Chapter 957: Oliver Appears, Cracker’s Urge to Retreat

Chapter 957: Chapter 957: Oliver Appears, Cracker’s Urge to Retreat

"Huh... HUH?!"

"Wh-Who is that guy?!"

"Don’t tell me this is the real Cracker-sama?!"

"So that giant was just armor he was controlling? This is Cracker’s actual face!"

Within the ranks of the Big Mom Pirates, plenty of people had never seen Cracker’s true form. In fact, many of the subsidiary captains under Big Mom’s umbrella had lived their entire lives without ever catching a glimpse of the man behind the biscuits.

"I heard you’re an incredibly weak-willed coward who can’t stand the slightest bit of pain, which is exactly why you hide inside a suit of armor!" Crocodile goaded, looking down at Cracker with a mocking sneer. "Don’t worry. I’ll make my cuts swift. I’ll do my best to make sure you don’t feel a thing!"

As a cornerstone of the Seven Warlords Alliance, Crocodile had secretly slipped into the Clifford Kingdom the moment the Big Mom Pirates declared war on the Chris Pirates. He had spent his time thoroughly analyzing the intelligence portfolios of Big Mom’s high-ranking officers.

The pain-fearing Cracker had left an exceptionally deep impression on him. Crocodile had spent decades ploughing through the treacherous waters of the Grand Line; he had seen those who welcomed death, those who begged for their lives, those who feared pain, and those twisted sadists who relished it...

But an elite pirate so deeply terrified of physical pain that he used his Devil Fruit ability to construct a permanent hollow fortress to hide inside? Cracker was a fascinating first.

Having his ultimate psychological weakness laid bare before the entire battlefield made Cracker’s face flush a violent scarlet. Feeling the sudden shift in the gazes of the surrounding pirates, he let out a humiliated, venomous roar. "You bastard! Who said anything about being afraid of pain?!"

While he normally saw nothing wrong with his methods, having it thrown in his face by an enemy on an active battlefield made him feel an acute sense of public humiliation.

"Why is your face turning so red, then?" Crocodile drawled, intentionally stoking the flames of his rage.

"Drop dead! Cracker Biscuit: Biscuit Soldiers!!!"

Pushed completely past his limit, Cracker unleashed his Paramecia powers in a frenzy. Countless thick biscuits materialized around him, snapping and condensing together at a breakneck speed to form towering, heavily armored Biscuit Soldiers. They manifested one after another across the clearing, each wielding a massive sword and shield, instantly forming a highly disciplined, mechanical legion.

"Tch!"

Watching the rapidly multiplying legion of clay-colored constructs, Crocodile clicked his tongue in irritation. He slammed his palm flat against the desert terrain, violently pushing his Sand-Sand Fruit powers to their absolute maximum.

"Desert Girasole!!!"

Instantly, the sandy ground beneath them transformed into a churning, violent sea of quicksand. The catastrophic, sinking sinkhole expanded outward at an alarming rate.

"Damn it! Quicksand!"

Cracker noticed the outermost line of his Biscuit Soldiers suddenly drop in height as their legs sank deep into the loose earth. Recognizing the immediate danger, he abruptly cut off the production of new units, fiercely commanding the hundreds of existing soldiers to scatter and break away from the sinking zone.

However, as they broke rank to escape, more and more of the dense Biscuit Soldiers were dragged down by the shifting terrain. By the time Cracker successfully navigated his way out of the quicksand basin, nearly half of his legion had already been swallowed whole or buried deep within the earth. No matter how frantically he manipulated his links to make them struggle, the heavy constructs remained entirely paralyzed under the crushing weight of the shifting sand.

"Kuhahaha! It’s useless! Standard numbers games won’t work against a Logia!"

"Die! Sables!!!"

Crocodile laughed uproariously at Cracker’s desperate maneuvering. A miniature sand tornado materialized over his right palm, spinning with violent intensity before he cast it out into the heart of the battlefield.

Rumble—!

The moment the miniature cyclone left his hand, it expanded exponentially. By the time it touched down, it had mutated into a cataclysmic sandstorm that tore across the terrain, throwing up a colossal wall of roaring wind and debris that completely blotted out the sky and earth.

What made it truly terrifying was that the high-speed rotating vortex continued to swell in size, threatening to swallow every piece of matter in its path.

"Logia bastards...!"

