The attack effect was significant. Loya wasn't Kaido; facing an attack like a shotgun blast, he instinctively chose to defend, but he didn't expect this to give the Elite Camp mbers the chance to close the distance.
Aldo went with his usual style, setting his stance to initiate a tackle.
BOOM!
This ti, the one caught off guard was Loya. His chest armor emitted an unbearable creaking sound, and Loya, suddenly losing his center of gravity, was sent flying backward.
The next second, two figures used Geppo (Moon Walk) to appear behind him. The two Ryo Wazamono (Grade swords) in their hands, Zan-u (Cutting Rain) and Duan-quan (Broken Spring), aligned perfectly and slashed toward Loya in unison.
"Ittō Ryōdan (Cut in Two)!"
"Cut in two my ass! I'm suing you for plagiarism!" Loya retorted, extending ice shards to block the attack just as he had done with Tony.
But the Jero brothers were far superior to Tony in both technique and speed. Furthermore, these were two blades—could it really be blocked that simply?
As they made slight contact with the ice shards Loya had extended horizontally, the two blades rapidly separated. Sparks of ice crystals scattered in the air as the blades grazed the ice, then, one from above and one from below, they fiercely slashed toward Loya's neck and thigh.
"You can actually do that?!" Feeling the biting slashes behind him, Loya couldn't help but reinforce his ice armor.
CRACK!
The sturdy ice armor saved Loya's life. Even with Ryo Wazamono swords, the Jero brothers' current strength couldn't penetrate the armor to injure him, not to ntion that neither of them knew Busoshoku Haki.
"Tch... what a tough turtle shell!"
The Jero brothers missed their strike and pushed off each other's feet to dodge Loya's follow-up counter-attack.
"So those are the Jero brothers. Their combo attacks are quite strong." Seeing their perfectly synchronized, telepathic movents, the usually expressionless Sengoku suddenly praised them with satisfaction.
Garp, busy digging for boogers, pursed his lips in disappointnt when Loya countered and said, "So what? Even an idiot like Aldo knows Busoshoku Haki, but they still don't. Attacks at that level can't even break through that brat's defense."
As he spoke, Garp flicked the booger forward, tracing an arc in the air.
Sengoku's face turned black. He lowered his voice and hissed, "Garp! Mind your status!"
"Yeah, yeah. Got it, got it." Garp proceeded to switch from digging his nose to cleaning his ears, looking like a man who was humble enough to listen but never planned on changing.
"You!"
Sengoku trembled with anger, preparing to teach him a lesson, but Zephyr stepped in to stop the bickering.
"What a disgrace! You are here to observe, not to be observed! If you want to fight, go down there and do it. I'd be embarrassed to be on the sa platform as you two!"
Hearing Zephyr put it that way, Sengoku couldn't bring himself to throw a punch. He had no choice but to release his hand in frustration, watching the fight on the field—which was riddled with openings—and pretending to be engrossed.
Although Loya blocked the Jero brothers' attack, the force sent him crashing toward the ground. At his landing spot, Aldo, mouth split in a grin, was warming up his shoulders. He had used Busoshoku Haki to dye his already pitch-black gauntlets an even deeper shade, waiting for his prey to arrive.
"Cannon Fist Style: Hundred Cannons!"
Aldo was simple-minded, and his technique was just as simple. The so-called "Cannon Fist: Hundred Cannons" was a strike with the power of a hundred cannon shells. The claim was an exaggeration, but it proved the sheer force behind the move.
Loya didn't want to use his ice armor to test if this punch could truly hit with the power of a hundred shells. He opened both hands toward Aldo, crossing his thumbs and index fingers to aim through the diamond-shaped gap.
"You stay still for a while, Aldo!"
"Ice-Make: Endless Chains!"
This ti, the ice didn't fire from Loya's hands; it ford out of thin air around Aldo. It took less than half a second to go from illusory to solid, and a dumbfounded Aldo was wrapped up tightly. After training, the Ice Coffin move was no longer restricted to being released in place; it could now be generated freely within a five-ter radius.
Loya released his hands, used his montum to roll, and kicked the immobilized Aldo flying.
