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OPI Chapter 341: When Sand Meets Lightning
🕑 Added 2025-04-18 20:05:22 +0000 UTC[BOOM!!!]
From the sand dunes where the Third Raikage had fallen, another deafening explosion drew everyone's attention.
The yellow sand formed a huge curtain.
At the same time—
A faint blue glow slowly emerged from the cloud of dust.
The Third Raikage, with a deep slash across his chest and blood trailing behind him, appeared before Crocodile's eyes.
The desert wind blew in soft, sweeping gusts, filling the air with a somber, tragic atmosphere.
“Huff—huff—”
The Third Raikage didn’t care in the slightest about the gaping wound on his chest or the blood flowing down his body. His fierce eyes fixed firmly on Crocodile's.
His breathing was heavy and ragged. The lightning-charged aura surging around him burned with intense heat, cauterizing his wound through sheer temperature.
“I don’t care who you are!”
“But you’d better brace yourself—for the next strike I unleash with everything I’ve got!”
“Heh—”
Crocodile still wore a composed smile on his face. He didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he reached into the inner pocket of his black justice coat, pulled out a fresh cigar, bit down on it and lit it with a lighter. He held the cigar between two fingers, took a deep drag, and exhaled slowly.
“I’ll give you three minutes.”
“If you take any longer, I’m ending this fight myself.”
The Third Raikage was the first true powerhouse Crocodile had encountered in the shinobi world. He was pleased that it turned out to be someone with real courage.
If the guy had been a coward, it would’ve annoyed him to no end.
So, in this relatively good mood, he was willing to give the Third Raikage a moment to shine.
But the instant those words left his mouth, a brilliant flash of blue lightning erupted before his eyes, and in the blink of an eye, it pierced right through his body.
Several seconds later, a thunderous roar finally reached Crocodile’s ears.
“I am the Raikage, peerless and unmatched—the strongest shinobi alive! There’s nothing this Hell-Stab can’t pierce!!”
Behind him—
The Third Raikage raised his right hand, with only the index finger extended. His face was filled with shock.
That had been his full-power attack. And yet, the enemy dodged it.
No—wait.
The enemy hadn’t made any evasive move at all. He had clearly pierced right through Crocodile’s body—but he had felt nothing. No feedback. No resistance.
“How long do you plan to keep standing there like an idiot? Your time’s running out, ‘strongest Raikage’~”
Crocodile slowly turned to look at the Raikage’s back and offered a casual reminder.
In truth, even he had been startled by the speed just now. Thankfully, he’d anticipated the Raikage’s strike a split second beforehand and dispersed his body using his elementalization ability.
Mainly, he still wasn’t sure whether this Lightning Release chakra could touch his elementalized core.
That was also why he was willing to give the Third Raikage a bit of time.
“Bastard! Don’t you dare underestimate the power of the Raikage!!”
The Third Raikage caught the mocking tone in Crocodile’s voice. The fury already burning in his chest felt like it had been doused with gasoline. His Lightning Release chakra flared up with renewed intensity.
[BOOM!]
A thunderclap-like blast erupted beneath his feet as the sand exploded, and in the next instant, he turned into a blinding bolt of lightning once more, hurtling straight toward Crocodile at unimaginable speed.
Crocodile didn't dodge. Nor did he use Armament Haki to enhance his attack or defense; he simply intercepted the Third Raikage's attack with the hook on his hook arm.
[BANG————]
The hook was easily pierced by the Four-Fingered Nukite. The enormous burst of lightning shattered it into a cloud of yellow sand in the air.
“He turned his body into sand… That last strike didn’t cause him any damage?”
The Third Raikage furrowed his brow as he turned to look at Crocodile’s wrist. The shattered hand was already reforming from the swirling sand particles, and his heart sank even further.
“A secret technique similar to the Hydrification Jutsu of the Hōzuki Clan in Kirigakure? Or could it be his Kekkei Genkai…”
But there was one thing he couldn’t make sense of no matter how hard he thought.
Whether this sand-transformation ability was a secret technique or a bloodline limit, it was fundamentally Earth Release, right? So why didn’t his Lightning Release chakra work on it?
