Quite a few diners in the restaurant couldn't help laughing out loud. Even the woman sitting across from Harpody covered her mouth, her shoulders trembling slightly.
To Harpody, who cared deeply about saving face, that laughter was no different from the loudest slap across the face.
His face instantly turned the color of liver, veins bulging on his forehead as the flames of humiliation and rage completely burned away his reason.
"Bastard! What kind of joke is this?!"
"Bang—!!"
Harpody abruptly rose to his feet and smashed his powerful fist down onto the dining table!
The enraged blow instantly blasted the solid wooden table to pieces.
Exquisite porcelain plates shattered across the floor, while the soup painstakingly simmered for countless hours, the carefully prepared steak, and the red wine all spilled over the carpet, leaving utter chaos behind.
The laughter around them stopped abruptly, and the diners watched the scene in terror.
Yet Sanji, standing at the center of the storm, did not even blink.
He slowly crouched down, lightly dipped his slender fingers into some of the soup spilled on the floor, sniffed it at his nose, then tasted it.
His expression changed.
The carefree roguishness vanished, replaced by a chilling coldness—the ultimate fury of a chef whose food had been ruined.
"If you removed that bug, couldn't you still drink it?"
Sanji's voice was low and hoarse, carrying suppressed rage. "This was soup made after three days and three nights of carefully removing its bitterness..."
"Shut up!"
Seeing that Sanji still dared to talk back, Harpody's anger flared even hotter.
He raised the foot clad in leather boots and viciously stomped on Sanji's hand on the floor!
Then he ground down hard!
"Isn't your attitude a little too arrogant, waiter?!"
Harpody roared down at him, his face twisted with savage delight. "I'm a customer! A customer who pays! The customer is always right, don't you understand?!"
If it had been an ordinary person, having their palm trampled like that would have made them scream and beg for mercy long ago.
But Sanji merely stared quietly at the wasted food on the ground, allowing his hand to be pinned beneath that foot as though he felt no pain.
He slowly raised his head. His exposed right eye stared coldly at Harpody as he asked the question that had defined his entire life:
"Can money... fill your stomach?"
The question left Harpody stunned. "W-What?"
Sanji suddenly stood up, his trapped hand instantly gripping Harpody's ankle like iron pincers!
"I'll ask you one more time..."
Sanji's voice was like an icy wind blowing from hell:
"Can money fill your stomach?!"
"Whoosh—!!"
Before his words had even faded, Sanji moved.
He did not push with his hands. Instead, he used his left foot as a pivot, spinning like a top as his right leg turned into a black bolt of lightning. With a fierce howl of wind, it whipped upward and smashed violently into Harpody's chin!
"Bang!!"
A bone-jarring sound of flesh and bone colliding rang out.
Harpody's tall body was like someone struck by a speeding truck. He flipped twice through the air, slammed heavily into the ceiling, then dropped to the floor like a dead dog.
"Pwah—!"
Two streams of bright red blood sprayed from Harpody's nostrils. His eyes rolled back, and before he could even scream, he passed out cold.
The entire restaurant fell silent.
Everyone stared at the scene in dumbfounded shock.
No one had expected this seemingly refined waiter to take down a Navy Lieutenant with a single kick!
Sanji straightened his slightly disheveled suit and tie, then walked elegantly over to the unconscious Harpody.
With one hand, he grabbed Harpody by the collar and lifted him up as if he were trash.
Sanji pulled a cigarette from his pocket, placed it between his lips, and lit it with a snap.
He took a deep drag. Amid the curling smoke, his cold voice echoed through the deathly silent restaurant:
"On this Great Sea... even offending a Navy Admiral is better than offending a chef."
"Because—"
Sanji's eyes were ice-cold.
"Crossing a chef at sea is the same as Seeking Death! Remember that!"
Sea Restaurant Baratie, main dining hall.
The afternoon sun streamed in through the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows, making the dark red carpet appear especially vivid.
The air had originally been filled with the aroma of red wine and steak, but after Navy Lieutenant Harpody was kicked unconscious, an odd, suffocating silence settled over the entire room.
Luffy, however, was completely unaffected by the Killing Intent in the air.
He sat cross-legged on his chair, arms folded as his gaze locked firmly onto the blond chef lighting a cigarette. A broad grin spread across his face.
"I found our cook."
"Huh?"
Zoro, who had been about to complain, and Usopp, who was still trembling in fear, both froze with question marks written all over their faces.
Luffy stretched out his finger and pointed straight at Sanji in the distance, who exhaled a ring of smoke with a cold expression. His tone was unwavering.
"I want him to be our cook!"
Ronan lifted the teacup before him, took a light sip, and thought to himself:
As expected of Luffy. That beast-like instinct of his saw right through Sanji's seemingly cold exterior and recognized his longing for the Great Sea and his dreams.
However, as the team's voice of reason, Ronan still poured cold water on the idea at the right moment.
"Luffy, getting a chef with a respectable job at a high-end restaurant like this to become a pirate with no guarantee of tomorrow... he might not agree."
"Hehe!" Luffy pressed down his Straw Hat, confidence shining in his eyes.
"Leave it to me! I'll get him onto our ship! Nobody I set my sights on can get away!"
Just then, the tightly shut restaurant doors were violently shoved open.
A navy soldier stumbled inside. His cap was crooked, and his face was filled with terror.
Ignoring the astonished looks from the diners around him, he rushed straight to Harpody, who had already regained consciousness and was clutching his aching jaw.
"C-Captain Harpody! B-Bad news!"
The Soldier's voice cracked with fear, nearly breaking into sobs. "We... we let that prisoner from the Krieg Pirates escape!"
Enduring the sharp pain, Harpody grabbed the Soldier by the collar and roared in disbelief:
"What did you say?! He escaped?!"
"How is that possible?! When we caught him three days ago, he was practically starving to death!"
"We haven't even given him a drop of water in the past three days! Where did he get the strength to escape?!"
"The Krieg... Pirates?!"
Those words seemed to possess some strange magic, instantly setting off an invisible bomb within the spacious restaurant.
The guests who had been whispering among themselves turned pale at once.
An elegant lady accidentally knocked over her wineglass, while the gentlemen dropped their forks onto their plates with sharp, grating clatters.
"Hey... did I hear that right? Did they say the Krieg crew?"
"The strongest pirate crew with a fleet of fifty Pirate Ships, the so-called 'Overlord of the East Blue'?!"
Fear spread like a plague.
In the East Blue, the name Krieg represented absolute violence and destruction.
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