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[Chapter Header Serialization: Big News 7 – “It wasn’t me! This isn’t me!”]
[Grand Line, at some research facility. Caesar Clown, wearing sunglasses, his hair slicked back with gel, and dressed in a suit, looked toward his colleagues who were occasionally glancing at him while reading the newspaper. Righteously, he refuted something.]
—
Whoosh…
The arrow swiftly came and went, appearing suddenly behind “B.I.B.” It flew for about ten meters before hitting the wall of a house, shattering the stone.
Originally, Hancock’s arrows, predicted with Kenbunshoku Haki (Observation Haki), had indeed hit their target. But just as smiles began to bloom on their faces, they saw something truly incomprehensible…
?
The Amazon warriors on the rooftops on both sides of the street collectively had question marks popping over their heads.
“Did I hit it or not?”
Hancock, having loosened her beloved Salome, now a taut snake-bow, was just as baffled.
“It’s still running!”
“Didn’t it hit?”
The Kuja Pirates rushing in from other directions quickly spotted the dark shadow running towards the city walls. They immediately drew their snake bows, firing arrow after arrow infused with Busoshoku Haki (Armament Haki), but just like Hancock, their efforts were in vain.
The shadow was too agile.
No matter how many arrows were rained down on him, it found angles to evade.
It was almost as if…
Its body could contract, enabling it to avoid even the most unavoidable barrage of arrows, all while continuing to run.
“Kami-e has finally clicked.”
Inside the Stand City fortress, Liam, the main body, smiled with satisfaction as he saw his ‘foolish son’ make progress, mastering a new skill before him.
How wonderful.
Now, when he retrieves it, he could copy the new skill.
Usually, it was the ghost copying his abilities.
This time, it’s finally his turn to copy a new skill from his Stand.
The Rokushiki technique, Kami-e.
This move was probably the closest to the original meaning of Life Return.
It’s about controlling the body.
Like playing with clay, you can bend your body however you wish.
In essence, it’s about controlling the shape of muscles, bones, and organs, allowing the body to contort into any number of anti-physical poses…
Given that a Stand can naturally increase or decrease in size, although this usually consumes too much energy to be practical, it seldom plays around with this ability.
For “B.I.B.” to master Kami-e before the main body, it wasn’t too surprising to Liam.
—
Arrows continued to rain down in rapid succession.
The black armored figure, like a ball of black mud, twisted and turned in an elegant, willowy manner, dodging the arrows with ease…
Is this the “Lingbo Weibu”?
Kami-e?
Robin suddenly understood.
No wonder the arrows outside were so dense, yet Liam’s ghost could still avoid them.
Liam had explained Rokushiki techniques in the past, like Tekkai, so it made sense that Kami-e wouldn’t be left out.
Robin, with her brilliant mind, remembered the time when Liam had force-fed her to the point of being as fat as a pig, only for her to digest it quickly and return to her original shape— a process that left her feeling conflicted. Now, imagining herself covered by his armor ghost, she wondered if she too could contort her body like Liam’s Kami-e.
“How could this be! It still hasn’t hit!”
The Kuja warriors, dripping with sweat, continued their pursuit. “Using Kenbunshoku Haki to predict it doesn’t work… what *is* that thing?”
While the warriors chased, Hancock gradually slowed down.
Standing atop a wooden stake by the roadside, she let her snake-bow Salome revert to its pet form and wrap around her arm.
“……”
Hancock turned to look back at the Royal city built against the towering mountainside. Using her Kenbunshoku Haki, she could vaguely see a tall, graceful figure emerging from a high balcony in the city.
The Snake Princess Tritoma strolled out, her hair billowing in the wind.
The entire beauty of the women’s country, and all the splendor of Kuja City, seemed to focus on her at that moment.
“Shoumu.”
The Snake Princess called out. The large snake at her side hissed, bringing over three giant wooden arrows and handing them to its mistress. It then straightened its body, transforming into a large, coiled bow that stood at her side.
