Marineford Era 1498,
At the center of an uninhabited island, a bare-chested man stood alone.
His deep eyes carried an innate air of disdain. His perfectly handsome face was full of focus, while his long, tousled black hair was casually tied behind his head.
Gently setting down a small mountain, Austin wiped the fine sweat from his forehead.
To train his control over his strength, he had been throwing mountains around lately.
More specifically, he threw massive boulders the size of small mountains from one side of the island to the other, then warped to the other side, caught them, and threw them back.
They could not be too close or too far.
And if he failed to control the Haki Infusion around his hands, the entire boulder would shatter, forcing him to start over.
Austin hoped to use this method to train his control over the monstrous strength he had been born with, as well as the Conqueror's Haki that continued to evolve as he grew.
The results had not disappointed him.
He could indeed feel his mastery and control over his own power improving.
One more time!
Wiping away his sweat, Austin slowly took a deep breath as his aura steadily rose.
As Conqueror's Haki poured out, Austin gathered his strength slightly and assumed the charging stance of Fish-Man Karate: Tangluo Wa Seiken.
He had learned it from Sambel, the Fish-Man member of his crew.
As his focus continued to sharpen,
The Conqueror's Haki field that had originally spread in every direction slowly began to contract.
Conqueror's Haki, dense to the extreme, crackled with black-red lightning before gradually coiling around his fist.
In the end, it even transformed into a black-red radiance of thunder.
Crack, crack, crack...
Only when it could no longer be compressed did Austin finally complete his charge.
He threw a punch!
At the center of the uninhabited island, the largest—and only remaining—mountain was reduced to powder, crumbling inch by inch beneath that terrifying black-red thunder.
With one punch,
The massive mountain range had been reduced to nothing but a ten-meter-wide crater!
What terrifying power!
Austin smiled. The sensation made his scalp tingle with exhilaration; it was even more addictive than the pleasures of a massage!
After months of grueling training, he had finally mastered Conqueror's Haki Infusion.
Austin was in a great mood. His next training regimen would be much simpler: mastering and developing the abilities of the Warp Fruit.
The training consisted of little more than combining his warping ability with his combat experience and trying to warp other objects as well.
Only after exhausting himself completely would Austin occasionally take time to fish or read the newspaper.
Those were hobbies he had cultivated since childhood.
"Come to think of it, the time should be getting close."
The day Captain Roger would be executed.
There was no way he would miss it.
After finishing the day's training, Austin was in such high spirits from mastering Haki Infusion that he ate even more than usual.
As he stuffed food into his mouth, Austin flipped through recent news reports, searching for news about the Roger Pirates.
Now that the captain had become the Pirate King, his bounty should go up too, right?
"Beru beru beru..."
Austin was a little curious,
But the sudden ringing of the Den Den Mushi interrupted his thoughts.
It was Sammy calling.
Sabaody Archipelago.
Lawless Zone—Island 17.
Inside a noisy, bustling tavern, pirates from every corner of the world gathered to boast, play cards, and gather intelligence...
As the gateway to the New World, the Sabaody Archipelago was often filled with all kinds of people.
Paradise rookies hoping to enter the New World, human traffickers looking to profit from chaos, bounty hunters who lived off rewards...
And naturally, there were also failures who had been eliminated in the New World and hoped to farm easy wins among weaker opponents.
Trebol and his group, whose spirits had been crushed in the New World before returning to seek out their king, were typical examples.
Inside the tavern,
A tense confrontation was taking place in an extravagantly decorated reception room.
Beside a burly man clad in golden armor stood an ugly man in sunglasses, holding a club-shaped cane in one hand. As he flicked around his snot, he grinned shamelessly.
"Behehehe... Ms. Sammy, of course we have the people ready. It's just that the ship is still on its way. You don't mind, do you?"
"What? You took our money and now you're telling us the people haven't arrived yet?"
One of Sammy's subordinates found this utterly absurd and could not help questioning him.
Since those who dealt in this kind of business were rarely decent people, the rule of the underground human trade had always been simple: payment in one hand, goods in the other.
Trebol's approach—taking the money first and delivering the people later—was basically no different from farting.
In other words,
I'm robbing you outright. What the hell are you going to do about it?
For Sammy to have grown her business so large, she naturally had her own enforcers even before Austin joined her, though they were not particularly impressive.
When faced with such outrageous behavior, even Sammy, a businesswoman normally skilled at hiding her emotions, could not help showing anger. She immediately ordered her men to surround the two.
"If we don't see the people, no one is taking the money."
As both the boss and the big sister, Sammy at least had plenty of presence. Her beautiful phoenix eyes glared furiously at the two men, who showed no reaction at all.
"Behehehe... So Ms. Sammy intends to rob us instead?"
Even with guns pointed at him, Trebol did not seem nervous. He merely grinned.
His arrogant expression seemed to say, I've got you exactly where I want you!
"You're the ones trying to rob us!"
Sammy's chest heaved with fury. Just as she was about to order her men to attack, she had not expected the other side to strike first.
All of a sudden, the ground began to churn, and the entire reception room started shaking.
The room's many thugs, who had looked fierce and imposing just moments ago, could not even hold on to their clubs and pistols in the sudden "earthquake."
They could only panic and grab the companions beside them. But that merely caused them to fall together, before the ground swallowed them whole, leaving only their heads outside to breathe.
Watching her subordinates suddenly sink into the floor, Sammy's pretty face turned pale with fright, though she quickly realized what had happened.
"You're... Devil Fruit users?"
"Behehehe, correct! Too bad there's no prize!"
"Lady Sammy..."
At that moment, a scantily dressed woman suddenly rushed in. Seeing that both sides had already begun fighting, she looked panicked.
Sammy looked grimly at her subordinate, a bad feeling rising in her heart.
"What happened, Airi?"
Airi, a woman from the Red-Light District, bit her lip and said in a trembling voice,
"A lot of pirates have come to cause trouble in the district! The taverns, restaurants, and casinos have all been attacked! We're no match for them at all!"
"Several people in charge have already been killed for resisting!"
At those words, Sammy's already frightened face went even paler. She immediately looked toward the smiling Trebol.
Their businesses had been attacked the moment the conflict broke out.
How could that possibly be a coincidence?
Before you continue