Chapter 233: Relentless Entanglement (part 2)
“Wait a minute!”
Sure enough, in the next second after Obei finished speaking, Garp’s vigorous voice suddenly came from the smoke and dust.
“No need to worry about him.”
After notifying Aoxi in the sky, Obei leaped up without any hesitation to leave.
But Garp on the ground clearly wouldn’t let them go so easily.
“Fist Bone: Meteor!”
Whoosh—!
Unable to find a cannonball, a red rock served as a substitute, thrown by Garp at supersonic speed toward Obei who was preparing to accelerate away.
The huge rock left a series of sonic booms in the air, then crashed straight toward Obei in the sky.
“Tch!”
Bang!
She directly punched and shattered the giant rock, and without stopping at all while looking at the scattered rock fragments, Obei continued to spread her wings.
Unlike Aoxi, although Obei’s maximum speed in the air could also reach a quite terrifying value, her maneuverability was much worse.
Compared to Aoxi’s hummingbird-like flexible aerial maneuvers, Obei’s flight style was more like a jet fighter.
Powerful! Haki! Unstoppable!
However, while full of kinetic beauty, the shortcomings were also very obvious:
Her flight not only required a brief acceleration process, but also couldn’t perform high-difficulty maneuvers like sharp turns.
The pair behind Obei were more like thrusters than wings.
“You two brats, don’t run!”
“Fist Bone: Meteor Shower!”
Seeing one strike fail, Garp directly switched to rapid-fire mode, with countless large and small stone blocks assaulting the two in the air.
Whoosh—
Whoosh—
Whoosh—
The sound of rocks breaking through the air was incessant, like a reverse-flying meteor shower.
Aoxi in the air naturally dodged easily, even having the leisure to pick similarly shaped stones to play a matching game.
But Obei was once again interrupted in her acceleration process and had to temporarily hover in mid-air.
『What a persistent guy!』
Countless stone blocks whistled past her, making Obei somewhat irritated.
The opponent was just like a neighbor’s persistent child, and she had to give him a lesson!
Moreover, this scene felt somewhat familiar; the perspective she saw when fighting Jhin back then was probably about the same…
Calming her inner agitation slightly, Obei simply reached out, steadily caught a baseball-sized ‘meteor’, and then gently gripped it.
Due to high-speed friction with the air, its surface was a bit hot to the touch, but that was nothing to her.
Taking a golden cube from the saddlebag at her waist, Obei embedded it into the stone block in her hand with some force, then wrapped it with endless deep blue Haki, instantly turning this fiery meteor into an ice stone from the abyss.
“Hey!”
Recalling that action from before, Obei swung her arm to send the meteor in her hand back.
And this time it was right on target!
Bang!
In the instant it left her hand, the stone block broke the sound barrier!
The deep blue, serene meteor plummeted from the sky at extreme speed, smashing fiercely toward the man who had thrown it from the ground.
“Hm?”
A puzzled voice came from the smoke and dust that hadn’t fully dissipated, as if the opponent hadn’t expected Obei to counter in this way.
However, Garp’s choice was exactly the same as Obei’s; of course he was willing to play this sandbag-tossing game.
“Interesting little girl…”
Thud!
After a muffled sound, Garp caught the Haki-wrapped stone and prepared to throw it back at even faster speed.
But clearly Obei had no intention of playing a sandbag-tossing game with him.
“Haha! Take this, my Fist Bone: Sand—”
Crack~
After a crisp sound like a switch being pressed…
Without any warning, a violent explosion suddenly swept over the area of several hundred meters centered on Garp’s location below.
First came the firelight, then the all-encompassing impact wave.
Clang!
The scabbard was forcefully inserted into the ground at his feet, and Bogard resisted the intense impact while watching the explosion in front of him, his Justice Coat flapping loudly behind him.
At this moment, this usually steady deputy officer’s face no longer held its previous calm.
Ignoring the soldiers behind him who had been blown away for being too close, Bogard shouted loudly:
“Mister Garp!”
“Are you alright?!”
Receiving no response, only the deafening explosion sound that arrived a step late.
Boom!!!
……
“Whoa~ This move again.”
“By the way, how much Haki did you infuse this time… This power is more than an order of magnitude higher than when you blew up Jhin back then, right?”
“That uncle doesn’t actually mean us any harm.”
Watching this terrifying explosion, Aoxi slowly flew to Obei’s side.
“I know, so I reduced the power a lot.”
Through research on the golden cube over this period, Obei successfully used her Haki to control the divine power explosion that could originally sweep an entire islet to only affect the surrounding hundreds of meters.
“If he hadn’t kept entangling us, I actually wouldn’t have resorted to this.”
“Big Sister notified us to hurry back as soon as possible, so we don’t have time to slowly wear him down here.”
Spreading her wings to the maximum extent, Obei used the explosion’s impact wave the moment it arrived to complete her acceleration.
“You’re right, we still need to hurry back.”
Passing through the heavy flames and smoke and dust below, seeing Garp’s still active soul fire, Aoxi stopped paying attention to him.
Lightly flapping her wings twice to catch up to Obei ahead, the two turned into two rainbows like when they arrived and disappeared into the distant sky.
……
“V-Vice Admiral Garp?”
“I’m fine.”
Several minutes after the explosion, Garp, with tattered clothes, climbed up from a circular crater.
“Cough, cough cough!”
“Ptoo~ Ptoo~”
After coughing a few times and spitting out all the smoke, dirt, and gravel from his mouth, Garp looked around.
“How are those soldiers? Any casualties?”
“Fortunately, except for a few front-row soldiers who had their internal organs injured by the explosion’s impact wave, the rest are fine.”
As an experienced deputy officer, Bogard had of course immediately checked the casualty situation of his squad.
“That’s good. Go notify the World Government side and say the one who caused the explosion has escaped.”
Tearing off the remaining scraps of cloth on his upper body, Garp draped on the Justice Coat that Bogard handed over—which he had casually tossed aside earlier—his expression rarely turning serious.
“Understood.”
Making a ‘dismiss’ hand signal, Bogard pulled out the Den Den Mushi from his pocket again, planning to report the situation this time.
“Purupuru~ Puru—Hello, who is this?”
“This is under Vice Admiral Garp, now reporting the details of the Holy Land explosion case.”
“Yes, please go ahead!”
Upon hearing it was related to the Holy Land, the tone on the other end immediately became serious and polite.
“According to the investigation, the explosion incident was【Hades—”
“Done by the Beasts Pirates, and they’ve already escaped!”
After hesitating for a moment, Garp snatched the Den Den Mushi and stopped Bogard from saying Obei and the others’ names.
Whether from his personal perspective or the Navy’s, he didn’t want to completely push those two little girls to the opposite side of the World Government.
