The torrent of swamp collided silently with the colossal black hand. Like an advancing army, the swamp climbed over the hand, completely enveloping it.
BOOM!
Offering absolutely no resistance, the giant hand simply disintegrated, overwhelmed and crushed by the sheer mass of the swamp!
Wilder emerged from the passage, stepping into the vast cavern, his expression impassive as he looked up.
The very air seemed to freeze for a moment. All the surrounding monsters abruptly stopped moving.
"Wh-What?!" After a long pause, a sharp, crazed voice shrieked from somewhere indeterminate, its source impossible to pinpoint.
"You… did you come to provide nourishment for me too?! Hsssssssss!" With that, the hordes of monsters began to stir again, surging with a manic excitement, as if beholding a particularly satisfying prey.
"You! You'll be even more nutritious! Hsssssssss!"
As the creatures moved, the black mist filling the entire cavern seemed to roil and coalesce! Another giant hand, identical in scale to the first, began to form and descend from the cavern ceiling. Simultaneously, the countless monsters on the ground surged forward!
Just as I thought… this guy can't gain information through these things, Wilder mused, his eyes narrowing slightly. Recalling his encounter in the jungle and the disembodied voice's earlier words, his suspicion was confirmed.
The mastermind didn't recognize him. Even though the jungle monsters had fought him, the entity likely only knew that those monsters had been defeated. Perhaps it had forcibly recalled them, causing them to dissipate, or maybe their dissolution was merely a passive reaction upon defeat. Either way, it proved one crucial thing: the monsters were vulnerable to attacks.
The giant hand, however, didn't pause for Wilder's internal deliberations. Its shadow fell over him, and over Claire and Yves who were now behind him.
Wilder's greatcoat billowed slightly. He tilted his head back, his eyes still calm and unreadable. With a faint gurgling sound, a pool of swamp materialized at his feet.
"Great Swamp Heaven!"
No further words, no wasted movements. Wilder once again chose the most fitting technique for the situation.
A violent deluge of swamp surged skyward with incredible force. Compared to this roiling wave, the descending giant hand seemed like a lone boat on a stormy sea, utterly insignificant. Within breaths, it was swallowed whole midway up the surging column of swamp, vanishing without causing even a ripple.
This was merely a prelude. The swamp continued its relentless upward surge! The monsters filled the entire cavern, easily numbering over a thousand, and Wilder's swamp wave engulfed hundreds of them in its massive radius!
This Great Swamp Heaven was on a far larger scale than any he had used previously, consuming a proportionally immense amount of stamina.
But Wilder wasn't concerned. With his current physical conditioning, unleashing a dozen more attacks of this magnitude wouldn't be a problem.
BOOM!
The swamp surged nearly to the cavern ceiling before finally crashing down like a catastrophic flood. Amidst a chorus of continuous, guttural roars, monster after monster was struck by the deluge, submerged and swallowed by the thick, heavy swamp.
"Holy crap! That's the boss for ya!" Bacon suddenly yelled, having found his opportunity. The monstrous form that had engulfed him seemed to inflate slightly, then burst apart. Bacon, covered in long white fur from his Zoan transformation, leaped free.
Claire: "…"
Yves: "…"
Pop! Pop!
The membrane balloons encasing Claire and Yves burst. They both turned to stare blankly at the newly freed Bacon.
"Hehehe…" Bacon scratched his head sheepishly under their pointed gazes.
The three sensibly moved to stand behind Wilder. They stood atop the swamp covering the cavern floor without sinking, clearly supported by Wilder's precise control.
Hissing sounds filled the air as black smoke rose from the swamp below. The hundreds of monsters consumed moments earlier were already reforming, coalescing from the dissipating smoke.
Wilder's expression remained unchanged. He had fully anticipated this.
His Observation Haki blanketed the immediate surroundings, though it couldn't yet encompass the entirety of the vast underground cavern.
But it was enough…
Swish! Wilder vanished from his spot.
He wasn't foolish enough to waste time fighting monsters that clearly required significant effort to put down permanently. Capture the leader first – that was his objective.
While he had some theories on how to deal with the monsters themselves, capturing the mastermind was the more direct and efficient path.
So…
Vmm! Armament Haki flared, coating Wilder's right hand in shimmering jet-black.
"Found you."
A cold, sinister grin spread across Wilder's face. His right hand formed into a claw and shot forward!
Swoosh! His Haki-clad hand punctured a hole through the swirling black mist where the voice seemed to originate. His arm plunged through the opening.
"What!? No!" A panicked cry erupted from within the mist. Wilder yanked his hand back, dragging a small, thin figure out with him.
"N-No… Impossible!" The figure struggled frantically in his grasp. It was small, incredibly small – holding it felt like holding a monkey.
The creature was emaciated, its ribs clearly visible beneath thin skin. It stood barely 1.2 or 1.3 meters tall. Its face was a mass of wrinkles, its ankles disturbingly long, two or three times the length of a normal human's. Its ears were oddly pointed, and its mouth was filled with rows of fine, sharp teeth, which were currently clamped down, gnawing uselessly on Wilder's Haki-coated hand.
"What the… It's just a little kid," Bacon commented, appearing beside Wilder with his usual impeccable timing now that the immediate threat seemed contained. He peered at the creature, then muttered dismissively.
"And ugly," Claire added, looking at the creature with clear distaste.
Suddenly, the small creature stopped struggling. It looked up, fixing its round, unsettling eyes on Wilder, then shifted its gaze to Bacon and Claire. A sinister, eerie smile stretched its features.
"You can't kill me!" it shrieked, its voice grating. "I don't know how you managed to grab me, but! I am immortal! I will never die!"
"Like this?" Wilder asked calmly, holding the creature up before him. His blackened fist slammed down!
Crack-crack!
The ground beneath the creature fractured. Its round eyes bulged, and it spat out a mouthful of blood with a strangled cry. "Waah!"
Its small body lay crumpled on the hard cavern floor, a noticeable crater denting the ground beneath its back.
"Or maybe like this?"
Wilder raised his hand again, preparing another punch. This time, however, he retracted his Armament Haki, striking downwards with an ordinary fist!
Hsssssssss! Before the punch could land, the creature's body dissolved, dissipating into a cloud of black mist that swiftly began to drift away, attempting to merge with the ambient mist in the cavern.
But instantly, a black arm – made of swamp – shot out from Wilder's body, plunging into the dispersing mist. It grasped blindly, then closed around a thin, bony arm!
With a sharp pull, the creature's form was forcibly re-coalesced from the mist, slamming hard onto the cavern floor once more.
"A strange ability," Wilder assessed coolly. Not a Logia, yet it can actively achieve a form of elementalization… No, not elementalization. It's more like… the tangible manifestation of some ethereal concept.
"So…" Wilder grit his teeth, his face suddenly contorting in pain. "What is this feeling?!" The agitation within his soul spiked dramatically, becoming almost unbearable, feeling as if something were trying to claw its way out from inside him.
"Get… Seastone cuffs on him! Now!" Wilder forced the words out, struggling to suppress the agony. His face remained a mask of calm, but a vein pulsed violently at his temple. He controlled his power, pushing a small box out from within his swampy form.
Claire quickly retrieved the box and opened it. Inside lay a set of Seastone handcuffs.