Chapter 956: Sir Crocodile vs. "Thousand Arms" Cracker

Chapter 956: Chapter 956: Sir Crocodile vs. "Thousand Arms" Cracker

"Cracker-niisan!"

"Thank goodness! Cracker-sama is here!"

"Get him, Cracker-sama! Crush this arrogant bastard!"

"..."

The pirates of the Big Mom Pirates erupted into thunderous cheers. The arrival of Charlotte Cracker brought an immense surge of morale to their staggering ranks.

Conversely, the men of the Chris Pirates felt a suffocating pressure weighing down on them as they stared at this legendary pirate with a bounty crossing the eight-hundred-million mark. His sheer, commanding presence alone felt as though it could single-handedly suppress three entire armies.

"Crocodile! You miserable lapdog abandoned by the Marines and the World Government! How dare you help that Golden Ring bastard oppose us?! I’ll be taking your head as a gift for Mama!"

Cracker advanced with heavy, deliberate strides, each footprint causing the earth to tremble beneath him. His furious roar, coupled with his terrifyingly oppressive aura, sent waves of sheer panic through the soldiers of the Clifford Kingdom. Many trembled so violently that they could no longer even hold their weapons, leaving them to clatter rhythmically against the ground.

The moment his words fell, the massive greatsword in Cracker’s hand began to spin at high speed with a loud buzz-buzz-buzz. Jet-black Armament Haki instantly coated and hardened the rotating blade as he drove it forward in a vicious thrust.

"Pretzel Roll!!!"

"I won’t let you have your way!"

Daz Bonez’s eyes turned ice-cold. His arms instantaneously transformed into gleaming steel blades as he moved to intercept Cracker’s assault.

Suddenly, Raisin blurred into motion, intercepting him with a ferocious downward slash of his long blade.

"Your opponent is me!"

Clang—!

A blinding flash of sword-light sparked as metal clashed violently against metal. A powerful shockwave erupted between Raisin and Daz Bonez, ripping through the terrain and fracturing the sandy ground below into thousands of hairline cracks.

Simultaneously, Crocodile had no intention of letting Daz Bonez fight his battles. He swung his left hand forward, his massive golden hook instantly cloaked in a dense layer of black Armament Haki as it collided head-on with Cracker’s incoming assault.

Boom—!

A deafening explosion rocked the battlefield as the jet-black hook clashed with the high-speed rotating greatsword. The atmospheric pressure from the impact buckled outward, whipping up a violent gale that sent massive sheets of desert sand spiraling into the sky.

Suddenly, a new right arm materialized right beneath Cracker’s existing one. Wielding an identical duplicate greatsword, he brought it down in a vicious arc aimed squarely at Crocodile. The strike tore cleanly through Crocodile’s torso, cleaving him into two, though the sharp wind generated by the blade drew nothing but cascading waves of yellow sand.

"Splitting one into two, and two into three... ’Thousand Arms’ Cracker, indeed..." Crocodile’s upper torso floated effortlessly into the air. He extended his right hand toward his opponent, his arm morphing into a long stream of extending sand that rapidly compressed into a razor-sharp sand blade, thrusting directly at Cracker’s face.

Cracker didn’t show a hint of panic. He swung his left arm upward, manifesting a dense biscuit shield out of thin air directly in his path.

Clang—!

The shield solidly deflected Crocodile’s sand blade, generating a fierce burst of turbulent air currents that kicked up another blinding screen of dust.

Immediately following the block, Cracker barked out in a deep voice: "Double Pretzel Roll!!!"

Raising both of his right arms simultaneously, the dual greatswords began to spin at a breakneck velocity. Hardened by a glossy layer of jet-black Armament Haki, he thrust both weapons forward in unison.

"Desert Spada!!!" Crocodile bellowed, refusing to give an inch. His arm dissolved into a torrent of sand as he swung it forward, unleashing a colossal, crescent-shaped blade of pressurized sand.

Boom—!

The high-speed rotating greatswords collided fiercely with the massive sand blade. It was a classic clash of absolute offense against absolute offense, locking both attacks in a desperate, grinding stalemate in mid-air.

After a few tense seconds, the crescent sand blade finally shattered under the pressure. Cracker’s dual greatswords pierced straight through the center, causing countless grains of sand to spray wildly across the clearing.

