"Don't push it, brat!"
Scarred Mountain Bandit Group froze for a moment before flying into a rage and grabbing Luffy by the collar.
"How dare you say you don't know us! How can you even say that with a straight face? Do you have any idea how much food you've taken from us these past few days?"
"Food?"
Luffy racked his brains, then suddenly widened his eyes. "Mister, you mean the grilled meat? That was yours?"
"Who else would it belong to?"
Scarred Mountain Bandit Group grew even angrier and roared, spraying spittle all over Luffy's face. "Do you think grilled meat grows out of the ground by itself?"
"But I didn't see anyone nearby?" Luffy looked bewildered. "So I picked it up. I thought the wild beasts in the mountains had grilled it."
That sounded a little absurd.
But Luffy really wasn't lying.
There were apes that could fish, monkeys that could brew wine, bears that could knit sweaters, and cheetahs that could build huts in trees...
The Colbo Mountains were full of strange and wondrous beasts. He had seen all of them with his own eyes.
Compared to that, beasts that could grill meat seemed perfectly normal. For all he knew, they might even be better cooks than most people.
Scarred Mountain Bandit Group had seen similar things before, so he froze again.
"So it was all a misunderstanding? Then why did you attack us without a word when we found food missing and came to question you several times afterward?"
"You were all carrying weapons, and you kept shouting from far away that you were the Scarred Mountain Bandit Group. That's scary, mister!"
Luffy wore a troubled expression. "I have a terrible impression of bandits. Even after that woman took me in, I still felt the same way. Anyway... anyway, I hate people who become bandits the most!"
The corner of Scarred Mountain Bandit Group's eye twitched.
Did becoming a bandit eat your rice or something?
Good thing the one standing in front of you is me. If it were Higgs, the infamous great bandit, he'd twist this brat's head off the moment he heard that!
"Forget it. Untie the kid."
Scarred Mountain Bandit Group sighed and waved dismissively.
"Really?" Luffy was overjoyed.
"But there's one condition."
Scarred Mountain Bandit Group snorted. "You have a companion, don't you? When is he coming to rescue you?"
"He also stole our food several times. You two brats are pretty strong, aren't you? Once he gets here, the two of you can go hunting for me together. Make up for the meat you lost—five times over... No, ten times!"
Ten times?!
Luffy's eyes widened. Isn't that asking for his life?
Luffy and Ace had been sent into the mountains by Dadan at Garp's request to undergo training. They had to survive the winter on their own.
Many of the beasts in the mountains were ferocious and difficult to hunt. Even feeding themselves was hard enough. And now they were being asked to produce so much meat?
"Ten times is too much! Six times!"
"Nine times. I'll reduce it a little since you're still young."
"Five times!"
"Eight times. I absolutely can't go any lower."
"Three times!"
"How is that bargaining?! You stinking brat! At least go learn some math!"
Scarred Mountain Bandit Group roared and nearly fainted from anger. He raised a hand to stop his subordinates. "There's no communicating with him. Don't untie him yet! Wait until his companion arrives. I refuse to believe that guy is just as brainless."
"Then you'd better untie him first."
A haunting voice suddenly came from above. "I'm really afraid that by the time his companion arrives, you'll die of anger again."
"Who's talking?"
Scarred Mountain Bandit Group's expression changed drastically. He drew his machete and pointed it toward the source of the voice—only to see a black-haired boy crouching in the tree overhead, studying him with a somewhat strange look.
"The great bandit Scarred Mountain Bandit Group, with a bounty of three million Berries?"
Xia Nuo shook the wanted poster he had taken from Skinny Monkey and compared the eyes back and forth for a long while. "No matter how I look at it, they're completely different people..."
The Scarred Mountain Bandit Group in the wanted poster had sinister eyes and a body covered in fat.
The leader standing before him was only somewhat sturdy, with entirely different facial features.
The only similarity was that both men had a long scar across their faces.
"Is this you in the picture?"
Xia Nuo turned the wanted poster around and pointed at the photograph.
"That's me." Scarred Mountain Bandit Group nodded. "I was still fat back then."
"Then this isn't you!"
