Slave ship?
Noah did not take the telescope. Instead, he spread out his Observation Haki and focused it on the ship.
Judging from the distribution of presences aboard, all twenty or thirty slaves had escaped. The only ones left were a group of vicious-looking, furious burly men in black suits.
"That's unusual."
Noah raised an eyebrow slightly. It was normal for a slave ship to occasionally lose one or two slaves, but for all of them to escape successfully... he did not know whether to say the guards aboard had been too lax, or that there had been some formidable leader among the slaves.
"How should we handle this, Vice Admiral?"
Beside him, the lieutenant colonel pushed up his glasses and asked cautiously, his expression clearly troubled.
If the slave ship belonged to some underground criminal organization, the matter would be simple. They could just open fire and blast it apart.
But... slave ships that could run rampant in a place like the Grand Line usually did not have simple backers.
They were generally connected to royal families and nobles from various nations. They might even involve the Holy Land.
"How about we hold fire for now, intercept them, and confirm their identity before—"
The lieutenant colonel had barely begun his tentative suggestion when Noah suddenly raised his right hand and extended a finger.
Crack!
In the next instant, the surrounding air trembled as a streak of azure lightning shot from his fingertip.
Under the horrified gaze of the bespectacled lieutenant colonel, the lightning resembled a thunder dragon. Wherever it passed, the sea surface rolled back to either side, carving out a terrifying trench over ten meters wide that stretched beyond the horizon.
The enormous slave ship was reduced directly to ashes, becoming countless blackened particles that danced through the