An Invitation!
Escape from Impel Down!
11: Trading Blows!
An Invitation!
Escape from Impel Down!
Chapter 11: Trading Blows!
An Invitation!
Escape from Impel Down!
The More-More Fruit had an extremely simple ability.
It could multiply the speed and size of either the user’s own body or external objects.
According to the original story, the maximum amplification was one hundred times.
Maybe World had exaggerated a little.
His performance in the original story had been pretty underwhelming, after all.
But Nate didn’t care.
He only knew one thing.
‘This ability is going to be ridiculously fun when combined with my projections.’ The arms behind the 100-Type Guanyin Bodhisattva began to move, one fist after another turning toward the crimson Venom Demon.
“This guy…” Magellan instinctively sensed danger.
Standing atop the Guanyin’s head, Nate thought for a moment.
“Hm.
Let’s call this True Several Thousand Hands instead.” Whoosh!
An arm hovering between transparent and black clenched into a fist and shot forward.
Magellan’s pupils contracted sharply.
The incoming fist expanded enormously in an instant, while its speed increased to a terrifying degree.
“HAAH!” Magellan had no choice but to roar and meet it head-on.
Armament Haki covered the Venom Demon’s right arm as its enormous fist swung forward.
BOOM!
For one instant, it felt as though only that deafening impact remained in the world.
The resulting shockwave crushed nearby prison cells.
Jailers and prisoners too close to the battlefield were blown away, while several unlucky ones were thrown straight into the pools of blood below.
The ground beneath the Venom Demon exploded with enormous spiderweb cracks.
The gigantic skeletal figure staggered backward as huge waves rippled across its liquid body, making it look as though it might collapse at any moment.
Its right forearm had already been smashed apart.
At the same time, however, the Guanyin’s attacking fist shattered as well.
“GET AWAY FROM THERE!!” One prisoner screamed.
“We’ll get caught in it!” “Stay away from the Chief Warden!” The Jailers had realized the same thing.
That battlefield belonged to two monsters.
“Hm.
I see.” Nate slowly nodded.
He understood it now.
When the More-More Fruit increased an object’s size, its weight rose enormously, but its underlying structure remained unchanged.
Its hardness stayed the same.
Its toughness stayed the same.
Without sufficiently strong Haki, blindly enlarging one’s own body would be a terrible idea.
Against a true Haki expert, size and weight alone meant very little.
As for increasing speed, the More-More Fruit multiplied an object’s existing velocity.
Unlike Solt’s Speed-Speed Fruit, it didn’t raise reaction speed along with movement speed.
That meant using it directly on oneself would make movement extremely difficult to control.
But that didn’t matter either.
‘I’m not actually a More-More Fruit user.’ Nate’s lips curved upward.
“All right.” “Here it comes.” Whoosh!
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
The countless arms behind the Guanyin shot outward at once.
Like guided missiles, they changed direction in midair and converged on the Venom Demon from every angle.
Once their trajectories were set, every fist began expanding.
And accelerating.
Inside the Venom Demon, Magellan’s face darkened instantly.
‘The More-More Fruit?’ ‘What the hell is going on?’ ‘Why can this man use two Devil Fruit abilities?!’ There was no time to think.
The Venom Demon’s shattered right arm rapidly regenerated.
Magellan coated both enormous arms in Haki and swung them against the storm of incoming fists.
BOOM!
BOOM!
He shattered two.
Then— BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
The endless barrage swallowed the Venom Demon.
Fists rained down without pause, pounding it like a violent storm.
Everyone fighting nearby couldn’t help stopping.
Because— “THE FLOOR IS BREAKING APART!!” “Damn it!
Are they going to punch through the whole level?!” “RUN!
WE’RE GONNA FALL THROUGH!” The ground was collapsing.
The reinforced floor shattered piece by piece until parts of the frozen landscape of Level Five could already be seen below.
“Magellan?” Shiryu, who had been steadily pushing back the injured and poorly armed Weevil, made several quick leaps away from the collapsing ground.
He looked toward the distant battlefield with a grim expression.
‘This is getting bad.’ At this point, Shiryu hadn’t yet become the completely deranged killer he would be seven years later.
“This is starting to cost a lot.” Standing atop the Guanyin, Nate muttered to himself.
Repeated high-output projections placed a considerable burden on his consciousness.
And there was also World’s body to consider.
Even if Nate could only draw out around half of the More-More Fruit’s original power, this was still a body that had spent more than twenty years frozen solid.
Its stamina was draining rapidly.
“Hm?” Nate suddenly raised an eyebrow.
The shattered ground and surrounding buildings began trembling.
Not because of the impacts.
They were wobbling like liquid.
Then the floor and nearby structures all transformed into crimson venom.
The poison surged upward and formed enormous Hydras, which collided head-on with the descending projected fists.
The venom lacked hardness and was smashed apart almost instantly.
