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Chapter 100 is out!!!! +40 advanced chapters monthly
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Truth be told, it had been nearly two years since the residents of Kuro Island had seen a pirate. So, when a pirate ship finally breached their horizon, an absurd, fleeting sense of familiarity washed over them—only to be instantly swallowed by absolute terror.
They knew all too well what pirates meant.
Worse still, the Savage Beast Pirates clearly weren't the merciful sort. Their Jolly Roger fluttered ominously in the wind: two massive, roaring beast skulls with a pair of crossed swords driven through them.
The first to respond were, naturally, the patrolmen of the Green Apple Kingdom stationed just offshore. But against hardened criminals freshly tempered by the New World, they never stood a chance.
Raan, the captain, didn't even have to lift a finger. A few casual cannon volleys, and the patrol ships were nothing more than splintered wood sinking to the ocean floor.
The next to react was T-Bone, who had been invited to the island as a witness. He knew he was likely outclassed, but his sense of justice wouldn't let him stand by; every second he bought was a second for the civilians to flee.
Flanking him were a dozen elite Marines from the local branch.
"Heh. You actually have a death wish, trying to stop me with that pathetic level of strength?" Raan sneered, watching T-Bone charge forward.
It made sense. To Raan, a man with New World standards, T-Bone wasn't even worth comparing to his lowest-ranking commanders. Why would he take him seriously? The New World was essentially an elite survival camp; anyone who made it out alive was a monster in their own right. Here in the East Blue—the weakest sea—no one was worthy of his attention.
Except, perhaps, for Baishui.
"Xunyang, Muyan, Lola," Raan called over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off the Marines. "Which of you wants to take out the trash?"
When the other two didn't immediately volunteer, Lola stepped forward, her expression flat. "I'll do it."
She didn't even glance at her captain, offering him zero face in front of the crew. It wasn't that Lola was insubordinate; it was simply her nature. She was Raan's lover, but her infamous icy exterior only ever melted behind closed doors. Only Raan truly knew the fiery passion hidden beneath the "Queen of Annihilation's" freezing facade. Muyan and Xunyang were curious, sure, but she was the captain's woman. They knew better than to pry.
"Don't underestimate a Marine!" T-Bone roared, refusing to let his guard down just because his opponent was a woman. He opened with one of his strongest techniques.
"Chokkaku Senko: Bone Kuga!"
A vicious, right-angled shockwave of azure sword aura tore through the air, shrieking toward Lola with lethal intent.
"Vanish."
Lola didn't even blink. She merely raised her bare hand and casually reached out to touch the lethal blade of compressed air.
What happened next defied logic. Her palm wasn't shredded to the bone; instead, the moment her skin made contact, the vicious sword aura simply blinked out of existence.
"Impossible!" T-Bone gasped, his eyes wide. He had never seen such a bizarre ability.
"Why is it impossible?" Lola asked softly, her feet touching down lightly as she looked up at the towering Marine. Her eyes were dead and apathetic. "I ate the Paramecia-type Vanish-Vanish Fruit. I can reduce anything I touch to absolute nothingness."
She tilted her head. "Forget that pathetic strike. Even if it were ten times—a hundred times—stronger, I could still erase it from this world."
T-Bone gritted his teeth, his leg muscles bulging. Having been promoted to Captain at Marine Headquarters, he had finally been granted permission to study the Rokushiki.
"Rankyaku!"
Swish!
T-Bone's leg whipped out, launching a crescent blade of compressed air so fast it seemed impossible for Lola to react.
"Vanish."
But true to her word, she could erase whatever she wished. The Rankyaku blade shattered into nothingness the moment it brushed her fingers.
"So, Marine Captain. Please vanish as well."
Lola disappeared from her spot like a phantom, her presence completely wiped from the air. In the next heartbeat, she materialized right beside T-Bone, her slender leg snapping up toward his head in a brutal kick.
T-Bone's instincts screamed. Every hair on his body stood on end. I cannot let her touch
me!
Clang!
Moving purely on reflex, T-Bone brought his armored gauntlet up to block. Metal rang against bone.
The physical force behind the kick was staggering, launching him backward over thirty feet. But worse was the sudden lightness in his arm—the heavy iron gauntlet he had used to block was entirely gone. Erased.
"What a terrifying ability!" T-Bone yelled, panic bleeding into his voice as his men rushed forward to back him up. "Don't engage in close combat! Do not let her touch you! Scatter and use ranged attacks!"
"What?!" The Marines hesitated, stunned by the loss of his armor, but their ingrained discipline took over. They immediately began falling back.
"Do you really think keeping your distance will save you?" Raan chuckled from the deck of the ship, looking at the Marines as if they were naive children. "They don't call her the Queen of Annihilation for nothing."
