The Operation Begins

"Bang!"

A gunshot rang out on the ship, grazing the hair of a Water Clone.

"Scatter!" Rodney ordered. The Water Clones scattered in all directions, with some of them running toward the other pirate ships.

Rodney, meanwhile, set his sights on the largest ship—the flagship.

The enemy had already spotted him. After the first shot missed, a dense storm of bullets followed.

The Sharingan appeared in his eyes. The lead bullets in the air seemed to slow down. He used the Sharingan to track their trajectories, predict and calculate them in his mind, and then react with his body, dodging out of the way. It all happened in the blink of an eye, as if his body were acting on instinct.

"Useless! Useless! Fire! Turn him into a sieve!!" Krieg roared furiously when he saw this.

"Yes, sir!" The pirates firing their guns broke into cold sweats, but continued shooting at Rodney and his Water Clones.

Unfortunately for them, the shots were all easily dodged.

"Give me the gun!" Enraged by his subordinates' incompetence, Krieg snatched up a Fire Gun and began firing at Rodney.

They were almost within range. A Water Clone hurled a kunai with an Explosive Tag attached to it, driving it into the pirate ship.

"What's that?" A pirate leaned over the ship's side and stared curiously at the kunai.

The Explosive Tag on the kunai suddenly burst into flames. Then...

Boom!!

The reasonably sturdy hull was blown open by the Explosive Tag's explosion. Seawater poured straight through the blasted hole and into the cabin.

"This is bad! The ship's taking on water! Abandon ship! Abandon ship!!"

Without a second thought, the pirates jumped into the sea and swam toward the other pirate ships. With a hole that large, there was no chance of repairing it, so they could only abandon ship.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Explosions erupted around the fleet one after another. The Water Clones moved incredibly fast, and every time one passed a ship, it stuck an Explosive Tag near the waterline. They blew open the bottom of each ship and let in the seawater, forcing the pirates to abandon their vessels.

A fleet of over a thousand men was dismantled with ease.

The greatest advantage of the Krieg Pirates was, in truth, their numbers. But the most important thing at sea was the ship. Without one, you didn't even have the chance to put out to sea. The ships of the East Blue were nothing like the great vessels built in Water Seven. They weren't made from any special materials, so blowing them up was remarkably easy.

For a while, the surface of the sea looked like a pot of dumplings, packed with bobbing heads swimming through the water.

Rodney had no intention of caring whether these people lived or died. Whether they survived was up to their own fate. Since they had chosen to become pirates, they should have been prepared to die at sea. If you roamed the jianghu, how could you avoid getting cut?

They had to take responsibility for their actions!

"Chief Krieg! Save us!"

"Let us aboard, Chief Krieg!"

"I don't want to die yet, Chief Krieg! Please let me aboard! I'm your most loyal subordinate!"

The pirates tried to climb onto Krieg's ship because it was the last one remaining. Rodney had destroyed all the other dozen or so ships.

Krieg's ship was their only way aboard, and their only chance to survive.

"Get down! All of you, get down! You useless fools! No one gets on! Where did that damned bastard go?" At first, Krieg had accepted some of the stranded crewmen, but afterward, he stopped taking in the sailors he considered useless. Instead, he ordered his men to drive away those trying to climb aboard.

The ship was large, but it couldn't possibly hold one or two thousand people. Besides, that bastard would definitely find a way to attack them. With too many people aboard, fighting would become more difficult.

As for loyalty, he didn't need it. He didn't trust his crew in the first place. He ruled them not through camaraderie, but through fear and wealth.

A stick in one hand and a carrot in the other.

All he had to do was make the crew fear him. Nothing else mattered.

If his men died, he could recruit more. First, he had to kill the bastard who had devastated his fleet!

"He's over there!" one of Krieg's men shouted.

Rodney had somehow conquered gravity. Using a motion that looked like something out of a man rising from his own coffin, he ran up the nearly vertical hull and landed steadily on the ship's side. His eerie red eyes swept across the deck, making a large number of pirates tremble with fear.

"Fire!"

Krieg was decisive and ruthless. At his command, every subordinate with a gun drew it and fired!

The shots struck Rodney's body without fail, turning him into liquid.

Yes, liquid. It was only a Water Clone.

