The Conclusion

Usopp stands battered but triumphant in the corridor, explaining the logic behind Perona's power. "Haa, the fact that I can see you, that you can fly, that you can pass through people and walls, and that you can freely change your size is just like that of a bodiless ghost!!" Perona listens in silence as he follows the chain of clues back to the moment she vanished. He says that when he was swallowed around before, she used the opening to make a ghost of herself. Then he points past her toward the broken room and declares, "The one hiding over there is your real body!! I won't be fooled anymore."

The truth is sitting on the bed: Perona's real body, limp and vulnerable, while her hollow self remains outside. Usopp laughs at her, "Kuh!! I thought you were just a negative dumbass. You got some courage from that mask just now, right?" She answers calmly, "I'm surprised you can use your head once you've calmed down...!! But you are only 9/10 correct." Usopp asks, "I see...!! Then, if you were to lose a body to return to, what would happen to you?" Perona corrects him with a proud smile: "I'm not a ghost being controlled by the real body!! I willingly came out of my real body. I'm a fully conscious Hollow!!"

Usopp decides that even if Perona's hollow is untouchable, the real body should not be. "If I attack that, there's no mistake it will hit, right!!?" he shouts, then fires "Hissatsu!! 'Daibakuhatsu Boshi'!!!" The page notes it as Big Exploding Star. Perona panics, "Bastard!! Stop it!!!" and the shot blasts toward her bed, but it misses and tears through the room instead. Usopp is shocked while Perona realizes the danger: "That's dangerous! You missed, and apparently it misfired!!!" She has escaped the direct hit, but the attack proves that Usopp has found the only place where she can truly be threatened.

Perona refuses to let Usopp keep firing at her real body. "I won't let you!! 'Special Hollow'!!!" she cries, releasing a gigantic version of her smiling ghost. Usopp sees the huge mouth open around him and panics, "Woah!! Don't tell me it's the same as..." Then he recognizes it as a "Special Big Edition...!?" Perona warns, "Struggle all you want!! I won't let you injure my body." Usopp thinks through the danger: if this is the same attack as the small ones, and if something this huge explodes, "My body will be torn to pieces!" He tries to dodge with "Shurui!!" but admits, "Even if I struggle, I can't touch this ghost."

Perona closes her eyes and gives the signal: "Horo horo horo!! That's a shame, negative nose!! At my signal, your body will fly around in pieces!!" With "Pach!!" she triggers the technique, calling "Kamikaze Wrap!!!" The enormous ghost seems to swallow the space around Usopp, and Perona expects the blast to finish him. Instead, the huge form vanishes. "Eh!? It disappeared!!" she cries. Usopp, panting with the shell in his hand, reveals the counter: "That was a close one...!! If you are wondering, what attacked just now, is inside this shell!!" He has trapped the hollow before it can detonate.

Perona's real body jolts as she realizes she cannot move. "What's going on...!?" she cries, then, "Hm!? I can't move...!!!" Usopp reveals the second layer of his trick: "The one that I managed to shoot, the 'Daibakuhatsu Boshi'... was a lie!! And it didn't misfire!! That's a 'Torimochi Boshi'!!!" The page notes it as Birdlime Star. He tells her he prepared for the possibility that she would return to her body, so the sticky shot would pin both her real body and hollow body with one stone. Then a transformed Kumashi appears: "So you are the one that purified Kumashi... Taishou." Perona grins at the timing and orders, "Kill him, Vice-Commander Hippo Gentleman!!"

Hippo Gentleman charges, but Usopp meets the attack head-on with a dial. "Impact!!!" he shouts, driving the blow into the zombie's body hard enough to stagger it. Perona stares, startled: "Ooh... Wha... This guy is actually strong!?" Usopp pays for the recoil at once, yelling, "It hurts~~!!! My arm is falling off~~~!!!" Still, he keeps moving. Hippo Gentleman rises again, and Usopp fires "Hissatsu 'Kurobikari Boshi'!!!" The page notes it as Black Luster Star, and the shot bursts into something dark and crawling. Perona is beginning to learn that Usopp's strength is not straightforward force; it is a chain of traps that keeps changing shape.

The Black Luster Star scatters across Hippo Gentleman with "Kasa kasa" sounds, and Perona recoils with "Uwah" as she sees what it unleashed. Usopp's attack is also called "Cockroaches~~!!!" and the page labels it "A.K.A. 'Cockroach Star'!!" The insects swarm the room and crawl over Perona's body. Her composure breaks completely: "This is disgusting~~~!! Someone take them off!! Save me~~~ I can't run away~~!!" She screams, "Kya~~~!! They went inside my clothes!! Noo... I hate cockroaches!!! I'm scared of them, Kumashi!! U~~~N!!!" The terrifying ghost princess is reduced to helpless panic by a fear far more ordinary than any ghost.

Usopp steps through the ruined wall dragging an enormous black weight and tells Perona, "There are other things, besides cockroaches, that you should be more scared of... like me...!!!" He adds, "You deeply underestimated me..." Perona trembles and begs, "Where do you have that power!? Stop it, please!! I don't have anywhere to run!!" Usopp boasts, "I'm known as the strongest superhuman in the East Blue," and the weight comes down in her imagination as a "Ten tons... wait." Her fear unravels into pleading: "I'm gonna die!!! Hey!!! Take off the cockroaches, too...!! The hammer, no!!! The cockroaches and the hammer, please. Uso~~~pp... I won't touch your nakama, so please!! Spare me!! Please stop~~!!!"

