If, when he had only been facing Beth alone, Golden Lion could still deal with her with ease and even faintly hold the initiative, then at this moment, facing the combined assault of Beth and Alicia, he instantly fell into a complete disadvantage.
Two Greatsword warriors with released Yoki—warriors who, even in their original world, could already step up against Abyssal Ones—now also wielded this world's Observation Haki and Armament Haki on top of that.
In terms of Haki control, they were in no way inferior to Golden Lion.
Alicia's fighting style had no defense at all, only the most extreme offense. The silver-white greatsword in her hands, under the blessing of Armament Haki, turned pitch black and radiated a powerful aura. She swung that massive blade from all kinds of vicious, tricky angles, hacking toward Golden Lion.
Every strike went straight for a vital point, forcing Golden Lion to respond with everything he had. The slightest lapse in attention would mean serious injury—or even death.
"Damn it! Just what kind of monsters are these two brats?!" Golden Lion roared inwardly. He brandished his twin blades, pushing "Lion: Thousand-Cut Ravine" to the limit while simultaneously using his Devil Fruit ability to constantly twist and heave the ground beneath his feet, trying to block and split the sisters' joint offensive.
However, under Beth and Alicia's flawless coordination, Golden Lion simply could not hold out for long. At this moment, the effectiveness of his Devil Fruit ability was drastically reduced.
"Shrrip!"
A streak of silver light flashed past. Although Golden Lion dodged in time, his kimono was split open with a long gash, nearly cutting into the skin beneath. Before he could even catch his breath, Beth's sword tip emerged from an impossible angle, piercing through his robe at the flank and drawing a spray of fresh blood.
Golden Lion suddenly had a very bad feeling.
Fear and fury churned in his chest. In all his decades of roaming the seas, when had he ever suffered such suffocating suppression? And he was being driven to this point by two completely unknown women! He realized that if this continued, he might really fall here.
"Damn… no helping it now!" A flash of grim resolve passed through Golden Lion's eyes. He suddenly exploded with an immense surge of Haki, forcing Beth and Alicia back from their pincer attack for a moment, and used that opening to shoot rapidly higher into the air.
"Trying to run?!" Murderous intent blazed even fiercer in Alicia's golden eyes.
"Lion's Might: Imperial Earth Coil!" Golden Lion bellowed, hands pressing down at the empty air below. This time he wasn't aiming to attack Beth and Alicia, but to sow chaos. He intended to use the power of the Float-Float Fruit to obstruct them and buy himself enough time to escape.
At this moment he was already prepared to run. No matter how humiliated he felt, in the face of life and death, retreat was not shameful. Once he finished producing his berserk drug, he would definitely make a comeback and repay today's humiliation with interest.
Golden Lion glared fiercely at Beth and Alicia, trying to etch their faces into his memory.
However, at the instant he activated his ability and let his focus scatter—
"Now!" Alicia's cold voice rang out.
She and Beth exchanged a glance; the sisters were of one mind. They pushed their speed to the limit, one left and one right, instantly catching up to the Golden Lion as he tried to climb higher into the sky and flee!
Beth's greatsword rose from below in a savage uppercut, while Alicia shot in from the side, slashing horizontally at Golden Lion's waist!
There was nowhere to dodge. Horror twisted Golden Lion's expression as he could only force his twin swords to cross in front of him and to the side to guard as best he could.
"Clang!! Crack—!"
Alicia's horizontal slash smashed into his twin blades first. Immediately afterward, Beth's precise, lethal rising slash carved across the base of the artificial limb that connected him to Kogarashi on his right leg.
"Guh—ah!!"
Golden Lion let out a muffled groan, thick with pain and disbelief. The prosthetic joint that linked him to Kogarashi was completely severed. At the same time, although most of Alicia's strike had been blocked, the remaining sword aura still tore a bone-deep gash across his waist and abdomen, sending blood spraying wildly.
Without Kogarashi as one of his supports, Golden Lion's body instantly lost balance. The Float-Float Fruit's power, shaken by the sudden grievous injury and agony, fluctuated wildly. He could no longer maintain his flight and plummeted helplessly from the sky, finally crashing into the sea with a heavy splash that sent up a towering wave.
The seawater swallowed him in an instant.
For a Devil Fruit user, the ocean was the absolute nemesis. With no one to save him after falling into the sea, the outcome needed no explanation.
The legendary great pirate who had once stirred the world and rivaled the Pirate King… in the end, fell in this nameless stretch of ocean. At the very moment Golden Lion hit the water, Ronan heard the sound of quest completion ring out in his mind aboard the Silver Gull below.
The remaining Quest Points on his panel jumped from 170 to 570. Ronan exhaled deeply. Quest completion meant Beth and Alicia had emerged victorious.
Even though he had complete confidence in the two of them, Golden Lion's legend still made Ronan harbor a trace of worry. But in the end, the result was far better than he had feared.
This time, the Compulsory quest triggered by encountering Golden Lion had yielded a rich harvest. In Ronan's eyes, 400 Quest Points was an extravagant reward. As for the Lucky Roulette, he no longer had any interest. It had given him nothing twice already, a complete waste of his hard-earned Quest Points. If he had poured all those points into Haki and Physical Arts, his mastery might already have reached the "expert" level.
While Ronan was thinking about all this, the true danger was quietly drawing near.
With Golden Lion's ability completely nullified, the massive island that had been suspended high above the sea, along with the countless chunks of rock orbiting it, suddenly lost the power keeping them aloft.
Rumble—!!!
The colossal main island and innumerable fragments began to obey the laws of gravity, pouring down toward the sea below in a mad cascade.
"Ronan-dono!" Beth and Alicia's faces changed at the same time. They didn't even stop to confirm Golden Lion's life or death. Without hesitation, they leapt from the collapsing edge of the island and dove toward the Silver Gull at top speed.
Ronan had also noticed the changes overhead. Yet faced with this disaster-like scene, there was nothing he could do.
With his current strength, he could not influence a situation like this in the slightest. Even just trying to escape this area in a short time would be extremely difficult.
"Still way too weak…" Ronan felt a bit of regret that he had spent so many Quest Points on Roulette draws. If he had invested all of them in Physical Arts and Haki, he would definitely be handling this situation with ease instead of scrambling in a panic, tumbling and stumbling with every step.
(End of Chapter)
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