As for the real Rodney, he charged into the battlefield from another direction, accompanied by the two remaining Water Clones.

"Water Release: Water Colliding Wave!"

Seawater surged upward. Amid the crashing waves, a large number of cannon fodder on the deck were swept overboard.

"Fire Style: Phoenix Sage Fire Technique!"

"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!"

The Phoenix Sage Fire set the sails ablaze, while the Great Fireball rushed into the crowd and exploded, taking many lives.

Oh, no! The Great Fireball killed people!!

"Courting death!" Krieg's second-in-command and top fighter, the combat commander of the Krieg Pirates, Ghoul Jin Akin, swung two iron tonfa. Each had an iron ball at its end, and a single blow to the body could kill an ordinary person.

He spun the iron-ball tonfa continuously, using centrifugal force to accelerate them and increase their destructive power. With agile movements, he charged toward the real Rodney—not because he had seen through the Clone Technique, but because he had simply gotten lucky.

Clang--

Wind-nature Chakra coated White Fang, increasing its cutting power. It collided with Ghoul Jin Akin's iron-ball tonfa, sending a shower of sparks flying.

But if Ghoul Jin Akin stopped to inspect his weapon, he would find a shallow cut left across the iron ball.

White Fang easily blocked Ghoul Jin Akin's attacks. Every one of his blows was heavy, and he constantly spun the weapons to increase their centrifugal force, producing power far beyond what his own strength should have allowed. Yet Rodney had no trouble dealing with him.

His perception was second to none. The Sharingan captured Ghoul Jin Akin's movements, processed them in his mind, and predicted what would come next. He could counterattack with ease, using less effort to deflect Ghoul Jin Akin's attacks.

It gave Ghoul Jin Akin the feeling of punching cotton—an utterly powerless sensation.

"How is this possible? This man is actually evenly matched with the commander? He's... he's too strong!"

"Commander, keep it up! You have to kill him!"

"That's right, Commander! We're the Krieg Pirates! The strongest pirate crew in the East Blue!"

A Water Clone nearby curled its lip and punched a cannon-fodder pirate flat. "The strongest? You mean the largest?"

"You..."

The pirates had been struck where it hurt and didn't know how to respond. They could only lower their heads and attack wildly. Under their assault, the two Water Clones soon turned into puddles of seawater.

Water Clones were fragile, much like Shadow Clones. Their ability to withstand blows was nothing special.

Only Rodney remained, fighting Ghoul Jin Akin.

Krieg narrowed his eyes. Ghoul Jin Akin had clearly fallen into a disadvantageous position. Krieg considered whether he should fire a shot. He didn't care if it injured Ghoul Jin Akin. In his eyes, trading a subordinate for a powerful enemy was a profitable exchange.

However, Akin was still highly valuable, so Krieg decided not to act yet. Instead, he shouted, "Bala, go help Jin."

"Yes, Chief Krieg. Let me, Iron Wall Bala, show this bastard what cruelty means!"

A living sandwich stood up. There was a steel shield taller than a man in front of and behind his torso, both extremely thick and pinning him between them like sandwich filling. The shields were decorated with delicate patterns, with pearls the size of small watermelons embedded in their centers. He wore pearl earrings, had a pearl perched atop his head, and smaller shields attached to both hands, elbows, and knees.

Iron Wall Bala, the man with the strongest defenses in the Krieg Pirates.

Clang.

The two shields in his hands struck each other. Iron Wall Bala chuckled. "Since you've run into me, your luck today is in the negatives!"

Rodney: "..."

Am I playing some mobile game?

He decided to end the battle quickly. The Sharingan found Ghoul Jin Akin's opening. White Fang reflected the dazzling sunlight, while wind-nature Chakra coated the blade. It was only a thin layer, yet it possessed enough cutting power to cleave metal and shatter stone!

Rodney suddenly exerted his strength and sliced through Ghoul Jin Akin's iron-ball tonfa in one strike.

Ghoul Jin Akin's eyes widened in disbelief. The people around him reacted the same way, as if they had witnessed something utterly inconceivable.

At that moment, someone recognized him and shouted, "I know who he is! He's the recently rising pirate hunter, Joestar J. Rodney!"