Steel Cutlass truly was a formidable man.
Garen had confirmed that from his own experience bar:
The experience Steel Cutlass provided alone exceeded that of all the pirate grunts who had previously died beneath Garen's greatsword combined.
And Garen did not need much experience to level up in the early stages, so his level indicator changed from 2 to 3 in that instant.
The third learnable skill lit up:
Courage: "Garen fortified his courage for 6 seconds, reducing all damage taken by 40% during that time."
This skill, too, differed slightly from its effect in the original game. It was simple and powerful.
Garen gladly accepted this divine defensive skill, then turned his faintly murderous gaze toward the remaining pirate grunts.
A man whose heart had just been pierced by a bullet and whose throat had been cut by a blade, clad in armor soaked through with crimson blood and holding high the slab-like greatsword that had just killed their own captain, was staring at them from afar.
"Ghost!"
The grunts gave the most genuine reaction possible.
Their legs went weak, their faces turned pale, and none of them dared move.
One grunt had stronger nerves than the rest. In an instant, he regained control of his body and fled madly into the distance like a beaten dog.
"Hundred-Step Flying Sword!"
Garen once again mercilessly used his ancestors' ultimate technique.
The flying greatsword smashed the fleeing grunt into a pulp on the spot, earning Garen another small portion of experience.
Garen raised a hand and recalled the greatsword from thin air, then said to the remaining grunts, who had been completely scared witless:
"When you live this life, sooner or later you have to pay your debts."
"Want to run? Ask my Greatsword first!"
The grunts exchanged looks, every trace of courage gone from their hearts.
They all dropped to their knees and said tremblingly:
"We won't run! We won't run anymore!"
"Please spare us, Knight!"
Seeing this, Garen slowly rested the greatsword back on his shoulder.
Though these grunts were living experience points, they had surrendered without resistance, so Garen did not wish to commit more needless slaughter.
Even someone like Steel Cutlass had his own bottom line. Garen had no desire to become a human piece of trash without principles just for power.
So he casually pointed at one pirate and said:
"You, tie up the rest of them."
"I'll hand all of you over to the Peacekeepers later and let them deal with you according to local law."
"Thank you! Thank you, Knight!"
The pirates hurriedly kowtowed in gratitude, and the tension in their hearts eased considerably.
If they were dealt with according to local law, the worst that could happen to grunts like them was over a decade in prison. Their lives should be spared.
At that moment, the young reporter who had been rescued finally came to his senses.
He looked at Garen's imposing figure, his eyes practically shining with golden light.
"Protecting the weak from the strong, upholding righteousness and chivalry, sacrificing himself for others."
"Steel bones and iron flesh, unharmed by blades, with unmatched courage and strength, and brilliant wits."
"And he risked life and limb for two complete strangers, offering his body to the blade."
"Was this the legendary Knight of Justice?!"
The young reporter trembled with excitement, then unhesitatingly raised the camera he had carefully protected all along and began snapping wildly at Garen's proud, sword-bearing figure.
He truly lived up to his profession as a reporter.
The moment the blond young man raised his camera, his trembling hands instantly became as steady as stone.
In his mind, he precisely controlled every factor—exposure, color temperature, color rendering, the angle of the light—and finally captured Garen's majestic posture in the most perfect interplay of light and shadow.
But the reporter's overly excited behavior made Garen's scalp tingle.
He quietly took two steps away from the young reporter, who looked ready to pounce on him at any moment.
However, the one who truly pounced was not the young reporter who worshipped Garen like a god, but Nami, whose tears still streaked her face.
She swung her pale pink fist with all her strength and slammed it furiously into Garen's solid armor.
"You bastard!"
"You weren't dead?!"
Nami hit him hard enough to lower Garen's HP by more than ten points.
"No need to be surprised."
Garen deliberately changed the subject, pretending not to understand.
"It's just one of my special abilities, something like a Devil Fruit."
"Who asked you about that?!"
A faint flush of embarrassment and anger quietly spread across Nami's fair cheeks as she drove an even heavier fist into Garen's breastplate.
"I thought you..."
Without even wiping the tears from the corners of her eyes, she vented her complicated emotions in frustration.
"You bastard who toyed with a girl's feelings!"
Garen merely laughed smugly.
"Hahaha..."
"You've tricked me so many times. This time, it was finally my turn!"
Just then, another set of footsteps came from the distance.
