Not just the World Government. The Marines snapped into combat readiness at the same time.
At Kong's side, Sengoku and Tsuru assumed fighting stances almost in unison.
But Makoto Nishikado didn't give them time to prepare.
The grey-black Susanoo's arms transformed violently. Bones restructured, twisted, extended. Both arms became massive chainsaws in an instant, teeth spinning at screaming speed, filling the air with a deafening whine.
The Susanoo swung.
A 360-degree omnidirectional sword blast erupted outward from Makoto at the center, sweeping in every direction at once.
One strike. Everyone in Grove 66 was caught in its radius.
Marines in front. World Government agents. Even the pirates and bounty hunters in the back who hadn't managed to flee. All engulfed.
Where the blade energy passed, the air tore open. The ground split apart. Debris and dust swirled into a grey-black storm of death.
"Shockwave!"
Sengoku roared. His body erupted in blinding golden light.
Human-Human Fruit: Daibutsu Model.
Within the radiance, Sengoku's form swelled rapidly, transforming into a small giant.
He thrust both arms forward. Golden shockwaves exploded from his palms, colliding head-on with Makoto's sword energy.
The clash of forces triggered a deafening explosion.
Sengoku gritted his teeth. His feet carved deep into the ground as the sword blast shoved him back several meters.
His arms trembled violently, veins bulging on his forehead. But he held the line. Barely.
"Such power..." Sengoku muttered, wariness filling his eyes.
On the other side of the battlefield, Saint Nusjuro swung the Shodai Kitetsu.
His approach was nothing like Sengoku's.
A flash of blade. His sword energy carved a precise opening through the incoming attack, splitting it cleanly around his body.
He didn't protect his subordinates.
The World Government agents standing behind him were swallowed by the overflowing sword energy without mercy.
Some were cut in half at the waist. Others shredded to pieces. Some didn't even have time to scream before becoming red mist.
Saint Nusjuro didn't spare them a glance.
Screams rose and fell across the battlefield.
The worst hit were the pirates and bounty hunters in the rear who'd come to watch.
They'd figured they'd catch a good show. Maybe, if luck was on their side, scavenge something useful from the chaos.
No one expected the "show" to become a slaughterhouse. No one expected the black-haired kid to be this unhinged, his opening strike an indiscriminate massacre.
The sword energy swept through.
Grove 66 became hell on earth in an instant.
Blood geysered from countless corpses, pooling into streams that snaked across the ground.
The grass was stained completely red.
Severed limbs scattered everywhere. Some ruined torsos still twitched. Some heads lay with eyes wide open, staring at nothing.
Blood pooled beneath Yu Ishigami, Beam, and the Fab Four's feet.
The red liquid gleamed with an eerie sheen under the sunlight.
Inside the prisoner cart, the Roger Pirates went pale.
They'd fought Makoto's crew before. They knew exactly what that indiscriminate strike was meant to accomplish.
It looked like mindless slaughter. But in reality...
"To create a battlefield," Roger murmured.
Under the Roger Pirates' watchful eyes, Yu Ishigami, Beam, and the Fab Four revealed expressions of manic delight.
Euphoria.
Absolute euphoria.
They drew deep breaths, greedily inhaling the blood-soaked air. Their eyes blazed with feral madness.
"Go!"
Yu moved first.
He launched toward the Marine formation like a loosed arrow.
Beam followed close behind. The Fab Four let out a string of cackling laughs and split up, charging in different directions.
Beam's body transformed mid-air. His upper half morphed into a massive shark form, rows upon rows of gleaming teeth filling a cavernous maw.
Mouth wide open, he plunged straight toward the nearest cluster of Marines.
Screams. Several Marines were swallowed whole in a single bite.
"Zoan users?"
Watching Beam's shark transformation and the Fab Four members bulking into beast-man forms, the Marines and the giants led by Harald tensed.
But their expressions quickly steadied.
Zoans.
Not a rare ability type.
These fighters had an impressive presence, sure. But as for how much of a threat they could actually pose...
"I have no grudge against you."
Harald spoke low, his right hand slowly closing around the hilt at his hip.
"But for Elbaf... forgive me."
Before the words had fully left his mouth, Harald drew.
In that instant, the sky darkened.
The massive sword felt light as a feather in Harald's grip. One-handed, he brought it down in a vertical cleave.
Blade pressure crashed down like a tidal wave.
The power of that single stroke rivaled Makoto's full-power Susanoo strike. In terms of range, it might have been even greater.
This was a monster who could fight Rocks to a four-six split. Maybe even five-five on a good day.
Harald's blade fell.
Yu's expression shifted. He crossed his arms in front of his chest.
A thunderous impact.
Yu's arms shattered like glass. Flesh and blood sprayed, exposing snapped bone underneath.
His body was hurled backward by the crushing force, slamming into a Red Mangrove tree behind him.