"Vanish Mist."
Lola parted her lips and exhaled a thick, cloying pink fog that billowed outward with unnatural speed.
Then came the horror.
The Marines who were caught in the expanding cloud didn't scream. Instead, their bodies began to turn translucent, fading like ghosts until they were wiped entirely from the face of the earth.
"Bastard! What did you do to my men?!" T-Bone roared in absolute grief and fury. He swung his straight sword in a frenzy, unleashing a barrage of four or five razor-sharp flying slashes that boxed Lola in.
Swish!
Lola disappeared again. T-Bone's desperate attacks cleaved nothing but empty air, leaving him with the sickening, frustrating sensation of punching cotton.
"Vanish Beam."
Lola's voice echoed from directly above him. T-Bone looked up to see her hovering in the air like a descending goddess. She extended her right hand, and a concentrated blast of pink energy shot down toward him.
Clang!
Unable to dodge, T-Bone hoisted his heavy broadsword horizontally to take the brunt of the blast. The metal held for a fraction of a second before crumbling away, turning to ash and annihilating into the wind.
"Dammit!" T-Bone cursed, tossing the hilt aside. He drew a spare blade from his back and slashed upward at the airborne pirate.
"Chokkaku Hicho: Bone Oodori!"
A massive, right-angled bird of azure sword aura shrieked toward Lola. Just as before, she reached out a hand to erase it.
But suddenly, her deadpan expression broke. She violently threw herself backward.
The sword aura, which should have traveled in a straight line, suddenly snapped at a perfect right angle right in front of her face. Had she not retreated, the attack would have bypassed her hand entirely and cut her out of the sky.
"Impressive," Lola admitted, landing a short distance away. Her expression was slightly heavier now. A thin line of blood trickled down her right hand. "That was a good technique. But unfortunately, you're still not a match for me."
Swish!
She vanished again, reappearing directly in T-Bone's guard, and snapped a brutal kick forward.
Boom!
T-Bone was sent skidding back another thirty feet, his boots tearing deep trenches into the trembling earth. His spare sword was already beginning to flake away into nothingness. Before he could recover, Lola closed the distance, her leg raised for another strike.
"Rankyaku!"
With no weapons left and his guard broken, T-Bone was forced to rely on his legs.
Bam!
Lola vanished right through the Tempest Kick, reappearing right in front of him. Her fist slammed directly into his chest.
It felt like being trampled by a rampaging dinosaur. The sickening crunch of bone echoed across the field as T-Bone's sternum caved in.
"Disappear," Lola stated coldly, reaching a pale hand out toward his broken chest.
"Lola, halt. Leave him breathing," Raan commanded suddenly, his voice slicing through the battlefield. "I want to properly 'entertain' our Marine friend."
Lola's hand stopped inches from his heart.
"Shatter Strike!"
She didn't erase him, but she wasn't about to leave him in fighting shape, either. She pivoted and drove her heel viciously into T-Bone's side.
T-Bone let out a strangled cry of agony as his right ribcage shattered completely, turning into a horrific, mushy wreck. He collapsed into the dirt, entirely paralyzed by the pain.
"You... you're the Queen of Annihilation... Lola," T-Bone coughed, blood spattering his lips as he forced the words out through the blinding pain. "A bounty of... 98 million Berries. Why are heavyweights like you...
suddenly here? What... what are you after?!"
"Heh. Do I really need to spell it out for you?" Raan sauntered over, looking down at the broken Marine with utter contempt.
"I heard you got a massive three-rank promotion straight to Marine Headquarters Captain," Raan continued, a cruel, feral grin stretching across his face. "All because you managed to capture a pirate named Torson."
T-Bone's eyes widened.
"Do you know who Torson is? He's my blood brother. Since you Marines saw fit to rip my family away from me and throw him into Impel Down, I've decided to let you taste that exact same despair!"
"Wha... what?!" T-Bone gasped, horror dawning in his eyes.
"Come on, boys," Raan called out, turning his back on the Captain. "Let's head into town and pay this Longer Baishui a visit."
Raan found it odd that Baishui hadn't rushed out to the docks the moment the cannons fired, but it didn't matter. They would just have to go to his house.
"Kekeke... I've been waiting for this," Muyan cackled, his long tongue sliding over his lips in anticipation.
"Heheheh, same here," Xunyang agreed, rubbing his hands together greedily.
Muyan: Bounty of 120 million Berries.
Xunyang: Bounty of 140 million Berries.
Meanwhile, deep inland.
"Why would pirates attack now of all times? I just pray Captain T-Bone can hold them off. If only Baishui were here, we wouldn't have to run like rats..." the Mayor muttered nervously, leading the terrified townsfolk into a fortified underground air-raid shelter.