Cracker could only watch in impotent rage as his remaining Biscuit Soldiers were sucked one by one into the hundred-meter-tall sand tornado.

Ordinarily, the composition of his Biscuit Soldiers was so densely compressed that even an opponent of Crocodile’s caliber would have to expend significant effort to cleave through them. But now, trapped within the churning vortex, the mass of constructs collided violently against one another. Faced with the friction of their own exact structural durability, the solid biscuit frames were pulverized into fine powder.

It was the universal law of materials: just as it took a diamond to cut a diamond, it took a biscuit to shatter a biscuit.

"Aaaargh! Crocodile-sama—!"

"Stop it! Are you trying to tear this entire island apart?!"

"Cracker-sama... save us!!!"

"Run for your lives! If you get caught in that vortex, you’re dead!"

As the massive sand tornado ripped across island, both the rank-and-file of the Big Mom Pirates and the allied soldiers of the Chris Pirates fled in sheer panic. The battlefield descended into a chorus of weeping and desperate wails as everyone fought to escape the kinetic pull of the storm.

Faced with a simulated natural disaster capable of grinding solid bedrock into dust, even the high-ranking officers didn’t dare draw close, choosing to flee as far as their legs could carry them.

"You absolute piece of trash!"

Cracker’s eyes burned with fury as he looked at the heavy casualties mounting among his subordinates. Yet, he found himself completely handcuffed; Crocodile kept the sandstorm under active, precise guidance, steering it directly at his heels.

Worse still, his legendary legion of Biscuit Soldiers had been rendered utterly useless, dismantled before they could even clash with the enemy vanguard.

"Aaargh!"

Suddenly, a curdling shriek of agony pierced through the chaos right ahead of Cracker. He snapped his head up, his eyes widening as he witnessed Salier, the "Invisible Blade," a prominent subsidiary captain with a bounty of 225 million Berries, collapse into the dirt. The pirate was covered in deep, hemorrhaging lacerations, felled by a dual-wielding swordsman with a sharp, aquiline nose.

Scattered around the swordsman’s boots were dozens of butchered corpses, every single one of them a notorious New World pirate with a multi-million Berry bounty.

Among the fallen were two of Cracker’s primary subsidiary captains: "Winter Wolf" Bori and the "One-Eyed Demon" Moki, who held formidable bounties of 344 million and 290 million Berries respectively.

Yet, they had been harvested like simple weeds by the man standing before him.

"That guy..."

Cracker’s pupils dilated instantly as a wave of paralyzing, visceral bloodlust washed over him. The source of this suffocating intent was none other than the dual-wielding swordsman.

"Yo, Cracker. It’s been a minute." Oliver looked across the short distance separating them, a casual, easygoing smirk on his face as though he were merely bumping into an old neighbor.

"Oliver... It’s you!"

Cracker’s expression grew profoundly heavy. He had never anticipated that the high-ranking executive the Chris Pirates had stationed to hold the Fernal Archipelago would be the legendary "Slayer" himself.

"I was planning to take care of you personally," Oliver said, turning his full attention toward Cracker, his smile twisting into something feral and savage. He gave his sword, Mikazuki Munechika, a casual flick; the thick, viscous blood clinging to the polished steel dripped lazily onto the dry earth, staining the sand a dark crimson. "But it looks like the sand crocodile beat me to the punch."

With the devastating sandstorm rapidly closing in from behind and the lethal presence of Oliver blocking his vanguard, Cracker realized he was trapped in a pincer movement. The sudden threat of being double-teamed by Crocodile and Oliver sparked an immediate urge to retreat within his chest.

"Get out of my way!"

Cracker had no intention of trading banter. With a furious roar, he commanded his last two remaining Biscuit Soldiers to sprint forward and engage Oliver.

Watching the heavy, lumbering steps of the two biscuit constructs closing the distance, a look of disdain crossed Oliver’s features. "Sending toys to do a man’s job...? Are you trying to tell me a joke?"

"Two Sword Style: Shadow of the Moon!!!"

The moment the words left his lips, Oliver blurred forward. Two brilliant, sweeping arcs of sword-light sliced through the air like the crescent reflection of a midnight moon.

Slice—!

A fraction of a second later, the two Biscuit Soldiers stumbled mid-stride. Their upper torsos slid cleanly off their lower halves, collapsing into the sand. The severed edges of the biscuits were perfectly smooth, cut with such surgical precision that not a single crumb was displaced.

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