Conqueror's Haki Luck

Collapsed on the cold floor, Buggy struggled at death's door, his heart filled with despair.

He recalled the magnificent first half of his life, and an intense unwillingness surged wildly through him:

Back then, I, the great Buggy, survived being surrounded by Golden Lion's forty ships in the New World. Am I really going to die today at the hands of some nobody knight?

Shanks, Rayleigh, Captain Roger.

Those famous old acquaintances kept appearing in Buggy's mind, giving him endless strength.

That extraordinary power fermented in Buggy's still-warm chest before erupting through his vocal cords as two resounding words:

"Help!"

Garen stared at him in helpless shock.

"Stop howling."

"Keep this up and I'm going to start cutting people."

Buggy still refused to stop.

Garen raised his greatsword high, intending to scare the out-of-control Buggy.

Instead, Buggy jolted in fright and immediately tried to use his Devil Fruit Ability to fly away again.

"What a waste of effort!"

Garen irritably swung the greatsword in his hand.

Buggy shouted like a madman, "I, Buggy, will never die here!"

"That's not up to you!"

Garen once again obligingly delivered a villain's signature line, merely waiting for Fatal Strike's cooldown to end so he could swing at Buggy again.

But at that moment—

A violent explosion suddenly rang out from outside the captain's cabin.

The next instant, Garen felt the entire ship beneath his feet shudder violently. Then, within just a few breaths, the sharp crackling of splintering wood spread throughout the ship.

The floor beneath them began to collapse at a visible rate, while countless wide cracks rapidly spread across the wooden walls of the cabin.

"What's going on?"

Garen hurriedly grabbed one of Buggy's feet, then fled the captain's cabin, which had already begun to crumble, with Wallace.

Once they stepped out of the cabin, the destructive power caused by that unknown attack became even more apparent:

The Buggy Pirates' fairly large medium-sized pirate ship had been blasted by some inexplicable force into two massive chunks of wood that were barely still connected. The entire ship was slowly sinking into the sea.

On the shattered, collapsing deck, quite a few pirate grunts had already been thrown into the ocean by the sudden force.

Animal tamer Mohji and swordsman Cabaji clung tightly to Richie, trembling in fear.

Nami gritted her teeth and used all her strength to bind several treasure chests together, shielding them tightly beneath her body.

When she saw Garen and Wallace, Nami did not forget to call out a warning:

"Garen, we're being shelled again!"

"Shelled again?"

Garen was utterly stunned.

How lucky did he have to be to get blasted by cannons again after switching to another ship?

Wait.

Garen suddenly looked at Buggy, who had visibly let out a huge sigh of relief beside him—

Was this his luck, or the red-nosed man's luck?

Garen immediately developed a reverence for Captain Buggy, who was said to possess Conqueror's Haki Luck.

Just as Garen froze in thought, the second cannonball arrived.

A disturbance came from the sky, and a tidal wave of sound surged over them.

Then, with a thunderous boom, the already ruined deck suffered another devastating strike. Buggy's pirate ship instantly became a heap of discarded lumber piled atop the sea.

This cannonball differed from the specially made Buggy Bomb Garen had encountered before. When it crashed down, there was no flash of explosion at all. It was clearly a solid cannonball.

Yet this solid cannonball could unleash a terrifying high-pressure storm, shredding the sturdy wooden hull in an instant. Its destructive power was even more horrifying than the Buggy Bomb.

"An ultra-high-speed kinetic weapon?!"

Garen was too shocked for words.

"What kind of damned place is this? How much more black technology is there?!"

Nami held tightly onto the bundled chests and shouted at Garen and Wallace:

"Stop standing there! Get over here and help me carry the chests!"

Garen suddenly snapped out of it and immediately ran to Nami with Wallace.

But then, a sudden change occurred.

Nami did not see it. Wallace did not see it. Yet with the physical abilities he had gained after reaching level four, Garen barely managed to capture the solid cannonball tearing through the air with his dynamic vision.

Perhaps it was the enemy's precise targeting, or perhaps it was some cruel coincidence ordained by fate, but the ultra-high-speed cannonball was headed directly for Garen and the others, who were barely standing on the damaged deck.

With Garen's current abilities, there was no way he could take Wallace and Nami with him and evade an attack of this level.

The cannonball was simply too fast. In Garen's vision, it resembled an indistinct trail that could not be tracked.

Garen had no time to think of any other solution.

Either he fled alone and watched Nami and Wallace die, or—

"Fatal Strike!"

"Courage!"

In an instant, Garen stacked himself with damage reduction, attack power, and speed buffs, then leaped from the deck.

His left hand still gripped Buggy's foot tightly, while his right hand raised the greatsword gleaming with the light of justice.

For Garen's utterly unscientific, data-based body, the force he could produce with one hand was the same as with two.

Suspended in midair, Garen attacked the indistinct cannonball within his sight.

Normal Attack!

Target acquired!

For an ordinary swordsman, even if he could barely see such a fast-moving object as Garen could, it would still be impossible to intercept it with a blade.

But Garen was different. As long as he could see it, he could cut it.

No matter how fast his opponent moved, as long as it was within the range of Garen's blade, the strike was guaranteed to hit.

Garen's greatsword met the high-speed solid iron ball in midair without deviation, its sharp edge colliding head-on with the cannonball.

Garen did not need to exert much force. The cannonball's own kinetic energy caused it to be sliced cleanly in half against his blade.

The cannonball, split in two, suddenly changed trajectory and continued downward in separate directions, ultimately slamming into the hull on either side of Nami and Wallace.

Despite the slowing effect from Garen's intercepting strike, the two cannonball fragments still possessed terrifying destructive power, kicking up splinters and seawater everywhere when they landed.

As for Garen, who had met the cannonball with his sword and split it apart, the enormous recoil sent him plummeting from the sky like a meteor before he crashed heavily into the battered ship.

Everything happened in a flash.

Only when Garen crashed heavily down in front of her did Nami realize that he had saved her life.

Nami poked her head out from the shattered deck and anxiously called Garen's name:

"Garen!"

"Where are you?"

Although she knew Garen seemed to possess some strange ability that made him immune to blades, Nami still could not suppress the fear and worry in her heart. Her voice trembled and came out distorted.

"I'm here!"

Garen suddenly stood up from a pile of wooden debris and deliberately said to Nami in a relaxed tone:

"Don't worry, I'm fine!"

Nami carefully examined Garen's body and suddenly breathed a sigh of relief.

Not even the silk fabric on Garen's armor had been damaged, and the skin exposed outside it did not bear a single wound. He truly did not look injured.

"It's good that you're okay."

Nami looked at Garen with lingering fear.

"Then let's hurry and take the treasure chests into the sea. We can't stay on this ship any longer!"

"Alright!"

Garen nodded. Acting as if nothing had happened, he leaped out of the human-shaped dent he had made, then hurriedly helped Nami gather the chests.

Yet although Garen said nothing, a storm was already raging in his heart:

He had only suffered part of the recoil transmitted through his blade, and he still had Courage's forty-percent damage reduction effect.

Even so, that cannonball had still forcibly taken away a quarter of his health!

Who exactly was the enemy?

Garen was horrified.