"Mr. Diamante seems to be struggling! The biggest dark horse in Block B has appeared! He is…he is…"
The participant list for Block B was being tossed behind Gatz one sheet after another. Each match had nearly two hundred contestants. There was no way he could remember all of them.
Before each match began, he would sort through the more famous contestants and prepare detailed introductions for them.
Most of the time, the winners came from among those names. Even if a dark horse appeared, it wasn't anything to fear. It always followed a gradual process, such as eliminating a few opponents in succession first.
That way, Gatz would have enough time to dig up some information on them. But this time, Diamante had deliberately separated the weaker participants into a group of their own, and then used his "Death Enjambre" attack to clear the field. These obscure nobodies simply couldn't withstand Diamante's attack.
Now, in the arena, the only ones left besides Diamante and Redfield was Rebecca, whom Redfield was protecting.
The change had happened too quickly. Gatz had been just about to declare Diamante the sole victor.
The rules said two people would advance, no more, but it never said it couldn't be fewer.
Now Gatz could only stall for time while hurriedly flipping through the documents.
"Found it! This sudden dark horse's name is Red….wait, that's it?!"
Aside from an empty name, there was no other information at all. Based on past experience, this name was probably fake, but there was no helping it. He still had to keep commentating.
"Mr. Diamante has launched a series of fierce attacks! Red keeps retreating and has been forced to the edge of the arena! Looks like Mr. Diamante is preparing his finishing move!"
Gatz's commentary always carried strong personal bias. If he didn't like a contestant, he would avoid praising them, even if they won.
Still, he always paid attention to the audience's preferences. For example, even though he genuinely admired Rebecca's fighting spirit, since she was almost universally hated here, he couldn't openly support her against the entire audience, or else he'd be close to losing his job.
Diamante was, without a doubt, the most famous contestant in the Corrida Colosseum. Naturally, Gatz leaned toward speaking favorably for him. Only Diamante himself knew that, in this battle, he was the one being toyed with.
No matter how he swung his sword, every strike missed, and up to now, there wasn't even a bead of sweat on Redfield's face.
[The intel's wrong. This old man's not normal. What the hell is this monster?]
"Lord Diamante! Come on, you can do it!"
"Lord Diamante, stop fooling around, just finish that old geezer already!"
Cheers rang constantly in his ears. Normally, Diamante would bask in such praise, but right now, all he felt was irritation.
"You've got quite a few fans. It would be really interesting to see you lose here."
"What a joke, I'm the Hero of the Corrida Colosseum! Corrida Glaive!"
The weapon in Diamante's hand suddenly turned soft, then, like a strip of cloth, transformed itself into the form of a bull's head.
Using the power of the Ripple-Ripple Fruit, Diamante transformed his sword, turning it into a "spear." The sharp bull horns formed the spear head as he thrust it toward Redfield's chest.
This time, Redfield didn't dodge. Instead, he lifted his umbrella again, blocking Diamante's attack head-on. Then, with both hands on the handle, he simply pushed forward. The shockwave from that single motion blasted Diamante backward.
"What?! Red just sent Mr. Diamante flying! I get it now, he must be some kind of mysterious Devil Fruit user! Mr. Diamante is trying to figure out what his ability is!"
Gatz quickly came up with an excuse to save Diamante's reputation, and it was enough to convince most of the audience. But to those who truly understood combat, it was another story.
The layman only watches the excitement, but the experts could see the truth. Only those with real strength could tell what was really happening in the arena.
"Marco, that Red's just playing around, isn't he?"
"Probably. The disparity in Haki is enormous. If he wanted to, he could've sliced Diamante in half just now."
Ace and Marco could tell that the Haki wrapped around the tip of Redfield's umbrella was on an entirely different level from Diamante's. The externally projected Armament Haki silently extended his attack range.
"Wow, so the old man Red is that strong! No wonder he dared to sail off on his own with just that racoon dog!"
"You know him?"
Luffy's tone made Ace a little puzzled, but what Luffy said next cleared his doubts.
"Before we got to Dressrosa, the old man Red's ship got wrecked. He almost fell into the sea. I pulled him up. Oh, and he's a fan of Brook's!"
Ace listened to Luffy's explanation with mild interest, but Marco's reaction was different.
There weren't many people whose Haki could reach that level. Redfield's figure gave him a strange sense of familiarity, especially that name, "Red."
"Could it be him?"
At first, Marco still had some hesitation, but when Redfield opened his umbrella and the pattern on the canopy came into view, Marco was completely certain of the man's identity.
"Aloof Red."
"Brother Katakuri, are you sure?"
