Imperial Classic of World Governance, Overlord Heavenly Image!

Conrad was a wanderer of the martial world.

The martial world was perilous; at any moment, one might face falling steel bars, collapsing concrete, deep pits dug everywhere, or unstable scaffolding—a multitude of lethal dangers.

At this moment, before stepping into the Opera House, he felt a chill.

The muscles in his ankles experienced a half-second hesitation of tiptoeing the moment he took a step, so he retreated two paces, his eyes widening.

Staring at the narrow passage leading through the Opera House, his innate Observation Haki told him that things inside were not simple.

He pinched his fingers into the hand seal of the Imperial Classic of World Governance, one of his two core cultivation techniques, and looked up to gaze at the stars in the night sky.

Observing the stars to measure fate.

But the drifting clouds in the night sky were hazy and dim, not very clear.

Suddenly, a cold wind swept past, and through the shifting gray-white clouds, a crescent moon was revealed. Beneath the moon, in the southeast position, two small stars flickered with piercing brightness.

Conrad's pupils dilated, his pores expanded, and he gripped the Bawang Spear in his hand tightly.

Ominous! Extremely ominous!

He had only encountered this level of danger once before, on a winter night when he snuck out to ice skate on a lake. His birth chart was heavy in fire, and that night he was violating a water taboo, but he refused to believe in fate and insisted on defying the heavens.

As a result, the ice cracked, and he fell into the water, nearly drowning. Had he not been wearing a new down jacket that kept him afloat through the night, he would have perished as a small child.

"Conrad!" Shuzo demanded, "Do you know what you've done! Will all of us be implicated because of you?"

Conrad had no heart to listen and continued to observe the stars, but the drifting clouds obscured the sky once more, leaving it dark and unclear.

Shuzo continued, "You can knock them out for a moment, but can you keep them unconscious forever? Once they wake up, the news will still spread! You are coming back to the warship with me now to report to Vice Admiral Aokiji..."

"Then should I kill them all?" Conrad lowered his head, his face dark and gloomy.

Shuzo's ox-like eyes widened, his mouth hanging open for a long time without uttering a word.

Conrad looked around, feeling as if every unconscious person was about to spring up at any moment. He slowly shifted his feet, adjusting his breathing.

He held the spear horizontally, ready to strike at any time.

"Seize him!" Shuzo ordered. He had to stop Conrad from acting recklessly and causing further damage.

Bang!

"Fine! So you're the first disaster star!"

The second Shuzo gave the order, Conrad's energy surged. He leaped up and smashed the shaft of his spear onto the top of Shuzo's head.

With a great disaster looming, they were still engaging in infighting! If he were restrained, how could he handle the crisis? Wouldn't he just become a lamb waiting to be slaughtered?

Shuzo's massive frame stiffened before he fell backward to the ground. His Doriki was only a little over two hundred; he could not withstand Conrad's immense strength.

The marines looked at Conrad with increasingly strange expressions, all of them distancing themselves from him.

But a young girl walked toward him in silence. With her navy-blue curly hair and rose-red eyes, she looked like a quiet blue rose in the neon night.

"What do you want to do?"

"What do you want to do!" Conrad leveled his spear, the tip pointing straight at Ain. "Stand back!"

He absolutely could not afford to be shrunk. His current body had a bone age of twelve years and eight months; if he were hit by one palm, he would become an eight-month-old baby.

Ain stood in front of the civilians who had been knocked unconscious by the Overlord Lion Roar and said solemnly, "The Navy only kills pirates, not civilians."

She drew the two guns from within her cloak. Calling them guns was an understatement; they were more like hand cannons with a caliber large enough to fit her two forearms inside.

They were called Gebru-Shot, left to her by her father.

"I never slaughter the innocent!" Conrad looked up at the starry sky again; the clouds were drifting slowly. "I only kill those who deserve to die!"

"Who deserves to die?" Ain slowly raised her muzzle. "Before you make that clear, don't you move."

