Vander Decken
Vander Decken's breathing grew heavy, his eyes turned bloodshot, and his bare chest heaved violently.
He suddenly raised his arm, which was covered with target markings, and frantically clenched his fingers in the air, trying to re-lock onto the location of the Shirahoshi, but he could only perceive emptiness.
His movements became increasingly ferocious, and the surrounding crew members were so frightened by this sudden change that they all retreated. Only one or two brave ones stepped forward to ask him what had happened.
He didn't answer, but instead smashed the table made of whale bones beside him with a single blow of his axe. Wood chips and bone fragments exploded in the seawater, and the turbid eddies knocked several henchmen who were too close to the ground.
"Impossible—my mark! How could my mark disappear!" His roar exploded from the depths of his throat, his fingers flailing futilely in the air, trying to grasp the anchor point that no longer existed.
In a rage, he overturned everything in front of him—chairs, barrels, crates full of stolen goods—smashing them all to pieces.
No one around dared to step forward to dissuade him; they knew the captain's temper all too well, and approaching him under these circumstances would be tantamount to suicide.
Vander Decken's roar echoed repeatedly in the hollow of the wreck, a mixture of anger and a kind of unease that even he himself was unwilling to admit.
Someone pulled out his anchor.
Someone trespassed on his territory and did something that even the Whitebeard Pirates had never done.
He couldn't understand who on this vast ocean would dare to meddle in the affairs of Fish-Man Island, but he would soon find out—that person not only dared to meddle, but had already arrived.
Natsu held the talisman containing the residual energy of the Mark-Mark Fruit mark between her fingers, closed her eyes, and unleashed her Observation Haki like a tidal wave.
The dark red energy compressed to its limit within the talisman was still struggling weakly, like a snake being pinched at its vital point.
With this mark as a medium, Vander Decken IX's whereabouts were no longer a secret to him—there was an unbreakable resonance between that energy and the caster, and following this resonance, he could clearly sense the other's direction and approximate distance.
A moment later, he opened his eyes, and the Mangekyo Sharingan in his eyes slowly turned.
"Southeast, Shipwreck Graveyard, about forty nautical miles from Fish-Man Island." Natsu put the talisman back into his sleeve, turned to Quan and said that he would go and get rid of the fly first, leaving her here to keep Shirahoshi.
Quan nodded, didn't ask any further questions, and simply whispered, "Come back soon."
Natsu nodded slightly, and then disappeared into the Hard-Shell Tower in a flash.
Forty nautical miles in the deep sea might take an ordinary person half an hour to navigate, but for Natsu Yin, who had mastered the Flying Thunder God Technique, it was merely the distance between the spell marks he had casually left on a few reefs when he was clearing out pirates around Fish-Man Island.
His figure flickered in the darkness, each appearance bringing him closer to the sea area where his target was located.
The fish along the way were startled by the figure that suddenly appeared and disappeared and scattered in all directions. A few ignorant deep-sea monsters tried to get close, but were frightened by the suffocating killing intent and turned to run away.
A moment later, Natsu landed on a broken mast that was stuck at the edge of the Shipwreck Graveyard.
Beneath my feet lay mountains of abandoned shipwrecks, their rusted keels and tattered sails swaying gently in the current, like the skeletons of drowned men.
His Observation Haki had precisely locked onto the giant shipwreck that had been converted into a nest, and the figure inside the ship still roaring hysterically.
Natsu lightly touched the mast with her toes and silently flew towards the sunken ship.
Natsu's figure landed silently on the tattered sail atop the mainmast of the sunken ship.
The tattered canvas bobbed slightly in the ocean current, yet he stood firmly with his hands behind his back. His greyish-white robes were lifted by the deep-sea current, fluttering in the wind.
He looked down at the pirate minions on the deck below, who were still not fully recovered from Vander Decken's outburst. His Sharingan gleamed with a cold, eerie light in the dim underwater glow.
"What a rabble." His voice wasn't loud, but it clearly pierced through the ocean currents and the creaking of the sunken ship's rotten wood, reaching the ears of every pirate.
The pirates on the lower deck all looked up, their wary gazes simultaneously locking onto the intruder who had appeared out of nowhere.
They had never seen this person before—he looked no more than fifteen or sixteen years old, dressed in plain clothes, without a pirate flag or any badge of a well-known pirate crew.
A few of the bolder henchmen instinctively gripped their scimitars and flintlock pistols, but most simply exchanged bewildered glances, their eyes filled with a mixture of wariness, confusion, and disdain. What trouble could a mere brat, barely out of his teens, possibly cause?
Vander Decken IX stood in the center of the deck, still clutching the giant axe he had just pulled from the shards of the whalebone table.
He narrowed his eyes, the muscles in his four arms twitching slightly from his lingering rage, but his combat instincts honed from years of deep-sea combat prevented him from underestimating this unexpected guest like the other henchmen did.
The other man's demeanor was far too composed; his condescending gaze wasn't one of ignorance or fearlessness, but rather the indifference of someone accustomed to life and death. He pointed to the top of the mast and said in a deep voice, "Who are you? How did you find this place?"
Natsu tilted her head slightly, as if she had heard some trivial and stupid question.
Who I am is not important.
He lightly leaped from the sail and landed on the gunwale at the edge of the deck, still in the same posture with his hands behind his back.
"The important thing is, I'm the one who plucked your Mark-Mark Fruit mark."
Vander Decken IX clenched all four of his hands at the same time, his knuckles cracking.
He glared at the boy on the ship's side, his ugly face twitching with bulging fat.
His mark, the imprint of the Mark-Mark Fruit's power, is an anchor etched into his soul, which no one on this sea but himself can remove.
What right does this kid, who hasn't even grown his first hair, have?
"Why—why do you have the right to interfere with my prey! Shirahoshi is my man! The affairs of the Ryugu Palace are my affairs! No one on this sea dares to meddle with Vander Decken IX!"
Natsu looked at him, and a slow smile crept onto her lips.
That wasn't a laugh; it was because he couldn't even be bothered to put on a serious expression after hearing such an incredibly stupid question.
"Why should I?" He tilted his head, the crimson in his eyes glowing eerily in the dim light of the deep sea.
"Does an ant have the right to question me?"
Dark golden Chakra exploded from his body.
Ribs, spine, shoulder armor, Susanoo's skeleton was pulled up layer by layer, lifting his entire body into the air.
The dark golden light illuminated the entire Shipwreck Graveyard as if it were daytime, and the abandoned ship wrecks cast haphazard shadows in the light.
The henchmen on deck were so overwhelmed by the oppressive force that their legs went weak. Some collapsed, others crawled, and some even tumbled over the ship's side and plunged into the sea, wishing they had more legs to get as far away from that dark golden giant as possible.