Crocodile was surprised that someone had been able to destroy his Sand Burial—the very technique meant to bury Gojo alive—but Gojo had easily slashed through it. The sand collapsed apart as if it were nothing. Not only that, Gojo stood there completely unharmed, without even a speck of sand clinging to him.
Still, Crocodile's surprise was limited, restrained. On the contrary, this was only to be expected from someone who had already displayed such overwhelming strength—someone who had nearly wiped out the entirety of Baroque Works, leaving behind only two or three officer-level members. So that's the level he's at, Crocodile thought coldly.
He had expected Gojo to put up a fight. What he hadn't expected was that Gojo would present an even greater challenge than anticipated. Even so, Crocodile wasn't intimidated in the slightest. His expression remained composed as he prepared to launch another attack.
But before he could act, Gojo moved.
In an instant, Gojo vanished from where he stood, his extreme speed carrying him directly in front of Crocodile. The distance between them disappeared, and almost simultaneously, Gojo's black blade swept forward, aiming straight for Crocodile's stomach. The air itself seemed to split as the blade descended.
Crocodile was no weakling. Although Gojo's speed was frighteningly fast—so fast that tracking him was nearly impossible—Crocodile still managed to barely follow his movements. His eyes narrowed as Gojo's blade closed in.
The black blade, now coated in invisible Armament Haki, struck Crocodile directly in the stomach.
Crocodile didn't even attempt to defend. He was confident—absolutely certain—in his Logia Devil Fruit, the Sand-Sand Fruit. His body was elemental, entirely composed of sand. Physical attacks were meaningless. He could never be harmed.
Gojo's sword passed through Crocodile's stomach, just as expected.
Gojo immediately realized that Crocodile was over-relying on his elemental ability, leaning too heavily on the invincibility granted by his Devil Fruit. So this is how he fights, Gojo noted calmly. Then I can definitely take advantage of that.
He could have pressed the attack further. He could have inflicted far more severe damage right then and there. But he chose not to. What fun would it be if every fight ended in just a few moves? At the very least, he wanted battles like the one he had with Jinbe—fights with real resistance, real challenge, and the chance to push himself toward breakthroughs in his different abilities.
On the other side, Crocodile waited.
He waited for the familiar sensation—his stomach turning to sand, the area grazed by Gojo's sword dispersing harmlessly. He expected to see shock on Gojo's face, or even horror. That would have been the best outcome.
But none of that happened.
Instead, Crocodile felt pain.
His eyes widened as he instinctively looked down, one hand moving to his stomach where Gojo's sword had passed through. His fingers brushed the area—and when he pulled his hand back, there was blood.
Crocodile stared at it, disbelief etched across his face.
"What?" he said in shock. "How is this possible?"
Then, suddenly, realization struck him.
It wasn't as if he were completely ignorant. Crocodile was someone who had crossed paths with Whitebeard before and is someone who had lived and fought in the second half of the Grand Line—the New World. His eyes narrowed as the pieces fell into place, and he spoke aloud, his voice low but sharp.
"So this is Haki?" he said. "You're able to use Haki, am I right?"
As soon as Gojo heard that, a smile appeared on his face—calm, confident, almost casual.
"Exactly," Gojo replied. "And you can't use Haki. I was able to tell that much just by observing you. That's why I said I already defeated a Warlord stronger than you—Jinbe. He can use both Armament Haki and Observation Haki. You, on the other hand, use neither. Or maybe you used to, and gave up on it. I don't know."
Gojo said his last sentence based on the fact that whenever there was a question in the fandom about Crocodile vs. Luffy, people often argue that Crocodile had abandoned his Haki—or stopped using it altogether. Instead, he began relying heavily on his pursuit of the ancient weapon Pluto and, in the process, seemingly "forgot" how to use Haki.
Crocodile's expression hardened, more serious than ever before.
If earlier he had been confident—confident that he could face Gojo head-on without suffering a single injury, confident that he could severely wound Gojo and eventually grind him down, even consume him to death if those barrier-type abilities of Gojo kept getting in his way—then all of that confidence had been built on one assumption. He had already played out those outcomes in his mind.
But never—not even once—had he considered the possibility that someone in the first half of the Grand Line could have mastered Haki.
That idea had never even entered his calculations.
And now it stood right in front of him.
If Gojo could use Armament Haki, then every single strike he landed could harm him. That alone forced Crocodile to reassess everything. And it wasn't just that—Gojo's speed wasn't slow. It was fast. Extremely fast. Each movement carried lethal intent.
Just as Gojo had said, it wasn't as though Crocodile had ever truly been a Haki user. If he had been, why would he have abandoned it?
Crocodile understood the importance of Haki. Anyone who had survived in the second half of the Grand Line understood it. Power without Haki was incomplete there. But the truth was simple—he had never managed to master it before leaving the New World, and afterward, his ambitions had shifted entirely.
He no longer wanted to become a high-level individual fighter.
Instead, he had begun to rely heavily on weapons—on grand schemes, on ancient power. His focus turned toward Pluto, toward forbidden knowledge and overwhelming destructive force. Because of that, he let his Haki training fade, then disappear entirely. He abandoned it completely, convinced that once Pluto was in his grasp, it would be more than enough to destroy anyone in the world.
Even if that someone was known as the world's strongest man—Edward Newgate, the Whitebeard.
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