"You…"
Kairos D. Vale raised his hand, then slowly lowered it again. His expression turned strange.
How had a Devil Fruit suddenly ended up in Perona's hand?
Had a Devil Fruit user nearby died?
Kairos had never expected Perona to eat her fruit this way.
Perhaps this was simply fate.
"Ah! Little Bear!"
Perona had already finished eating the Devil Fruit. The moment she saw the stuffed bear in Kairos' hand, her face lit up and she threw herself toward it.
Ding: Host has earned Perona's admiration. Reward obtained: SSR Shikigami Onikiri Card, 1/1.
Not bad.
Hearing the system notification, Kairos' mood improved.
Another Onikiri card.
He watched Perona hug the bear tightly and rub her cheek against it. The corners of his mouth lifted slightly.
Little girls really were easy to coax.
"Dad! It was him! He bullied me!"
Suddenly, an angry child's voice rang out behind Kairos.
Kairos turned his head.
It was one of the noble brats he had scared away earlier.
Beside the boy stood a richly dressed man, followed by a group of armed soldiers. Every one of them looked angry and contemptuous, staring at Kairos as if he were a rat in the street.
"Dad, he might be a Devil Fruit user!"
The bowl-cut noble boy, with tiny eyes and buck teeth, glared viciously at Kairos. After that, he kept shouting filthy insults like "bug" and "lowborn trash."
"Where did this peasant crawl out from?" the nobleman said arrogantly, practically looking at Kairos with his chin. "You dared hurt my precious son? Crawl over here and kowtow. If I'm feeling generous, I might spare your life."
Listening to the nobleman's shouting, Perona's small body trembled almost imperceptibly.
Her face turned pale, and she hid behind Kairos while clutching Little Bear tightly.
Kairos said nothing.
He only let out a soft sigh.
In the next instant—
the breath leaving his lips turned thick and hot, like white mist.
Faint arcs of lightning flickered within it.
Thunder Breathing.
Crackle.
Electricity surged faintly across Kairos' body.
His right hand lowered slightly.
The Demon Sword Thousand Blades trembled.
A moment later, Kairos gripped the sheathed blade and swung it out.
The strike was so fast that the sheath scraped against the air, throwing out sparks. Scorching heat and domineering wind pressure burst forward together, roaring like a falling meteor.
Boom!
A terrifying gale erupted.
Lightning and violent wind intertwined, shattered outward, and surged forward like a vast sea. In an instant, they swallowed the nobleman, his soldiers, and his foul-mouthed son.
The air was crushed apart.
A vacuum zone formed at once.
The stone pavement exploded, and the storm mixed with lightning lifted the ground before grinding everything into fragments.
After that swing, Kairos lightly shook his arm, where electric arcs were still flowing.
Then he returned the Demon Sword Thousand Blades to his side.
He exhaled a breath of white mist, and the lightning around him slowly faded.
From beginning to end, the Demon Sword Thousand Blades had not even left its sheath.
Until the moment he died, the nobleman probably never imagined he would be slapped to death by a sword sheath.
"Wow…"
Behind him, Perona was already stunned. She raised Little Bear over her head, as if sharing the explosive scene with her little companion.
At last, the gale dispersed.
Crystal-like fragments and broken stone rained down, clinking as they struck the ground.
At the center of the street, the earth had been torn open, forming a shattered trench nearly a hundred meters long.
The nobleman's group, who had been standing there a moment ago, had vanished completely.
Not even a shadow remained.
It was as if they had been erased from the world.
Kairos looked at the scene ahead, then glanced at his own palm in slight surprise.
For the past half month, he had been circulating Thunder Breathing day and night. Without realizing it, his physique had improved quite a lot.
Just now, he had only intended to slap the nobleman to death.
In the end, he had erased the man and his son together.
Forget it.
Kairos felt no sympathy.
They would have grown up rotten anyway.
Dying early was probably a blessing.
With that thought, Kairos bent down and looked at Perona behind him.
"I'm leaving now."
He spoke gently, as if coaxing a child.
"Big Brother…"
A trace of hesitation flashed across Perona's little face.
She grabbed the hem of Kairos' coat.
Then the hesitation disappeared, replaced by determination.
"I want to go with you. Can you take me? I don't have a home anymore…"
As she spoke, tears gathered in her eyes again, as if she might cry at any moment.
"All right."
Kairos looked at her expression and hesitated for a moment before nodding.
Bringing one child along would not be much of a burden.
At least twelve years old was much better than Nami's six.
No matter how he thought about it, liking little girls was still better than—
Kairos abruptly cut off that thought.
Why had his thinking been getting stranger lately?
Was this a side effect of using the Pleasant Goat card?
Did growing sheep horns open two extra holes in his brain?
Perona blinked at the motionless Kairos, completely unaware that he was fighting a war inside his own mind.
"Come to think of it, we haven't introduced ourselves yet."
Noticing Perona's gaze, Kairos quickly returned to his senses and spoke with a serious face.
"My name is…"
On the ruined street, under the gazes of many stunned passersby, Kairos held Perona's small hand and gradually walked away.
Not long after Kairos left—
a towering figure more than six meters tall appeared where he had been standing earlier.
He had hair shaped like flaming leeks, a face like a demon, horns on both sides of his forehead, sharp ears and teeth, and cross-shaped stitches running from his head to his neck. He wore a shirt with a bat-wing collar and gothic-style clothing.
This figure was none other than one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea—
Gecko Moria.
"Hm?"
Moria looked toward the spot beneath a nearby tree, and his expression froze.
His eyes nearly popped out.
"Where's the Devil Fruit I put here?"
"How did such a big Devil Fruit just disappear?!"
At the place where the Devil Fruit had originally been buried, only an empty hole remained.
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