But its terrifying corrosiveness rapidly ate away at the giant fists, shrinking them until they lost most of their original force.
“Awakening?” Nate clicked his tongue.
‘Of course.’ Magellan relied heavily on his Devil Fruit because his Haki and physical techniques were only average.
It would’ve been stranger if someone this dangerous hadn’t achieved Awakening.
From within the smoke, Magellan’s grave voice rang out.
“Shiryu!
Take everyone and retreat to Level Three!” Shiryu stared deeply at Magellan.
The Venom-Venom Fruit was terrifying enough normally.
After Awakening, it could turn everything in the surrounding area into deadly poison without distinguishing friend from foe.
This was a technique Magellan would never use unless the situation became truly desperate.
One careless moment could wipe out every living thing on an entire floor.
“RETREAT!” Shiryu immediately gave the order.
He led the shaken Jailers toward the stairway.
Not that many Jailers remained.
The difference in strength between them and the escaped prisoners was simply too large.
With Magellan and Shiryu both occupied, nobody could stop Level Six monsters like Solt and Anthony.
Only the Jailer Beasts could resist for a while thanks to their abnormal vitality.
Everyone else—Jailers and beasts alike—was being slaughtered.
The prisoners turned toward Nate atop the Guanyin.
“Go.” Nate calmly looked down at Magellan emerging from the smoke.
“Weevil, keep your previous opponent occupied.
Everyone else, head for the harbor and wait.” “YES, MY LORD!” The prisoners were ecstatic.
Even Magellan couldn’t seem to stop their lord.
And Weevil could keep the terrifying Shiryu occupied.
There was nobody left to prevent their escape.
The prisoners immediately flooded into the stairwell.
Soon, only Nate and Magellan remained.
Magellan looked miserable.
His left arm appeared broken, his right leg was bent unnaturally, and his face was badly bruised and swollen.
Yet poison surged in from every direction and wrapped around him.
A gigantic upper-body figure formed, far larger than the previous Venom Demon.
Worse, nearly a thousand meters of surrounding floor and structures had transformed into constantly churning venom.
Crimson mist was also spreading from every direction.
There was no need to guess what it was.
Deadly poisonous gas.
“What a monster.” Nate couldn’t help saying it aloud.
‘If Shiryu hadn’t betrayed Impel Down in the original story, and if Blackbeard’s Dark-Dark Fruit couldn’t suppress Devil Fruit users, I really can’t imagine how they would’ve beaten this guy.’ Magellan was absolutely stronger than the so-called right-hand men of the Four Emperors.
Especially inside an environment like this.
Nate immediately created a semi-transparent enclosed space around himself, blocking the poisonous gas.
He still needed to breathe.
If the poison kept spreading freely, World’s body would die before long.
“COME, WORLD!!” The enormous skeletal figure swung a massive fist straight toward Nate.
At the same time, crimson Hydras erupted from the poisoned ground around him and attacked from every direction.
“Then come.” Nate chuckled.
Projected arms appeared one after another.
The More-More Fruit continued amplifying them, turning each fist into something like a falling meteor.
At the same time, the Guanyin itself finally raised one of its original arms.
Its fist collided head-on with the Venom Demon’s.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
Violent explosions swept through all of Blazing Hell.
The earth shook.
The pools of blood churned.
Walls collapsed.
Even the ceiling trembled.
The entire Level Four had become an apocalyptic battlefield.
“This is actually getting my blood pumping.” Nate’s lips curled upward.
‘ORA ORA versus MUDA MUDA.’ ‘That’s romance every man can understand.’ Thinking about it carefully, Nate and Magellan were actually rather similar.
Neither had an overwhelmingly powerful base body.
Both relied heavily on their abilities.
A battlefield that should’ve featured berserkers beating each other senseless had somehow turned into two mages bombarding each other with spells.
…
At the same time.
Level Three—Starvation Hell.
The fighting erupted again.
Or rather—The slaughter continued.
“Salt-Salt Shot!” Countless white arrows rained down.
A Jailer Beast screamed as its body was riddled with holes.
“SHIELD BASH!” Another figure charged forward like a locomotive.
Impel Down’s Deputy Head Jailer was blasted away by the impact.
“Hahahaha!” Anthony, still transformed into a gigantic Cave Bear, laughed wildly.
“FREEDOM IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF US!!” He brought one enormous paw down and smashed the Chief Jailer into the ground like a planted radish.
“You’re criminals!
Don’t you dare talk about freedom!” Despite being covered in wounds, Hannyabal still stood before the staircase leading toward Level Two with his double-bladed weapon in hand.
His voice was already hoarse from shouting.
“YOU’RE NOT GETTING PAST—” Shhk.
A blade pierced straight through his chest.
“Move.” At some point, the short and stocky Solt had appeared behind Hannyabal.
