Quick-Quick Fruit User (Please Bookmark and Recommend)

In the town square, Zhong Hao blocked the pirate captain's sneak attack. Blade and dagger collided, sparks flying everywhere. Only then did he get a clear look at the pirate captain.

He was incredibly thin, his pirate coat hanging loosely from what seemed like a skeleton. He was also very short, no more than around one meter forty. If not for his middle-aged face, anyone seeing him from behind might have mistaken him for a child.

Behind him, the boy's blade had already fallen. With a wet thud, it struck Desman's neck and was caught on the neck bone. The boy's hand went limp, and he released the hilt, staring stupidly at the corpse at his feet with his mouth agape. His mother hurriedly pulled him into her arms, burying his face against her chest. One hand supported the back of his head while the other gently patted his back to comfort him.

Seeing his subordinate dead, the pirate captain's eyes flashed coldly. He instantly retreated ten meters and looked at Zhong Hao. "Kid, you've got some skill. Give me your name."

His voice was incredibly deep and thick, utterly mismatched with his body.

Zhong Hao narrowed his eyes. Having witnessed the man's speed, he secretly raised his guard. "My name is Zhong Hao. And who are you?"

The pirate captain frowned and ran through his memories, confirming he had never heard that name before. Cursing him as a nobody, he said, "I'm Rudifen, captain of the Quick-Quick Pirates, with a bounty of forty million. A Quick-Quick Man."

"A Quick-Quick Man?" Thinking of the man's earlier speed, Zhong Hao probed, "You're a Devil Fruit user?"

Rudifen burst into laughter. "That's right. I'm a Quick-Quick Fruit user. Now that you've seen my speed, you still dare make an enemy of me? I've got a hundred ways to kill you. So what do you say? Want to join my crew and follow me?"

I can turn down recruitment from the Fleet Admiral, so who the hell are you? Zhong Hao sneered inwardly, while mocking him aloud. "If I became a crewman under a dwarf like you, wouldn't I be laughed to death?"

Rudifen flew into a rage. He hated people mocking his height most of all, and he also hated looking up at others. Wherever he went, he had to stay somewhere high, like the elevated platform in the square, which he had ordered built temporarily. His offer for Zhong Hao to become his subordinate was not only because he had seen Zhong Hao's strength, but more because Zhong Hao was even shorter than him.

Of course, Zhong Hao was short because of his age. Rudifen was just genuinely short.

Now that he had been publicly mocked, Rudifen's face immediately turned livid, and fury burned in his heart. He roared, "Then I'll butcher you! I'll cut out your tongue and mash your heart into pulp!"

With that, Rudifen charged Zhong Hao first. Seeing their captain make his move, the pirates left some men behind to guard the townspeople while the rest swiftly surrounded Zhong Hao.

Zhong Hao blocked Rudifen's attacks as he fought and retreated. Once he had withdrawn to the edge of the square, away from the civilians, he shifted from defense to offense and clashed with Rudifen.

The battle was fierce, drawing all the attention of the pirates left behind. Seeing an opportunity, a burly man who had long been prepared grabbed a stone and smashed it into a pirate's face. He seized the man's long blade, then cut him down with a backhand swing. Raising his arm, he shouted, "Brothers, we can't let our benefactor fight alone! Kill all the pirates!"

"Roar!" The grown men had already been burning with rage. They responded at once, and under the burly man's lead, they cut down several pirates, seized their weapons, and fought the pirates hand-to-hand. The elderly, weak, women, and children retreated behind them.

However, the pirates were hardened bandits who had survived countless battles. After their initial panic, they quickly steadied themselves, and the townspeople immediately fell into a disadvantage.

"Kill!"

Seeing this, more than twenty sturdy women rushed out from among the elderly and weak. They picked up weapons and charged the pirates with loud battle cries.

At that moment, some of the pirates surrounding Zhong Hao broke away to suppress the townspeople.

Zhong Hao deliberately concealed his strength. While pretending to struggle, he observed the situation. When he saw the townspeople gradually failing to hold on, his brow furrowed tightly.

Rudifen darted ghostlike through the gaps between pirates, launching sneak attacks against Zhong Hao from time to time. Suddenly, his figure vanished from the crowd. When he reappeared, he was already behind Zhong Hao, his dagger carrying a piercing whistle as it stabbed toward Zhong Hao's back.

"Good chance!" Zhong Hao had kept his Observation Haki active the entire time and immediately caught sight of him. A cold gleam flashed through his eyes as he used Kami-e, narrowly evading the dagger. He twisted his wrist and used the momentum of his turn to slash Sea Fang diagonally upward from below, cutting straight for Rudifen's legs.

Given Sea Fang's sharpness, if it connected, it would easily sever both his legs.

However, Rudifen was a Quick-Quick Fruit user after all. Though the sudden counterattack startled him, he forcibly halted his forward momentum with his Fruit power and abruptly shifted another meter backward.

Seeing this, Zhong Hao's arm paused as well. Sea Fang stopped sharply, its tip aimed directly at Rudifen's thigh. Zhong Hao leaned forward and thrust his blade. The tip instantly pierced Rudifen's thigh, sinking an inch deep. He then twisted his wrist, viciously wrenching the tip through the thigh muscle to inflict a second wound.

