I'm Angry

He was about to crash into the horses pulling a cart ahead.

Duen abruptly halted. To reduce the force of his momentum, he stomped down hard with his right foot, borrowing the force to leap straight up. Then he used Geppo, flipping over the cargo cart more than two meters high.

But that brief delay had turned Ace and Luffy into two black dots in his vision. With such a distance between them, catching up again would probably be beyond him.

"Forget it... There'll be another chance to run into them later..."

Duen assessed the situation and stopped.

Looking back, the cart had already rolled away slowly. The group of servants and cooks had dwindled to only a scattered few. Every one of them was bent over with their hands on their knees, panting from exhaustion. Watching Ace and Luffy leave in a cloud of dust, they could only curse as they departed.

Duen stood there for a while, looking around in confusion. Damn it, where am I...? Don't tell me Roronoa Zoro's idiocy infected me with some terrible disease...

He was already unfamiliar with the place, and he had made several turns while chasing Ace and Luffy. Now he realized he had forgotten the way back.

"Hmm..."

After pondering for a moment, Duen used Geppo. With two quick whooshes, he leapt along the wall and landed on the roof of a nearby house.

He lowered his body slightly, like an eagle surveying the terrain from above, and slowly turned his head to take in the entire town.

"..."

Damn it! All these houses looked exactly the same!

The terrain-scouting method in Berserker's Creed was definitely fake!

Unable to make sense of anything, Duen could only carefully recall the route he had taken while using Geppo to cross the gaps between houses, moving inconspicuously across the roof tiles.

The streets and alleys bustled with people. This was a border town, so the military police did not patrol very heavily, and no one noticed Duen moving across the rooftops.

The dark alley was piled with foul-smelling garbage bags. Besides the trash, a man was trapped within it.

"What exactly do you want?"

Simon's neat clothes had long been stained with all manner of filth. He held his hands up defensively, watching the group of hostile-looking men before him with wary eyes.

A man with a red headscarf pulled a dagger from his waist and ran his long, thin tongue over its blade. "We don't want anything. We're just warning you: you'd better understand your place and stop doing things that cross the line."

Simon's expression darkened. "I don't understand what you mean."

"You should know..." The red-headscarfed man turned the dagger over in his hand, his eyes fixed on the reflected glint along its blade. "Think carefully about what you did today."

"Elena... You don't want me getting close to Elena?"

"That's right." The red-headscarfed man's face turned cold. "Don't go near the Jeffrey family's villa again. You're just an insignificant sailor. No one will welcome you."

Simon said angrily, "Why should I listen to you?"

An hour and a half earlier, he had met the woman he yearned for day and night at a quiet, comfortable cold-drink shop on Central Street.

As he spoke with Elena and listened to her occasional silver-bell laughter, he felt as though they had returned to those carefree, happy days of childhood. It was as if his heart had been lost to her.

With both of them silently understanding one another, vows of love had nearly escaped their lips... How could he sever his relationship with Elena over a few words from some stranger?

"Why? You still don't understand..."

The red-headscarfed man shook his head to himself. A venomous glint flashed through his eyes, and then he rushed at Simon, the dagger in his hand slashing toward Simon's cheek.

He did not hesitate in the slightest. He did not care whether that stab would kill Simon and draw the military police patrol.

Faced with such a lethal attack, Simon panicked and twisted aside. The dagger carved a long, deep gash across his cheek, and a lock of hair at his temple fell to the ground with the blade's sharp flash.

Before he could even cry out in pain, the dagger struck again. Simon's burly frame became a disadvantage in the cramped space, and he was cut again and again like a living target.

Though he had experience fighting at sea and battling pirates, he had no way to make use of it now. As pain coursed through his body, his strength steadily drained away.

Soon, flaws began to appear in his defense. The red-headscarfed man thrust the dagger forward, plunging it into Simon's abdomen. Then he kicked him away, sending the nearly two-hundred-pound man flying several meters.

