Retribution for Good and Evil

Steel Cutlass was indeed a formidable man.

Garen confirmed this from his experience bar: the experience provided by Steel Cutlass alone was greater than that of the dozen or so pirate lackeys who had fallen to Garen's greatsword combined.

And since Garen didn't need much experience to level up early on, his level indicator instantly jumped from 2 to 3.

The third learnable skill lit up:

[Courage]: "Garen fortifies his Courage for 6 seconds, reducing all incoming damage by 40%."

This skill also had a slight difference from its original game counterpart—simple yet powerful.

Garen gladly accepted this life-saving technique, then cast a murderous gaze at the remaining pirate lackeys.

A man whose heart had just been pierced by a bullet and whose throat had been slit by a blade, clad in armor soaked with crimson blood, holding aloft the door-plank greatsword that had just skewered their boss, now stared at them from afar.

"Ghost!"

The lackeys reacted with the utmost sincerity.

Their legs went weak, their faces turned pale, and they dared not move an inch.

One lackey had a stronger mental fortitude; he regained control of his body in an instant and fled madly into the distance like a stray dog.

"Hundred-Step Flying Sword!"

Garen unceremoniously unleashed his ancestor's signature technique again.

The flying greatsword smashed the fleeing lackey into a pulp on the spot, netting Garen another chunk of experience.

Garen reached out and retrieved the greatsword from thin air, then addressed the remaining lackeys, who were utterly petrified:

"In this world, what goes around comes around."

"Want to run? Ask my Greatsword first!"

The lackeys exchanged glances, their courage completely drained.

They knelt in unison and stammered:

"We won't run, we won't!"

"Spare us, Knight!"

Seeing this, Garen slowly hoisted the greatsword back onto his shoulder.

Though these lackeys were walking experience points, since they surrendered, Garen didn't want to shed more blood needlessly.

Even a man like Steel Cutlass had his own bottom line; Garen had no desire to become a human scumbag who abandoned all principles for power.

So he pointed at a random pirate and said:

"You, tie up the rest."

"I'll hand you all over to the Peacekeepers later, and they'll deal with you according to local law."

"Thank you! Thank you, Knight!"

The pirates hurriedly kowtowed in gratitude, their tension easing considerably:

If dealt with by local law, the worst they'd face as lackeys was a decade or two in prison—their lives would likely be spared.

Meanwhile, the young journalist who had been rescued finally snapped out of his daze.

He stared at Garen's imposing figure, his eyes practically gleaming with gold:

"Aiding the weak, upholding justice, self-sacrifice for others."

"Steel bones, impervious to blades, unmatched in courage and wit."

"And risking his life for two strangers, testing his blade against steel."

"Is this the legendary Knight of Justice?!"

The young journalist trembled with excitement, then unhesitatingly raised the camera he had been carefully safeguarding and snapped a flurry of shots at Garen's proud, sword-wielding silhouette.

He truly lived up to his profession as a journalist.

The moment this blond young man lifted his camera, his trembling hands steadied like rock.

He precisely controlled factors like brightness, color temperature, color rendering, and light angle in his mind, ultimately capturing Garen's majestic stance with the most perfect interplay of light and shadow.

But the journalist's over-the-top reaction made Garen's scalp crawl.

He quietly took two steps back from the young man who seemed ready to pounce at any moment.

However, the one who actually pounced wasn't the young journalist worshipping Garen like a god, but Nami, whose tear-streaked face hadn't yet dried.

She swung her pale fist with all her might and slammed it hatefully against Garen's solid armor:

"You bastard!"

"You weren't dead after all!!"

Nami hit hard enough to drop Garen's HP by over a dozen points.

"Don't be surprised."

Garen feigned ignorance and changed the subject:

"This is just a special ability of mine, something like a Devil Fruit."

"Who asked you about that!"

Nami's fair cheeks quietly flushed with a hint of embarrassed annoyance, and she struck Garen's chest plate with an even heavier fist:

"I thought you—"

Without even bothering to wipe the tears from the corners of her eyes, she vented her tangled emotions in anger:

"You bastard who toys with a girl's feelings!"

Garen, however, laughed smugly:

"Hahaha..."

"You've tricked me so many times—this time it's finally my turn!"

Just then, another set of footsteps sounded from the distance.

Leading the group was none other than the middle-aged Peacekeeper who had fled earlier, followed by the squad of Peacekeepers who had previously withdrawn.

