Johnny took a deep breath, covering himself in armament haki as he stood in place, allowing the negative hollow to pass through his body.
He stood rooted in place, a blank expression on his face. However, Johnny's efforts proved futile in fending off the negative hollow's assault as he promptly fell to his knees soon after.
"It's useless... everything I do is useless, no matter how strong I get..." Johnny muttered in apparent dejection, smacking the floor with a clenched fist.
"I should have chosen a slice of life anime instead of this shit..." he added in a gloomy tone. "I wish the ground would split and swallow me right now... maybe next time I'll reincarnate to Fruits Basket or something..." he remarked in a downcast voice.
"I can hear precisely 10.1 thousand people laughing at me right now..."
...
'Hollow-Hollow fruit is fucking overpowered...' I took a deep breath, shaking off my depression as I stood up, glaring at the dancing ghosts floating above my head.
That was the worst I've ever felt in both of my lifetimes, but even if my armament haki can't protect me from this bullshit ability, I have a way of defending myself now, so there's that, at least.
Perona's negative hollows were not tangible and are impossible to defend against under normal circumstances whether you used haki or not.
However, I already thought of two ways to counter them before coming to this island. The first of the two methods was to use conquerors' haki to repel the damned things. However, I wasn't sure that would work, and I was curious to see whether I could endure their effect, so I chose the second method.
But what was the second method, you might ask? It's to let the ghosts pass through me to measure their density and adjust my mass accordingly to the same level.
Being intangible meant having a density low enough to pass through physical objects that were immensely more dense, so in other words, all I had to do now was adjust my sword to the same level of density as the damned things and cut them down.
"Time for some payback," I remarked with a smile, activating my devil fruit ability to decrease the density of my sword, Triton, as I jumped towards the ghost that passed through me.
I swung my sword horizontally at the hollow's head, landing on the ground and watching with a smile as it kept floating in place, seemingly unscathed.
"Negative...?" the hollow intoned, tilting its head to the side in confusion. However, its beady eyes widened as it split in half and began dissipating seconds after, causing the other hollows to flee the scene.
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEH?!"
I smiled as I heard a high-pitched, confused scream from the mainmast, confirming I had destroyed the hollow.
Shrugging my shoulders as I activated my observation, Haki again and trying to locate Moria as the ghosts finally left me in peace.
...
"This place is horrible. I wonder what kind of person that Moria guy is..." Byron said with a frown on his face as he flew behind Brook from a distance, taking in the sights of Thriller Bark and the numerous monsters creeping within its shadows.
"This place is less than pleasant indeed..." Kozue said, holding to Bryon's hybrid form's talon, seeing the same things he did. "But I'm more interested in that Ryuma zombie the skeleton mentioned..." she added, her expression turning thoughtful.
"Hm? What's so interesting about a moving corpse?" Byron asked, turning to Kozue with a tilted head.
"The fact it could be the dug-up corpse of my ancestor and that it might be swinging around my homeland's stolen national treasure for one..." Kozue flatly replied, looking at byron with a deadpan expression.
"Well, the guy has Brook's shadow, so we can't leave without getting it back anyway," Byron replied, scratching his head as he turned away from Kozue, focusing on flying instead as he almost hit one of the giant chains.
"So you'll get your chance to see him for yourself and put him to rest if he's really your ancestor," he concluded, opening his mouth and sending a fireball towards a bunch of zombies trying to ambush Brook.
Brook, of course, noticed Byron's actions and halted, turning to the sky to look at the duo, who promptly descended towards him.
"It's dangerous here. You two shouldn't have come!" Brook exclaimed, sighing and scratching his afro. "Even my heart is almost leaping out of my ribcage in nervousness from being here, even though I'm a skeleton and have no heart to speak of- Yohohoho," he added, laughing and holding his ribcage.
"Those skeleton jokes are getting old rather quickly..." Byron said, a deadpan expression on his face as he judgingly stared at the brook.
"They weren't funny, to begin with," Kozue flatly added, shaking her head in disapproval at Brook's antics.
"How harsh~!" Brook exclaimed, falling to his side in dejection.
"Anyway, the captain already told you that we're picking a fight with Moria, and we have a promise to keep with Crocus..." Kozue muttered, raising an eyebrow as Brook rose to his feet without any leverage like he was floating up.
"It can't be helped then, but that means we must hurry and open the gates just in case something goes wrong," Brook said, turning serious as he turned to the mansion.
"The gate controls should be in the mainmast tower, but we'll likely run into Ryuma and other zombies before we reach it, so be prepared," he added, clutching his cane sword as he dashed towards the mansion after nodding at the duo.
"I'm counting on it..." Kozue said, squinting her eyes as she and Bryon followed behind the skeleton on foot, jogging instead of flying this time.
...
"Gather up all of the crew~♫ It's time to ship out Bink's brew~♫" Elvis leisurely hummed as he rode on the zombified cerberus's back, taking in the sights of the dead forest around him.
"Sea wind Blows. To where? Who knows? The waves will be our guide~♫."
Elvis suddenly stopped singing, tilting his head in confusion as he looked at two creatures in front of him, a dried-up tree with the face of a wretched middle-aged man pouring sake for a zombified zebra unicorn as they both sat cross-legged on the ground.
Elvis stared at the two creatures in speechless confusion, and they stared back in equal confusion. However, they seemed more horrified than confused, unlike the fish-man.
"You know what? I'll pretend I didn't see anything for my own sanity," Elvis remarked, resolutely nodding his head as he ordered the Cerberus to walk past the two creatures, making them sigh in relief as they resumed their drinking session.
"O'er across the ocean tide~♫ Rays of sunshine far and Wide~♫" Elvis resumed singing, refusing to turn back and stare at the two creatures.
He honestly didn't have the mental capacity to process the existence of two such strange creatures, despite already knowing their origins.
Elvis' singing soon stopped once more as the cerberus stopped moving, and he found himself staring at a cemetery.
"That's a trap if I've ever seen one..." Elvis muttered while looking at the many tombstones littering the cemetery. "I can only hope nothing as freaky as those two monsters from a while ago crawl out of those graves..." he added, holding back a shiver as he ordered the cerberus to move into the cemetery.
Sure enough, bandaged, rotten hands emerged from the ground, followed by zombified human faces, as the zombies used the ground as leverage to climb out of their graves.
"Now that's something I can deal with," Elvis remarked, smirking as he jumped to the ground, blue electric arcs coursing through his body into the ground.
"None of that now. Back to the ground with you..." Elvis remarked, clapping his hands as the ground around the entire cemetery turned to liquid, sucking the zombies back.
"Dead Bodies belong in the ground, so stay there and rest in peace," he concluded with a smirk as he clapped again, causing the liquid to turn into hard rock, trapping the zombies.
"Gather up all of the crew~♫ It's time to ship out Bink's brew~♫" Elvis promptly resumed carefreely humming as he climbed back onto the cerberus back, ordering it to head into the mainmast.