Chapter 149: The Clash of Stitch and String

The moment Moriah burst out of the cell, he had already activated his Kenshoku Haki, naturally sensing the Rankyaku/Finger Gun attack launched at him by Yukikoma.

Having suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Donquixote Doflamingo and reflecting deeply upon it, his combat awareness had recovered significantly.

Using his Doppelman to switch places and evade the attack, a shadow spear materialized in his hand.

"It seems you are not entirely devoid of combat capability after all."

Faced with Yukikoma's deeply sarcastic remark, Moriah laughed in spite of his anger, "Gek-gek-gek-gek-gek! Woman, I will return the things you did to me earlier tenfold!"

As soon as Moriah finished speaking, the shadow spear in his hand was hurled toward Yukikoma at blistering speed.

Simultaneously, his main body transformed into countless shadow bats and swarmed toward her as well.

Seeing Moriah make his move, Emporio Ivankov naturally did not stand idly by.

Employing Newkama Kenpo, he too charged at Yukikoma.

Barthorotolomeo, whose emotions had just been restirred by the camaraderie of the group, also struck. The hatred of being betrayed by companions for decades instantly transferred itself to Yukikoma, the CP0 agent.

"It is precisely because of scumbags like you in the World Government that the bonds between crewmates are shattered. Today, I shall also avenge my fallen brother!"

Although he was now seventy-four years old, having been frozen for thirty years meant his appearance and physical functions were still locked at the age of forty-four.

Coupled with the supplementary bonuses of the More-More Fruit, his combat strength could not be underestimated.

Eating the More-More Fruit allowed the user to multiply the speed, volume, and power of objects or themselves by up to a hundredfold. They could also freely increase their own movement speed to much higher levels, though they could not enlarge living beings other than themselves.

Warder instantly increased his movement speed tenfold, making him five times faster than the Six Powers technique Soru. This allowed him to arrive first, meaning his attack actually reached Yukikoma before Moriah's shadow spear.

Faced with the three-pronged pincer attack, Yukikoma remained completely unfazed.

Though weaponless, she was thoroughly proficient in the Six Powers, and a single Tempest Kick unleashed a wave of red slashing energy to meet Warder's fist head-on.

……

"Fufufufufu! It would seem Magellan is nothing but trash." Doflamingo wore a wicked, charming smile.

Buffon did not waste words with him; he opened with a finishing move, using the Goalkeeper Secret Art: Spiral Punch to strike Doflamingo directly.

"You really are an impatient fellow!"

Doflamingo smiled contemptuously and deployed his Five-Colored Thread. Generating a nearly transparent, thin wire from each of his five fingertips, he assumed a beast-claw posture to lash the five wires at the charging Buffon.

Once these steel-sharp wires touched an opponent's body, they could slice them to ribbons or even cut them in half!

This was Doflamingo's fatal technique for close-quarters combat!

When Buffon's black spiral collided with the threads, however, the scene Doflamingo anticipated did not occur. The threads failed to slice through Buffon's body; instead, Buffon simply burst right through them and continued his charge toward him.

Doflamingo's reaction was swift. He immediately braced his hands against the ground and generated massive surges of string from the floor to defend against Buffon's onslaught.

This was a technique utilized through the awakening of his Devil Fruit ability—White Whip Shield.

As the foremost pioneer in the development and utilization of Devil Fruit abilities in the world, Doflamingo's mastery over his fruit had reached an absolute pinnacle.

Whether for offense or defense, long-range or close-quarters, single-target or area-of-effect, appropriate techniques had been developed for every aspect of the String-String Fruit.

To Buffon, he was undoubtedly a formidable opponent!

Although the name of this White Whip Shield contained the word "shield," it was not as rigid as Mr. 3's wax shield; rather, it relied on the principle of overcoming hardness with softness.

As Buffon's black spiral struck the White Whip Shield, his forward momentum gradually slowed, and the shield began to warp in response to the force of the attack, yet it steadfastly refused to snap.

Before Buffon's rotation could even come to a halt, Doflamingo pulled his hands up from the ground and swept them toward his chest. Instantly, thousands of threads imbued with Busoshoku Haki rose from the ground behind him, shaping themselves into the form of a flamingo's wings as they bypassed the shield to encircle Buffon.

Buffon was well aware of the sharpness of these Busoshoku Haki-infused threads, as he used a similar principle in his own Goalkeeper Secret Art: Goal-Net Strangulation; he simply did not yet know what differences existed between their respective strings.

Using the Six Powers technique Soru to dodge away, countless suture needles materialized between Buffon's fingers in an instant!

Since both were string-based abilities within the Paramecia class, Buffon was eager to determine whether a dominance hierarchy existed between them.

After all, the Stitch-Stitch Fruit was Buffon's foundational ability; if it were suppressed, he would have no choice but to somehow acquire Doflamingo's String-String Fruit.

If he were outmatched by this grandiose schemer of the seas, how could he even speak of resisting the World Government?

Carrying threads and cloaked in black Busoshoku Haki, Buffon's suture needles flew hurtling toward Doflamingo.

Upon seeing this, Doflamingo laughed even more maniacally. "Buffon, if you had brought out the level of skill you used against CP0, I might still consider you an opponent. But pulling out this corpse-stitching parlor trick—I happen to be a completely healthy, living man; I hardly need you to sew up any wounds for me!"

Despite his words, he had no intention of holding back. Drawing his hands back to build power and then thrusting them forward rapidly, he shot dozens of nearly transparent, thin threads from his palms, twisting them together to form a thick, hair-like pillar of string.

He then pulled this pillar back as far as possible before lashing it forward toward Buffon, true to the technique's name: Overwhite Whip!

Yet the moment Buffon's suture needles collided with the Overwhite Whip, an unbelievable sight unfolded!

Instead of attacking Buffon as Doflamingo had anticipated and controlled, the Overwhite Whip reversed direction alongside Buffon's suture needles and came sweeping back toward Doflamingo himself.

Witnessing this, even Shyly, who was locked in fierce combat with Baggio, paused for a fraction of a second before muttering to himself, "What is the meaning of this? Weren't they saying Buffon isn't a Devil Fruit user?"

Taking advantage of that momentary lapse, Baggio's Senbonzakura slashed an opening directly across Shyly's prison uniform.

At that moment, the astonishment in Doflamingo's heart surpassed Shyly's a millionfold. As someone who had pushed his fruit's abilities to such extremes, it was impossible for him not to know about superior-inferior fruit dominance.

Yet, according to all intelligence gathered from every direction, Buffon was not a hammer—he could swim. This had even been personally verified by a Navy Admiral.

The fact that Devil Fruit users cannot swim was an undisputed ironclad law of the world, and no user had ever escaped it, making this entirely incomprehensible to Doflamingo.

Faced with the whip lashing back at him, the deeply arrogant Doflamingo had no intention of dodging. He flatly refused to believe that strings created by his own power could be controlled by someone who wasn't even a user.

He merely assumed Buffon had pushed his suture needles to some godlike level of mastery and achieved this deflection through sheer coincidence.

Buffon himself had not expected such an outcome, though he remained far more composed than Doflamingo.