A human-shaped crater marked the trunk, cracks spiderwebbing outward.
Beam and the Fab Four fared worse.
Their strength was already below Yu's. Against Harald's blade pressure, they had zero resistance.
Bodies torn apart. Crushed. Pulped into meat. Along with their shrieks, they became scattered debris in pools of blood.
"Impressive."
Sengoku, still in his Daibutsu form, commented despite himself.
Tsuru stood behind him, watching Harald with narrowed eyes.
The King of the Giants was desperate to make Elbaf a World Government affiliate nation. She'd heard the rumors.
Most of the Marines, Garp included, supported the idea. The Marines already had giant soldiers in their ranks. Elbaf as a member state would be a significant boon.
But the World Government had been stringing Harald along.
Using the promise as leverage, ordering him here and there, making him work for them while never delivering on their end.
Tsuru had a bad feeling about this.
Sure, what you can't have always tempts you more. But stringing someone along for too long...
That's how things go sideways.
Even a cornered dog will leap over a wall. A simp is no different.
"Now then. Only one left."
Saint Nusjuro fixed his cold gaze on Makoto, slowly raising the Shodai Kitetsu.
Bang.
A gunshot.
Harald's Observation Haki had caught the danger in advance.
He instinctively raised his sword to block. The bullet struck the blade dead center, throwing off sparks.
He looked down.
Yu Ishigami, whose arms had just been pulverized by blade pressure, had somehow dropped down from the Red Mangrove.
His arms were whole again. He was grinning coldly, the barrel embedded in his forehead still trailing smoke.
"What?"
Sengoku and the others flinched.
Regenerated that fast?
But what came next was even more shocking.
The Gorilla Devil erupted from the ground, its massive frame rivaling Sengoku's Daibutsu form.
Thick black fur covered every inch. Knots of muscle bulged everywhere. Eyes burning red. A suffocating aura of menace rolled off it.
The Gorilla Devil charged and seized Sengoku by the throat. The sheer momentum slammed him flat onto his back.
The ground cratered beneath them.
Before Sengoku could react, the Gorilla Devil's tongue lolled out.
"Slurp~ Wanna play, baby?"
"HAAAAAH!"
The Dolphin Devil opened its fang-lined maw and unleashed a piercing sonic attack.
Visible soundwaves rippled outward. Marines clutched their ears in agony. Some dropped, bleeding from every orifice.
Others, desperate to escape the pain, drew daggers and stabbed out their own eardrums.
"Lady, please die!"
The smallest of the Fab Four, the Rabbit Devil, exploded with astonishing leap power.
One bound. A blur in the air. She came down in a Leo-style flying kick aimed straight at Tsuru.
"They came back?!"
Marines and World Government agents alike blanched.
They had watched. Moments ago. Under Harald's devastating blade, these Zoan users had been reduced to paste.
And now they were back?
"So Imu granted you the same power?"
Saint Nusjuro murmured, narrowing his eyes as he studied the resurrected devils.
But Yu heard him.
"Don't lump me in with some lapdog's ability."
Yu's head snapped toward Nusjuro. The barrel in his forehead flared bright.
A laser beam erupted from the barrel, carrying devastating energy straight at Saint Nusjuro.
Nusjuro raised his sword to block.
The Shodai Kitetsu's blade caught the laser, but the sheer impact drove him backward, feet carving two deep trenches through the ground. He was about to crash into the Marine base behind him.
At the last instant, Nusjuro's body underwent a radical transformation.
His lower body restructured. Bones shifted. Flesh stripped away and regenerated. His legs became a skeletal horse frame.
Four white bone hooves struck the ground with sharp clicks.
Mythical Zoan.
With the Zoan enhancement, Nusjuro's strength surged.
He drove the hooves deep into the ground, arresting his slide. Then a backhand slash.
The sword energy pushed back hard.
Its power rivaled Harald's earlier strike. If anything, it was more concentrated.
If it had been before, Yu would have just tanked it with his devil body. He couldn't die, so why bother dodging?
But this time, he chose evasion.
Yu twisted aside. The blade energy grazed past his nose.
He returned fire, shooting at Nusjuro.
After his fight with Roger, Yu had been thinking.
He had to keep evolving.
Couldn't just lean on his devil body's immortality.
If he always fought with a "can't die anyway" mindset, he'd never truly grow stronger.
But...
It had been less than two months since arriving in the pirate world. His growth had limits.
The instant he fired again, Nusjuro was faster.
A flash of steel.
Yu's right gun-arm was severed at the shoulder, spinning into the air.
After all, not everyone had a 200x effort buff.
Seizing the opening, Nusjuro in beast-man form charged forward on bone hooves, closing the distance to Yu in a heartbeat.
Point blank.
Another slash.
Crunch.
Nusjuro frowned.
The resistance against his blade was wrong.
