"Get down!"
A soldier shouted frantically—
Whoosh!
—but it was already too late.
Frank slammed his finger on the trigger.
A rocket, trailing a blazing tail of fire, streaked through the air and slammed straight into the lead vehicle—
BOOM!
The explosion shattered the entire transport in a single, deafening blast.
"He's out of ammo! Fire!"
Seeing Frank lower the spent launcher, the squad leader barked the order to attack.
A storm of bullets poured toward Frank.
Round after round tore into his body—
but he didn't fall.
He didn't even bleed.
"Not good! He's immune to bullets!"
"He's a mutant! Definitely a mutant!"
"Report to command—the mission has failed!"
"Prepare to retreat! Do not engage further!"
The soldiers' discipline was impressive.
Even under shock and confusion, they moved in unison—
fight, defend, withdraw, report.
They knew when a battle couldn't be won.
But Frank had no intention of letting them escape.
One after another, rocket launchers materialized from the shifting mire of his body.
He fired relentlessly, obliterating every remaining military vehicle.
The convoy was reduced to burning wreckage,
and the ground was littered with the dead and dying.
A few officers were captured alive—
the rest were nothing but ash and twisted metal.
The thunderous explosions echoing through the valley—
those were the blasts the people back at the villa had just heard.
No one there could have imagined
that mere minutes after leaving, the convoy would be annihilated in a firefight of this scale.
"Frank was captured—could it be someone came to rescue him?"
"Impossible! Who would dare snatch a prisoner from the military?"
"Why not? Maybe it's the same people who kidnapped Tony.
Frank could've been their spy planted beside him,
and now that he's been exposed, they came to pull him out."
"Or maybe it's just a cleanup—killing him to silence the witness."
The board members argued among themselves,
each one speculating wildly.
Obadiah's face was ashen and cold.
Those explosions—they had to have wiped out every vehicle the military brought.
And as for survivors… he doubted there were any.
This—this was completely beyond his calculations.
Frank and the people backing him were insane!
They'd actually dared to attack the military head-on!
He had already asked his contacts in the army to investigate Frank's background.
They'd confirmed that he was an elite operative,
a fully trained Marine Corps veteran.
But that was still within the realm of human limits.
How could one man, even a trained soldier,
wipe out an entire armed escort unit?
They'd planned everything precisely—
the moment they left Tony's villa, Frank was to be eliminated.
There was no possible room for a counterattack.
Yet somehow, Frank's side had struck first.
Before they even reached the rendezvous, the entire convoy was destroyed.
The enemy's firepower and coordination were overwhelming—
far beyond anything Obadiah had anticipated.
And the reason was simple:
Frank was no ordinary man anymore.
Very few people knew he had become a Devil Fruit user.
In fact, among everyone present, only Tony knew the truth—
he'd seen Frank's power firsthand when Frank saved him.
That was why Tony had believed Qin Xiao's words.
And why he'd chosen to eat the Yomi Yomi no Mi—the Fruit of the Underworld—himself.
To be honest, Tony hadn't felt any change after consuming it.
Sometimes he even wondered if the fruit was a scam.
But he wasn't about to test it by dying just to find out.
Now, watching the board members panic,
Tony saw nothing but clowns.
They were all just Obadiah's puppets.
This time, Tony vowed,
he would take back full control of Stark Industries with his own hands.
The panic of others didn't shake him in the slightest—
that was the power of information asymmetry.
As Obadiah instinctively reached for his phone to call for help,
a shadow appeared outside Tony's villa.
The Punisher.
Frank.
The white skull emblazoned across his chest gleamed under the lights.
Most shocking of all—
he was carrying another rocket launcher over his shoulder.
Standing calmly outside the villa gates,
he looked in through the glass walls, his expression unreadable.
Then—
he pulled the trigger.
BOOM!
A rocket streaked across the courtyard straight toward Obadiah.
In that final instant, Obadiah's eyes went wide with terror.
Damn it!
That bastard—he's really doing it!?
The board members around him froze in horror.
A single rocket could kill half the people in the room!
Even Tony stood stunned, unable to react.
Frank… why was he acting so recklessly!?
BOOM!
A deafening explosion tore through the villa.
Obadiah was blown apart on the spot—
dead before he even hit the floor.
Eyes wide open.
Not even in death did he find peace.