The Plan to Usurp the Magpie's Nest

The smarter a person is, the less they like "surprises." The more important the matter, the truer this holds.

"Hundred Schemes" Kuro was undoubtedly in that category.

The sky gradually darkened, the ocean pitch black, but since Kuro didn't speak, no one dared leave the deck to light the lamps.

Beneath their feet, the unconscious, gravely wounded navy soldiers and the unlucky substitute acting as a decoy would soon wake up—there was no time left to rearrange the plan now.

The Catman Brothers had told him what happened in the cabin. No one expected that the recent rookie "Triangle Spellbreaker" would be a Devil Fruit user, wielding the ability to control corpses.

Even less did they expect him to be on this very ship, taken into custody by the navy.

And that he had witnessed everything...

And might not be dead!

Splash...

Soaking wet, Buchi climbed onto the deck with the help of his companion, gasping for breath as he said, "Cap... Captain, no body was found. It must have been washed away by the seawater."

"If he was cut in two, even an undead would be destroyed, right? Plus, he's a Devil Fruit user—falling into the sea means certain death."

That answer wasn't very reassuring. Sam cautiously asked in a low voice.

Kuro's cold gaze shifted to him. "Do you have any proof?"

Gulp...!

Sam swallowed hard and prostrated himself on the deck.

"A thousand apologies, Captain!"

Kuro ignored him, sitting by the railing with his head lowered.

"No proof of certain death means there's a possibility he's alive... Zango, this is the Black Cat Pirates' top priority, understand?"

"Captain Kuro..."

Zango hesitated for a moment, then asked, "How about we wait for the next opportunity? This is too risky."

Every additional person who knew the truth added one more threat of exposure to Kuro's plan to fake his death.

He knew what Kuro wanted. As the vice-captain, both for the crew's sake and his own, he didn't want Kuro to take such a risk.

Hearing this, Kuro lifted his head, the pupils behind his glasses bloodshot.

"There won't be a next opportunity!"

He gritted his teeth, speaking each word deliberately.

"...The main force of Branch 153 has been wiped out here. Within a few years, every branch in the East Blue will tighten their defenses! Are you asking me to wait years in a situation like this?!"

As his bounty increased, more and more navy soldiers and bounty hunters joined this game of pursuit. Kuro wasn't afraid of death, but he had long grown tired of this skulking pirate life.

Not to mention that after this massacre, the enraged navy would surely intensify their hunt for the Black Cat Pirates—the situation was even more dire than before!

Would there really be another opportunity in a few years?

Zango had no retort. It was the truth.

"He's bound to slip up. As a fugitive, the navy won't let him go either..."

Kuro took a deep breath and stood up.

"Let's go. The navy reinforcements will be here soon. If we're going to put on an act, we do it all the way."

This was a gamble!

As a pirate, Kuro had a bit of a gambler's instinct.

Zango nodded respectfully.

"Yes!"

As he reached the bow to prepare for boarding a small boat, Kuro suddenly remembered something. He turned back, his gaze icy on the Catman Brothers.

"You two know what I want, right?"

If this matter was exposed, whether Lowett lived or died, they would have to be buried with him!

The Catman Brothers shuddered and nodded repeatedly. "We understand, Captain!"

"Best if it's so..."

Kuro said no more. He turned, pulling his coat tight. The skull epaulets gleamed coldly under the moonlight, but soon a dark cloud drifted overhead, shrouding him in shadow.

Zango watched from the side, a chill running through his heart, because he knew full well—the Catman Brothers were dead men!

With a captain like Kuro, if he punished you on the spot, that was proof you might live.

Other than that, there was no luck!

When the dark cloud drifted away, revealing the moonlight, the sea surface fell silent.

The slaughter had ended, leaving only the deck littered with corpses lying every which way.

Splash...

Suddenly, the seawater rippled, and a pale-faced head surfaced.

Blood loss and cold made Lowett tremble all over, but he still gritted his teeth and held on for so long, relying on faint Mental Power control to force the half-corpse Undead Navy to hook onto the warship's rudder, lurking and waiting all the while.

Calculating the time of a body's death was a basic skill for Necromancers.

He knew that with his current physical condition, even with the help of the undead, his chance of surviving a fall into the water and escaping was over ninety-nine percent!

Instead, staying behind and waiting was the only way he might live.

After confirming which world he was currently in, relying on his extraordinary memory, Lowett clearly knew that "Hundred Schemes" Kuro wouldn't stay long.

The most dangerous place was the safest.

"Terrifying speed!"

Thinking back to that flash of black light when Kuro struck earlier, Lowett felt a lingering fear.

That speed was by no means that of a normal human!

It was almost comparable to the Transcendent Knight King of the human kingdom in his previous world!

Even in a world dominated by mages, where martial arts had declined, a nation's Knight King was still not to be underestimated. Like mages who sublimated their souls and evolved, they sublimated their physiques in all aspects, making them one of the Necromancer's...

favorite experimental subjects.

And through his memories, Lowett knew that this world had beings far more terrifying than Kuro!

"So even though Necromancy is adept at combat, it's not absolutely invincible in this world. I'll have to be more careful in the future..."

If searching by book title doesn't work, try searching by the author—maybe it's just been renamed!

Setting his course of action, Lowett smiled wryly to himself: "But then again, mages in that world weren't combat professions to begin with. Fighting was just a means to an end."