He sneered and kicked the Vice Warden away.
Then he looked toward the dark stairwell ahead.
“Hahaha!
I’ll be going on ahead!” He vanished inside.
“Bastard!
Wait for me!” Anthony immediately charged after him.
“GO!!
FREEDOM IS RIGHT THERE!!” The other prisoners roared wildly as they surged forward.
There were no Jailers left capable of stopping them.
Only one man was still standing.
Shiryu’s expression was extremely dark.
“You bastards!!” “I’M GONNA BEAT YOU FLAT!” Weevil’s body was already covered in sword wounds.
He didn’t care in the slightest.
Roaring loudly, he continued swinging his fists at Shiryu.
“You persistent idiot!” Shiryu was getting genuinely irritated.
Weevil had barely any brains, but he was ridiculously hard to shake off.
“WEIVEL!
KEEP IT UP!
I’LL WAIT FOR YOU OUTSIDE!” Far away, Buckingham ran with the escaping prisoners while turning her head to shout encouragement toward her son.
Staying behind wouldn’t help.
She would only become a weakness Shiryu could exploit.
Besides, Weevil wouldn’t lose to Shiryu quickly.
And Buckingham didn’t believe their mysterious lord would ever abandon such a powerful fighter.
“OKAY, MOM!” Weevil became even more motivated.
Shiryu’s teeth clenched harder.
…
Level Four.
The violent exchange continued.
Crimson poisonous mist had completely filled the surrounding area.
Nate was entirely engulfed by it.
The transparent barrier around him was constantly being corroded, forcing him to continuously project new material to repair it.
At this rate, the air inside would eventually run out.
However—Nate raised his head slightly and sensed the locations of his connected nodes.
His lips curved upward.
“In that case…” “It’s time to say goodbye.” “YOU’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE!!” Magellan roared.
Compared with the other prisoners, the man before him was far too dangerous.
He absolutely could not let World escape.
More crimson Hydras came roaring toward Nate.
“That’s not your decision.” While projecting arms to intercept them, Nate raised his right hand.
A drill appeared.
A massive transparent drill formed above his palm.
Armament Haki coated it.
Then—It began spinning.
Magellan’s pupils contracted.
But it was already too late.
Nate shot upward like an illusion.
More-More Fruit—Acceleration!
Several Hydras attacking Nate were smashed apart in midair.
Then Nate drove straight into the ceiling.
The reinforced structure couldn’t withstand the drill rotating at extreme speed under the More-More Fruit’s amplification.
A perfectly smooth tunnel was carved through it.
In almost the next instant, Nate reached Level Three.
He kicked against the air.
“Geppo!” The More-More Fruit accelerated him again.
His speed became so extreme that a ring-shaped sonic boom exploded through the air.
To the naked eye, Nate seemed to stretch into a single black line.
Whoosh!
Then he stopped abruptly.
Invisible arms grabbed him and forcibly canceled his momentum.
Directly ahead, two figures were locked in combat.
“What?” Shiryu instantly disengaged.
His sword snapped toward Nate.
‘Magellan couldn’t stop him?’ Nate looked Shiryu up and down.
“Shiryu.” “Doesn’t staying in Impel Down ever get boring?” “What?” Shiryu frowned.
“What exactly are you trying to say?” He hadn’t attacked immediately.
Good.
‘If I can stall him for a little while, Magellan will catch up.’ “I’m asking whether you want to come with me.” Nate extended the invitation casually.
“Come with us.” “Let’s turn this whole world upside down.” “Turn the world upside down?” Something stirred in Shiryu’s heart.
Then an intrigued smile appeared on his face.
“That does sound interesting.” “Why don’t you tell me more?” “Oh?” Nate raised an eyebrow.
“Looks like you still haven’t realized who you really are.” “Hm?” Shiryu froze.
“I’ll come back.” Nate grabbed Weevil by the shoulder.
“I look forward to our next meeting.” Then the two of them shot upward again.
Shiryu could only watch as they smashed through the ceiling and continued straight toward the surface.
“This bastard…” His sword slowly lowered.
He couldn’t catch them.
But— ‘Who I really am?’ ‘What did he mean by that?’ …
Impel Down.
Surface harbor.
The ground was covered with the bodies of Jailers and Marines.
On a small Marine warship docked at the harbor, the escaped prisoners stared anxiously toward the dark prison entrance.
Almost immediately— BOOM!
The top of Impel Down exploded.
Two figures shot high into the sky.
After changing direction in midair, they flew toward the warship.
Nate landed lightly on the deck while holding Weevil.
“Let’s go.” “It’s time to leave.” An enormous invisible hand appeared beneath the small warship.
It lifted the entire vessel into the air and rapidly carried it away from Impel Down.
‘First, we need to put some distance between us and the prison.’ ‘Otherwise, the Marines might be coming after us very soon.’ … …