Unlike before, these Peacekeepers had finally mastered the proper timing for police to make their entrance in works of fiction.

It turned out that the Peacekeepers who had retreated first hadn't fled far after their commander fell into enemy hands; they had been hiding nearby, quietly observing the situation.

They just didn't have the same Courage as Nami to charge in and fight.

"You're here?"

Garen greeted the middle-aged Peacekeeper with a relaxed expression, then asked with some concern:

"How's that young man doing?"

Facing Garen, whose body was drenched in blood, the middle-aged Peacekeeper had initially looked a bit tense, but after that question, his demeanor eased considerably:

"He's been sent to the hospital for treatment. No serious injuries."

"That's good."

Garen pointed to the bundled-up pirate underlings and the pile of still-steaming corpses on the ground, then said to the middle-aged Peacekeeper:

"Then I'll trouble you to clean up the mess."

"Yes, Knight!"

The middle-aged Peacekeeper bowed respectfully to the young Garen, then turned and shouted to his subordinate Peacekeepers:

"Don't just stand there—get to work!"

The Peacekeepers stepped forward with practiced ease, some gathering prisoners, others hauling corpses, all moving in an orderly fashion.

They had done this kind of work many times before, but their targets had always been insignificant small-time pirates. Cleaning up after a Pirate Crew worth tens of millions was a first.

The middle-aged Peacekeeper gazed at the bloody battlefield, muttering to himself:

"One, five, ten... nineteen."

Finally, he ordered a young man beside him:

"Go to the coffin shop and order nineteen coffins."

"Pay for it out of the town's peacekeeping fund."

The young man nodded and turned to leave.

"Wait!"

Garen suddenly called out, looking at the middle-aged Peacekeeper with some surprise:

"What?"

"You're buying coffins and building graves for these pirates?"

"That's right."

The middle-aged Peacekeeper blinked in slight confusion, then said with an expression of utter certainty:

"What's wrong?"

"These scum who murder, burn, and rob when they come ashore—"

Garen asked with some displeasure:

"—you're using public funds to erect tombstones and bury them?"

The middle-aged Peacekeeper paused for a moment, then said:

"But... this is how we've always done it."

"No matter how terrible they are, they're still men of the sea."

And indeed, this world was excessively lenient toward the pirates who roamed the seas.

They would erect tombstones and bury dead pirates; when they captured pirates, they usually didn't execute them on the spot.

Even those who had massacred cities and destroyed nations, once caught, could find a free apartment in Impel Down, and if lucky, follow the protagonist in a jailbreak to continue wreaking havoc elsewhere.

With that, the middle-aged Peacekeeper wore a deeply moved expression and said:

"On this sea, this is the only way to bury others."

"So that when your own turn comes, you won't end up rotting in the wilderness."

"Nonsense!"

Garen cut off the middle-aged Peacekeeper's sentiment with a dark scowl:

"If you let evil men die a proper death, all you'll do is fill this sea with more and more graves!"

Too harsh on the good, too lenient on the bad.

This was a social ill Garen had despised since his previous life.

Pointing at the corpses of the pirates, including Steel Cutlass, Garen said coldly:

"String them up. Hang them all from the flagpoles on the dock to dry in the wind as a public warning!"

This method came from a movie Garen had seen—well.

From that Pirates of the Caribbean film from America.

Back then, the British Royal Navy used this exact method to dispose of pirate corpses.

This was the fitting end for wicked pirates who had committed every crime.

"This?"

The middle-aged Peacekeeper said with some reluctance: "Isn't that a bit much?"

"What's wrong with it?"

Garen shot back:

"Hang the bodies of the Steel Cutlass Pirates on the docks."

"From now on, any pirate thinking of raiding and pillaging Samwell Island will have to think twice about keeping his head on his shoulders!"

The middle-aged Peacekeeper's eyes lit up.

Garen's reasoning made him instantly shift his perspective on the matter.

"Captain?"

The young man asked hesitantly: "Should we still buy the coffins?"

"No more!"

The middle-aged Peacekeeper finally made his decision:

"Do as the Knight says—hang all these pirate corpses on the docks!"

"Oh, and."

A glint of middle-aged shrewdness flickered in his eyes as he added to his subordinate:

"We're not buying coffins, but don't forget to bill the town for the burial expenses."