Leading them was the middle-aged Peacekeeper who had fled earlier, followed by the group of Peacekeepers who had withdrawn before.
Unlike last time, these Peacekeepers had finally arrived at the proper moment for police in a work of fiction.
It turned out that the Peacekeepers who had retreated first had not fled very far after their superior fell into enemy hands. They had merely hidden nearby and watched the situation.
They simply lacked Nami's courage to charge into battle.
"You're here?"
Garen greeted the middle-aged Peacekeeper with an easy expression, then asked with some concern:
"How's that young man?"
The middle-aged Peacekeeper had initially looked somewhat restrained before the blood-soaked Garen, but relaxed considerably at the question.
"He was sent to the hospital for treatment. He's out of danger."
"That's good..."
Garen pointed at the tightly bound pirate grunts and the steaming pile of corpses on the ground, then said to the middle-aged Peacekeeper:
"Then I'll leave you to handle the aftermath."
"Yes, Knight!"
The middle-aged Peacekeeper respectfully bowed to the young Garen, then turned and shouted at his subordinates:
"Don't just stand there. Get to work!"
The Peacekeepers moved forward with practiced ease. Some gathered the prisoners, while others carried away the bodies, all in perfect order.
They had done this sort of work plenty of times before, but their targets had always been insignificant small-time pirates. This was their first time cleaning up after a pirate crew worth tens of millions.
The middle-aged Peacekeeper looked over the bloody battlefield and muttered to himself:
"One, five, ten... nineteen."
Finally, the middle-aged Peacekeeper ordered a young man beside him:
"Go to the coffin shop and order nineteen coffins."
"Put it on the town's public security budget."
The young man nodded and made to leave.
"Wait!"
Garen suddenly called out, then asked the middle-aged Peacekeeper in surprise:
"What?"
"You're buying coffins and building graves for these pirates?"
"Yes."
The middle-aged Peacekeeper froze slightly, then replied with a perfectly natural expression, "What's wrong with that?"
"These scum who murder, burn, and rob people when they come ashore..."
Garen asked unhappily:
"You're still going to use public funds to bury them and erect headstones for them?"
The middle-aged Peacekeeper considered it for a moment before saying:
"But that's how we've always done it."
"No matter how terrible they were, they were still men of the sea."
That was indeed the case. This world was far too tolerant of pirates who roamed the seas.
They erected headstones and buried dead pirates, and even captured pirates were usually not executed on the spot.
Even those who slaughtered cities and destroyed nations could receive a free apartment in Impel Down after being captured. If they were lucky, they could even break out with the protagonist and continue causing trouble elsewhere.
As he spoke, the middle-aged Peacekeeper wore an expression of deep feeling.
"Out on this sea, only by burying others like this..."
"Can you avoid being left to rot in the wilderness when your own time comes..."
"Utter nonsense!"
Garen interrupted the middle-aged Peacekeeper's musings with a dark expression.
"If you let evil men die as they deserve, all you'll do is fill the sea with more and more graves!"
Being too cruel to the good and too kind to the evil.
That was a social disease Garen had despised ever since his previous life.
Garen pointed at the pirate corpses, including Steel Cutlass's, and said coldly:
"Hang them up. String every one of them from the flagpoles at the docks and leave them there to dry as a warning!"
Garen had seen this method of dealing with pirates in the film Pirates of the Caribbean. Uh.
He had seen it in that American Pirates of the Caribbean film.
Back then, the British Royal Navy had used precisely this method to deal with pirate corpses.
This was the fate pirates who had committed countless atrocities deserved.
"This..."
The middle-aged Peacekeeper said somewhat uneasily, "Wouldn't that be inappropriate?"
"What's inappropriate about it?"
Garen shot back:
"Hang the Steel Cutlass Pirates' corpses at the docks."
"Then whenever pirates think about coming to Samwell Island to burn, kill, and plunder again, they'll have to think carefully about the heads on their shoulders!"
The middle-aged Peacekeeper's eyes lit up.
Garen's words instantly changed the angle from which he viewed the matter.
"Captain?"
The young man asked hesitantly, "Should I still buy the coffins?"
"Don't buy them!"
The middle-aged Peacekeeper finally made his decision.
"Do as the Knight said. Hang all these pirates' corpses at the docks!"
"Oh, right."
A few traces of middle-aged shrewdness flashed through his eyes as he added to his subordinates:
"Even if we aren't buying coffins, don't forget to get the burial expenses reimbursed by the town."
Before you continue