"How many?" Ron's question landed on the air between them.
Matthew's fist clenched slightly, his jaw muscles twitching.
"At least forty. Locked in six cells. Some have very weak heartbeats—less than thirty beats per minute."
He took a step forward, his lips beneath the mask forming a tight line.
"Every twenty minutes or so, one heartbeat stops. And then you never hear it again." Ron dialed the encrypted channel.
"Frank."
"Here."
"All hands on deck. Chinatown." There was a pause on the other end of the channel.
"You said tomorrow—"
"Now." Ron hung up and turned to Matthew.
"You don't kill."
It wasn't a question.
Matthew's chin lifted slightly.
"I don't kill. But the people underground need to be brought out. You fight, I rescue—clear enough." Ron stared at him for three seconds.
The face beneath the mask showed no sign of backing down.
A notification popped up on the left side of the screen: [Temporary collaborator Matthew Murdoch joins the operation. Note: No rank granted, no system bonuses.]
"Keep up."
— Twenty-seven minutes later.
Four people crouched in the back alley of a closed traditional Chinese medicine shop on Mott Street.
Frank arrived fastest, carrying Jack on his shoulder for six blocks. Jessica remained at the backup safe house on 45th Street, carrying the Target-Target Fruit and three pairs of Seastone handcuffs.
Matthew used the tip of his white cane to draw a rough structural diagram on the ground.
"The altar area is twenty meters underground. Approximately forty by thirty square meters. Six holding cells extend from the east side. Five meters down, there's an underground river passage leading towards the East River." Frank crouched down, his vertical pupils scanning the lines on the ground.
"Heartbeats?"
"Fifty to sixty in total, including the altar area and the corridor. Ninjas." Frank's claws scratched the ground.
"Twice as many as last night."
"The poison has tripled its defense." Ron stood up.
He marked three locations on the ground map with a red pen.
"Frank, Jack—broke in from the front through the hidden door in the basement of the Chinese medicine shop. The door is two meters below you; Matthew has already located it. Your mission is to draw away the main force of the ninjas, the more the better."
Frank nodded.
"Matthew—ventilation duct, infiltrate the detention area from the north. Evacuate the people out through the underground river passage." Matthew put away his white cane, hanging it at his waist.
"What about me?" Jack stood behind Frank, his pistol tucked into his waistband, the gray Armament Haki on his fist flashing.
"Follow Frank. He attacks from the front, you cover the rear." Ron glanced at him. "Your Armament Haki will last a minute. Use it sparingly."
"What about you?" Frank asked.
Ron looked up at the ground.
"I came from the sky."
Frank didn't ask any more questions.
Ron turned and walked towards the fire escape behind the medicine shop, climbing up step by step.
He paused when he reached the third-floor platform.
His right hand reached inside his trench coat and retrieved a fruit from his system space.
Dark purple. The size of a fist. The surface was patterned in concentric circles, with a central indentation—the shape and texture of the entire fruit combined to form the outline of an eye.
A Soul-Soul Fruit.
Mental fluctuations radiated outwards from the fruit's surface, a fine, continuous, and tingling frequency.
Ron tucked the fruit back into his coat and continued climbing.
Reached the rooftop.
His Observation Haki pressed down, penetrating twenty meters of ground, locking onto the most intense aura in the center of the altar area.
Poison Devourer.
"Move." Three voices responded simultaneously in the encrypted channel.
—The basement of the Chinese medicine shop.
Frank kicked through the wooden floor, revealing a stone staircase leading downwards.
There were lamps on the staircase—oil lamps, on iron frames, one every three meters. The flames were a dark reddish-brown, not the normal orange-yellow.
Frank's spine arched, his bones dislocated and rearranged, gray fur bulging from his skin.
Completely transformed into a beast.
The gray wolf's four legs braced against the stone steps as it charged down.
Jack followed behind, pistol level, his right fist glowing with a steady gray light.
The first wave of ninjas waited at the bottom of the stairs.
Eight. Black clothes, short swords, cloth shoes.
Different from those who attacked the safe house last night.
These eight were more closely packed, their sword strikes originating from lower angles—all aimed below the knee.
Specifically targeting the four-legged form.
Frank didn't slow down. His forepaws, glowing with Armament Haki, slammed into the first ninja's short sword, breaking it and slamming the man into the wall.
