Having successfully landed his blow, Lucci vanished from his spot and reappeared instantly in front of Brook, driving a single finger straight out.
"Finger Pistol!"
BOOM!
Before Brook could offer any form of reaction, he was violently blasted backward.
Bael moved to intervene immediately, but the remaining masked agent intercepted him, cutting off his path.
"She's ours!"
A surge of triumph washed over Lucci as he reached his hand toward Robin, who lay exhausted on the stone floor.
"Robin-chan!" Sanji roared in sheer desperation.
CLANG!
Zoro traded a furious clash with his masked opponent, his face contorting with panic. He cut his gaze frantically toward Robin.
"ROBIN!!" the Straw Hat crew screamed at the top of their lungs.
Just as Lucci's clawed hand was about to make contact with her, a figure materialized directly in front of him and clamped down on his wrist with a vice-like grip.
"Who do you think you are? Our younger brother isn't someone a piece of trash like you gets to criticize!" Drake stood firm in mid-air, looking down at Lucci with an aura of absolute dominance.
Their eyes locked in a fraction of a second. Lucci struck first, twisting his captured hand in an attempt to counter-grab Drake while snapping a heavy kick through the air.
"Tempest Kick!"
A sharp, flying slash tore through the atmosphere, racing straight toward Drake's face.
Drake merely cast a casual glance at the incoming blade before executing a teleportation into the upper sky. Lucci, who had maintained his tight grip on Drake, was dragged along into the heavens.
Faced with this sudden, reality-bending shift in coordinates, Lucci was momentarily stunned.
What is this?!
In that exact microsecond of disorientation, Drake teleported back down to the ground, slamming Lucci ruthlessly into the stone floor.
KABOOM!
"Ugh..." Lucci let out a muffled groan. Yet, his response time was incredibly swift. Suppressing the agonizing pain, he immediately flipped backward and vaulted away, widening the distance between himself and Drake.
Seeing this, Drake cast a brief look of genuine approval at the assassin.
He was indeed a weapon forged from a lifetime of rigorous, unforgiving training; his physical reflexes and adaptability far surpassed ordinary human limits. Unfortunately, against the absolute manipulation of space, such traits were entirely trivial.
"Crush!" Drake pressed his open palm down against the empty air. An invisible, colossal weight manifested instantly, slamming a completely unprepared Lucci flat against the ground.
Without giving him a single moment to breathe, Drake closed the distance, unleashing a localized spatial fracture.
BOOM!
The surrounding space fractured and collapsed layer by layer. The devastating shockwave of the spatial distortion slammed directly into Lucci's frame, forcing a violent spray of blood from his lips.
Having sustained two catastrophic impacts in immediate succession, Lucci was left completely bewildered. He had no understanding of how Drake was executing his attacks. If he couldn't decipher the fundamental nature of this ability, even fighting at full strength would be a futile waste of stamina.
"Luffy is our younger brother. Have you memorized that yet?" Drake's cold voice echoed directly beside his ear once more.
Lucci couldn't even track how Drake was moving. A phenomena this bizarre and absolute was something he had never encountered in his entire life. While his mind raced to calculate a countermeasure, Drake's fist came hurtling toward him again.
He desperately wanted to dodge, but his physical vessel refused to budge. Drake had already compressed the surrounding space, locking his body in an invisible vise.
BOOM!
The concussive energy of the fracture hit him square in the face. Lucci's eyes rolled back as a mixture of blood and saliva sprayed from his mouth. It took a long, agonizing moment before his consciousness managed to snap back to reality.
The sheer brutality of the one-sided beating sent a primal chill running through the hearts of everyone watching.
What terrifying power!
They had all witnessed Lucci's formidable strength just moments prior, yet in front of Drake, the CP0 leader was rendered completely helpless. At least, that was the indisputable reality right now. How could they not be shaken to their core?
"Boss!" the remaining four masked agents cried out in pure disbelief, staring at Drake as he systematically dismantled their leader.
There was simply no remedy for it; spatial manipulation was entirely unpredictable and impossible to defend against. Anyone crossing blades with Drake for the very first time would invariably suffer from this profound sense of helplessness.
Unless an individual possessed an incredibly advanced level of Observation Haki, dodging Drake's spatial manipulation was a mathematical impossibility. After all, the folding of space could not be perceived by the naked eye. Under normal circumstances, one could only hope to intercept his attacks by preemptively deciphering his physical execution style.
