"One, two, three—run with everything you’ve got?"
Hyogoro froze.
He immediately grabbed Nekomamushi’s arm and hurriedly said,
"Nekomamushi, what are you talking about? Don’t forget, we’re samurai!"
"Even if we know we’re going to lose, my code of honor absolutely won’t allow me to run away!"
"Hahaha! So-called samurai are nothing more than a bunch of useless fools."
"Then I’ll use this brat as an appetizer for my drink!"
Babanuki suddenly burst out from within the crowd.
He had used the advancing guards as cover and concealed himself among them, waiting for an opportunity to launch a surprise attack.
As the Chief Warden, he might not have been particularly clever, but he still understood what it meant when an enemy appeared at the prison.
If he could exploit an opening and defeat these intruders, that would naturally be the best possible outcome.
After looking around, he quickly identified the youngest person among them—and the one who had been drinking nonstop from a liquor gourd—as Lucas.
In Babanuki’s eyes, Lucas was clearly the easiest target.
"Brat, you can only blame yourself for standing out so much!"
"Die!"
Babanuki laughed viciously.
His enormous trunk instantly became coated in Armament Haki.
Like an iron whip, it tore through the air with a terrifying whistle as it slammed toward Lucas.
Bang!
A heavy collision echoed across the entire area.
Everyone froze.
The elephant’s trunk, descending with tremendous force like an iron whip, had been stopped less than a foot from Lucas.
A translucent manifestation of a Thousand-Armed Guanyin had appeared around him, blocking the attack head-on.
The moment Nekomamushi and Inuarashi saw the Guanyin phantom surrounding Lucas, their nerves immediately tightened to the limit.
Without having time to think, they shouted,
"Run!"
Run?
Hyogoro, Kawamatsu, and the other prisoners froze.
Shouldn’t they be charging forward?
Why were they running away before even making a move?
But just as that thought surfaced in their minds, Lucas suddenly raised his head.
A terrifying aura that words could barely describe erupted like a volcano.
BOOM!
A tangible wave of Conqueror’s Haki burst forth from his body with the force of a raging tide crashing against the shore.
Babanuki, who had been standing right in front of him, suddenly felt as though an invisible mountain had slammed directly into him.
His eyes bulged wide.
He opened his mouth and spat out a mouthful of blood.
His entire body was blasted backward like a cannonball.
He crashed into the guards rushing up behind him.
The tremendous force sent dozens of guards along the path flying as well.
The remaining hundreds of guards stared in terror as the overwhelming wave of Conqueror’s Haki swept toward them.
They fled in all directions as if they had seen a ghost.
What the hell was this? A tsunami?!
Hyogoro, Kawamatsu, and the other prisoners were completely dumbfounded.
They felt as though they had been caught in the middle of a raging storm, suffocating as if they could be swept away at any moment.
They finally understood why Nekomamushi and Inuarashi had immediately told them to run.
Recalling the warning they had just received, Hyogoro and the others no longer had time to worry about anything else.
They turned around and desperately chased after Nekomamushi and Inuarashi.
"You bastard! You clearly said we’d run when you counted to three!"
"Why didn’t you count?!"
"I did count to three in my head!"
"How could there not be a three?!"
Nekomamushi shouted without looking back.
Hyogoro, who was already running for his life, stumbled when he heard this and nearly fell flat on his face.
But at this point, he couldn’t afford to care about anything.
With death itself chasing him from behind, he squeezed every last ounce of strength from his body and desperately ran for his life.
The only thing he could do was occasionally glance back.
Yet the moment he turned his head, the first thing he saw was the enormous wave of Conqueror’s Haki rising into the heavens.
Its momentum showed no sign of diminishing as it crashed directly into the gates of Udon Prison.
BOOM!
The massive shockwave swept across the entire area like a Category 12 hurricane.
Even Hyogoro and the others, who had already fled a considerable distance, were violently thrown off their feet by the raging blast.
No one knew how much time had passed.
When the clouds of dust finally dispersed, Hyogoro and the others—who had retreated more than one or two kilometers and were already completely exhausted—struggled to their feet amid the ruins.
They turned around.
Their eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets.
Their faces were filled with utter disbelief.
It was broken!
The thick steel gates of Udon Prison, regarded as its most impregnable defense, had been blasted apart.
A massive opening had been torn straight through them.
The two enormous gates, each dozens of meters tall, had collapsed heavily onto the ground.
The once-flat stone quarry had been transformed into a wasteland.
Within a kilometer of Lucas, everything had shattered as easily as paper.
Hundreds of guards lay scattered across the ground, blood pouring from their mouths, their fates unknown.
As for Babanuki, the Chief Warden himself had been violently embedded into a massive rock formation.
His eyes were rolled back, and he had passed out completely.
The power of a single strike was this terrifying!
It had annihilated the entire fighting force of Udon Prison.
It had even blown apart the prison gates.
If they hadn’t witnessed this scene with their own eyes, the people present would never have believed that it was real.
They looked at the slender figure still standing exactly where he had been, casually drinking from his liquor gourd.
One after another, they swallowed hard.
They finally understood why Nekomamushi and Inuarashi had ignored all the etiquette expected of samurai and immediately told them to run.
After witnessing that single attack, what good was samurai honor supposed to do?
Facing the long-lost freedom beyond the shattered gates, a wildly absurd thought suddenly flashed through Hyogoro’s mind.
He grabbed Nekomamushi and Inuarashi by the arms and excitedly demanded,
"Nekomamushi! Inuarashi!"
"Tell me quickly!"
"Did Lord Oden’s prophecy finally come true?"
"After all these decades, has someone finally appeared who can lead Wano to reopen its borders?"
"Tell me!"
"Is he Kozuki Momonosuke?!"
Pfft!
Lucas spat out the liquor in his mouth.
He stared at Hyogoro’s fervent expression and instantly found himself completely unable to understand the man’s train of thought.
To be honest, when Lucas had come to Wano this time, he had actually planned to see whether he could run into Momonosuke.
After all, in his previous life, his friends had spent so many years chanting the slogan "Momonosuke must die."
He figured he should at least carry on that fine tradition.
He simply hadn’t expected that he’d arrived too early.
However, faced with Hyogoro’s misunderstanding, Lucas rolled his eyes.
Then his eyebrows suddenly rose.
He quickly looked into the distance.
"Nekomamushi, Inuarashi, I’ll leave things here to you."
"Don’t forget our agreement."
After leaving those words behind, Lucas vanished from the spot.
The ghostlike scene left Hyogoro even more astonished, and the urgency in his expression intensified.
The prisoners around them, as well as Kawamatsu, were no different.
Feeling everyone’s gazes upon them, Nekomamushi and Inuarashi exchanged a glance.
They could only smile bitterly.
"Boss Hyogoro, we’d certainly like him to be Young Master Momonosuke too."
"But would Young Master Momonosuke really grow up to be that handsome?"
"Besides, just looking at Young Master Momonosuke makes people want to kill him."
"When you saw this man, did you have any urge to kill him?"
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