Blood drew a fine line through the air. Simon landed in the foul-smelling garbage heap behind him, blood continuously seeping from the wound in his lower left abdomen and dyeing his white suit a vivid rose-red.

The next moment, someone grabbed his hair and hauled half his body into the air. Four or five vicious-looking men restrained his arms so tightly that he could not move.

The red-headscarfed man leaned close. A chilling smile spread across the corners of his mouth, which bore stitch marks. "Promise me you won't look for Jeffrey or Elena again, and I'll let you go home."

Enduring the pain shooting through his body, Simon gritted his teeth. "Who are you people? Why are you interfering in my affairs with Elena?"

"We're just a bunch of lowlife desperadoes, acting on someone else's request... As for who that someone is, there's no need to tell you."

The red-headscarfed man licked the blood from his dagger. "Just agree already. Killing someone would be troublesome, and I don't particularly want to go that far right now. But if you make me angry..."

"Agree...? I've wandered through a sea of confusion for so many years, always entangled by the inferiority and cowardice spilling from my heart. But now, I understand what I want..."

Though trapped in danger, Simon's conviction only grew firmer. It turned into a resounding roar: "I will never give up!"

Smack!

A heavy fist smashed into Simon's face, cracking the bridge of his nose. Bright red blood poured from his nostrils as the red-headscarfed man frowned. "Your voice is far too loud, you bastard. And... that attitude is really unpleasant."

"Who the hell do you think you are, idiot!"

With that, he threw another punch at Simon's face.

"Hurry up." The red-headscarfed man looked increasingly weary of Simon. "Don't waste my precious time."

Ptui!

Simon answered with a mouthful of saliva mixed with blood.

The red-headscarfed man wiped the fluid from his face and kicked Simon's abdominal wound. Amid Simon's agonized scream, he stepped back coldly. "Give him a good welcome. Break his arms and legs, and the mission should count as complete. Don't kill him."

"Got it, Boss Sean."

The five or six men surrounding Simon grinned viciously as they kicked, stomped, and trampled hard on his joints.

As unbearable pain twisted his hands, nearly all color drained from Simon's face. He did not know why he feared death so little, nor why he had not begged even once in the face of such pain...

But he knew that if he agreed to the red-headscarfed man's demand, he would lose every bit of courage he had painstakingly gathered. He would never dare face Elena again, and would spend the rest of his life barely surviving in pain, sorrow, and regret... That would be a hundred times more painful than death, and far worse than this.

"This guy's really stubborn, huh? Heh heh, but that makes it more fun." One man grinned viciously as he grabbed Simon's left arm. While the others held his joints in place, he violently yanked it backward.

Crack!

The sound of bone nearly tearing apart rang clearly in his ears. Simon's mind went blank, and he nearly passed out.

The man grabbed Simon's right arm and was about to carry out the same punishment when a strange sound came from the roof nearby. He looked up and saw a youth with a broad sword strapped to his back leap down from a roof more than four meters high. He landed on the ground, let out a long breath, and showed no intention of leaving.

The red-headscarfed man froze for a moment before saying coldly, "Kid, if you don't want to die, get the hell out of here!"

Duen slowly drew the broad sword from his back. A chilling gloom gradually settled over his indifferent face. "Yeah... Someone is definitely going to die today."

In an instant, the white cloth strips wrapped around the broad sword fell away, and a suffocating cold gleam shone from its crimson-and-black blade.

The red-headscarfed man's pupils suddenly widened, reflecting a terrifying sight. As the enormous blade flashed, before he could react at all, his rigid body was brutally slammed into the wall.

The several men rushing up from behind were swiftly cut across the throat with the edge of the black broad sword. Blood immediately sprayed out in bursts like a fountain.

Clutching their throats, now unable to make another sound, their bodies collapsed limply.

Drip... drip...

Blood slowly dripped from the blade onto the ground.

Duen gave the broad sword a slight shake, his voice calm and without a ripple. "Sorry. I can't just stand by and watch..."

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