The world was filled with natural combat geniuses and battle-hardened monsters who could deduce the trajectory of Drake's spatial coordinates based on the miniscule shifts in his posture.
BIG MOM was precisely that kind of monster. During their initial clash, she had been left entirely without a defense because the nature of Drake's power was too elusive. Yet during their subsequent engagement, she had avoided being completely suppressed. She had successfully grasped the precise timing of Drake's teleports and the exact mechanism he used to lock her movements.
Compounded by the unified assistance of the Big Mom Pirates, the battle had evolved into a legitimate stalemate. It was precisely because of their adaptive coordination that Drake had sustained a few minor injuries of his own.
And Lucci was undeniably a genius among geniuses when it came to the art of war. Through this brief exchange of blows, his tactical mind had already deduced the core parameters of Drake's capability—it was a form of absolute restraint coupled with unblockable, explosive point-blank damage.
But understanding a technique and conquering it were two entirely different matters. This ability was practically a logical paradox! Finding a flaw in spatial manipulation wasn't something that could be achieved in a single day, nor was it a riddle an ordinary warrior could solve.
"Again!" Lucci roared in a violent frenzy, charging toward Drake in his fully unleashed Hybrid form.
He refused to accept this. When it came to pure combat, he had never feared a single soul. Even when staring down a Yonko, his heart had never wavered. He genuinely believed that with his innate talent and specialized training, purging the world of pirates was nothing more than an inevitability.
Drake merely raised a hand. A massive spike composed of condensed space erupted violently from the stone floor. This specific application was a concept Drake had pioneered during his previous tactical analysis of Luffy's combat style; it was highly effective, though it placed a minor strain on his mental focus. Forcing the fluid fabric of space to crystallize into a concrete structural shape required immense concentration.
STAB!
The spatial spear pierced cleanly through Lucci's left leg.
Before the assassin could recover, Drake crossed the intervening distance in a single stride, appearing right before his face. He unleashed a localized spatial tremor, blasting Lucci straight up into the high heavens.
"Ma-ma-ma-ma... MA-MA!"
The colossal flagship of the Charlotte family sliced through the waves, dropping anchor alongside the island. Standing at the vanguard, BIG MOM vaulted into the air, leaping across the distance to land heavily upon Onigashima.
"DRAKE!!"
A giant, heavily chipped broadsword came cleaving down, its trajectory aimed squarely at Drake's neck.
The entire battlefield held its breath in unison.
The Emperor of the Sea, BIG MOM!
The sudden intrusion of a literal natural disaster left them paralyzed with fear. No one dared to make a single movement; they could only watch in a daze.
"BIG MOM!" Drake extended his hand, materializing a brilliant, crimson-red spirit blade into his palm to parry the descending broadsword.
KABOOM!
A thunderous shockwave erupted from the point of impact.
Zzzzt...
Bolts of dark red lightning rippled violently across the atmosphere, saturating the entire clearing. Simultaneously, the space surrounding BIG MOM began to violently churn, folding inward to crush her.
"Candy Wall!"
Charlotte Perospero, the eldest son, frantically swung his candy staff. He manifested a massive, cylindrical wall of hardened candy, enveloping BIG MOM in a protective barrier.
BOOM!
The spatial compression pulverized the Candy Wall into fine dust in a fraction of a second, but it successfully bought BIG MOM a crucial moment of reprieve. She used the opening to vault out of the collapsing spatial coordinates, launching another ferocious assault toward Drake.
Evidently, the Big Mom Pirates had slowly engineered a working methodology to counter Drake's spatial dominance.
However...
Drake took a single step forward, bypassing the Emperor entirely to materialize directly in front of Perospero. Through their prior warfare, he had easily identified that Perospero was the critical lynchpin and the primary vulnerability of this collaborative formation.
"During our last bout, I merely claimed your arm and spared your life. Since you don't know how to cherish mercy, you can die right here," Drake murmured coldly into Perospero's ear.
Perospero's entire frame froze, his pupils dilating in sheer horror. Before his nervous system could register a defensive response, Drake's spirit blade had already pierced cleanly through his heart.
SHUCK!
In that singular microsecond, it felt as though the very flow of time had ground to a complete standstill.