The second ninja slashed in from the side, his blade aimed directly at Frank's right hind leg.
Jack's gun fired.
The bullet struck the ninja's right shoulder, the impact pushing him off course by twenty centimeters.
The blade grazed the hair on Frank's hind leg, missing by a finger's width.
Frank glanced back at Jack.
Jack didn't speak, turning his gun towards the third ninja.
All eight men fell within forty seconds.
Frank's vertical pupils swept over the corpses.
Three of them had bulging muscles on their necks—not from training. Unnatural proliferation induced by the serum.
"Serium-enhanced." Frank moved forward, his claws sparking as they scraped against the stone wall.
Deeper, footsteps surged from all directions.
—North ventilation duct.
Matthew's body was curled up in a metal duct less than half a meter in diameter, his hands bracing against the walls, inching forward.
High-frequency sound waves emanated from his head, striking the duct walls, rock strata, and steel bars, bouncing back.
A three-dimensional map continuously updated in his mind.
Left turn. Descend two meters. Right turn.
The detention area was getting closer.
The sound of heartbeats pierced the rock—forty-three, four of them barely audible.
There was another sound.
The sound of fluid being injected.
The sound of a syringe being pushed into skin.
The muffled whimpers, forced from throats after being restrained.
Matthew's fingers dug into the metal pipe, the metal at his fingertips denting into a curved shape.
He continued crawling forward.
At the end of the ventilation duct was a welded iron plate.
Matthew slammed his fist down.
The plate bounced off, crashing into the opposite stone wall.
He tumbled down from the duct opening, his feet landing on the damp stone floor.
Six secret chambers lined both sides of the corridor, their iron doors unlocked—bolted from the outside.
Matthew pulled the first bolt.
The stench from behind the door assaulted his nostrils.
Blood. Excrement. Medicine. Rotting tissue.
Seven people were crammed into a stone chamber of less than ten square meters.
The two men in the corner were motionless.
The remaining five huddled together, their arms covered in a dense network of needle marks, black veins etched beneath their skin.
Dark power.
It had been injected into the bodies of ordinary people.
Matthew crouched down, placing his fingers on the wrist of the nearest man.
The pulse was twenty-six beats per minute.
"Can you walk?"
The man looked up. A Chinese man in his fifties, his lips cracked, his eyes bloodshot.
No answer.
Matthew pulled him up from the ground and slung him over his shoulder.
Footsteps echoed from the end of the corridor.
Two ninja guards.
Matthew leaned the Chinese man against the wall and turned to face them.
The first ninja slashed horizontally with his short sword.
Matthew's sonic targeting locked onto the trajectory the moment the blade left its sheath.
He sidestepped, striking the ninja's temple with his right elbow.
He fell.
The second ninja slashed down from below, his poisoned blade cutting across Matthew's left ribs.
The fabric tore, the skin split, and blood seeped out.
Matthew groaned, grabbing the ninja's wrist with his left hand and pressing it down, then thrusting his right knee forward—his knee slamming into the ninja's jaw, causing his neck to arch backward and his body to slump.
He pressed his hand against the wound on his left ribs, blood seeping through his fingers.
As the iron door to the third secret room was pulled open, a withered hand grabbed his wrist.
A Chinese woman in her seventies, her hair completely white, her clothes so filthy their original color unrecognizable.
She uttered two words.
In Chinese. Matthew didn't understand.
But the trembling frequency of those two syllables, the length of her breath, the pressure her fingers applied to his wrist—
He understood.
"Go. Come with me."
—The ground.
Ron stood on the rooftop, his hands pressed firmly against the concrete floor.
Observation Haki confirmed that Frank and Jack had attracted the attention of over thirty ninjas in the main corridor.
Ma Xiu opened doors one by one in the detention area.
The altar area.
The aura of the Devourer remained unmoved.
Waiting for him.
"Great Eruption." A pillar of magma pierced through the building directly beneath Ron's body, penetrating five floors of the building structure, six meters of foundation, and fourteen meters of rock.
Twenty meters of ground were burned through in three seconds.
The magma evaporated the water in the pipes, vaporized the buried cables, and turned everything in its path into a glowing red liquid.
The shaft was cleared.
