Chapter 310: Shift
"Onward! Smash straight through...!" exclaimed Bonney, smiling broadly and pointing an ornate cutlass at a pair of icy stone gates nearly 200m in height. It would have been easier to fly over them, but upon hearing her shout, Vahn, in his more than three-kilometer-long Dragon form, sped up and barreled through them headfirst.
BOOM
As Vahn crashed through the colossal gates and slid across the icy promenade beyond, hundreds of elf-like figures with bright blue skin, white eyes, white hair, and long ears poured out from blue stone spires resembling carved termite mounds. Unlike traditional elves, these had garments comprised of fur and bone, and in place of bows and arrows, the majority of the swarming creatures wielded jagged swords, daggers, and axes as they leaped onto Vahn’s body like fleas.
"Come at me, you knife-eared pricks! The Dread Pirate Empress Bonney of the Sorbet Kingdom will be your opponent!" bellowed Bonney, smiling from ear to ear as she put her cutlass away and made a beeline for one of the elves that had leaped atop Vahn’s head—the pale yellow, almos white text above its head denoting it as a C-Rank Ice Elf Soldier.
Though she was fast under usual circumstances, Bonney felt a rush of adrenaline as she used Bukujutsu to accelerate several times faster than she normally could. The nearly two-and-a-half-meter-tall Ice Elf Soldier reacted by brandishing a jagged scimitar with three prominent teeth, but midway through its swing, Bonney backhanded the blade with her right hand, shattering it while simultaneously burying her left fist deep into the Soldier’s diaphragm.
THOOM
Unable to resist the force of Bonney’s Haki-infused fist, the Ice Elf Soldier was sent flying through one of the termite-like mounds with such velocity that the upper half of the structure collapsed.
"This is awesome! I feel invincible...!" exclaimed Bonney, striking a pose with her arms flexed and her legs raised as if she were sitting on empty air. Two additional Ice Elf Soldiers and a crossbow-wielding Ranger tried to ambush her, but the first two were scattered to pieces and swept away by the wind pressure of Ghislaine’s tempestuous slash. The latter tried to snipe her from one of the mounds, but she sensed it with her Observation Haki, produced a custom, long-barreled black and gold-trimmed revolver from her Inventory, and pulled the trigger before it could finish taking aim.
BOOMBOOMBOOM
Unlike a conventional revolver, the one in Bonney’s left hand had a barrel that flared like the horn of a trumpet. And instead of discharging ordinary ammunition, it fired explosive cannonballs that rapidly expanded from two to more than twenty centimeters in diameter as they traveled through the air. As such, the three projectiles she fired in quick succession produced a trio of sizeable explosions as they met their mark.
"Fuuu—"