"Ice Dragon's Hook Claw!"
Aldo bounced across the ground like a rubber ball, rolling further and further away until he smashed a massive crater into the wall. Loya clapped his hands in satisfaction, then looked with a wicked grin toward Simon, who was busy pulling out iron sand.
"Even though your plan was reasonable, you miscalculated one thing: whether Aldo and the others could actually pin down."
Gulp!
Simon suppressed his inner tension, trying hard to maintain his suave deanor as he swept his bangs upward: "Yeah... but..."
THUD!
Before he could finish, Loya used another 70-degree roundhouse kick to send him flying.
But this attack didn't fully land because two figures instantly appeared on either side of Simon, one after the other. They grabbed his waistband and pulled in opposite directions, neutralizing the intense, twisting impact of the kick.
"Jero!"
The people who arrived were indeed the Jero brothers. It had to be said that whenever a task required two-person coordination, these twins did it perfectly. Just like now, other than the kick to the face that hurt a bit, Simon completely avoided the more severe secondary damage.
"Jero... Jero... prepare to die, Loya! We will defeat you."
In one sentence, the brothers each said one word at a ti, miraculously linking them together perfectly—even their tone matched. If you only listened, you wouldn't know it wasn't just one person speaking.
After speaking, the Jero brothers used Soru to rush forward again, surrounding Loya.
Loya was far superior to them in both offense and defense, but relying on the high-speed movent granted by Soru and Geppo, combined with their own extraordinary swordsmanship, the two managed to hold Loya back head-on.
Simon, shaking his dizzy head, scrambled to pull Tony out of the ground. While having other recruits go up to harass Loya, he pinched Tony's philtrum: "Damn it! We'll lose if this keeps up! Wake up, you idiot!"
Loya's Dragon Slayer Magic only got stronger, never weaker, and any move would be fatal for the recruits. Because of this, he hadn't used any wide-range area-of-effect attacks to clear the field. But because of this hesitation, the perceptive Jero brothers seized the opportunity. While Loya was busy dodging a sneak attack from another recruit, they used their combo technique again, slashing at his neck.
The whistling sound at his ear made Loya's scalp tingle.
What a shaless way to fight! Loya thought, secretly startled while also admiring their technique.
This attack was a sneak attack, and Loya was too late to block it with ice shards, but that didn't an he would just sit and wait for death.
Ting!
With a crisp sound, the Jero brothers widened their eyes in disbelief as they looked at the weapons in their hands.
Their weapons were wedged at Loya's shoulder, a centiter from his neck, but they couldn't move forward an inch. Through the tactile feedback in their hands, the brothers realized they hadn't hit anything. It was Loya's raw brute strength that had stopped Zan-u and Duan-quan.
He could unleash such terrifying power just by tilting his head and hunching his shoulder!
Maintaining that tilted head and hunched shoulder, Loya peered at the two Ryo Wazamono swords inches away: "I heard that unless a swordsman dies in battle, they never let go of the sword in their hand."
He smirked, letting intense cold air spread backward along the blades. Visible frost rapidly crawled all over the swords. The brothers looked at each other, gritted their teeth, and pulled with all their might, but they couldn't move them a milliter.
"Jero..."
Releasing his neck, Loya stepped forward and patted the two, who were now frozen into ice sculptures, and praised them: "Not bad. If a swordsman abandons the sword in their hand, they aren't worthy of being called a swordsman!"
Then, he used Ice Dragon's Iron Fist to reinforce the freezing.
Supporting the groggy Tony, Simon happened to witness this scene and instantly wore a mournful face: "It's over. How are we supposed to fight now?"
Their three main combatants—the sturdy legs provided by the Elite Camp—were wiped out in just a few minutes. One was over there like a rubber ball, struggling to crawl back to the battlefield, and the other pair had turned into ice sculptures.
Although they had the numbers advantage, Loya still hadn't used a large-scale area attack.
On the platform, Garp seized the chance to mock Zephyr: "Are these the disciples of your Elite Camp? This is a one-shot, hey, it's a one-shot, right?"
Zephyr took a deep breath, his face dark enough to drip oil.
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