Ron fell through the magma tunnel, his feet landing on the stone floor of the altar area.
Magma dripped from his shoulders and arms, burning black scorch marks on the ground.
The altar stood before him.
A massive stone platform, its surface engraved with the Hand's dark runes. Dark red liquid flowed from the grooves of the runes—thicker than water, thinner than oil.
Human blood.
A black longsword was stuck in the center of the altar. The blade reflected no light, blending seamlessly into the stone. Blackened strips of cloth were wrapped around the hilt, their fibers fused with the stone surface.
The air smelled wrong.
Not the smell of blood. It was the smell of something deeper, of decay—the odor of tissue decomposing while still alive.
Viper stood opposite the altar.
Twenty ninjas stood in a fan formation behind him.
The bloodshot in his white blind eye hadn't completely faded—the wound from Ryuo's injury three hours ago.
He looked at Ron descending from the sky, without retreating.
"I said three days. You only gave me three hours."
He drew a short sword from his waist. Purplish-black energy writhed along the blade, wrapping around it layer by layer.
"Fine." Viper plunged the short sword into the altar.
The instant the blade pierced the stone, all the runes lit up simultaneously.
A dark red light surged from the grooves, spreading along the engravings and covering the entire altar surface.
The temperature plummeted.
Ron's body temperature dropped ten degrees from the residual heat of the magma tunnel. His breath turned into white mist.
The black longsword in the center of the altar began to vibrate.
A faint humming sound emanated from the blade, growing higher and more intense.
The longsword detached from the stone.
Without any external force. It floated up on its own.
The tip pointed downwards, hovering half a meter above the altar, slowly rotating.
In the venomous white blind eyes, the phantom of Impel Down reappeared—but this time it wasn't a blurry noise.
Clear. Complete. Every iron bar, every corridor, every cell door.
A sharp chill ran down Ron's spine.
The system issued the highest-level red alert—
[Urgent Warning: Impel Down's dimensional barrier has detected a sharp increase in external resonance!] [Source: Altar rune array + minor damage to the spatial barrier caused by magma penetrating the earth during the host's landing.] The Venomous Devourer spoke.
He was laughing.
"What did you think I was waiting for?"
His left hand pressed against the altar surface, purplish-black energy surging from his palm, flowing into every groove of the runes.
"I wasn't waiting for three days."
At the very center of the altar, the suspended black longsword suddenly accelerated its rotation. The tip of the blade sliced through the air, emitting a sharp whistling sound.
"I was waiting for you to open the dimensional portal yourself."
The stone floor began to crack from the center of the altar.
The cracks extended outward along the rune patterns, each crack radiating purplish-black light.
"Your landing just now—twenty meters of magma penetrating—torn apart the thinnest spatial barrier node here." The Venomous Devourer's white blind eye was fixed on Ron, the Impel Down phantom deep within his iris trembling violently.
"Thank you, Warden of Impel Down."
The stone surface of the altar shattered from its very center.
A purplish-black crack tore open from the rubble—not the crimson vortex of Impel Down.
The color was wrong. The structure was wrong. The edges weren't neat spatial folds, but jagged, irregular, wildly expanding tears.
The sound emanating from the crack—
wasn't wind. Not resonance.
It was howling.
Countless throats simultaneously emitting howls, twisted by pain to the point of losing their humanity.
Sound waves surged from the crack, crashing against the stone walls of the altar area, shaking off a layer of dust.
Ron's Armament Haki instantly enveloped his entire body.
The crack continued to expand.
Purple-black light shone through the fissure, illuminating Venom's face.
His left eye—the normal black iris—slowly turned white under the purplish-black light.
Two white eyes.
Venom raised his hands from the altar, fingers spread, palms facing the crack.
A purplish-black energy surged from the crack into his arm, spreading upwards along his veins, covering his entire arm, shoulder, and chest.
His body swelled.
His muscle density doubled in three seconds, tearing the hem of his kimono to reveal a chest covered in purplish-black veins.
The system frantically displayed data—
[Poisonous combat power rapidly increasing—Current assessment: Akainu template synchronization rate 35%...38%...40%—]
[Exceeded the host's current synchronization rate. The gap continues to widen.] From the crack, the first hand reached out.
A grayish-white, withered hand, its nails falling off, grasped the edge of the crack.