Rising from the dusty ruins of the shattered sandstone wall, Crocodile saw exactly who had just sent him flying. His scarred face contorted in absolute rage, and he roared, "So it was you, you miserable bastard!"
Crocodile was genuinely furious that his meticulous, years-in-the-making plans had been repeatedly, casually disrupted by this arrogant rookie.
Covered in pale dust and dirt, with a faint bruise already forming on his face and fresh blood seeping through the white bandages around his chest, Crocodile certainly looked incredibly pathetic for a Warlord of the Sea.
As a polite, upstanding pirate, Darian responded warmly to Crocodile's roar.
"Hey! Crocodile! Isn't it good to still be alive after the beating I gave you yesterday?" Darian called out across the tomb. "Why are you looking for an early death again?"
Darian answered with a cheerful, mocking smile beneath his mask, but his heart was filled with cold rage. If he had arrived just a single second later, Robin would have been seriously injured or killed by that poisoned hook.
As for Robin, Darian couldn't even find the words to scold her properly right now. In Darian's eyes, she belonged to him. It was simply outrageous that this washed-up, stinky crocodile dared to try and damage his property.
Darian's warm, mocking greeting led Crocodile to misunderstand further, thinking that Darian was simply toying with him and looking down on him as a minor threat. That made the Warlord even angrier.
"Kid, who the hell do you think you are?!"
Whoosh!
Crocodile raised his right hand, a wisp of heavy, dry sand rising from his fingers. He was about to swing it down forcefully to unleash a massive wave of destruction within the confined tomb.
"Desert Spada...!"
CRACK!
BOOM!
However, Darian, having arrived a moment too late previously, refused to let the Warlord launch a clean attack. He raised his hand and instantly unleashed a massive blue lightning bolt, about the thickness of a tree trunk, which crossed the cavern and struck Crocodile dead-on, violently interrupting his impending attack.
BANG!
Crocodile was instantly smashed backward into a cloud of scattering yellow sand.
Splash... splash...
"!!!"
The sand surged rapidly back together, coalescing near a stone pillar. Crocodile, now fully formed again, bulged with veins, his killing intent boiling over.
"You absolute bastard!"
Although elementalizing at the last microsecond weakened the lightning attack's kinetic force to the extreme, the feeling of being instantly destroyed and scattered still annoyed him to no end. His body felt tingly and numb, and a sharp, burning pain flared in his chest where the intense heat had struck.
Lightning possessed a certain degree of natural restraint over sand. Lightning, with a core temperature that could reach tens of thousands of degrees Celsius, could instantly bake raw sand into silicon dioxide vapor or fuse it into brittle glass crystals. Even if Crocodile transformed into his elemental form, it was impossible to completely avoid the damage from Darian's electrical attacks.
Ignoring Crocodile's rage entirely, Darian turned his head to look at Robin. "It seems he really wants to kill you. If I help you get rid of him permanently right now, will you finally agree to be my woman?"
He was about to kill me, and you saved me... that's true, Robin thought to herself. But that lightning attack was clearly aimed at him, so don't act like a hero, you opportunist!
Robin simply gave Darian a very nice, highly unamused eye roll.
Seeing Robin roll her eyes, Darian nodded and replied to himself cheerfully, "Excellent! It's settled then. I'll kill him, and you'll be my woman."
As he spoke, Darian didn't give Robin a chance to refute his twisted logic.
He vanished instantly, transforming his body into a streak of crackling blue lightning that hurtled across the tomb directly toward Crocodile.
If it were any other ordinary, naive girl, she would definitely be furious at Darian's shameless, opportunistic behavior. But Robin merely looked helpless, letting out a quiet sigh, lamenting that she was truly being pestered by a very powerful demon.
With Darian engaging the Warlord, Robin no longer had any intention of dying today. As the ambient sandstorm began to spread through the cavern, Robin used her Flower-Flower abilities to quickly and silently move King Cobra away from the center of the battlefield.
"Gear Second!"
With the second gear engaged, Darian's physical power, reaction time, and speed increased tenfold, reaching a speed that was incredibly difficult to track with the naked eye.
After his extensive "Dual Cultivation" session with Vivi earlier, Darian had successfully recovered his stamina, further enhancing his overall vitality.
Crocodile, having just been beaten up in close-quarters combat by Darian a day ago, knew perfectly well that he absolutely couldn't let the rookie get close enough to throw another vibration punch.
"Rghhhh!"
Crocodile's face contorted into an ugly, desperate mask, and he let out a loud roar.
BOOM!
The endless sand covering the tomb floor suddenly began to swirl violently around him, forming a massive, dense defensive sphere of swirling sand with only a few tiny gaps. The vortex was so dense and narrow that even small insects couldn't get in without being shredded.
As long as Darian tried to get close to him, the swirling sand would act as an abrasive shield and alert Crocodile to his exact position.
But there was really no need for Darian to use any fancy footwork or stealth. As a man who possessed overwhelming physical strength, he preferred to face obstacles head-on.
The brawler was often accompanied by lightning. Darian threw a massive punch directly toward where Crocodile's face was hidden within the sphere. If you didn't punch someone squarely in the face, then it wasn't a real fight.
Although Crocodile's sandstorm shield couldn't significantly harm Darian due to his Outer Path durability, it bought the Warlord some crucial time.