He looked down. Yu's mouth had transformed. His jaws had grown fangs, eerily similar to Makoto's Chainsaw Man form and Reze's bomb form. And they were clamped dead onto the Shodai Kitetsu's blade.
"Don't underestimate me, old man."
Yu growled through clenched fangs in his Gun Fiend form.
The barrel on his head fired again.
The laser detonated at point blank.
A massive shockwave rippled outward. All of Grove 66 shuddered.
Dust clouds rocketed skyward. Debris rained down. A crater tens of meters wide opened in the ground.
Through the smoke, the Fab Four and Beam kept attacking.
They rampaged through the ranks, unleashing indiscriminate assaults.
The Gorilla Devil tossed Marines around like toys. The Dolphin Devil's sonic blasts dropped countless soldiers. The Rabbit Devil darted through the crowd at blinding speed, each landing claiming a life.
The Marines held overwhelming numerical advantage. Countless blades and strikes hacked at the devils' massive bodies.
But every time those devils touched the blood-soaked ground, their wounds healed at visible speed.
"They're regenerating by absorbing blood."
Tsuru saw the pattern now.
Her pupils shrank.
She finally understood. That was why Makoto had unleashed that indiscriminate opening strike.
To create terrain advantage.
Blood covered the earth. The entire battlefield was one giant blood pack.
"Sengoku. Destroy the ground here."
Tsuru made the call instantly, shouting toward the Daibutsu.
Sengoku didn't hesitate.
He raised both palms. Golden light gathered, then he slammed them into the earth.
The ground shattered.
Soil erupted.
Blood-soaked earth was torn up from below. Along with the blood, flesh, and severed limbs, it all went airborne.
Bedrock lay exposed underneath. Seawater seeped up through the cracks.
The blood and remains that had been fueling Beam's recovery were blasted skyward in a single strike.
"Good."
Kong silently approved.
Blood still stained the surface, but at least the monsters wouldn't regenerate as fast now.
But.
"Heh."
Far behind the front lines, Makoto, who'd been watching with cold eyes the entire time, smiled.
A quiet smile.
But Tsuru noticed.
Every instinct screamed at her. A violent sense of foreboding flooded her chest.
Makoto raised his hands. Fingers interlaced.
Hand seals.
So fast they were afterimages.
"Water Style: Water Dragon Jutsu."
The instant the words left his mouth, seawater surging from the underground fractures gathered at terrifying speed.
The current spiraled, condensed, compressed.
It became a colossal water dragon.
Its size dwarfed anything Yukino or Erina had ever produced. Even Makoto's usual version was several times smaller.
The water dragon circled once overhead, its head rearing high, and let loose an earth-shaking roar.
Inside the prisoner cart, the Roger Pirates went pale again.
They'd fought Makoto's group on Malad Island. They'd encountered water-style users like Yukino and Erina.
But that amount of water was nothing to people at their level.
Besides, the Roger Pirates were all non-devil-fruit users. Water didn't frighten them.
But the Marines were different.
Devil fruit users were everywhere in the Marines.
Sengoku himself was a user.
The water dragon roared toward the Marine formation.
"He can control seawater?!"
Kong's face drained of color.
In this world, what devil fruit users feared wasn't just any water. It was seawater and Seastone. An ironclad rule.
And Makoto was controlling seawater erupting from underground.
"Sengoku, fall back!"
Kong leaped, fist blazing with dense Armament Haki. His entire arm turned jet-black iron as he slammed it into the water dragon's head.
The impact shattered the dragon's skull.
But the Water Dragon Jutsu wasn't fully neutralized. Seawater rained down in torrents across the Marine formation.
Sengoku was drenched.
His body went limp instantly. The Daibutsu form's golden glow faded. He stumbled and dropped to one knee.
Small mercy that Kong had weakened the jutsu's force.
If the full attack had landed, Sengoku wouldn't have been able to maintain his Daibutsu form at all.
And it wasn't just Sengoku.
Every devil fruit user in the Marines who was splashed by the seawater felt their strength drain. Movements grew sluggish. Devil fruit power became difficult to channel.
"NOW!"
Beam in beast-man form seized the moment, sinking his teeth into Sengoku's shoulder.
"Gah..."
Sengoku clamped down, grabbing Beam's lower half with one hand.
Leveraging his massive size advantage, he ripped Beam off and hurled him away.
But Beam took a chunk of Sengoku's flesh with him.
Blood gushed from the wound.
On the other side...
"Demon Power, 100,000 Horsepower! Sun-Blasting Fist!"
The Libido Devil shrieked, throwing a devastating punch.
The fist trailed a bizarre brown energy as it plowed into the devil fruit users who'd collapsed from the seawater.
Flesh exploded.
Those users didn't even have time to scream before they were pulverized into paste.
Blood flooded the earth once more.
For Makoto's crew, numbers meant nothing.
If anything, the more people there were, the happier they got.
Because more people meant more blood.