Usopp finishes the psychological battle with one theatrical swing. "Pound!!!" he shouts as the huge hammer seems to smash down beside Perona in a storm of smoke. The scene freezes around the impact: Perona's real body, trapped on the bed, is struck not by crushing weight but by the terror of believing Usopp's lie. The hammer collapses like a prop, revealing the trick for what it is, but the damage to her courage is already done. Usopp exhales, drained and sweating, while Perona's resistance disappears. The fight is not won because he overpowered her ghost powers; it is won because he understood her fear and turned his own specialty, lies, into the final weapon.

Usopp stands over the defeated Perona and delivers the verdict. "I don't have any use for a princess of the haunted mansion... that loses consciousness from a 'balloon' and 'toy cockroaches'...!!" Perona lies collapsed, foaming and unconscious, while the harmless props that broke her nerve sit nearby. Usopp, shaking but victorious, shouts, "You were wrong for challenging 'negativity' and 'lies'!!!" Then he leaves her to the darkness with a final command: "Sleep until dawn!!" The corridor falls quiet behind him. Against an enemy who could fly, phase through walls, and command explosive ghosts, Usopp has won by being the one person strange enough to make cowardice and deception into strengths.

Outside, Thriller Bark groans under another violent crash. The castle towers shake with "Zubaa!!!" and dust bursts from the rooftops. A body is hurled through broken stone and tumbles across the roof, the impact marked with "...!!" and another heavy crash. The battle has moved away from Perona's chamber and into the sky-darkened architecture of the mansion itself. The force of the fall sends debris scattering and smoke rolling along the roofline, making it clear that somewhere above the building another fight has reached a dangerous pitch, one strong enough to tear through Thriller Bark's structure.

On the rooftop, the fallen samurai's words echo in the minds of the onlookers. Someone asks, "Didn't that samurai say something just now?" Franky, with Brook nearby, tries to make sense of it: "Then... what did it mean? In other words..." Smoke and rubble surround them, and a figure stands at a distance as the fight shifts into its decisive stage. The samurai himself gives the answer in a low, final tone: "It seems to be the conclusion...!!!" The narrator-like weight of that line hangs over the roof, and Brook admits, "This is the first time I've seen this kind of battle."

Ryuma lies amid the smoke and wreckage, but the samurai zombie understands exactly what has happened. Remembering the swordsman who fought him, he thinks, "That samurai... when he fought me..." Then, standing in the black smoke with his sword at his side, Ryuma admits the truth: "He wasn't serious at all...!!!" His body is damaged, and the fire-lit atmosphere around him makes the realization feel almost ceremonial. Zoro has not merely survived the duel; he has forced the legendary corpse to recognize that the blade he faced before was restrained, and that the battle now reaching its end is something far beyond the earlier exchange.

The chapter cuts back five minutes earlier in Hogback's laboratory. Brook laughs, "Yohohoho," and names the black sword: "This black sword, 'Shuusui,'" with the note "Clear Autumn Water." He asks Zoro, "You are gonna take it from me?" Zoro answers without hesitation, "To be more precise... I'm gonna take it from your corpse." Ryuma replies, "Really. I see...!! Then with all your might, yohoho!!" The atmosphere in the laboratory tightens. Franky, watching from the side, warns, "It... it's better if you don't provoke him too much...!!" Even before the duel begins, everyone understands the swords are drawing something serious out of both fighters.

Ryuma looks at Zoro's swords and notes, "But you seem to already have 3 of them." Zoro replies, "One is broken. I won't feel good until I replace it. I'm a santouryuu, after all." Ryuma laughs at the unfamiliar term: "I've never heard of it! Is it some kind of acrobatics? Yohohoho." Zoro says, "It's a shame I can't show it to you right now. And I also wanted to break that low septum of yours." Ryuma senses something in him: "I suppose you seem strong. It feels like you might come not based on memory, but with emotion." Zoro answers the pressure with a quiet stare, saying only, "..." as if his body is already eager to dance.

The duel begins with a violent clash. Zoro and Ryuma close the distance at once, their blades slamming together with enough force to fill the page with impact lines. Brook, watching from nearby, blurts, "Dowah... That scared me!!!" Zoro's face splits into a fierce grin as the pressure of the fight rises. The two swordsmen spring apart and collide again, their weapons striking the floor and walls with heavy metallic bursts. A fallen barrel rolls at the edge of the battlefield while their swords carve through the room. The exchange is fast, close, and clean: no tricks, no ghosts, just the sound of steel deciding which body can keep up.

Ryuma uses Brook's fencing style and calls, "Aubade Coup Droit!!!" His thrust fires across the room like a pistol shot, punching through the door beyond Zoro. Brook recognizes the technique in alarm: "...!!! A pistol!? Th...!! It's a thrust." He explains that even if he performs the same technique, "it doesn't become like that!!" Zoro studies the attack with sharp interest rather than fear. The corpse may hold Brook's shadow, but Ryuma's body and sword turn the familiar move into something heavier and more lethal. The duel is already proving that stolen techniques change shape in a stronger vessel.

No description for this page.