The ship blasted through the cloud border of Upper Yard and slammed up against the firm shore of island clouds. Rain was the first to jump down. The scholars followed one by one, stepping off the ship and looking around curiously at this unknown land.
Whoosh—
A flaming spear tore through the air with a piercing shriek and thunk—buried itself deep into the ground half a meter in front of Rain's feet, the shaft still vibrating violently.
The atmosphere froze.
Rain slowly lifted his head. In the jungle shadows ahead, dozens of cold, hostile eyes lit up one after another.
"Get out of Upper Yard!" A Shandian warrior's voice—ancient as the land itself—rang with fury. "Invaders!"
That icy roar, together with the spear trembling in the soil, echoed along the forest edge of Upper Yard.
The Shandian chief—a weathered old warrior with eyes like steel—stepped out of the shadows with a spear in hand, followed by dozens of guerrilla fighters. They radiated ferocity, every gaze locked on these "invaders."
Saul stepped forward first, raising both hands to explain. "We mean no harm! We're here to seek refuge!"
But the Shandian chief didn't believe him. He'd endured too much oppression. In his eyes, a massive ship falling from the sky and a giant like Saul could only be allies of Gan Fall's "God's country."
"Another wave of invaders from the so-called God's country!" the chief barked, leveling his spear at Saul, the largest target. "Upper Yard does not welcome you. Leave at once, or don't blame us for what happens next!"
"Hey, old man—aren't you misunderstanding something?"
Smoker strode out with a black face, two cigars in his mouth, exhaling thick smoke.
As a Marine, he instinctively hated this blind hostility—and he couldn't tolerate threats from "savages."
"I don't care whose damn land this is!" Smoker roared. His shoulders shifted, and his lower body instantly turned into rolling smoke.
"White Smoke!"
He shot forward like an arrow, rushing the Shandian chief—planning to take the leader first, then "talk."
Facing that roaring smoke, the chief didn't look afraid at all.
Just as Smoker's smoke-hand was about to touch him, the chief calmly pulled a strange shell from his waist.
"Huh? A shell?"
Smoker sneered inside. He assumed it was some primitive thrown weapon.
Out of Marine combat instinct, he didn't rely purely on intangibility. He coated his arm in Armament Haki, intending to seize the chief with solid force and tank whatever pathetic counterattack came.
He didn't even bother dodging—he charged straight in.
"Impact Dial!" the chief growled, aiming the shell at Smoker's solidified, Haki-coated arm.
BOOOOM—!!!!!
A visible shockwave erupted.
"What?!" Smoker's pupils shrank. It felt like he'd hit not a shell, but a volcano detonating.
The force was pure and brutally direct.
Smoker's hastily raised Armament shattered like paper under the impact.
PFF—!
The shockwave slammed into his chest—where he wasn't smoke.
Smoker felt his organs shift. Blood burst from his mouth.
His tall body flew backward like a cannonball, snapping through seven or eight huge trees before smashing into the ground with a cloud of dust.
"Smoker!" Saul shouted in alarm.
The scholars recoiled in terror.
"Pathetic." The chief snorted, returning the dial to his waist—but his arm trembled slightly. The recoil was immense, yet he forced himself to endure it.
He raised his spear toward Rain and Saul. "Leave now, or you're next. Get out!"
The Shandian guerrillas' morale surged; weapons rose all around.
"Cough—cough…" Smoker staggered up out of the wreckage, staring in disbelief at his chest. "Y-you've gotta be kidding… what kind of power was that…?"
"Tsk. Looks like you didn't improve at all during those three months."
A calm voice cut through the standoff.
Rain stepped forward from in front of the scholars, casually rolling his wrist as he moved to stand between everyone and the Shandians.
"Rain!" Smoker clutched his aching chest and warned him, "Watch out for their shells! That thing's power—"
The chief now treated Rain as the new enemy. Looking at the younger man, he decided to use his strongest force to crush him as an example.
With a roar, he pulled out another shell—larger than the Impact Dial that had dropped Smoker. Its casing even glinted with a dark red tint.
Above them, Gan Fall saw it and immediately dove, shouting, "Careful! That's a Reject Dial! Ten times the power of an Impact Dial!!"
"Rain-nii!!" Robin's face went white. She clutched Olvia's clothing and screamed, "Be careful!!"
The chief gave Rain no time to react. He aimed the red-glowing Reject Dial at him, his face filled with grim resolve.
"Pay for your arrogance, invaders!"
BOOOOM—!!!!!
A shockwave several times thicker than before—almost solid—howled forward with a shriek that tore the air.
Rain didn't dodge.
Under everyone's suffocating disbelief, he slowly raised his right arm.
VMMM—
Pitch-black Armament Haki, so dense it looked like it might drip, spread like a living thing from shoulder to fingertips.
BOOOOM—!!!!!
The monstrous shockwave slammed into Rain's blackened arm.
Before eyes that nearly bulged from skulls, that terrifying energy struck Rain's bottomless Armament as if hitting an immovable wall.
White shockwave and black Haki ground against each other with a sizzling annihilation sound, and the resulting blast wind whiplashed outward from Rain, forcing the scholars to squint and stagger.
The ground under Rain's feet cracked in a spiderweb pattern—
But Rain himself didn't move an inch.
As the turbulence faded, he stood there completely unhurt.
He simply flicked his arm—still coated in perfect Haki—like brushing off dust that wasn't even there.
PFF—!
In sharp contrast to Rain's calm, the Shandian chief suffered the backlash of his own suicidal strike.
The terrifying recoil shattered his body at the same time.
He vomited a huge mouthful of blood. The entire right arm he'd used to fire the Reject Dial twisted at a grotesque angle—clearly a pulverizing fracture.
He couldn't stay standing. With a heavy thud, he dropped to one knee. The Reject Dial rolled from his hand, still smoking.
He looked up with a ghost-seeing stare, terror flooding his eyes as he locked onto the young man standing there unscathed.
"W-what… what the hell…"
Rain lowered his arm as the black Armament faded away. Meeting the chief's horrified gaze, he spoke calmly:
"Now… can we talk?"
~~~
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