Spare Them Beneath the Blade

"Ha ha ha!"

Garen's blunder successfully amused the pirate lackeys. Pointing at him, they laughed loudly:

"This guy's girlfriend ran off!"

Garen's expression darkened considerably.

He did not have a girlfriend at all.

"She actually abandoned her lover and ran off alone with the treasure?"

Steel Blade Captain studied the gloomy-faced Garen with interest, greed gradually gleaming in his eyes like that of a beast ready to devour its prey.

"That woman really was short-sighted."

"The things on this Iron Can are the truly valuable goods!"

"Heh. Keep dreaming!"

Garen raised his greatsword once more and looked toward Steel Blade Captain from afar.

"You'll only die beneath this greatsword."

Steel Blade Captain narrowed his eyes but said nothing more.

He merely silently raised the large blade in his hand.

Yet the blade was not pointed at Garen, who stood opposing him, but at the middle-aged Peacekeeper still kneeling before Steel Blade Captain.

"What are you doing?!"

Garen cried out in alarm. "Let him go!"

This turn of events was beyond Garen's expectations.

"Ha ha ha ha."

Steel Blade Captain's smile was full of mockery, with a hint of savage delight.

"You're so far away from me, while my blade is so close to this ant."

"Little knight!"

Steel Blade Captain's eyes brimmed with brutality as he roared like a lion or tiger.

"What right do you have to tell me to stop?!"

"You!"

Blazing fury ignited in Garen's eyes once more.

His almost tangible rage made even the pirate lackeys surrounding him tremble in fear.

Yet Steel Blade Captain casually rested the heavy blade on the trembling middle-aged man's shoulder, then, as though teasing an ant, lightly let its chilling edge drift across the middle-aged Peacekeeper's neck.

The middle-aged man did not even dare breathe too heavily. He merely closed his eyes in despair.

Behind him, the hot-blooded young man who had been shot and fallen to the ground could only glare with eyes split wide, watching the blade about to take his senior's life.

At last, a cruel smile bloomed across Steel Blade Captain's face.

"I told you, it's too late."

"I want to kill someone!"

The blade began cutting a scarlet line into the middle-aged man's neck.

Whoosh!

A metal pipe still bearing fragments of torn sheet metal flew from the distance like a javelin toward Steel Blade Captain, who was about to strike.

Faced with such a fierce attack, Steel Blade Captain instinctively pulled back his blade and casually sliced the incoming pipe in half midair.

"Who was that?!"

Steel Blade Captain asked offhandedly.

The answer came quickly.

An Orange-Haired Girl sprang high into the air from behind a tall shelf nearby, using it for leverage. Wielding a long staff, she descended into the midst of the ferocious pirates.

"Nami?"

Garen stared in surprise at the Orange-Haired Girl who had suddenly charged into the fray with a staff in hand and blurted out:

"You didn't run?"

Nami's pretty face reddened, but she had no time to say anything else.

She merely shouted at Garen, "What are you standing around for? Move!"

Nami truly had not run—or rather, she had not run very far.

For Nami, that was utterly unbelievable.

Throughout her long years as a thief, running away had been what she was most accustomed to; using one enemy against another and shifting disaster onto others had also been her tried-and-true method of escape.

Nami could leave a bunch of victims to tear at each other's throats without the slightest qualm, then swagger away from the chaos with their gold and silver in hand.

But this time, she hesitated.

Because Garen was an honest man.

On these seas, honest men truly were a rare breed.

After spending so many years as Cat Burglar Nami, she had met all kinds of people, but this was the first time she had encountered an honest man like Garen—one who had both strength and money.

So much so that, after escaping safely, Miss Nami had unprecedentedly begun worrying about the meat shield who had taken the blade for her, wondering whether that big Iron Can had died there because he helped her block it.

That was why she had not gone far, merely hiding nearby and watching in secret.

Yet what had truly driven Nami to abandon the professional instincts of a cat burglar and charge into the enemy ranks like an idiot was that middle-aged Peacekeeper.

An ordinary-looking old man, a minor character who had turned bowing, scraping, and kneeling into professional skills.

To protect his juniors, he stood before a brutal pirate without backing down.

He really resembled her. Bell-mère.

And so, Nami, who only knew a half-baked form of defensive martial arts, had gotten carried away and rashly run out to save him.

"Stupid!"