"It's almost certainly him, the man I remember fighting Mama is him."
After the era of Rocks ended, Golden Lion, Roger, and Whitebeard became legendary figures among pirates, representing the pinnacle of that time.
While below them were powerful pirates like World and Charlotte Linlin, and Redfield was one of them as well.
However, Redfield was imprisoned early on. Though Impel Down was, in a sense, a "good place"—a place where some people could attain enlightenment in a short time, and the Eternal Hell of Level Six even allowed certain inmates to continue training relentlessly, like Bullet.
Redfield had always been a lone wolf. Compared to Golden Lion's massive fleet, Redfield, as a loner, left far fewer traces behind. Even among the members of the Four Emperors' crews, few had any impression of him.
But exceptions existed. People like Katakuri and Marco, who had long served as key figures and possessed great strength, still remembered the once-dominant "Aloof Red."
Though he was a lone wolf, his deterrence was in no way inferior to that of Whitebeard or Golden Lion.
Not only was his personal strength immense, but he also had no ties, no territory, no crew, and his whereabouts were ever-shifting.
Capturing him was no easier than launching a frontal assault on the fleets of Golden Lion or Whitebeard.
After all, if he managed to escape, the random retaliations that followed would be something even the Marines could hardly endure.
"He fought Mama before…"
"Yeah. Back then, you were too weak to even watch a battle like that."
"Red Count, Patrick Redfield. I thought he was dead already. Didn't expect even that old monster to be drawn here. Oven, don't let your guard down, he's probably going to be our toughest opponent."
Unlike Marco and Katakuri, Diamante hadn't lived through the fierce struggles of the New World in those days.
Like most people, even after seeing the emblem on the umbrella, he still failed to recognize the opponent's identity.
All Diamante knew was that if he couldn't even make it to the finals, he'd be utterly humiliated. At this moment, he wasn't thinking of defeating Redfield.
Not because he didn't want to, but because the pressure Redfield exerted was so overwhelming that he had no confidence of winning. Faced with that, he came up with an underhanded trick.
Now that there were only three people left in the arena, as long as he took out Rebecca, he would naturally secure a spot in the next round.
"Army Bandera!"
Diamante placed one hand on the ground beneath him, and in an instant, the entire arena began to ripple and roll like a sheet of fabric. Using his ability, he turned the whole arena into a fluttering flag.
Rebecca, already standing near the edge of the arena, slipped and almost fell off. In the end, she managed to steady herself with the skills honed over years of training, but Diamante's attack was already upon her.
"Half Moon Glaive!"
The undulating ground made it impossible for Rebecca to stand firm, and Diamante seized the chance to unleash an air blade at her. A massive crack split across the arena.
The entire arena was sliced cleanly in two like tofu, yet after his strike, Diamante didn't hear Gatz announce the end of the match.
"How disgusting. It seems your talent for being a clown isn't just limited to your ability, your behavior itself is that of a clown."
Redfield was capable of controlling his Haki. He could choose not to read others' memories, but the ability had become second nature to him, an old habit he could never fully suppress.
From Diamante, he had read filthy thoughts and despicable behaviour.
"Why are you helping her, old geezer?! You two have nothing to do with each other, do you?!"
"Why? Because I like to do it. I'm getting on in years, and don't have as much energy anymore. It's time to end this fight."
As he spoke, Redfield's umbrella swept twice through the air, and two arcs of crimson sword energy shot toward Diamante. Diamante's body immediately flattened, fluttering in the air just like when using Kami-e.
"I can float around too! Your slashes can't hit me!"
Before the slashes reached him, the air current it created produced wind, and he used that wind to dodge the attacks. But in the end, he still underestimated Redfield.
Not that he could be blamed. Had he known Redfield's true identity beforehand, Diamante would never have agreed to be placed in the same group.
Unlike Vergo, who had tempered his Haki through training, Diamante relied almost entirely on his Devil Fruit ability. Yet in front of Redfield, it was utterly worthless.
The crimson slashes curved through the air, striking from both front and back, carving two enormous wounds across Diamante's flag-like body.
If not for the fact that the match wasn't over yet, and that Diamante was one of Doflamingo's key officers, Redfield's attack would have been enough to kill him outright.
Even so, despite Redfield holding back, Diamante, struck by the slashes, still fell into the water below.
"Mr. Diamante has lost!! The winners of B-Block B are Red and Rebecca! Rescue team, hurry up and save him, Mr. Diamante can't swim!!"
TN: Hey guys, I have picked up another one piece novel by the same author as Arceus Pirate Journey. You can check it out.
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