Xia Nuo sneered. "Before entering the mountains, I heard all about Scarred Mountain Bandit Group. Murder, rape, arson—he did every vile thing imaginable. The townspeople feared that name like a tiger. If you really were Scarred Mountain Bandit Group, would this brat still be bouncing around here and spouting nonsense?"
"And besides, do these subordinates of yours look like bandits? Otherwise, how could three or four of you fail to beat an eight-year-old child together?"
Xia Nuo surveyed the area.
The dozen or so bandits in the camp were all pale and emaciated, dressed in rags, with equally battered weapons in their hands.
Only two of them carried old flintlock rifles. Most of the others were holding nothing more than sharpened wooden sticks.
Scarred Mountain Bandit Group was silent for a while before muttering, "...You saw through us."
"But speaking of which, you have one subordinate whose aim is pretty accurate."
Xia Nuo tossed down Skinny Monkey, whose mouth he had stuffed with a rag. "If I hadn't dodged quickly, he would have shot straight through my forehead."
"Accurate aim?"
Scarred Mountain Bandit Group stared blankly at Skinny Monkey, who was lying on the ground and making muffled noises. He yanked the cloth from the man's mouth and asked in confusion, "Silver, since when did you become a sharpshooter?"
"I didn't! I didn't!"
Skinny Monkey gasped for breath. After holding it in for so long, he could finally speak, and tears were nearly streaming down his face. "I was aiming at the branch beneath that guy's feet. I wanted to make him fall down. Who knew it would go, it would go just a tiny bit off..."
From the soles of his feet to his forehead, and he called that a tiny bit off?!
I'm nearly six feet tall!
A black line appeared across Xia Nuo's forehead.
Scarred Mountain Bandit Group understood the gist of it and hurriedly looked up to explain.
"Sir, you may have misunderstood. There's no way Silver would shoot straight at your head the moment he saw you! He's not that kind of person, and there's even less chance his aim could be that accurate!"
"In fact, his marksmanship is an absolute disaster. Everyone who knows us is aware of that. Otherwise, he wouldn't have ended up entering the mountains with me!"
"He used to be a reserve soldier in the royal city guard. During the New Year celebration the year before last, he was temporarily pulled in to fire a ceremonial rifle. It was supposed to be fired into the air, but he blasted Her Majesty the Queen in the face instead... Afterward, he was beaten until he went lame and dumped at the Uncertain-Terminal Station."
And he's still alive after that?
Xia Nuo listened in stunned silence. He glanced at the aggrieved Skinny Monkey, then helplessly smacked his forehead. "So... you're not actually bandits at all, are you? You're all residents from the Uncertain-Terminal Station?"
He suddenly thought of something, and his expression grew complicated. "Your homes were burned down?"
The Goa Kingdom had always been hailed as "the most beautiful country in the East Blue."
In reality, only the inside of the city was bright and glamorous on the surface. Hidden behind its high walls was a massive waste-burning facility.
That was the Uncertain-Terminal Station.
All the filth, garbage, and starving people from the lowest levels of society were concentrated there, and it had gradually developed into a sprawling slum with an appalling environment.
At the end of last year, in order to welcome an inspection by the Celestial Dragons, the king of the Goa Kingdom had taken away even this last difficult means of survival.
He had burned the terminal station and its residents to the ground, treating the poor as "garbage" and clearing them out along with everything else.
"Yes. It's gone. All of it is gone."
Scarred Mountain Bandit Group looked desolate, his eyes filled with memories. "Many people were killed or injured that night. I heard that a group of kindhearted people called the Revolutionary Army took in refugees at the docks aboard a large ship. But some people like us ran south and were driven into the Colbo Mountains by the flames, where we struggled to survive."
"On the outskirts of the mountains, I happened to come across Scarred Mountain Bandit Group's corpse, burned to death. So a few months ago, I simply began operating under his name. At least that way, I could scare off quite a few bandits and keep them from bothering us."
He let out a long sigh, raised his head, and said with a bitter smile:
"Sir, we don't want to live like this either. We're even afraid that if this continues, we'll slowly become real bandits. But what other choice do we have?"