An explosion?
Was it from the auction house?
Maud's thoughts stirred, and he hesitated.
If the explosion really had come from the auction house, then something must have gone wrong.
If there was trouble, it would be easier to fish in troubled waters.
But at the same time, it also meant greater risks.
Should he go or not?
Maud thought for a moment.
Whatever. As long as I keep my distance.
As for Saul's safety...
Maud had never even considered it.
Even if everyone attending the auction died, he believed Saul would definitely be the one who survived to the end.
As for why, ever since Maud heard Saul explain the realm of snipers that day, he had deeply understood one principle.
As long as you ran fast enough, the enemy's hail of bullets and flashes of blades couldn't catch you.
And Maud believed that Saul, a veteran sniper whom even Yasopp addressed respectfully, might have reached the pinnacle of running fast, even if his raw strength wasn't that impressive.
After making his decision, Maud put away his gun, then leaped up and lightly landed on top of the building.
The three pirates he had hunted tonight had brought him tangible gains, so his jumping ability had naturally improved as well.
Jumping onto buildings two or three stories high was no longer a problem.
Leaping across the rooftops, Maud headed toward the auction house.
Before long, Maud arrived at Cape Street, where the auction house was located.
After quite a bit of effort, he found a suitable vantage point atop a building.
However, to avoid the possibility of being caught up in the chaos, Maud chose a spot some distance from the auction house.
From there, he could clearly see only the black smoke billowing out of the auction house. As for the crowd outside, he could barely make out the general situation.
In such circumstances, Maud suddenly felt that he might need a pair of goggles with tactical functions, or perhaps a small telescope that would be convenient to carry around.
Like right now, that would let him stay in a sufficiently safe area while still seeing the situation clearly.
"Should I get a little closer?"
Maud pondered.
"Forget it. Safety first."
Soon, Maud abandoned the thought of taking the risk.
If he could gain experience simply by killing these pirates, he would be willing to take the risk. After all, the rewards were right there.
But Hunter's Notebook had its limitations. There was no need to take risks in a situation like this.
All he had to do was stay honestly in a safe place and wait patiently.
If luck came, someone would naturally come to his door with their head.
If luck didn't come, he could just wait for the next opportunity.
Maud held Usopp and leaned against a long, pipe-like chimney, gazing from afar at the situation outside the auction house.
Aside from the thick smoke, the crowd gathered outside the auction house remained fairly calm. There was no particularly obvious disturbance.
Or perhaps the auction house's armed guards had taken control of the situation.
"Looks like it's all thunder and no rain."
Maud glanced at the thick smoke rising into the sky, somewhat disappointed.
Without a fight, where would he find easy kills?
In his expectations, he hadn't demanded a battle as intense as the Summit War, where one side lived and the other died. But at the very least, a chaotic melee would have been fine.
Only with a melee would there be slaughter, and only with slaughter would there be people forced to temporarily withdraw because of their injuries.
That would be the perfect opportunity for him to take advantage of the situation and pick up a few kills.
But though his calculations had sounded perfect, with the disturbance this small, he probably wouldn't gain anything in the end.
"Some troublemaker would do, too."
Maud muttered to himself.
The moment he finished speaking, as if to prove the power of his blessed mouth, another explosion rang out from inside the auction house.
Immediately afterward, a figure burst out of the smoke, crashing into the crowd like a tank.
"Hm?"
Maud immediately perked up and narrowed his eyes at the broad street outside the auction house.
With his eyesight, he could only make out the general shape.
It seemed that a "person" had fought his way out of the auction house, scattering the crowd in all directions.
"Good!"
Watching from afar, Maud secretly cheered.
To see the situation outside the auction house more clearly, he stopped lying in wait and crept toward it.
At this moment.
Outside the auction house.
The crowd was awash in blood, with severed limbs flying everywhere.
A two-meter-tall fish-man charged recklessly through the crowd.
"Get out of my way!"
The fish-man's face was twisted viciously. His mouth, filled with sharp teeth, was like a keen blade, biting the people in his way into several pieces in an instant.