With her two-meter height, even this giant snake-bow seemed oversized and heavy. Yet with a simple gesture, she lifted the bow with ease.
“Why worry!” In the city, Elder Suzuran scolded the citizens. “Have you forgotten? The country’s strongest warrior has not yet made a move!”
The Snake Princess effortlessly nocked all three massive arrows onto the bowstring.
The bowstring, made from the resilient tendons of a Sea King, was pulled taut without any resistance, forming a crescent moon in her arms.
“Now… how will you escape?” The Snake Princess whispered to the three arrows beside her cheek. “Pirate King’s ghost.”
“The Snake Princess is this nation’s finest archer! The strongest warrior!” Elder Suzuran raised her arms to the crowd and shouted, “She is the strongest woman! The strongest person! No matter what intruder dares to trespass in this land of powerful, beautiful women, no men allowed—”
The people glanced nervously at each other, frightened by her manic enthusiasm.
“They will pay the price!” She roared, pointing towards the city wall where the dark shadow had fled.
Above them, three black streaks shot across the sky like lightning in an instant.
“……”
Hancock didn’t have time to admire the Snake Princess’s arrows. Instead, she looked hurriedly towards the dark shadow fleeing towards the city wall.
She wanted to see how it would die under the Snake Princess’s three arrows.
Though the arrows had been shot from Kuja’s royal city high above which was several hundred meters away…
Hancock was certain the shadow couldn’t escape.
It wouldn’t be able to dodge…
The dark-armored figure turned its head, its mask glowing with white light, making the same judgment as the original body within the city fortress at the same moment.
The three arrows sealed off any possible avenues of escape.
The arrows were too large, and the Busoshoku Haki (Armament Haki) wrapped around them, similar to Ryuo (Flowing Sakura), left almost no room to evade, even with Kami-e.
The Stand’s ability to shrink also required immense focus, and there simply wasn’t enough time to shrink in this split second.
…
Hancock watched as the shadow was shattered into countless pieces by the Snake Princess’s arrows. She smiled.
The Kuja warriors, arriving from both sides, cheered, “As expected of the Snake Princess!”
Clap, Clap, Clap— the women applauded in celebration.
But when it came time for Hancock to clap, she felt awkward as she ignored the warriors, not bothering to do anything.
“No…!!”
Hancock’s expression turned serious as if she’d seen something unbelievable. “It didn’t die!!”
What!?
The warriors turned their heads in shock. The three arrows had gouged out craters in the ground, yet the shadow, which should have been shattered into pieces by the arrows… its fragments began to move again!
From the high balcony in the Kuja royal palace, the Snake Princess appeared surprised. “I see…”
Under her Kenbunshoku Haki, the shattered black ghost fragments were flowing together like a river, still desperately racing towards the city walls before them.
The black fragments touched the wall, vanishing one by one as if they had leapt into the water.
“Hurry and chase!”
“Catch it!”
At the edge of Kuja City, the female warriors angrily pursued the black shadows into the city gates.
The great gate of the city, bearing the giant Kuja emblem, slowly opened.
The national warriors and pirate crew ran along the narrow paths flanking the river, chasing the black shadow fragments sensed by their Kenbunshoku Haki, all the way to the island’s coast.
“Huff… huff…”
The warriors panted heavily. The running wasn’t the hard part— using Haki continuously was exhausting.
“Did it really just fly away?”
Cosmos, one of the warriors, wiped the sweat from her forehead and glumly watched the black fragments disappear across the sea, now too far to sense.
“Keep chasing!” Hancock urged. “Where’s our pirate ship?”
Cosmos rolled her eyes. “You just want to sneak aboard the ship to leave the island, don’t you, Hancock?”
“Ugh!” Hancock pouted and turned away, heading back with her beloved Salome coiled around her arm.
While the Kuja warriors sulked, unhappy with their failure, the wall of the city suddenly opened a pair of eyes.
“Bururu?”
—
(End Of Chapter)
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