Conflict

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Luo Sa's face turned cold as well.

"Yukus!" Just then, Zephyr spoke up and stepped forward to pull the two apart.

Then Zephyr turned to Luo Sa, his expression grave. "Luo Sa, tell me what happened down there."

Luo Sa looked at Zephyr and nodded. Then, starting from when he discovered Capone Bege, he recounted everything from beginning to end.

"Just when Cas felt he couldn't escape, he opened a mechanism, and seawater flooded the entire room."

"And I'm a Devil Fruit User. After I fell into the water, I nearly lost consciousness. When I came to, I found myself on a sailing ship out at sea, tied up from head to toe!"

"Fortunately, Cas didn't know I could control the wind. I managed to escape and used the wind to kill him out at sea!"

Luo Sa calmly told his story. He had thought it all through carefully.

Then he pulled the cloth sack from behind him and poured out the spoils he had collected, making his story more convincing.

"It really is Cas!" The Elite Camp members exclaimed, looking at Luo Sa with envy and jealousy.

"You're lying! If there were only four of you, like you said, then who was the person who killed my brother?!" As soon as Luo Sa finished, Yukus immediately stepped forward to challenge him.

"How would I know? I lost consciousness after falling into the water." Luo Sa shrugged and looked coldly at Yukus, who kept picking a fight with him.

"You're lying! Sakartam said you could control water. How could you have lost consciousness in it?!" Yukus continued to press him relentlessly.

"Hey, Senior Yukus, I only said Luo Sa was a Seagull and seemed to be able to control water. I said he'd be safe even if he fell in!" Sakartam's face changed drastically as he hurriedly called out. "I was just saying something to reassure everyone. Don't take it seriously!"

"Exactly, Senior Yukus. Luo Sa is our peer, and as his friends, of course we hoped he was safe. That's a normal expectation—or a hope. You can't be so unreasonable!" Hina added.

The other Elite Camp members didn't say anything, but their expressions showed that they strongly agreed with Sakartam and Hina.

"Sakartam, what happened after I passed out? And I remember Capone Bege seemed to have escaped through the entrance ahead of us. Didn't you run into him?" Luo Sa fixed his gaze on Sakartam and asked calmly.

"Sorry, Luo Sa. I said something I shouldn't have and put you in a difficult position." Sakartam looked apologetic.

Luo Sa shook his head to show he didn't mind.

Only he knew whether he really minded.

"We went down from the front with Senior Yukus and the others. When we reached the place where you'd been fighting, we saw a... a blue humanoid creature kill Sok!" Sakartam said hesitantly. "But we never saw the Capone Bege you mentioned!"

"A blue humanoid creature? With so many of you there, you still couldn't stop it?" Luo Sa asked with a frown.

"Actually, at first, we thought it was a Devil Fruit User, so Senior Yukus just knocked it into the water."

"But when we went underwater to look for it, we found that it could move in the water. It escaped through the passage leading out to the sea!" Hina sighed.

They hadn't expected the creature to get away, even with nearly the entire Elite Camp present.

"Could it have been a Fish-Man rather than a Devil Fruit User? As for why the Fish-Man was there, it must have been one of Cas's men!" Luo Sa followed Hina's lead, trying to steer them toward the possibility that it was a Fish-Man.

"We thought so too, but Senior Yukus insists it was a Devil Fruit User." Hina shrugged.

"All right, Senior Yukus. Fish-Man or Devil Fruit User, I couldn't possibly be the killer, could I?" Luo Sa looked at Yukus calmly.

"My instincts can't be wrong! My natural instincts have helped me escape danger countless times. If they tell me it was you, then it was definitely you!" Yukus glared at Luo Sa through clenched teeth, looking as though he wanted to tear him apart and swallow him whole.

"Instincts? What a joke!" Luo Sa sneered, his contempt plain to see.

"You!" Yukus flew into a rage and immediately tried to attack Luo Sa.

"Yukus, stand down!" Zephyr had had enough.

He couldn't possibly agree with Yukus's claims about his instincts. He assumed Yukus was simply distraught over his younger brother's death, and that his mind was in turmoil.

"Teacher Zephyr!" Yukus gritted his teeth. In the end, he could only retreat to the side unwillingly, though his eyes never once left Luo Sa.

Luo Sa was also watching Yukus, his expression dark as one thought after another crossed his mind.

Damn it, Yukus's instincts are terrifying! He's convinced I'm the one who killed Sok!

He's a time bomb that could go off at any moment. I have to stay on guard!

And there's Sakartam. He may look like he did nothing, but he let information about me slip, intentionally or otherwise. He's a liability too!

"All right. This Elite Camp mission is over. Report what happened, then turn in your spoils and claim your Military Merit!" Zephyr was in a terrible mood. He had thought it would be a small, if troublesome, mission, but never imagined they would lose a student here.

Everyone nodded with grim expressions and took their spoils to exchange for Military Merit.

"Luo Sa, you're incredible. You got the lion's share this time!" Drake praised him sincerely as he passed by.

Smoker gave him a thumbs-up too. They were newcomers, usually the ones who needed protection. Someone like Luo Sa was rare among even the previous batches of new recruits.

Luo Sa nodded amiably to them, then called Hina over.

"These are the documents Cas always carried with him. They should contain information about the Dark Kingdom's underground organizations. Take them in and turn them in. They should count toward your Military Merit." Luo Sa pulled a stack of papers from his coat and handed them to Hina.

Hina looked delighted and thanked him. She took the papers and hurried off to exchange them for Military Merit.

In the end, the documents earned her 3,000 Military Merit, which genuinely surprised Luo Sa.