"How can that be explained clearly! I don't know! I only know that I use my eyes to see!" Conrad's gaze was burning. "My eyes will never judge wrong! If I am wrong, I will pay with my life!"

He strode toward Ain. "Use this gun, aim it at my forehead. If you kill the wrong person, you can blow my head off."

Ain could not judge the situation, but she could feel that Conrad was not a bad person.

"Waaah~"

Suddenly, a cry rang out, sounding very heartbroken. It came from a little girl wearing a smooth yellow hat, looking to be about ten years old. She had woken up from her faint and was shaking the noblewoman beside her.

"Mom! What's wrong with you! Mom, wake up!"

The girl wore lemon-slice earrings, and her short skirt was also covered in lemon patterns. She clutched an umbrella as a walking stick, looking both cute and pitiful.

"Big sister! Please, save my mom!" She cried incessantly, causing the marines to soften their expressions, fearing they might frighten her further.

The girl glanced at Conrad and cried even harder. "This person is so scary!"

Saying this, she hid behind Ain, who was closest to her, and grabbed onto Ain's leg.

Ain turned and lowered her guns, fearing she might accidentally hurt the girl. "Don't be afraid, he won't hurt you..."

At this moment, only the sound of rapid, rhythmic tapping on the ground could be heard.

It was the prelude to the activation of Soru.

"Gwah! You dog-spawn! I saw right through you from the start!"

Conrad flashed instantly behind the girl, his gaze locked onto her lemon earrings as he raised his long spear and thrust it fiercely through her back.

"Don't think I wouldn't recognize you just because you haven't grown up yet!"

Her delicate lemon-colored dress was instantly ripped open, the spear piercing through her abdomen and pinning her to the floor tiles.

This brutal scene left the marines dumbfounded; he had just claimed he wouldn't slaughter the innocent, yet in the next breath, he had struck down a child.

Ain stood frozen. She had been preparing to receive the girl's embrace, only to witness Conrad's cruel execution of her.

"What are you doing?"

"Saving you! She's an assassin!" Conrad pulled his spear free, and the girl's body slumped.

Ain said sorrowfully, "She's just a child, how could she be an assassin? She doesn't even have a weapon! You're just..."

Boom!

The girl's body slammed into the ground with a thunderous sound like an earthquake. The lemon umbrella in her hand drove straight into the floor from its tip, sinking in like an iron rod through tofu.

Conrad said indifferently, "Her name is Ms. Valentine! Though, she might go by a different codename now. She's a user of the Kilo-Kilo Fruit."

The girl twisted her head to look at Conrad, vomiting a large mouthful of blood and viscera. Her performance had been flawless; she couldn't understand how she had been discovered.

She had only needed to finish the assassination, reduce her weight to that of a feather, and kick off the ground to fly away with her umbrella.

But she could no longer speak, convulsing in agony.

Her final sight was Ain's hand, burning with pink flames, and her eyes filled with pity.

Ain's slender hand removed the large hat, brushed aside the lemon-colored hair, and pressed gently against the girl's forehead.

"Such a small child..." Ain activated the power of the Return-Return Fruit.

The girl vanished. Under the glow of the flames, a flash of light flickered, and she disappeared without a trace, as if she had never existed at all.

Only the bloodstains on the ground, the lemon dress, and the hat and earrings remained, showing how much she truly loved lemons.

"Assassins have no moral standards," Conrad added. "If I didn't kill her, she would have killed you. One of you had to live, and since you helped me, I chose you."

Ain picked up the earrings, which were the easiest to carry, wrapped them in a handkerchief, and tucked them into her pocket. "How did you find out?"

Conrad looked up at the sky. Above Song and Dance Street, the night clouds had drifted away to their final stretch.

When a sudden gust of wind struck, blowing the marine flags into straight lines and pushing the clouds away, the countless stars across the sky were finally revealed.

"I can observe the heavens and read fate."

In the celestial dome, next to the star of fate representing his current position, four malevolent stars flickered in alternation.

"Besieged on all sides! Ha! I truly am the Overlord Heavenly Image!"

Conrad pointed his spear at the moon and laughed wildly.