Meanwhile—
Crocodile’s smile only grew wider.
He had risked injury—possibly even a broken arm—to confirm a very important piece of intel: that the ninjutsu and chakra of this world could not harm a Logia user’s elemental form.
Of course—
If it were Water Release, it might still pose some danger to him. That part really sucked.
Why did his Suna-Suna no Mi have to come with the weird flaw of being especially vulnerable to water? How was that fair?
Unfair!
Yet the Third Raikage didn’t retreat just because he realized Crocodile could transform into sand. Instead, cloaked in his Lightning Release Armor, he launched another series of high-speed, ferocious assaults.
[BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG...]
The scene looked like streaks of blue lightning were attacking Crocodile from every direction, each blow blasting his body apart into clumps of earth-yellow sand and gravel.
“This fight is getting boring… and the three minutes are up.”
At that moment, Crocodile glanced idly at the Third Raikage, who was once again charging toward him.
That one glance set off alarm bells in the Raikage’s heart. He could feel an overwhelming and intense aura suddenly erupting from Crocodile’s body—like an invisible tsunami pressing the very air down upon him.
“Throw whatever you’ve got—I’m not backing down!”
Rather than fear, this surge of pressure only made the Third Raikage’s blood boil with excitement. His battle spirit erupted in full force alongside his roar.
He focused all his power and will into the index finger of his right hand. Black lightning began to crackle and arc from its tip.
“Witness the might of the Raikage—this is the strongest spear in the shinobi world!”
“Hell-Stab—Final Form—Black Lightning—One-Finger Nukite!!”
“Not convinced?”
Crocodile's indifferent eyes narrowed as he raised his left hand.
The next moment—
His entire left arm, along with the sand hook, turned into a mass of earthen-yellow sand. It began to vibrate at a frequency so fast it seemed blurry to the naked eye, accompanied by a faint buzzing sound.
At that exact instant—
The Third Raikage moved. No flourishes, no buildup—just a straight-line charge, crackling with black and blue lightning.
At the same time, a deafening roar like thunder exploded behind him, creating a sonic boom and shockwave so fierce it sent visible ripples through the air.
The ground behind him erupted like it had been hit by a thousand tonnes of explosives, launching a towering curtain of sand skyward.
Yet—
Crocodile's momentum was no less earth-shaking.
His left arm, now a high-frequency vibrating sand blade, surged with a tidal force of Haki and lashed forward at lightning speed.
A single slash from that sand blade instantly tore through the desert in front of him—wrapped in flickering strands of violet lightning.
[Boom!]
At that moment the Desert Spada collided head-on with the One Finger Nukite.
The resulting explosion sounded like thunder roaring in one’s face. Waves of pressure blasted outward, and tsunamis of sand surged in all directions.
A huge sand tornado erupted from the battlefield, completely blocking the view of all spectators.
Only the occasional streaks of violet, black, and blue lightning flashed through the dense storm.
“A battle on the level of a natural disaster…”
One kilometer away, a Jōnin from Sunagakure murmured to himself while peering through binoculars.
But honestly, even without binoculars, everyone could see the rampaging sandstorm. It wasn’t even being directly controlled by Crocodile—it was the result of the residual force from both techniques colliding.
“The Third Raikage is actually that strong?”
Rasa’s expression flickered with uncertainty. If that move had been used against him earlier, his Magnet Release Gold Dust might not have been able to block it.
The towering sandstorm that had shot into the sky disappeared as quickly as it came. It had barely formed before it was blasted apart from within by an overwhelming burst of light.
“Whoa!”
“Watch out!”
As the violent shockwave swept out, several young Sunagakure Genin lost their balance and were blown into the air, their terrified screams echoing through the sky.
Fortunately, some quick-reacting Chūnin and Jōnin managed to grab and pull them back down.
Seeing this, Rasa furrowed his brow slightly, then raised a thick wall of sand in front of the squad to block the waves of wind still surging their way.
He deliberately refrained from using Gold Dust—its dazzling golden shine would reflect sunlight and attract unwanted attention. And right now, they still had no idea whether that sand-controlling powerhouse was friend or foe.
