You're Not Qualified to Negotiate with Me

Danger was a relative concept. Depending on who one faced, the definition of danger changed as well.

There were many Bounty criminals on these seas. Even before Roger ushered in the Great Pirate Era, pirates already numbered like the hairs on an ox.

Among all those Bounty criminals, Nereus undoubtedly stood at the very top.

As agents trained by the World Government system, they were not pirates who had just set sail and knew nothing about the outside world. It was impossible for them not to know of someone with a massive Bounty like Nereus.

Yet among all these pirates, the ones the Marines and CP agents least wanted to encounter were Nereus.

If they encountered a pirate like Rocks while carrying out a mission, he would most likely casually slash apart the ship they were riding, then ignore everything else. Whether they survived would depend on luck.

Though the chances of surviving a fall into the sea were low, they were not zero.

Encountering a pirate like Roger was actually rather fortunate. If he was not in a particularly bad mood, he might not even initiate a fight. He would quickly disengage and flee instead.

Pirates running when they saw Marines was a logic some pirates followed.

But if it was Nereus...

He would most likely eliminate every enemy, then decide whether to destroy the ship or take it away as spoils.

If Marines had only a slim chance of survival when they encountered Nereus, World Government agents had it even worse.

Ever since Nereus first attacked a slave ship, the survival rate of CP agents involved in operations against him had been zero.

Furthermore, every corpse had either been drained of blood or aged beyond recognition, as though they had entered some bizarre nightmare.

"N-Nereus... We don't want to be your enemy this time. We were only passing through. How about we pretend we never saw each other?"

At that moment, the CP9 commander finally understood why he had been unable to see the other man all this time.

CP9 did not require its members to possess Haki. As long as they were proficient in Rokushiki, they could be selected. If they also mastered the two types of Haki and earned some merits, they could directly advance to CP0.

As the commander of CP9, he was not trash like Spandam, whose Doriki Value was only nine and who was weaker than an ordinary soldier. He was the strongest person in this group.

Not only was he a Devil Fruit user, but he had also roughly mastered a bit of Observation Haki. Yet even so, he could not sense Nereus standing right beside him.

But if the enemy was Nereus, that was no longer strange.

For an enemy of that level, concealing his presence was simply too easy.

The essence of Haki clashes was similar to mutual cancellation. Roger and Garp working together could break through Rocks's Conqueror's Haki defense.

Observation Haki was different, but not by much.

A clash of Observation Haki was not some endless nesting game of you predicting me, then me predicting that you predicted me and changing my move accordingly.

If that were the case, the theoretical result of a battle would be two people standing there blankly until one suddenly conceded or fled.

The person with stronger Observation Haki could cancel out the other person's perception, rendering their Observation Haki useless.

The CP9 commander's Haki was clearly not on the same level as Nereus's.

And that was also bad news. According to the few surviving Marine soldiers, Nereus would sometimes get playful and toy with his enemies like a cat playing with a mouse.

"Never seen each other?"

"Yes. Our target is only that Lunarian. We can even give you the Bounty for capturing her.

"You must know that simply providing the Lunarian's exact location earns one hundred million Beli. Capturing one alive is worth far more than one hundred million..."

CP department commanders were never simple-minded. On the contrary, their minds were all quite sharp.

Within the World Government, embezzlement and corruption were common occurrences.

Those who could only fight and did not know how to adapt either had to become strong enough to interest Imu and be recruited into the Holy Knights, or remain miserable laborers on the front lines. Administrative positions were simply impossible for them.

"That sounds pretty worthwhile."

"Right? Then..."

"But I'm not interested. You're not qualified to negotiate with me."

As he spoke, Nereus's finger suddenly swept across the CP9 agent's carotid artery. Strangely, the damaged artery did not cause blood to spurt out. That blood seemed to vanish into thin air.

Instead, the CP9 commander's face gradually turned livid and pale. A smile of relief at having survived still hung at the corner of his mouth, but the blood being drained from him in an instant left him with no time to react.

"Run!!"

The other CP9 agents had a simple thought at that moment. They should not have stood there watching their leader negotiate with him. The moment they saw Nereus appear, they should have run.

However, the agent who shouted for them to run discovered that he was actually the slowest one. The others had already rushed off in different directions, unwilling to waste even a second.

What kind of joke is this? How did we run into this guy? Why is this monster still in the West Blue...?

The CP9 agents used Soru and Geppo with all their strength, fleeing into the distance.

From time to time, they glanced behind them. Only when they saw Nereus making no move to pursue did they breathe a little easier, but not one of them dared slow their escape.

At the very least... they had to run faster than everyone else.

After all, there was only one enemy. No matter what, he should be unable to split himself apart. It was like encountering a bear in the mountains: as long as you ran faster than your companions, you had a slightly better chance of surviving.

"You Cipher Pol people really never learn any manners. It took me quite a while to find you, yet you started running the moment we met. That won't do."

Nereus looked at the agents who had begun fleeing the instant they saw him and merely raised a hand, casually aiming at their backs.

[Uchimizu: Blood Shark.]

Several drops of blood surfaced on Nereus's fingers. With what seemed like a careless wave of his hand, each blood droplet transformed into a blood arrow and chased after the fleeing CP9 agents.

Whether they could run a little faster held no meaning before Nereus. The final result would be the same.

Even though they had fled far enough away, they still could not escape Nereus's attack range. In the end, they merely became black dots falling into the sea, gradually swallowed by the dark seabed.

The ship that had brought the agents there was also sunk, vanishing upon these seas alongside them.

However, at that moment, Amphitrite, whose body had already been somewhat unsteady, suddenly stiffened as well.

The drug CP9 had mentioned, developed by Saturn, seemed to have begun taking effect. It made her unable to control her body, and she fell toward the sea as well, but Nereus caught her before she hit the water.

Given Nereus's slaughter of CP9 just now, as well as the undisguised terror of those Cipher Pol members, Amphitrite temporarily relaxed. At least Nereus was not on the World Government's side.

"The... the bottle... in the sea..."

Because of the drug, Amphitrite could no longer speak properly, but she still forced out a few words, her gaze drifting toward the sea below.