However, Cracker’s relentless forward momentum was brought to a dead stop. Even his exceptionally dense biscuit arms suffered fine, spiderweb-like fractures under the immense force of the sand blade, though they began to seamlessly repair themselves a heartbeat later.

"Hmph. Is this truly the extent of the so-called Three Sweet Commanders?"

Crocodile let out a disdainful scoff, a mocking smirk playing across his face. "Two years ago, I failed to claim the old man Whitebeard’s head. Taking Big Mom’s head two years later sounds like an excellent alternative. But before that, I’ll be taking yours, if only to stop your arrogant mouth from polluting my ears!"

Crocodile’s casual disrespect immediately drove Cracker into a state of absolute fury.

"You arrogant bastard! I’ll butcher you!"

Without another word, Cracker’s entire frame shuddered violently. Multiple arms instantly sprouted from his left and right sides, some wielding massive swords, others holding heavy shields. Even his legs multiplied into four as he sprinted forward, his heavy footsteps hammering against the earth with a rhythmic thud-thud-thud.

"Haah!!!"

In the blink of an eye, Cracker closed the distance. With a furious roar, his six sword-wielding arms moved in perfect unison, thrusting six colossal greatswords forward simultaneously in a coordinated, devastating strike.

Crocodile chose not to take the blow head-on. His body instantly dissolved into a swirling vortex of sand, soaring high into the relative safety of the sky.

Boom—!

The six greatswords pierced deep into the earth where he had just been standing, blasting a massive crater into the ground and sending shattered stone and sand rocketing outward.

"Desert Spada!!!"

High in the air, the sand coalesced to reform Crocodile’s upper torso. His arms reshaped themselves into giant sand blades as he brought them down with terrifying velocity, unleashing four colossal, intersecting shockwaves of sand.

Cracker reacted instantly, throwing up two of his arms to interpose his ultra-dense biscuit shields before him. The shields vibrated imperceptibly, a faint, near-invisible gleam passing across their surface.

Boom—!

In the next instant, the four massive sand blades slammed heavily against Cracker’s dual shields. The cataclysmic impact generated a towering pillar of dust and pressurized air that shot straight into the heavens.

The blades generated by Crocodile’s sand were exceptionally sharp, yet Cracker’s highly compressed biscuit shields were legendary for their nigh-impenetrable durability.

However, after a grueling few seconds of atmospheric strain, Crocodile’s sand blades proved to have the superior edge. They cleanly sheared through the biscuit shields, obliterating the shield-wielding arms entirely before carving four deep, jagged lacerations right across Cracker’s torso.

Rumble—!

Driven back by the immense kinetic force behind the sand blades, Cracker was launched backward dozens of meters, crashing heavily onto the dunes and carving a massive trench into the soft sand.

"You bastard...!"

Cracker used his remaining functional arms to push himself up from the earth, glaring with a mixture of shock and fury at Crocodile, who was still floating gracefully in mid-air.

"Die! Desert Grande Espada!!!"

Crocodile roared. Hurtling downward at a breakneck pace, he slammed his sand-transformed palm directly onto the desert floor.

Instantly, the desert floor churned violently. Millions of grains of sand condensed into a massive, solid broadsword of sand that erupted abruptly from the earth right beside Cracker. The colossal blade pierced diagonally upward with blinding speed, striking him dead-center.

With a sharp slice, the incomparably sharp sand broadsword tore cleanly through Cracker’s frame. The near-meter-wide blade of sand sliced his body entirely in half at the waist.

"What—?!"

Cracker’s expression froze in absolute shock as his upper torso slid helplessly down at an angle, collapsing onto the sand.

"Cracker-sama!!!"

"He... He was broken in half!!!"

Countless pirates of the Big Mom Pirates stared with their eyes practically bulging out of their sockets, letting out horrified, panicked shrieks.

A high-ranking executive of the Big Mom Pirates, an elite Sweet Commander, had been effortlessly cleaved in two. How could anyone possess such terrifying power?!

Crocodile looked down at the shattered fragments of Cracker scattered across the floor. His expression remained entirely unreadable as he spoke in a calm, indifferent drawl.

"How much longer do you plan on hiding?"

Sure enough, from within the hollow depths of the severed lower torso, the silhouette of an unfamiliar man with long, spiky purple hair slowly stood up.

"You actually had the nerve... to break my favorite armor!"

Accompanied by a low, gravelly voice dripping with unadulterated venom, the real Charlotte Cracker finally stepped out into the open.