Who Doesn't Have a Special Ability?

"Have you ever heard that the Fishman Race has ten times the arm strength of humans?"

"W-What?!"

The captain of the Fat Bottle Pirates tried to pull his blade from Nanamo's palm.

Yet no matter how hard he pulled, the blade seemed welded in place. It did not budge in the slightest.

Nanamo's hand was like an iron clamp, firmly gripping his weapon.

Because of racial differences, the Fishman Race was naturally born with ten times the arm strength of humans.

That figure was calculated according to racial averages, much like how the Marines and Cipher Pol treated the Doriki Value of a trained, gun-carrying Marine as 10.

Naturally, comparisons of strength also had an average value as their foundation. Through training and exercise, some individuals could overcome that gap.

And strength did not appear out of thin air. Bone and muscle strength, along with the force exerted by other parts of the body, were all natural advantages of physique.

"Forget it. Explaining something like this to someone like you is pointless."

Nanamo tightened her grip on the blade. Even its razor-sharp edge failed to leave the slightest mark on her seemingly delicate skin.

Instead, the blade, subjected to immense pressure, began to let out a mournful groan.

That was not the effect of Haki, but an innate ability.

In fact, every race living on the seas possessed its own unique talents.

Different races had vastly different habits, as well as different environments and battlefields to which they were suited.

Therefore, it was both difficult and unfair to crudely judge which race was stronger and which was weaker.

But within the same race, finding someone exceptionally gifted was much easier.

Among humans alone, Charlotte Linlin's talent could be considered among the very best.

Even as a child, she possessed monstrous strength, capable of killing enormous brown bears with her bare hands, while her skin was as hard as steel.

Neither ordinary cannons nor sharp swords could leave any mark on it.

That was Charlotte Linlin's talent—Steel Balloon.

As the only one of Charlotte Linlin's children to inherit that talent, Nanamo's starting point was the endpoint that countless others could only look upon from afar.

Clang...

Half of the broken blade fell to the ground. The sound was not loud, yet it was exceptionally piercing in this environment.

The captain of the Fat Bottle Pirates showed a look of terror as he stared in disbelief at the broken edge of his blade.

It had not snapped under brute force. Instead, it looked more like something had corroded and melted it away.

"Fish-Man Karate: Uchimizu: Acid Rain!"

A mass of liquid seemed to gather in Nanamo's right hand, the hand that had just gripped the blade, as though it might drip at any moment.

But with a swing of her fist, the liquid instantly transformed into countless tiny water blades, shooting like a violent storm toward the Pirates behind her who had tried to ambush her.

Uchimizu was one of the most basic techniques in the Fish-Man Karate style, as well as its most fundamental long-range attack.

Its principle was simple: treat the liquid gathered in one's hand like bullets and fire it out. Its range and penetrating power depended on the user's strength.

The Uchimizu Nanamo fired was like buckshot, piercing through several Pirates' bodies. Even after punching through their enemies, the water arrows did not lose their power and flew straight into the nearby wall.

But afterward, the small holes in the wall began to hiss with corrosion. Wisps of white smoke rose as the holes rapidly widened and deepened before the naked eye.

"Urgh... Aah!..."

The Pirates who had been struck directly in vital spots and died instantly in that dense attack were the lucky ones.

Because Nanamo's attack was like a shotgun blast, there were inevitably some uncontrollable factors regarding exactly where it struck.

Some lucky ones had happened to avoid vital areas, but the Acid left in their wounds and bodies was now corroding them from within.

An intense burning sensation, as though it had erupted from the depths of hell, violently burst forth inside their bodies. The agony was so severe that they could not speak at all.

In the end, they could only curl up on the ground in utter misery, their bodies convulsing from the agony as broken, tuneless sounds squeezed intermittently from their throats, expressing their suffering.

From that perspective, avoiding a fatal wound had not been fortunate, but unfortunate.

However, the pain did not last long. Their bodily functions gradually collapsed under the Acid's corrosion, and they soon completely lost their ability to feel pain as their lives faded away.

"M-Monsters! Those two damned brats are both monsters! Run, run!"

Having witnessed Katakuri slaughtering his subordinates as easily as chopping vegetables—

And then seeing the Pirates before him fall with just one strike from Nanamo, the captain of the Fat Bottle Pirates' final mental defense completely crumbled.

He threw away the broken blade in his hand, no longer caring whether the other members lived or died, and fled backward in panic.

"Honestly, you've already made it to the New World. How can you still be this ignorant? You could at least call us ability users."

Nanamo was deeply dissatisfied with being called a "monster." There were all sorts of strange abilities on the seas, most of them related to Devil Fruits.

"With strength and knowledge like yours... no, it should be said that only a brain as smooth as yours could do something like this."

Nanamo's ability really was not from a Devil Fruit. It was another innate talent: the Fish Type of the Fishman Race.

For example, as a shark Fish-Man, Arlong could rapidly regrow his teeth, while Sebastian could use his scorpionfish abilities for camouflage and invisibility.

Such abilities were greatly enhanced in both Fish-Men and Mermaids.

Due to genetic inheritance, the descendants of the Fishman Race did not necessarily possess the same Fish Type abilities as their parents. There was a certain degree of randomness.

Moreover, the types of fish in these seas were far more numerous than people realized. Fish-Men and Mermaids also included marine creatures such as seahorses and octopuses, so unusual abilities occasionally emerged.

Many times, even Fish-Men and Mermaids themselves could not explain their own circumstances and could only make estimates based on books.

Nanamo's Fish Type was a kind of marine creature capable of releasing corrosive liquid. In her hands, that Acid had been further enhanced, capable of easily corroding even metal.

The captain of the Fat Bottle Pirates did not hear what Nanamo was saying. He only wanted to escape this place, escape this hellish place.

Though he did not know where to run, humanity's most primal survival instinct drove him toward the distance.

Reality was often cruel. There was no light of survival waiting for him—only the trident Katakuri had thrown.