Will looked at the terrified people in ordinary clothes inside the prison cell before him.
His brow furrowed, and several suspicions immediately came to mind.
After pondering for a few seconds, he asked directly, "Are all of you prisoners?"
It seemed they had sensed no malice from Will, and he didn't look like a Marine, either.
So, from among the people in the cells,
a middle-aged man with a scruffy beard nervously gathered his courage and replied, his voice trembling:
"N-no... We're not prisoners..."
"We're just ordinary townspeople from a few coastal villages on the Konomi Islands..."
"A while ago... those Marines suddenly showed up. They didn't say a word and just dragged us onto their warships..."
"Then the Marines brought us all back here... and have kept us locked up ever since..."
Seeing that the tall man before them showed no hostility after the middle-aged man finished speaking,
many of the people in the nearby cells began stepping forward to add their own accounts.
Some of them also described the Marines' usual behavior and recounted things they had overheard the Marine soldiers chatting about.
Clearly, the Marines here had grown accustomed to throwing their weight around.
After capturing these townspeople, they hadn't been cautious in the slightest.
The Marine soldiers guarding the cells didn't care at all that the townspeople could hear what they were talking about.
Perhaps the Marines believed that there was no way these ordinary people could escape.
So there was no need to take precautions.
From what the townspeople told him,
Will also learned many useful details.
Most of his earlier suspicions had been disproven, and new questions had taken their place.
After all, the Marines had no quota requiring them to capture a certain number of pirates every month.
There was no reason for them to forcibly seize so many ordinary people without cause.
But if the Marines had gone to the trouble of capturing so many townspeople, they must have had some particular need for them.
Will's brow furrowed deeply. For a while, he couldn't figure out the key to the matter.
After mulling it over, he decided there was no point in continuing to think about it and chose to approach the problem from another angle.
Clang—!
When the townspeople fell silent, Will reached out and ran a finger over the iron lock on the cell door, slicing through it with ease.
Then he repeated the same action on several nearby cells.
The ordinary townspeople stared in astonishment.
The locks on the cells were twice as thick as an ordinary person's thumb.
Yet the man had cut through one with a light swipe of his finger.
Will paid no mind to what they were thinking.
Looking at the tense townspeople around him, he said calmly, "Come on. I'll take you out of here."
Then he turned and headed for the hidden passage they had used to come down.
The villagers exchanged glances but didn't immediately leave their cells to follow him. Clearly, they were still hesitant.
One of them approached the cell door and nervously asked, "Um... benefactor, what about the Marines upstairs?"
Will stopped and replied calmly, "Don't worry. There aren't any Marines left upstairs."
Then he continued walking.
Hearing this, the villagers looked uncertain.
After all, when that Marine captain who looked like a rat had captured them, he'd been surrounded by a large group of Marine soldiers.
Now this man was saying there were no Marines upstairs. They couldn't tell whether it was true.
After seeing the Marines' ugly side, the townspeople had become far more wary.
But after waiting for a while,
their yearning for freedom finally overcame their fear of the Marines.
So, led by several of the braver townspeople,
they all left their cells and cautiously followed in the direction Will had gone.
Will had already made his way back along the passage. After leaving the building, he stood still, lost in thought.
Then his gaze settled on the tallest building nearby. He turned and headed toward it.
Will figured that a man like Rat Captain would never allow anyone on his turf to stand higher than him.
So his office had to be at the highest point in Marine Branch 16.
As it turned out,
Will had been right.
He entered the tallest building, smashed through walls and rubble as he climbed several floors, and reached the top. He opened the only door there and stepped inside.
As soon as he entered, he was met with all kinds of rat-themed ornaments and trinkets in a wide variety of styles.
"How obsessed with rats is that guy...?"
Will couldn't help muttering under his breath. He couldn't understand it at all.
Then, without giving it any more thought, he got down to business and began searching carefully for documents related to secret missions,
or confidential reports and the like.
A moment later,
after searching carefully, Will really did find several confidential documents hidden in a secret compartment.
He also unexpectedly discovered a blueprint of the Marine Branch 16 base.
Without hesitation, he opened the documents and read them carefully, word by word.
The farther he read, the more deeply Will's brow furrowed.
The documents clearly described a secret transportation mission, complete with an exceptionally clear and precise sea chart.
They also recorded in detail the dates, numbers, and destinations involved in transporting those special "cargoes."
On [date], escort 150 prisoners to Bridge-on-the-Nation, Tequila Wolf, and hand them over to...
On [date], escort 200 prisoners to Bridge-on-the-Nation...
In [month, year], escort 300 prisoners...
...escort 120 prisoners...
...escort 130 prisoners...
The records stretched across several pages.
Anyone who didn't know the truth might have assumed that pirates were rampant in the area.
But Will, who understood what was really going on, immediately thought of the ordinary townspeople locked up in the dungeon.
The things he hadn't understood earlier suddenly made sense.
Once he understood what had happened, a cold glint flashed in Will's eyes.
"They really don't see civilians as human beings..."
Staring at the documents in his hands,
Will felt as if two words were slowly taking shape between the lines: people-eating.
The Marines had captured all these innocent townspeople simply to meet the required number of "prisoners"
and carry out the secret transportation mission assigned by Bridge-on-the-Nation.
For Rat Captain to secretly capture so many people on the Konomi Islands, he couldn't have done it without the region's ruler, the fish-man Arlong.
It seemed that the dealings between Arlong and Rat Captain went far beyond a simple exchange of money.
There had clearly been a large-scale, long-running trade in people between them.
It was even possible that after Arlong and his fish-men destroyed the villages that couldn't pay their "tribute," they hadn't killed all the townspeople.
Instead, they may have spared some of them, sold them to Rat Captain, and pocketed an extra profit—a win-win arrangement.
After thinking through some of the details, Will said in a low voice:
"This world is truly filthy!"
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