In this dimly lit, cavernous tomb, apart from the flickering oil lamp carried away by Robin and the bright lightning crackling from Darian's body, there was no other light source. It was already difficult to see clearly, let alone track Darian, who moved incredibly fast.
This time, Crocodile was smarter. Instead of trying to take the devastating blow head-on again, he manipulated the sand spreading around him to form a thick, hardened shield as the punch hurtled toward him.
BOOM!
The Sand Shield technique was directly blasted apart by Darian's punch, which was imbued with immense kinetic power and speed. White lightning and yellow sand flew everywhere, accompanied by a violent, tearing gust of wind that shook the ancient pillars.
While creating the sand shield to block the primary attack, Crocodile was still able to divide his attention, manipulating the ambient sand on both sides of the room to sweep toward Darian in a pincer maneuver.
With his own body emitting a bright, electrical aura, Darian could clearly see Crocodile's incoming sand attacks illuminated by the lightning.
'This is really troublesome,' Darian cursed inwardly, moving quickly to dodge the sweeping sand waves. 'As long as I don't force him into prolonged melee combat, fighting a Logia-type mage class is incredibly annoying.'
Crocodile's mastery of the Sand-Sand Fruit was truly remarkable. As Darian moved, the sand suspended in the air became Crocodile's eyes and ears. With each step Darian took, razor-sharp sand swirled around his ankles.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
With a wave of his hand, Darian unleashed a rapid series of thick, branching bolts of lightning. Facing an enemy whose exact physical location was impossible to pinpoint within the swirling dust, lightning balls appeared from all directions and rained down on Crocodile's general area like a localized thunderstorm.
However, against the sheer volume of the sand's defense, the electricity was clearly not very effective, only producing a constant barrage of exploding "sand flowers" as the heat turned the outer layer of the shield into brittle glass, which Crocodile simply shed and replaced.
"Damn it! This arrogant brat...!"
Crocodile looked around wildly from within his vortex and desperately tried to use his Observation Haki—which he hadn't actively trained or relied on in a very long time—to try and capture Darian's exact movements.
But the truth of the Grand Line is cruel. After being utterly defeated and broken by Whitebeard in the New World, Crocodile had lost his true conviction as a warrior. He was, at best, a manipulative villain hiding in Paradise. How could someone who lacked a firm will, and who no longer truly believed in his own strength, harness the spiritual power of Observation Haki under intense pressure?
BOOM! BOOM!
More lightning struck. When Darian finally noticed a relatively weak, less dense area in the swirling sandy territory, he launched another explosive charge directly toward Crocodile.
Based on the tactile feedback from the sand in the air, Crocodile's lips curled into a sinister grin. The fish had finally taken the bait. This weak point was the deliberate trap he had set for Darian.
"Go to hell, Rookie!"
Whoosh!
"Sables!" (Sand Tornado)
Crocodile suddenly waved his hand, and a massive, highly compressed sand scroll erupted directly in Darian's path.
It just goes to show how incredibly rich the ancient Alabasta royal family was; they had built such a massive, cavernous tomb that the enormous enclosed space didn't hinder Crocodile's large-scale abilities, which were typically reserved for open desert areas.
Faced with the oncoming, razor-sharp sandstorm, Darian didn't flinch. He ran headlong directly into it.
Crocodile might have thought it was a brilliant, lethal trap, but Darian was just looking for a direct path to close the distance!
Using his Frictionless "Lubrication" abilities to their absolute limit, Darian's body emitted a faint, slick white halo. After a period of intense Dual Cultivation with Alvida the previous night, Darian's lubrication and friction-negation abilities had been further enhanced and refined.
The violently swirling winds and abrasive sand were completely deflected by Darian's power the moment they came into contact with the slick aura surrounding his body. The sand simply slipped off him harmlessly.
The Sand Tornado had so little effect on Darian that it was negligible. Darian simply rushed through the eye of the storm, instantly passing right through the deadly trap and appearing directly in front of Crocodile.
PFFT!
"!!!"
"How... how could this be...?!"
Thick, dark blood flowed rapidly from Crocodile's mouth as he stared wide-eyed in absolute horror at Darian.
Darian stood before him. His right hand—formed into a rigid, flat palm—had already pierced cleanly through Crocodile's chest, right through the Warlord's heart. Blood was dripping down Crocodile's torn coat.
If the ambient light were better, Robin would have clearly seen a dense ring of black iron filings buzzing violently around Darian's "Palm Sword" like a chainsaw, with faint wisps of white water vapor drifting off his skin.
It had been raining heavily outside all day. When Darian had rushed into the palace and down into the tombs, he was completely soaked in rainwater. He had used the frictionless power of the Smooth-Smooth Fruit to collect the rainwater on his skin, intentionally keeping his right hand slick and wet until the exact moment he delivered the fatal blow to Crocodile.
It could only be said that Crocodile's mind had been hopelessly clouded with anger and arrogance. He thought a simple sandstorm would shred the rookie. He had completely forgotten that Darian's lubrication ability could deflect most abrasive attacks, and that Darian had already demonstrated his ability to absorb the kinetic energy of a sandstorm the day before.
The Iron Sand Sword was an indestructible, high-frequency blade, while the water coating his hand was the ultimate counter-factor that forcibly prevented Crocodile from turning into his sandy elemental state to dodge.
Crocodile thought his brilliant trap had succeeded, but he didn't know that his overconfidence would cost him his life.
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