The night was black. A phantom of darkness moved, silent, across the black earth.
B.I.B., a shadowy ghost in the sky, glided low. Its narrow, focused eyes glowed faintly white in the dark, its back turned against the weak light of the moon and stars. On its chest, the triangular "reactor" used to store Devil Fruit chips glimmered with a hazy luminescence.
With the power of the Gold-Gold Fruit flowing through its systems, B.I.B. perceived everything beneath the island, the hidden veins of gold buried deep underground, sensing them even where they extended beneath the ocean floor.
Whiz... B.I.B. paused for a breath of a second, then dissolved into a blur of shadow, plunging silently into the earth. It vanished completely into the depths below.
"Attack! We're under attack!"
After the initial, brutal storm of gunfire swept across the Marine base, the compound was left pockmarked and shattered. Amid the ruin under the night sky, only panicked shouts and confusion echoed through the structures.
Finally, a branch officer struggled to his feet, roaring to restore order:
"Don't panic! Where's your Marine discipline?!"
The terrified soldiers slowly calmed, their eyes turning toward the senior officer standing precariously on the higher ground, until one of them suddenly pointed behind him at the night sky and screamed:
"Th-that's... !"
The senior officer spun around and saw several cannonballs shrieking straight toward them.
"Take cover!" he bellowed, diving forward just as the shells hit.
Inside the royal palace, even the Marines stationed to guard the treasury alongside the royal guards had heard the news: someone had launched a devastating night attack on the Marine base across the island.
The King, already driven to his wits' end by the kingdom's turmoil, issued no orders. He simply slumped deeper into his cushioned chair, drinking heavily, his face ghostly white.
A faint tremor from the distant explosions reached the palace. The King shuddered violently.
"Your Majesty!" A minister burst through the doors, panting, his eyes wide. "Something's gone terribly wrong within the royal city!"
The night deepened, and with it, chaos erupted across the royal city.
Gunshots... "Bang! Bang!"... shattered the tense silence, followed by shouts and general uproar echoing through the streets.
In the residential districts, windows flicked on one after another.
"What in the world is happening?" someone asked, leaning out of a window, pulling a coat half-closed around their chest.
On the street below, people were rushing past. A young man carrying a rifle ran under a flickering streetlight, shouting furiously:
"They say soldiers from the palace killed townsfolk! The citizens did nothing wrong, they just gunned them down! We can't let them get away with it!"
Boom! Boom!
Explosions lit up the night sky again as bright fireballs erupted from the Marine base. Flames rose like hungry tongues toward the heavens, the smoke spreading thick across the darkness.
From afar, Blueno watched the glow grimly.
"Was that pirates? Could it be Giorno and Jolyne?"
He, Jabra, and Fukuro the Silent had applied only rough bandages to their wounds. Only Jabra, being a Zoan-type with its enhanced recovery, looked marginally less battered.
Jabra ground his teeth and snapped, "With Giorno's power, if he wanted to attack a small Marine branch like that, would he need to make such a public, explosive show?"
Fukuro and Blueno remained silent, but nodded slightly, he had a point.
Each of them, as elite CP9 agents, was confident they could take a branch base like this without a scratch. Yet against Giorno, none of them had even managed to land a single blow. If Giorno truly intended to attack the Marine base, he could have slipped through it like empty air. No one there could possibly force him into such a flashy, explosive fight.
Lucci watched the distant blaze for a while, then turned his gaze toward the faint silhouette of the royal palace on the hill, its outline barely visible under the moonlight.
"They're drawing the Marines' attention," his shoulder-perched dove murmured in his stead. "Their real target is the treasury."
With that, Lucci leaped into the night, vanishing instantly like a shadow.
"Looks like they're making their move tonight."
"It's because of scum like them that this country has no future!"
More and more ordinary citizens flooded into the streets, their faces twisted with a raw, ugly rage. Some carried rifles, others wielded rusty machetes or simple fruit knives. They screamed as they surged through the night, their overlapping voices blending into an indistinct, fearful roar.
Most couldn't even articulate what they were yelling about, or why they were charging through the streets, only that the mob was headed toward the royal palace on the hill.
Amid the noise, fragments of slogans could be heard:
"The King won't let us live!" "Then no one should live!" "Anyone can kill!" "Don't let them go unpunished!"
A true flood of chaos, disjointed and meaningless, swept through the streets.
Even so, more and more people joined in, pouring out from alleys and lanes, all rushing toward the palace.
Naturally, not everyone went outside.
Some remained in their homes, throwing on cloaks and pretending to be devout. They drew crude ritual circles on their floors, knelt down, and began murmuring frantic prayers, to strange gods, to birds, to doves… to anything that might possibly listen.