To be precise, mages were a group of scholars, each with their own research goals.

Take the Necromancers he represented, for example—their Ultimate Mystery was to define death and explain life!

In that world, because they could control the undead, toy with souls, and even communicate with the underworld to awaken ancient spirits sleeping for tens of thousands of years, coupled with the fact that the Star Spirit, which could not be killed, truly existed in the mortal world, they themselves couldn't define the boundary between life and death.

Every Necromancer asked themselves: Is the death we recognize now truly death?

No one knew the answer.

For tens of thousands of years, the meaning of "death" had been defined and overturned countless times, even sparking wars in the Mage World. It wasn't until the [Holy Ten] Necromancer Great Mage, Anthony Musk, wrote the book Necronomicon that this academic debate was ended, setting it as the ultimate goal of Necromancers.

This was the Necromancer's Ultimate Mystery, and Lowett was no exception—he too wanted to know the truth.

As a side note, the Necromancer's fearsome combat reputation was also forged in those thousand-year wars.

Within academic circles, we're the best at fighting!

It was something like the feeling of a gentleman's six arts...

"But I can think about that later. For now, the priority is healing... then finding a place to rest and recover!"

Carried up onto the deck by the undead, Lowett tore off the clothes of a nearby corpse and draped them over his shoulder, his eyes gleaming as he looked not far away.

There, the unlucky bastard who served as Kuro's double and the lucky bastard who was the protagonist were still unconscious. Later, "Axe King" Monka, who even took a swing at Garp, now had his jaw crushed, his flesh and blood a mess, looking utterly miserable.

"If I remember correctly, he was deeply hypnotized by Zan... Go? I think that was the name... to the point where his personality changed drastically."

Plop!

Dispersing the Mental Power spread across the Undead Navy, letting the tools die stiff as boards, Lowett held a Soul Light Orb up to his nose and took a deep breath.

As the saying goes, eat what you lack—in a mage world based on soul strength, this was probably the Necromancer's most unreasonable ability.

Soul Devouring!

"Cough... I inhaled too much!"

Holding his throbbing, aching forehead, Lowett gripped the remaining Soul Light Orb in his hand, panting heavily.

"Personality change? Zan Go doesn't have that skill. That's the result of the soul's self-correction. If the fragmented memory area is interfered with by external force and can't recover or leave enough blank space, then it has to be filled with false memories—and memories determine personality..."

Then his eyes gleamed as he looked at Monka.

"But... even if a wound heals, it leaves a scar."

"Patching a soul isn't an easy thing... Normally speaking, that's true."

"Seaman recruit Monka? Seaman recruit Monka?!"

The world was pitch black, and faintly, a familiar calling voice echoed in his ears.

"Mm..."

Monka slowly woke up. The moment he opened his mouth, the sharp pain in his jaw jolted him fully awake.

"Great, he's alive!"

Cheers full of joy sounded beside him. Monka remembered that it was a colleague left behind at the branch base.

Opening his eyes, he looked at the soldiers gathered around him and suddenly sat up.

"K... Kuro?"

Ignoring the intense pain, Monka grabbed a colleague's hand and asked excitedly.

That colleague, equally moved to tears, gripped his hand back and nodded: "Don't worry, we've caught him!"

What a fine fellow!

How could I have ever thought he was too rigid?

"Even as you passed out, you didn't let him go, Monka... well done!"

Is... is it me?

Monka's gaze froze, his thoughts grinding to a halt for an instant, but under the influence of two unknown forces, an image surfaced in his mind.

That's right!

A scarlet sunset blazed across the deck, the warship littered with corpses. The captain was dead, his comrades were dead. Seeing so many colleagues fall, he fought alone, bloodshot and berserk, charged in, and by sheer luck stabbed Kuro.

So, I succeeded?!

Suddenly, Monka's head throbbed with pain, and he clutched his forehead.

"Lo... Lowett! How is he?"

The space beside him fell silent for a moment, then the familiar comrade asked, "Who's Lowett?"

Among the colleagues on this mission, there didn't seem to be anyone by that name?

"That pirate!"

Monka lifted his head, his tiger-like eyes brimming with tears: "If he hadn't sacrificed an arm to block a fatal blow for me, Kuro would have escaped long ago! He... cough, cough, cough!"

"Lie down first, get some rest!"

Urged by others, Monka lay back on the deck and let the doctor examine him, but his eyes kept sweeping across the deck, searching for someone.

Not far away, a few soldiers exchanged glances, all seeing the helplessness in each other's eyes.

"So... that pirate also made a contribution? Never seen this situation before!"

"Leave it to the higher-ups to decide! Monka is the battle hero who captured Kuro, so his words carry some weight."

"That's the only way... but speaking of which, what was Lowett's reason for going to sea?"

"I heard he discovered the new Law Enforcement Officer in town colluding with pirates, so he fought his way out. Originally, it was a serious crime of attacking an official, but a follow-up investigation found the officer really was corrupt, so they only symbolically set a 100 million bounty."

Attacking a World Government official starts at a minimum of 500 million bounty!

Setting it at just 100 million Berries was probably out of consideration that they couldn't massacre the entire town to silence everyone.

The World Government's authority cannot be challenged, so even if there were reasons, they couldn't rule you innocent.

The speaking Marine immediately rallied in shared indignation: "That's so unfair!"

Hearing this, the other two exchanged a look, shrugged, and dared not chime in.