain.
"This is..."
Mina's heart skipped a beat, her pupils shrinking to pinpricks. Relying on her raw survival instincts, she immediately transformed into a crimson blur to escape the perimeter.
Virtually simultaneously, a flash of blinding sword light flickered through the center of the sphere with a faint, deceptively quiet shhhk.
Rumble—
In the next instant, the entire munitions vault, along with several consecutive storage rooms stacked directly behind it, was cleanly, uniformly severed along a perfectly horizontal plane.
Mina touched down on the floor, staring with a mixture of shock and fury at the man who had suddenly entered the fray.
"Trafalgar Law!"
"Mina-san, it's been a while," Law greeted expressionlessly. He held his cursed blade, Kikoku, loosely at his side, its tip pointed toward the floor as the polished steel gleamed with a cold, lethal luster.
Luffy stomped over to Law, puffing his cheeks out in irritation. "Tra-guy! The Bat Woman is my opponent! Don't butt in!"
"B-Bat Woman?!"
Hearing the ridiculous moniker, Law's stoic facade nearly cracked. His jaw twitched as he desperately suppressed a smirk, fighting hard to keep his composure.
"Insolent little brat!" Mina hissed, her teeth grinding as she glared daggers at Luffy.
"Straw Hat-ya, I have no intention of stealing your fight," Law said, tightening his grip on Kikoku as his expression grew deadly serious. "I am simply reminding you that we don't have the luxury of time to waste on a prolonged battle.
"Furthermore, this 'Mina-san' is no mere 'Bat Woman.' She is the underworld's most infamous Information Queen, a user of one of the rarest Mythical Zoan Devil Fruits in existence: the Bat-Bat Fruit, Model: Vampire! Her moniker is the 'Blood Queen'!!"
"A Vampire?!"
Luffy, who possessed an almost childlike obsession with anything bizarre, mythical, or legendary, instantly lit up, his eyes sparkling with pure awe as he stared at Mina.
"Brat, stop looking at me with those eyes!" Mina snapped, a sudden shiver running down her spine under Luffy's intense, starry-eyed gaze.
"Enough, Straw Hat-ya," Law cut in, casting a grim look toward Mina. "Our primary directive is destruction. We need to locate and detonate the primary explosives cache stored here to blow this entire valley off the map!"
Hearing Law's casual declaration, Mina's face instantly drained of color.
She knew better than anyone the exact volume of volatile materials, mortar shells, and heavy explosives stockpiled in this sector. If they actually managed to trigger a chain reaction, tearing the entire valley from the face of the earth would be child's play.
"You bastards! Don't you dare think it'll be that easy!"
Mina roared, lunging forward like a striking viper as she unleashed a rapid-fire torrent of consecutive kicks aimed directly at Law.
Her legs blurred into seamless afterimages, churning the air into localized tempests. Each strike carried immense kinetic force, clashing repeatedly against Law's Kikoku in a furious cascade of metallic rings. Clang! Clang! Clang! The shockwaves from the duel rippled outward, kicking up dust with every strike.
"Room: Shambles!!!"
Seizing a split-second opening, Law muttered the command. His body vanished into thin air, instantly swapped with a massive chunk of displaced masonry that appeared where he had stood a millisecond prior.
Boom!
Mina's sweeping kick connected squarely with the meter-wide slab of stone, shattering it into fine powder. The sheer power of her strike sent a deadly hail of razor-sharp stone shards whistling through the air.
Stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp...
Suddenly, the heavy, synchronized thunder of rushing boots echoed from the main corridor, the sheer volume of the sound indicating a massive force.
Law materialized right next to Luffy, his eyes narrowing with deep caution as he took in the newcomers. "The 'Silver Rain,' Smythe Betilla!" he muttered under his breath.
Emerging from the dust, Betilla, Cavendish, and Edmond strode into the ruined vault, backed by over a hundred elite security guards. With an imposing, aggressive aura, they effectively sealed off every primary exit from the room.
"Straw Hat Luffy! Trafalgar Law!"
Cavendish recognized the duo instantly, his voice booming across the vault. "To think you actually had the audacity to infiltrate this facility... You must truly be tired of living!"
"We were just looking for you, and here you go delivering yourselves right to our doorstep," Betilla said, her beautiful features twisting into a predatory, sinister smile. With a sharp shiiing, she drew the slender rapier from her waist.
"Silver... Line!!!"
In a flash, a brilliant silver gleam erupted. A razor-thin strand of silver light sliced through the air, carrying a lethal, suffocating aura of absolute sharpness.
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