"Oh god, wait! Aki isn't here!" a young man suddenly screamed, slapping his forehead in sheer panic.
"What?!"
The entire shelter froze. A collective, terrified gulp echoed in the dim light.
Everyone on Kuro Island knew exactly how important Aki was.
"Are you out of your mind?! Do you have any idea who Aki is?!" the Mayor exploded, leaping to his feet and pointing a trembling finger at the boy's nose. "How could you leave her behind?! If so much as a hair on her head is harmed, how the hell are we supposed to look Baishui in the eye?!"
He was hyperventilating, and for good reason. Ever since the incident where Aki was nearly assaulted trying to help him, the Mayor had sworn to protect her with his life whenever Baishui was away. He had vowed to never let anything like that happen again.
And now, he had failed.
BOOM!
Just as the Mayor turned to sprint out of the shelter to find Aki, the heavy reinforced door buckled under a massive impact. Dust rained down from the ceiling as a spiderweb of cracks ripped across the thick entrance.
"Kekeke! I didn't expect you all to politely pack yourselves into a little box for us. Really saves us the trouble of hunting you down!"
A sadistic voice echoed into the bunker, accompanied by a pair of violent, bloodshot eyes peering through the cracked door. The sheer malice in that gaze froze the blood in the villagers' veins.
"Wh-who... are you?!" the Mayor demanded, his voice shaking violently as he tried to mask his terror. The civilians huddled together, weeping silently.
"Bwahaha! Do you really need to ask? Are you blind, old man? We're pirates!" Xunyang laughed uproariously, his jovial tone violently contrasting with his monstrous intent.
"Cut the crap, Xunyang. Stop playing with your food and kill them already so we can see what the boss is doing," Muyan grunted. "I guarantee that when Longer Baishui comes home and sees this, he's going to lose his damn mind."
"Hahaha! Exactly! When he sees the neighbors he loved so dearly slaughtered because of him, maybe then he'll understand a fraction of the captain's pain!" Xunyang grinned. To the terrified civilians, that smile was the face of the devil himself.
"Well then, let's do this together. Let's make sure they die screaming in terror," Muyan said casually. As he spoke, his skin began to flush deep red, and a horrific amount of steam violently hissed from his pores, superheating the air in the bunker.
Muyan was a Devil Fruit user who had eaten the Boil-Boil Fruit
"Fine by me. I won't hold back, then,"
Xunyang licked his lips. His physical body began to lose its shape, melting into a grotesque, viscous sludge of dark green liquid.
Xunyang had eaten the Acid-Acid Fruit.
"Boiling Deluge!"
"Corrosive Wasteland!"
The two pirates unleashed their powers simultaneously.
Before the horrified eyes of the villagers, a lethal tidal wave of scalding, superheated water fused with thick, flesh-melting acid violently surged into the enclosed bunker.
The civilians screamed, scrambling backward over one another until their backs hit the cold stone wall. There was nowhere left to run.
Sizzle! Sizzle!
Even the solid earth couldn't withstand the horrific corrosion, melting into putrid green smoke that choked the air. The chemical reaction violently expanded the bunker, eating away at the rock and exposing it to the surface.
"AGGGHHHH!"
Agonized shrieks tore through the shelter, but their cries did nothing but amplify the terror.
The toxic flood entirely submerged the bunker, turning it into a macabre, bubbling pond. Noxious green smoke hissed into the air, the sound of sizzling meat and melting bone echoing relentlessly. The stench was apocalyptic.
For the people caught in the torrent, it was like being dragged into the depths of a volcano while thousands of invisible hands peeled off their skin and rubbed salt and chili into their raw nerves.
They thrashed and scrambled in the boiling acid, but the heavy liquid swallowed their screams, burying them in agonizing silence.
"Let's go," Xunyang said, casually clapping his hands together as he looked at Muyan. Judging by the relaxed, satisfied grins on their faces, mass slaughter was just another Tuesday for them.
Meanwhile, at Baishui's home.
Aki, having stayed up late vibrating with excitement for Baishui's return, had eventually crashed from exhaustion. She was sleeping so deeply that the chaos of the evacuation, the cannon fire, and the screams had entirely failed to wake her.
"Well, well. She truly is a gorgeous woman. Longer Baishui certainly knows how to enjoy himself."
Raan stood in the doorway of the bedroom, staring down at the sleeping girl. He had fully expected to clash with Baishui upon landing, but instead, he had strolled all the way to the man's home entirely unopposed, finding nothing but his defenseless lover.
"Since you personally arrested my brother and threw him into the hell of Impel Down... I think I'll slaughter your wife. Let's see how you like the taste of losing the person you love most!"