Steel Cutlass gave Nami a rather fitting assessment.

Nami thought so too.

But she did not regret it, even though she looked utterly outmatched the moment she appeared before the pirate grunts blocking her way.

The only thing she cared about now was whether she could save that middle-aged Peacekeeper she had never met before.

"You can't save him!"

Steel Cutlass grinned viciously and raised his saber again, intending to continue the murder he had yet to finish.

The middle-aged man closed his eyes helplessly once more.

Another sharp whistle tore through the air. A second thrown ranged weapon was coming—it was Garen's Greatsword.

"Hundred-Step Flying Sword!"

After all, he was named Garen. Without hesitation, Garen gave his weapon-throwing move an outrageously flashy name.

The Greatsword was heavy, and Garen had thrown it with tremendous force. As it ripped through the air, it let out a piercing shriek.

This attack was far more terrifying than the iron pipe Nami had thrown earlier.

For the third time, Steel Cutlass had no choice but to abandon his attempt to chop someone down and focus entirely on dealing with Garen's "Hundred-Step Flying Sword."

Seeing this, the middle-aged man, whose forehead had already broken out in several waves of cold sweat, could not help growling under his breath:

"Is this ever going to end?"

After being interrupted three times in a row, he somehow still had not died.

Naturally, no one was in the mood to care about the middle-aged Peacekeeper's roller-coaster emotions.

Steel Cutlass used all his strength to block the Greatsword Garen had thrown with the saber in his hand, yet the enormous kinetic force attached to the blade nearly made him stumble and fall.

In the end, he successfully stopped the flying divine weapon and firmly gripped it in his hand.

"Hahaha!"

Steel Cutlass looked at the magnificent golden hilt in his hand and burst into laughter.

"You idiot, you actually delivered such a precious sword right into my hands!"

"Let's see how you'll fight me now?!"

The pirate grunts surrounding Garen were greatly encouraged as well. Savage looks spread across their faces as they tightened the encirclement even further.

"Hmph!"

Garen merely snorted in disdain. Then, with an aloof posture, he stretched out his broad palm toward the empty sky and shouted again:

"Sword, come!"

"Huh?"

Before Steel Cutlass could even react, the ornate Greatsword in his hand began to tremble violently, as though it were about to shoot into the sky at any moment.

As a greedy pirate, he naturally could not stand by and watch such a valuable treasure slip from his grasp.

And as a brute immensely confident in his own strength, Steel Cutlass did not believe he would be unable to hold on to this Greatsword.

So, like Cat Burglar Nami before him, Steel Cutlass chose not to let go.

But the system's rules were absolute, irresistible laws.

Then—

This burly man, nearly three meters tall, became a rocket soaring into the sky along with the Greatsword.

In the end, the Greatsword naturally returned to Garen's hand, while the overconfident Steel Cutlass crashed brutally down from the sky, landing face-first on the ground in a perfect faceplant.

The entire street fell silent, and the pirate grunts stared at one another.

The first to react was the middle-aged Peacekeeper who had somehow survived three attempts on his life.

The moment he realized the butcher's blade had been withdrawn from his neck, the middle-aged man seized the chance to escape.

He turned around, hoisted the hot-blooded young man who was already heavily injured and unconscious onto his shoulder, then fled outside without regard for his own life.

Nami noticed the opportunity as well. She desperately swung the long staff in her hands, forcing a path through the pirate lackeys for the middle-aged Peacekeeper.

Within a few breaths, the middle-aged Peacekeeper had vanished without a trace with his gravely wounded junior in tow.

"D-Damn it!"

Steel Blade Captain, filthy and furious, climbed up from the ground. He still tightly clutched a chunk of brick that had been crushed to pieces by the monstrous strength he could barely restrain.

Not only had he failed to kill anyone, he had even put on a performance of flying through the air and face-planting in front of his underlings.

How could the famed Steel Blade Captain endure such utter humiliation?

He fixed Garen and Nami with a murderous glare, then roared in a distorted voice:

"You two are dead!!"

"Dead!"

Bang!

A crisp sound like a watermelon bursting rang out, mixed with the metallic screech of a blade shattering.

Garen's Greatsword was already drenched in blood.

"Dead?"

Garen's greatsword suddenly lit up, dazzling light of justice swirling around its silver-white blade:

"Good. I was thinking the same thing."