What was frightening was that one of the scattered chunks of corpse happened to fall into the fish-man's mouth.
Gulp—
The fish-man didn't spit it out. Instead, he swallowed the chunk whole, filling his empty stomach with it.
"Get out of my way! Get out of my way! All of you, get out of my way!"
"I want to go back! Back to the sea!"
The fish-man's face was splattered with glaring blood. Roaring madly, he thrust both hands forward and seized a pirate by each cheekbone.
His astonishing grip strength erupted without warning, and the two pirates' heads exploded like watermelons.
The fish-man's momentum did not diminish. He continued charging forward.
However, there were simply too many humans around him. No matter how desperately he struggled, in the eyes of the onlookers, he still moved with stumbling steps, only a distance named despair away from breaking through.
If nothing unexpected happened, then even if the fish-man could keep killing in such a desperate situation, he would eventually die of exhaustion.
"It's a fish-man! We're done for if he gets close! Open fire! Hurry up and shoot him dead!"
In the midst of the chaos, someone in the crowd suddenly shouted.
Bang—
Someone fired at once.
However, the bullet not only missed the fish-man, but struck an unlucky pirate instead.
"Which idiot fired that shot?"
The wounded pirate's companions were both shocked and furious. They couldn't believe some idiot would fire under such circumstances, when they had the fish-man surrounded with numbers.
Did that idiot think his marksmanship was usually too poor and come here to regain his confidence?
"Make way! Everyone, make way!"
The auction house's armed guards acted like a pair of giant hands, forcibly pushing the crowd aside and opening a path.
"Stop! That fish-man slave is an important auction item!"
"Go to hell! He's already right in our faces, and you still want us to stop?"
A pirate whose companion had been killed by the fish-man glared with bloodshot eyes and raised his gun toward the fish-man's back.
Just as he was about to pull the trigger, a member of the armed guards struck in time and snatched the pirate's flintlock pistol from behind amid the chaos.
The pirate, who had been about to fire, froze for a moment. As he turned around and was about to start cursing, a gunshot suddenly rang beside his ear.
The pirate's body jerked. He lowered his head and stared at his bleeding chest, his lips moving briefly before he collapsed on the spot and became a corpse.
The armed guard who had snatched the pistol froze at the sight. For a moment, he even thought the gun had gone off accidentally.
"Who fired?"
A question mark popped into the armed guard's mind.
Suddenly, someone shouted.
"The auction house attacked! Someone was killed by them!"
"I didn't...!"
The armed guard had just begun to explain.
Another gunshot rang out.
The bullet struck him squarely between the eyebrows, cutting off the unfinished words he had not had time to say.
With a pirate and an armed guard shot dead, the first signs of chaos emerged.
"Damn it, they killed my brother!"
Bang—
After the gunshot, another armed guard was shot and fell to the ground.
But the person who had shouted and fired quickly withdrew into the crowd, disappearing in an instant.
Although two of the auction house's armed guards had been inexplicably killed, they ultimately represented the auction house and did not rashly retaliate.
However, two more shots followed, directly shattering their restraint.
For a moment, the scene grew even more chaotic...
The fish-man slave had no idea what had happened, but he seemed to see an opportunity, and his movements as he slaughtered the pirates became increasingly swift.
"Who gave me that assist?"
On a rooftop, Maud, utterly astonished, quickly stowed Usopp away before jumping into the alley between the buildings.
"Could there be another hunter here?"
Maud rapidly changed positions.
Only after reaching the scene did he learn that the "person" who had charged out of the auction house was a fish-man.
After observing for a while, he felt that the scene was too peaceful, so he fired a probing shot.
He hadn't held out much hope.
Who could have expected that after he fired, assists would spring up one after another like bamboo shoots after the rain?
After that, events developed beyond his expectations.
Listening to the sounds of fighting coming from the direction of the auction house, Maud moved through the alleys between the buildings, loading ammunition as he quickened his pace.
He wasn't running away with his tail between his legs. He simply planned to change locations and see whether any fish slipped through the net.
Before you continue