Just as Zhong Hao put strength into his arm and prepared to pull the blade again, Rudifen had already retreated rapidly. Sea Fang slid free from the muscle in his thigh.

An ordinary person would have had no way to deal with Rudifen's speed. When he moved, normal people could not even see his shadow and could only take his attacks passively. Fortunately, Zhong Hao possessed Observation Haki. Though he was not as fast as Rudifen, as long as he could catch Rudifen's movements, he could remain undefeated.

"Damn bastard, you've made me mad! Get him! Surround him and hack him to death!" Rudifen swiftly retreated behind the pirates encircling Zhong Hao, one hand covering his wound as he shouted, "Ship doctor, come bandage me up!"

Watching the pirates surround him once again, Zhong Hao thought, Perfect. I'll clear out as many lackeys as possible and reduce the townspeople's casualties. But Rudifen is a huge problem. He's too fast. He can fight whenever he wants and leave whenever he wants, and there's no way to keep him here. If he doesn't die, I'm not afraid of retaliation, but there's no guarantee he won't come back and slaughter the townspeople to vent his anger. And with his speed, even a seawater barrel probably couldn't splash him. What a pain...

Sea Fang flashed up and down, each stroke taking a life. After clearing out the pirates around him, Zhong Hao leaped into the air. Looking out across the battlefield, he saw townspeople already lying in heaps. His brow immediately creased, and he snorted coldly before using Geppo repeatedly to move sideways toward where the townspeople were fighting.

He killed several of the stronger pirates, easing some of the pressure on the townspeople.

"You all deserve to die!" Zhong Hao's eyes gleamed with cold light. He turned around to face the dense mass of pirates pursuing him, then suddenly sheathed his sword and assumed a standard iai stance.

"Iaijutsu: Iai Slash!"

The long blade left its sheath, and a two-meter-long silver-white slash extended from its edge, shooting outward. The slash traveled parallel to the ground and swept through the pirate horde like a force of destruction. In an instant, more than twenty pirates fell.

"Successive Slashes!"

Zhong Hao shouted again, swung his blade once more, and slashed five times in different directions before him. Five crescent slashes swept into the pirate crowd in a fan shape. Another large group fell at once, leaving only a dozen or so pirates standing there, trembling as though they had been scared senseless.

They had not survived because they were strong enough, but because Zhong Hao's swings had not been aimed at them.

For a moment, the entire square fell silent. The townspeople stared at the sight with their mouths open, unable to recover for a long time. The burly man who had led the first resistance had fought on the front line the entire time and was now covered in wounds. He barely managed to close his jaw and smacked his lips, utterly unsure what to say in the face of such a scene.

Originally, he had risen up in resistance with the resolve to die. Killing even one pirate would have been enough, as long as the women, children, and elderly could survive this disaster. The other men fighting alongside him had shared the same thoughts. But judging from the situation now, it seemed that they... were about to win.

Everyone's emotions surged like a stormy sea, and they could barely contain their excitement. Their gazes toward that figure were filled with molten, scorching gratitude.

Zhong Hao pretended to be utterly exhausted, as though he were about to collapse. In a very low voice, he said to the burly man, "I'll leave the rest to you. The pirate captain is too dangerous, so I'll lure him away first."

Without waiting for a reply, he laughed twice. Yet even his laughter seemed weak and breathless. "Ha ha, that was satisfying. I'm just getting a little hungry. Dwarf, wait until I've gone back and eaten my fill. Then I'll come find you and teach you the secret to growing taller."

After saying that, Zhong Hao hurried out of the square and ran toward the outskirts of town. As he ran, his lower body seemed unsteady and his upper body swayed, as if he might stumble at any moment.

To Rudifen, this was clearly a sign that Zhong Hao had exhausted his stamina and lost confidence. Then he heard words like "dwarf" and "the secret to growing taller," and his fury immediately erupted. Reason was burned away in an instant. He kicked the ship doctor aside and roared, "Damn bastard! I'm going to eat your flesh!"

With that, he suddenly vanished from where he stood and chased after Zhong Hao.

The remaining dozen or so pirates looked at each other, unsure what to do.

"Should... should we go after the captain?"

"You go if you want. I'm not going. The captain didn't order us to follow him anyway. Besides, didn't you see how terrifying that kid swordsman was? More than a hundred brothers were cut down in less than two seconds. If you want to die, go ahead."

"Then... then fine. Let's take the money back to the ship and wait for the captain to return."

The dozen or so remaining pirates had barely finished discussing it when they froze after taking a single step. At some unknown point, more than a hundred townspeople armed with blades and spears had surrounded them. Their limbs turned ice-cold, and their faces went pale with terror.

"You're all that's left. Go die!" The leading burly man roared and charged forward. Everyone immediately raised their weapons and followed.

"N-No... don't! I was wrong! Please don't kill me... Aah—"

No matter how the pirates begged, the townspeople's hearts did not soften. The pirates' evil and cruelty had long since ignited the raging fury within them.

After more than a dozen screams, more than a dozen piles of mangled flesh, no longer recognizable as human, lay on the ground. At last, the square became quiet.

Thus, aside from Rudifen, the Quick-Quick Pirates had been completely wiped out.

After rushing into the fields outside town, Zhong Hao crouched among the lush green seedlings, concealing himself as he lay in ambush.