Some, seeing the sudden chaos outside, grew increasingly despondent and pale. One of them opened a cabinet and took out a small bottle containing the so-called "Water of Salvation."
After carefully drinking the liquid, he smiled, a look of profound relief, then quietly hanged himself.
"How is it? The effect of the Water of Corruption, isn't it exquisite?"
Near the royal palace, under the cloak of night, Stiel, dressed in the uniform of a royal guard, gazed down with intoxicated delight at the chaos unfolding below in the royal city.
He spread his arms wide, a flush rising on his cheeks, and murmured with absolute rapture, "It's a masterpiece... the most beautiful work of art..."
"Beautiful my ass!"
Beside him stood a bald, middle-aged man, his face slick with sweat and his jowls trembling, the head of the Haiqi Chamber of Commerce.
He kept frantically wiping his brow, muttering curses under his breath.
"Do you have any idea how close I came to dying today?! When I went back, the entire company, every floor, was covered in blood! Corpses everywhere! The walls and doors were clawed to shreds, like some kind of monster beast had broken in! If I'd come back a little earlier, I'd be dead already!"
The Haiqi Chamber of Commerce had earned far too many enemies over the years. The bald man couldn't even begin to guess who had been responsible for that kind of slaughter.
Stiel shot him a brief, dismissive glance but said nothing.
"Anyway, you have to protect me!" the bald man demanded, his voice sharp with terror. "If I die, there'll be no more business! The person backing you won't be happy about that! And besides, Lord Feld won't let you off either!"
Stiel suddenly grinned, a chilling sight.
"They're here."
"What?" The bald man froze for a second, then he heard it: the sound of the mob surging up the slope below, the chaotic roar of thousands of voices rising like a tidal wave toward the palace.
Moments later, Stiel said quietly, "It's our turn to act."
The guards positioned in front of the palace stood tense, their faces pale, as the sea of dark, enraged figures surged up the hill toward them.
Bang! Bang!
The bald man flinched as several muzzle flashes erupted in front of Stiel.
He heard Stiel shouting down toward the mob below, his voice dripping with utter contempt:
"Filthy peasants! Do you even know what you're doing!?"
By the time Lucci and his team arrived at the royal palace, the entire complex was already engulfed in fire and smoke.
Royal guards and citizens clashed violently in the courtyards, creating a scene of utter, blood-soaked chaos.
Through a shattered palace roof, the King's upper body could barely be seen beneath the rubble; a fallen wine glass lay beside his limp hand, rolling across an expensive carpet.
Lucci, Jabra, and the others soared past using Geppo (Moonwalk). They spared only a single glance for the wreckage before pressing on toward the treasury.
But the closer they got, the worse the carnage became... Royal guards, Marines, and even agents in black suits lay sprawled across the halls, bleeding out onto the polished floors.
Suddenly... BOOM!
A deafening explosion burst from ahead. The solid steel gates of the treasury room bulged violently outward from the blast, then, with another thunderous crash, they blew apart completely!
A black shadow shot out from within, no, not one, but many bodies, flung violently from inside the vault.
Each one rolled across the ground, eyes rolled back, coughing up blood.
Among them were royal guards, Marines, black-clad operatives... ... and one face that Blueno and the others instantly recognized.
"Kumadori!" Jabra roared, instantly transforming into his wolf form as he leapt high into the air, catching the lion-man mid-fall.
The moment he did, he noticed something shocking... Kumadori's long mane, normally wild and full, had been torn out in clumps, leaving bloody patches of exposed scalp, as if ripped off by some brutal, tearing force.
"Wah... !" Kumadori spat a mouthful of blood onto Jabra's shoulder, his face drained of all color. "Impossible... could he also be an immortal? Or... is he the true immortal?!"
"Hey, Kumadori! Don't start talking nonsense, I can't understand a word!" Jabra shouted as he landed heavily, the battered Wano-born agent still slumped on his back. "Who the hell are you talking about!?"
"It's... him..."
Jabra froze at the sound of Lucci's low, taut voice.
He looked up, and saw it.
At the blasted-open gates of the treasury, Blueno and Fukuro the Silent stood wide-eyed, gazing at the figure revealed within.
At the center of the wrecked chamber stood Lucci, already halfway transformed into his human-leopard hybrid form, exuding a suffocating killing aura, the kind that only appeared when he was fighting at full, unbridled strength.
All three CP9 agents had their eyes locked on the same person standing inside the treasury.
"Hmm?"
Liam stood there, one foot resting casually on a pile of shimmering gold, a bald middle-aged man dangling limply in his hand, the man's head slick with fresh blood.
He tilted his head slightly, his eyes gleaming in the dark.
"So... the little cats and dogs have come too?"
(End Of This Chapter)
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