Gasparde

Three hours earlier...

With the Celestial Dragon dead, after the initial shock and terror had passed, the four CP9 agents and Gasparde all had the same thought.

They absolutely could not let the two audacious bastards in front of them escape.

Failing to protect a Celestial Dragon was already a capital crime. All they could hope for now was to catch the killers, make up for their failure with merit, and survive this disaster.

"What are you still standing around for? Surround these two lunatics, now! Don't let them get away..."

Gasparde spoke viciously, hatred for these two madmen shooting straight to the heavens in his heart.

From this moment on, his future in the Marines had been completely destroyed.

Hearing their superior's order, the Marines instantly snapped back to their senses.

An endless stream of Marine soldiers, weapons in hand, rushed out from the cabins and onto the deck with tension on their faces, tightly surrounding Ye Mu and Enel.

"Do not let these two get away."

Gasparde roared again. Unlike before, this time he was speaking to the four CP9 members.

Among the four CP9 agents, the one in the lead had a beard like a goat's, a fat body, a bald head, and faintly reddish skin.

His expression was ugly, as black as the bottom of a pot.

The other three were not much better.

"Capture them..."

The moment his words fell, he activated his Devil Fruit without the slightest hesitation: the Sheep-Sheep Fruit: Argali Form. To the naked eye, pink wool spread across his entire body, his frame doubled in size, his limbs turned into hard sheep hooves, and huge, sharp horns appeared on the top of his head.

The remaining three surrounded Ye Mu and Enel from three directions.

Among them, one had the Paramecia-type Gear-Gear Fruit, which allowed him to turn any part of his body into gears and attack through high-speed rotation, while the other two were pure martial-arts-type ninjas.

Seeing this, Enel's eyes lit up, and he said to Ye Mu, "Leave these guys to me..."

"No problem. But remember, don't kill them. We still have a use for these four..."

After saying that, Ye Mu looked at the dense crowd of Marines surrounding them.

"Before that, let's clear the field first."

Hearing Ye Mu's words, Enel instantly thought of something, his expression full of displeasure.

"You bastard..."

As Gasparde and the four CP9 members listened to these two madmen brag so shamelessly, their expressions grew even darker.

If they had not needed to take them alive, he would have ordered them to open fire long ago.

But just then, as the red-haired youth before them grew stern, a strange smile appearing on his lips, Gasparde and the four CP9 members had no time to react before they felt a terrifying, mountain-crushing aura erupt from the boy in front of them.

In that instant, time seemed to stop. Every Marine present felt as if their heart had been seized by something, making even breathing impossible. Then it was as if the nerves in their brains had been brutally crushed by a massive hammer. Their consciousness shattered in an instant, and their minds went completely blank.

It was clearly only an instant, but to Gasparde, it felt as long as a century.

His expression changed from its initial gloom to utter terror.

"Huff, huff, huff..."

Gasparde could not control his legs at all. As if all strength had left him, he dropped to his knees in front of Ye Mu and began retching in pain, then struggled to gasp for breath, as though he had been suffocating for a long time.

And the moment he knelt, on the deck, countless standing Marines had already rolled their eyes back, fainting one after another like falling dominoes.

In an instant, across the entire deck, aside from Ye Mu and Enel, only the four CP9 members remained standing.

As for those four CP9 members, they seemed completely unaffected.

They did not even understand what had happened. With expressions like they had seen a ghost, they looked at the fallen Marines around them and at Gasparde kneeling on the deck.

Until Gasparde's voice rang out.

"Con... Conqueror's... Haki..."

"What!???"

"How is that possible..."

The expressions of the four CP9 members changed instantly. Although they had never faced Conqueror's Haki directly, how could they not know its fearsome reputation? That was a power possessed only by those with the qualities of a king.

At that moment, they understood instantly.

The two boys before them were not madmen, but terrifying monsters.

The leading CP9 member, the Sheep-Sheep Fruit user, did not need to think at all when he saw this horrifying scene. He made his decision immediately.

Power erupted through his whole body. His feet stamped down, and his figure vanished from where he stood.

But he was not attacking Ye Mu. He fled outright.

He definitely was no match for the two monsters before him. If he did not run, there was only death waiting for him.

And if he ran, although he might still die for failing to protect the Celestial Dragon, But...

If I can get the intel here out, maybe I won't have to die.

As he thought that, in the span of just a few breaths, he flashed from the bow of the ship to the stern.

This was one of the Six Powers: Shave.

By stomping the ground dozens of times at high speed in an instant—0.36 seconds—it generated explosive reaction force for high-speed movement.

It was one of the abilities CP9 members had to master, and with the physical enhancement brought by his Zoan fruit, his Shave was the fastest of the four people present.

But just then, from the corner of his eye, a blur of blue suddenly appeared, along with the crackling sound of lightning.

At the same time, a sentence rang out that scared the soul right out of him.

"Hey, I said, where do you think you're running to..."

He turned back in terror. What entered his vision was only a black fist the size of a clay pot...

On the deck, when the other three CP9 members saw that their captain had actually abandoned them and fled, their faces instantly turned ugly. Then, without the slightest hesitation, they erupted with their fastest speed and vanished from where they stood.

However, they were smart as well, fleeing in three separate directions.

But Ye Mu did not move. To deal with these guys, Enel was enough.

He slowly walked up to Marine Admiral Gasparde, who was kneeling on the ground, and looked at Gasparde, who was still panting heavily, as he asked.

"So, Marine, are you ready to answer my question now? This ship is transporting the Heavenly Tribute, right..."

Gasparde's face was full of terror, no longer possessing the reserve of a Marine from before, and he readily said.

"N-no... It isn't... We're only the warship responsible for protection..."

"Mm!?"

When Gasparde heard Ye Mu's dissatisfaction, he was instantly startled as well, and he told everything in full.

"Our objective is to head to Mahbas, a World Government member nation in West Blue, and protect the ship carrying the Heavenly Tribute from Mahbas to Mary Geoise. That ship is the one transporting the Heavenly Tribute..."

Ye Mu's expression darkened a little too.

"In other words, this ship is actually empty right now..."

"Y-yes..."

Ye Mu's heart was instantly filled with disappointment. He had originally been counting on making a huge fortune by robbing the Heavenly Tribute.

Although he already possessed all the gold of the City of Gold and was no longer short on money.

But who would ever complain about having too much money? Not to mention, there might even be Devil Fruits, fine swords, and things like that inside.

However, his disappointment vanished in an instant. Instead, he looked with great interest at the Marine Admiral before him, who seemed as if he had become a completely different person.

"You sure changed fast. I thought you'd be a little more stubborn. Looks like, in your heart, there doesn't seem to be any of the so-called justice of the Marines..."

When he heard Ye Mu's words, Gasparde's expression turned ugly, but then he spoke as if he had thrown caution to the wind.

"The justice of the Marines—I never believed in that kind of thing..."